January and February are a barren time as far as preserving fresh produce goes, but there are some delicious recipes still worth getting on with.

Most of these involve imported citrus fruit, such as Seville oranges, which are at their cheapest and most plentiful at this time of year.

image source wikimedia commons

1.  The pumpkin is a squash of the genus Cucurbita, and can refer to one of many species, they all originated in North America.

1. The word pectin derives from the Greek word pektikos, meaning "congealed, curdled".

2. Pectin is a naturally occurring carbohydrate found mostly in the skin and core of fruit, when combined with acid and sugar it forms a gel, the essential process for setting jam.

image source wikimedia commons

1. The latin name for runner beans is Phaseolus coccineus.

It's about this time of year that the question of what to do with the last of the marrows raises it's gnarled green head over the edge of the vegetable bowl.
The marrow is unquestionably a beast, and sadly it's culinary uses are usually limited to being stuffed, but it can make the base of a most subtle and delicious jam. Its saving grace is that it doesn't have much flavour, and while this is usually its downfall, in this recipe it allows the ginger and lemon to shine through.

It's also a pretty jam.
The cooked marrow is translucent and jewel like chunks of it float in the jar, I've adapted this recipe to include a small amount of pumpkin, which adds a stronger orange colour to the effect.

The nights are drawing in, the clocks turn back soon and it's cold enough to put the heating on, we've even been tempted to light the fire early and play some http://www.foxybingo.com/.

Christmas will be on us before we know it, and thoughts are starting to turn to presents for friends and family. Edible treats always go down well in our house, and in some cases are all eaten by the new year.

Recent news articles ( in the Daily Mail and on the BBC) have highlighted a Food Standards Agency regulation regarding safety criteria for food packaging. It has come to light that selling homemade jams and chutneys in reused jars may be punishable by local authority environmental health officers with penalties reaching £5,000  or six months in prison.

So should we be concerned about this?

Runner bean chutney is something I've eaten at friend's houses, but never made myself. This year, while many crops in the garden have done badly due to the bad weather, the beans have romped away. So, to use up a bit of a glut, I picked a trug of the larger of both runner and green beans and set about this recipe.

Recycling glass jars by reusing them is a good way of keeping costs down, and of course helps save the energy used to recycle them through the bottle bank.  Jars can be used again and again, and after some time you can end up only having to replace a few each year.
Think of it as milk bottles for jam.

There are, however, some precautions to take to make sure that your jam or chutney stays sealed and uncontaminated.

If you prefer a bit of variety at breakfast then combining citrus fruit to make a three or four fruit marmalade is as easy as making a traditional recipe.

I'm a convert to the whole fruit method of making marmalade, and this recipe is based on that.