• I started collecting recipes when I was in school.  I would bake  recipes and star rate them.  My chocolate chip cookies recipe was given to me by an American exchange student when I was in High School.
• My dad grew up on a farm, so it was he who passed down the passion of making jams to me because as a boy he loved his mother’s jams on freshly baked bread.
• Jam making only became a passion for me in later years and started with making batches of apricot jam in December, bottling them and giving them as gifts.  Apricot jam has always been my husband’s favourite, and with a little tweaking suggestion of the recipe by my husband, we have a lovely tang in the recipe that other Apricot jams do not boast.
• Other family favourites have been my Plum jams and variations thereof such as Plumapple and Plumberry.
• I make an amazing 3 citrus fruit marmalade and with our ample fruit supply, I don’t only have to make it in the winter months.
• I have always loved all things quaint and country-ish and have thus enjoyed the process of baking as well as bottling and preserving.

My family came on an old sailing ship, the Chapman. They voyaged from England and landed in Algoa Bay, the 1820 Settlers came to make South Africa their home. Wild and untouched, they farmed, built homes and schools and churches. Life was hard and new, they nevertheless, “Took root and grew!”