The Season for Giving

Christmas is coming and it is the season for making things to give friends and family.  A friend of ours gave us some mulberries and as it was getting to the end of the useful fruit on the tree, I turned the harvest into jam.  I was a bit concerned that the fruit might either be too tart because it was not ripe enough or too sugary being over ripe so I decided to add some other fruit and flavours to make it more interesting.  I wasn't sure if it would work but I had some apricots and added some vanilla bean and - well, it worked.  Go figure.  It will be nice to be able to give a jar of jam back to the friend who provided the mulberries.

The same friend gave us some wattle seeds.  Mind you I had to do the tedious work of extracting the seeds which took ages.  It's not hard, you leave the pods in the sun until they dry out and open then scoop the seeds out, or if you have left them on something easily shakeable, they will shake free but of course I didn't do that so had to manually split the pods and flick the seeds out with my fingernail.  Like I said, not hard but time consuming and I'm not sure how rewarding it might end up being.  I've never used wattleseeds before but I am aware that you can use them in the same way you'd use poppy seeds so a little experimentation is in order.  Eating them whole is tough, unlike poppy or sesame seeds they are hard little beggars but I read that you need to toast and grind them in a coffee grinder.  Well, fortunately we have a coffee grinder so no problem.  I have a few recipes that I will be trying as soon as I get the chance.

I've been making Christmas mince pies, experimenting with an almond meringue topping on my gluten free spiced pastry and making the filling less sugary sweet by adding fresh pear to the standard fruit mince.  I won't claim it to be acceptable to diabetics with the meringue topping but it might be better than a regular mince pie.  I would certainly hope so.

So, the real joy of the Christmas season is the preparation building up to the day, the making something to give.  Shopping and Christmas carols have long since worn off but the feeling that I can use my skills to make presents feels good.