Purple Grape Jam with White Bread Loaf

I had been eyeing this jam for a couple of months now and i had been sceptical of baking bread for even longer. Then i saw my friend bake bagels from scratch and knew it was time for me to draw some inspiration. I had been telling her that i would bake a bread from her blog because she was doing it all too easily and all too frequently.  I may have been postponing it because nobody was asking me to do these. If i did make both bread and jam from scratch, it would be solely for me. The husband won't touch bread especially when it has jam in it (will eat Subway breads only!). And is not much of a breakfast person either. I decided i should do it for my own satisfaction. Boy was i happy. I finished making jam at 5 in the evening, then made these for the husband to snack on and finally pushed my bread into the oven. Fresh bread came out at 8 pm. And i didn't have the patience to wait till breakfast to try these out. So my dinner came in the form of purple jam lathered over freshly baked and sliced bread. I have no complaints. Making something from scratch going slightly out of your comfort zone gives tremendous satisfaction. And for me, i have not done anything so elaborate just myself after getting married. Usually when the husband is out and i have to cook only for myself, i have only ever made Maggi noodles or eaten left over rice from the morning or convinced him to bring me takeaway. So to go out to such lengths to prepare something only for myself wasn't bad at all. I should try it again sometime.

Papaya and Beetroot Jam

My father-in-law loves gardening. And his hard work with the papaya tree was bearing fruit - literally! Three weeks ago found us with so many papayas that we couldn't possibly eat them all straight as fruits. It was also mango season and papayas automatically got relegated to second place, despite being homegrown. So i needed an idea to consume the papayas. Only a few days earlier had mom sent me some home-made mixed fruit jam when i began my bread experiments. Ever since i had wanted to make my own jam. These papayas presented the perfect opportunity.

I called up mom and asked for the recipe and found that it was really really easy. And it was her idea to add a beetroot to give my home-made jam a natural yet appetising colour of store bought jams. The recipe is almost no recipe at all because you have so few ingredients and the process is so easy. The only downside is that since we are not adding any preservatives, it may not last as long as store-bought jams. But it has less sugar, so we can eat more of it :-)