Strawberry & Raspberry Jam (summer 2020)
I’ve been losing track of recipes, so decided to add a page to the website to keep track of the concoctions that were successful and super delish!
Yum!
Why ‘Witch’ you may wonder…. My beloved maternal grandmother was a very skilled artist and craftswoman, who painted oil and acrylic portraits and paintings, made dolls and clothes and much more for all of her many children and grandchildren – of which she had many!
One year she made each of her children a ‘kitchen witch’ – with heads created individually by her out of paper mâché, and then sowed a cloth and batting body, and adorned with unique little doll dresses. Each witch was unique and individual, with differently styled dresses and facial features.
When she had to downsize her house as she was unable any longer to live independently, I was lucky enough to be in Canada that summer and was able to peruse some of her personal effects before they were disposed of. All of her own sentimental items were laid out in a huge Mississauga basement – it was a sad day for her and I felt it keenly. Incredibly to me, nobody else in the family wanted her very own kitchen witch, which had hung in her kitchen with her through the years. I scooped it up as a significant personal memento, to bring back home with me to London.
To my delight her kitchen witch still had it’s little poem tucked into the witch’s apron, written by her own hand. This is truly a treasured personal item and hangs to this day in my tiny little galley kitchen in London.
Granny’s Lucky Kitchen Witch spell, with my Birks baby knife.
Granny’s good luck Kitchen Witch with her handwritten spell in her pocket. Her broom has come off but I still have it and will reinstall one of these days…..
I’m often accused of being a hoarder, but truth be told most of my hoarding is highly sentimental and each item collected evokes powerful personal memories. An example would be that I still to this day, five decades on, have in my possession the silver Birks baby knife that I was gifted at birth by my godparents and beloved aunt and uncle, as shown in the photo above. But the impulse goes beyond the usual kinds of objects, and also includes such items as a rounded granite stone the size of a tennis ball that my fisherman uncle picked up while we were on a walk on one of our North Ontario fishing trips. Sadly I can no longer hold his hand, but I occasionally pick up the stone and think fondly of him – which is as close to holding his hand as I can get until we meet again in the infinite cosmic energy of heaven.
Philosophising... 