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Hi Elodie! My parents have a giant wild cherry plum tree in their garden (which pre-dates the house) and as you've said, it's a Good Year for Plums. I went round this weekend and came home with an enormous amount and was still leaving plenty on the tree. This batch I will be stewing and using for various baking projects, but I'd love to learn to make jam. Every time I see your posts about jam-making I think 'wow, I wish I could do that!' However, whenever I've looked into it, the bits about sterilising and properly sealing jars scares me off, because it seems like the sort of thing you should need specialist equipment for. Do you have any tips on that part of the process specifically and just jam-making generally? Thank you!

Oh I know what you mean! Jam seems so arcane, so distressing, so wrong, so close to food poisoning, doesn't it? You're supposed to throw out cooked rice after three hours, but with jam you're expected to make something with your silly little hands and eat it six months later? If you don't have experience with it, it's uncomfortable!

It can be helpful to know a bit about the microbiology involved. In simplistic terms, the high sugar content of jam means that bugs can't grow very easily. In the process of making jam, you remove the water from the plums and replace it with sugar.

Sterilising is definitely scary, but also something that's part of your everyday life. It's worth remembering that "boiling" kills most living things. Biologically, how could they survive it?

The jam itself will be above boiling temperature (that's how it becomes jam.) You'll be placing clean hot jam into clean hot jars. Ask yourself: where will the germs come in? Even an experienced person should be thinking about this - much like in lab microbiology work, you should always be considering the unexpected places where contamination could be introduced - but in the process of "hot sterile jars out of oven, hot sterile jam on the stove, jam straight into jars" there are really very few places where fresh germs CAN jump in.

Before making jam, you can save glass jars with metal lids (especially with pop-button lids.) Wash them in warm soapy water or put them through the dishwasher. Put them on a baking tray with the lids facing up. Bake in the oven (definitely killing all the germs) about 15 minutes before the end of when the jam is being made, or just leave them in the oven while the jam catches up. There will be no germs in the jars now - how could there be?

When you fill the jars with jam, make sure they're filled up to the top. That's "jam-packed," by the way. Leaving air in the jars increases the likelihood of spoilage. Screw the lid firmly and correctly on the jar and - here's a trick - turn the closed jar upside down. The hot jam is sterile and will super-sterilise the inside of the lid. It should also suck down the pop-button part of the pop-button lids.

When the jam is cooled, you can poke the pop-top lids. Most of them will be nice and flat, the button sucked down, as if they are a new jar of storebought jam. You can be more confident in those. Store them in the cupboard.

Any jars whose pop-top lids didn't work properly, any jars without pop lids to comfort you, and any jars where you feel like you messed up (didn't fill it fully, didn't fill it properly, accidentally dropped lid on floor, etc) or any jars you just don't feel Sure about can, for your comfort, officially become Fridge Jams. They're fine, but you're doubtful about them. Put the Fridge Tier Jams in the fridge, and eat them within six weeks.

Throughout the process, it's good practice to keep asking yourself "where will the germs come in." Did you just grab a new wooden spoon? Make sure it's rested on a "clean" plate, not a "dirty" countertop. But also, it's about being mindful: jam doesn't need a hazmat suit, it just needs a bit of attentiveness.

The River Cottage book about preserves is really good, and there are many resources available. Good luck!

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Too many artists are held back by outdated and bad color theory rules, or even rules that are fine but have built in limitations that you should know and I want to set everyone free.

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the thing that bothers me with 7 deadly sin based characters is when they cant decide if they embody the sin by suffering from it or by drawing it out of others. ie. if your gluttony demon is a guy who loves eating then your lust demon should be a gooner sex pest. and if your lust demon is a seductive girlboss then your gluttony demon should be a 5 star chef. does this make sense.

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Bought my uncle a burger and milkshake in exchange for letting me disrupt the holiest day of the week, NFL Sunday Football, so I could install a Pi-hole and free the household of ads...the thing abt the specific boomers I live with is they told me not to trust people on the Internet but they do not understand the algorithm or online advertising and think that Facebook has their best interests at heart. And every time I have tried to explain to them that no, blorbo from my dashboard is not selling my kidneys on the dark web but Google from your capitalism is definitely selling your web searches to every advertising company on the planet, they think I am paranoid. How could their personal friend Mark Zuckerberg want anything bad to happen to them etc. I am fighting battles I did not know existed!!!

