[food] culinary amusement of the day

So. I am still processing this enormous pile of apples.

(I am also now set up with a food dehydrator, courtesy of the powers of my mother and Adam combined, with much gratitude to ewt for talking me through considerations!)

Today I have made my second batch of apple-and-mint jelly for the year, this one containing significantly less cider vinegar than the previous.

It turns out that the solution to all of my anxious flapping[1] about But How Do I Tell When The Jam Set is indeed neither the jam thermometer nor even the plate-in-the-freezer-with-which-to-test-the-set...

... but pottering around idly doing Something Else, not really paying attention to the jam pan beyond keeping half an ear on it, and waiting for it to sound done.

I know I do a lot of my cooking by listening and by smell, but I'm entertained that this is apparently how I get to stop agonising about not understanding how jam works.

[1] ... which got rendered by my fingers as "flaffing", being presumably the portmanteau of "flapping" and "faffing"...