My Jam

© Fiep Westendorp

What is it about blackberries that temporarily throws adults back to childhood? Annie M.G. Schmidt explores this brilliantly in Pluk van de Petteflat, in which these 'hasselbramen' make anyone who eats them want to play, run, and giggle together like children. They were 'thinly disguised' drugs, basically.

Granted, in the real world blackberries don't have quite this strong of an effect. But picking a bunch and returning home with the loot just seems to set something off in adults. I have seen my father hold up a little bowl with a total of four blackberries from the shrub in our garden. I swear, he was so proud; like it was his greatest accomplishment; like these tiny, sour berries were a huge trophy he'd just won.

My mother has similar memories of my grandmother. Whenever her family would happen upon wild blackberry shrubs while driving through the country, they'd stop to pick them bare. She remembers my grandmother's fanaticism. The abundance of thorns could never stop her from getting to the perfect ones buried deep within the bramble, untouched by birds. The really thick and juicy ones wouldn't even make it home. Our word for snacking is 'snoepen'. There is something mischievous about the word, though, as if it's sneakily done. So when I asked my grandmother for her side of the story, and she used this word to say she'd eat the thick blackberries straight from the shrub, her face and tone were that of a child caught stealing a cookie from the jar.

Whatever did make it home, sometimes entire buckets or baskets full, would be made into jam. With arms covered in scratches, my grandmother would set about making jars upon jars of deliciously sweet fruit confiture. "It's quite easy actually," she assured me. All you need is fruit, jelly sugar, maybe some lemon juice and a big saucepan on the hob. Most sugar would do, really, but jelly sugar has got pectin in, a natural gelling agent. Because of this it only has to be on the heat for 4 minutes, instead of at least 45.

This sugar is great!

In the summer season, fresh produce is easy for her to come by. Family and friends all grow fruit and give my grandmother whatever they can spare. If there's too much, and often there's kilos, she freezes it. This way, she can even make jam in the winter. She mixes and matches all kinds of ingredients. Sometimes the labels are too small to fit all the types of berries on. It always tastes great though. Whenever we see her, she always makes sure to send us home with a tutti-frutti cake, and if we're lucky, one of her jars of jam.

Though in all her years of jam-making, I believe my grandmother never mistook blackberries for hallucinogenic ones that made her blubber like a baby, unlike Mrs Helderder below, who unfortunately wasn't aware of the power of the 'hasselbramen'.

This is what I imagine my grandmother's kitchen looks like whenever she makes jam.
© Fiep Westendorp