In the mood for fruit, to finish supper on the patio tonight. There’s nothing much in the fruit bowl, so I went firkling through the “preserves” cupboard. The bottled pears need using up (four years is about the limit for them, really). All kinds of memories of the Conference tree at the old family home, and of struggling back to Worcester on the train with large carrier bags of pears (as well as a backpack full of whatever tools I’d taken over to do the usual minor running repairs). This is the penultimate small jar, though there are still a couple of large ones.
I didn’t bottle any fruit last year, and this year I suppose I’ll have to buy Conference pears to bottle, as neither of the varieties I grow is suitable for bottling. My grandmother had a large shelf in her larder full of bottled fruit, and I remember helping her with the process from a very young age. There’s something comforting about having “stores”, I think.
