Tomato Jam

Dear Readers,

I made tomato jam yesterday. A vegetable market just across our apartments put up a board 'buy one kg and get one kg free!' for Rs.6/- which I thought was a steal.
Psst... today its Rs.8/-! up by Rs.2/-.

Well, i washed a kg of tomatoes and processed it just as my mom would do when we were very young. She would add a dash of lime juice which added flavor to it. It came out very well. I made soft rotis and we had them with tomato jam today.

I will share the recipe with you.
Wash 500gms of ripe sour tomatoes.
Boil, de-skin and make a pulp. The ratio of sugar I used this time was 1.25 times sugar to 1 measure of pulp. I just tried another method this time for preparing too. Just mixed both the pulp and sugar and set it up on low flame over the stove. Kept stirring until sugar dissolved completely. when I could see the mixture reducing to 3/4ths of the original quantity I added 3 tablespoons of lime juice and 1/2 tsp of salt to balance the sweetness. It was gooey and very tasty. When it was poured into a glass jar to set, it looked so attractive with seeds everywhere like a red polka dot dress. It sits pretty over my dining table and will be over very soon. Then I washed the ladle and the pan with some water to make tomato juice. That was tasty too. :D

We remember food, events, etc. associated with childhood, when we are past 50 years. Perhaps that is the time when our kids are on their own and we have time to look back upon our own lives as a flashback. We remember our childhood friends and cousins with whom we might have spent our innocent days. Each one of us must have come a long way from how we led our lives half a century back!

Sweet and sour are our memories of the days gone by just like the sweet-sour lime pickle without which my last course of any meal - curd rice - is not complete. More on this later.

Catch you tomorrow, god willing :D

Cheers!
Mahalakshmi