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it is so frustrating to participate in discussions about Institutions And Systems with people who work for those institutions and systems. for many reasons. but a big one is that when you bring up having experienced abuse within those institutions and systems, people go "wow I'm so sorry that happened to you. anyway--" and it's like no I'm bringing this up because I know more than you. these are my credentials. lol. I'm not trying to get you to feel sorry for me, I'm trying to get you to understand that my depth of knowledge exceeds yours

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when you’ve honed the fine art of perfectly-timed reblogging of something aimed at one specific mutual and they immediately like it

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many people have heroically tried to offer me recommendations to aid my harrowing journey through booktube, most of which I'm ignoring because I'm having a lot of fun navigating this deeply hostile terrain on my lonesome and the journey is in fact bearing some fruit, as it were

kate lee 경민 caught my attention with this quite short video about her pivot to reading primarily novels that have been translated into English. I think we have pretty different tastes but she talks about a lot of very interesting international literature as well as less recent releases by literary powerhouses like Baldwin and Woolf, which is very cool

thisstoryaintover is the creator I've gotten into who I would most solidly describe as a booktuber(TM). the first video of hers I watched was this one actually offering a substantive critique of booktok, namely the tendency for many content creators to focus on a handful of white industry darlings at the expense of hyping up other authors

and Abby Cox is a historical fashion creator, not a booktuber at all, which I think is probably why she was able to produce one of the most evenhanded analyses of the booktok panic I've ever seen, and one of the few that seems to remember that the publishing industry has always been, you know, a business that exists to turn a profit

so, you know. hasn't been all dismal!

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the cultural object of the black hole is kind of remarkable. It's almost an anti-God in a sense, a negative infinity. Yeah there's this kind of dead sun that's collapsed into an infinitely dense point, and if you fall past its event horizon you're fucked. Every schoolchild knows this. A black hole can be introduced in a superhero blockbuster without any explanation except for its established look and the name "black hole", and this will be understood as the ultimate natural disaster, which even superman could not hope to defeat. truly S-tier cosmic object

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since mrs, ms, and mr are all descended from the latin word magister, i propose the gender neutral version should be mg, short for "mage"

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Results from calling about the refusal to process payments for adult work on itch.io and Steam:

My script in each case hit the points of 'I'm a cardholder calling about the recent refusal of this company to process payments for works deemed adult, particularly in regards to the Steam and itch.io games marketplaces. This has been in response to protests made by a small religious group in Australia. Frankly, I don't find it [company]'s place to dictate how I spend my money, and I'm very concerned that this is in response to protests from a religious group that should have no legal power over me. If this continues I will be seeking an alternate way to make payments and will no longer be a customer of your brand.'

Visa

heard me out, thanked me for the feedback

asked me to email my feedback to 'askvisa@visa.com' so they can track it

advised to not include any identifying details such as card numbers etc in the email

Mastercard

the phone tree did not have a complaints section so I navigated the options as 'current cardholder' -> 'a question about benefits'

happily took my feedback after confirming my customer details (full name and contact number)

let me know that they had already received significant feedback about this issue and it had been 'escalated' and registered my feedback to add to the pile

I was concerned about feeling awkward about calling a company and basically being like 'yo I'm mad you won't let me buy porn' in terms of I don't think a poor customer service rep should have to deal with that, so I was planning on sprinkling in 'and LGBT content is frequently mislabelled as adult' in my script but I Forgor and it was fine. Each call was <1:30 and minimally painful. If you needed a sign to call, call today! Or, well, maybe email Visa.

Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372

Mastercard (Int.): +1-636-722-7111

Visa (US + Can): 1 800 847 2911

Visa (AUS): 1 800 125 440

PayPal: +44-0203-901-7000

Alternative Mastercard numbers:

Mastercard (Aus): 1800-120-113

Mastercard (US): 1-800-307-7309

Mastercard (UK): 0800-96-4767

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"Because I said so" straight up isn't as good an answer as you think it is.

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To a homophobe, even the most chaste kiss on the cheek between gay people is exactly as disgusting and degenerate as a hardcore BDSM orgy hosted in the town square, so you may as well ally with the BDSM orgy enthusiasts to throw bricks at the cops who are going to try and arrest all of you together anyway.

[escaygee]

If you’re LGBT reblog and tag with your opinion on beer.

[escaygee]

Rich people showers