Making Jam and Driving

Yesterday was berry picking and jelly/jam making day. We picked red and black currant berries, as well as gooseberries from bushes in the backyard. We made the currant berries into jellies. The colors were so gorgeous, the black currant one turned a bright pink to start with then after it cooled became a lovely dark maroon color. The red currants became an electric pink and stayed that way. Pia used a jam recipe with lemon and lots of cardamom for the gooseberries. We probably should have cut the berries in quarters instead of in half as they did not break down very much but it didn’t end up mattering because the jam was absolutely delicious with the lemon and cardamom flavors coming through and making a wonderful combination with the fruit. For all three jams the smell was wonderful! Luckily it wasn’t a very hot day and we had a nice cross breeze in the room, which is very helpful when canning. 

My experience with canning has been using hot water baths to sterilize and seal the jars. Pia’s method was different – she heated the jars in the oven and poured boiling water over the lids (they were one piece lids as opposed to the two part ones that I am used to). When the jars came out of the oven it was my job to swish a sterilizing agent inside the hot jars. Finally she poured in the jam or jelly and put the lids on top, no need to boil the jars afterwards. Pia keeps some jars for use at home and to give to family, but sells the rest at the holiday markets that are very popular in Sweden during the month of December.

In Pia‘s section of the house, there are still the original coat hooks that the students hung their coats on and little benches where they would take off and put on their shoes. Most of the people who went to the school have now passed away as it has not been a school for many, many decades.

We were all up early today as Pia and Giorgia were heading down to see Pia‘s mother at her summer house on the coast. On the way they dropped me off in Borås to pick up my rental car. I got to explore the cute little downtown area by the river while Pia ran an errand. Borås is the textile capital of Sweden, there’s a university that focuses on fashion and textiles and lots of fashion related businesses. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in, but it seems like a cute little city with a beautiful church so I’d like to go back and check it out again when I have more time. I had to laugh when I went past a little pedestrian mall that had an IKEA in it! 

I picked up my rental and was upgraded from a stick shift to an automatic for free. I don’t mind driving a stick shift at all, but it’s nice to have one less thing to concentrate on when I’m driving in a place where I don’t know the language. It’s a very clean new Skoda Fabia, basically the least expensive rental car that I could get. Skoda is a Czech car manufacturer. I’m glad to have a car so I can get out and about and explore a little bit more. I discovered that the stoplight in Sweden are a little different from those in the US. They work the same way and that there are red, yellow and green lights and the light goes from green to yellow to red so people know that they’ll need to stop. But, they also go from red to yellow to green, letting you know that the light is just about to turn green. Pia thought this was to give folks who have electric start cars, an extra second to start their car so it was ready to go. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but it is a little strange to be right now seeing the light go from red to yellow to green. After I got used to the car and driving on the roads, I put on the radio which was tuned to a pop station, so I heard a lot of songs that were very familiar to me. However, I could not understand most of the words the DJs were saying in between songs though was really cute hearing the way they pronounced some of the bands names like Vilsson Feelips (Wilson Phillips). At one point they started talking about ‘bitch vullybull’ and I wondered what that was. Eventually I figured out they were saying beach volleyball! I am grateful that everybody here has been very patient with my butchering of the pronunciation of the Swedish language.

I made a few stops on my way back, first checking out an old church (every town seems to have several of them with very well maintained graveyards). I passed several raised platforms in fields that I have been told are used during moose hunting season, which comes up in October. I stopped at the side of the road to check out an old burial marker from 1754. 

When I got home, there was a package hanging on the mailbox for Pia. Apparently that’s the way things are delivered – the mail carrier inserts a little metal hook into the mailbox flap and the package or bag hangs on it. I guess in a country where it snows a good amount of the year and rain during summer is expected most days, you need a way that packages are not sitting on the wet or snowy ground. The animals were very excited and greeted me enthusiastically. It’s a partly cloudy and a warm day for this area – a very pleasant 24 degrees Celsius (mid 70s for us Americans). 

Now that I’m going to be here on my own for this week I’ve moved downstairs so the animals can sleep near my bed if they want to. I’m probably not going to be eating the delicious gourmet meals that Pia and Giorgia have been making, though there is plenty of food, including authentic Swedish meatballs. Yum!