Tips off any of you that are good at home made stuff please!

[Trygg]

(OK, first sorry for the crap grammar in the title :/)

I'm thinking this xmas rather than buying people tat they dont want id love to go down the homemade jam or vodka route. I'm not great at cooking and dont have many store cupboard ingredients, but im not totally thick and im very willing and excited

for example with all the vodka recipes what 'quality' vodka do u use? is tesco vodka not going to cut the mustard?

and where do you get jam jars from for cheap? tbh i think me and dp may get through two shop jars before xmas which isnt much use

anyway sorry for wittering any tips would be VERY aprreciated

cheeers!

OK blackberry it is >_

I collected a random selection of jars from different things - not just jam. As long as they are clean and sterilised doesn't matter what was in them, cut a circle of material to cover the lid and tie a piece of ribbon round to keep it in place.

If you live near me I have a random selection of jars :)

Oh I'm Cheshire but 90% of MNers seem to be London based (in my rural head)? Ooh I'm excited now

I am one of those London based MNers, sorry won't be able to give you my jars.

I'm off scrumping for apples now, you've inspired me to get moving on my apple chutney!!

This is a great thread. I'm getting all inspired and Christmas-y!

I made my first chutney at the weekend to use up some over-ripe tomatoes and it was dead easy - it even tastes pretty good.

Tomato Chutney

Although the recipe says it lasts for 4 weeks, so might be a bit premature to do this now for Christmas.

Freecycle is a great idea for jars, also look for value products in jars in the supermarket. Things like mint sauce can be very cheap, don't buy pickled onions though, unless you were planning on making pickles, as the smell never goes.

Ooh Im going to do about six hours of this stupid bloody dissertation and then il go on a late night tesco trip hunting out cheap jars. thanks for the pickled onion tip

will this do for bottling the vodka?

on another thread someone just mentioned only 3 paydays til xmas which has made me

The jars from tomato puree (if you use that) work pretty well for jam, I find.

I make fruit-based vodka out of asda smart price vodka. When I take it round to people's houses, it gets drunk very quickly. no-one has ever sneered at it!
Cranberry vodka is nice and festive. As is chili-jam (nigella has some good recipes)
Both can be made now for xmas. if you gave someone a little box with a small cute bottle of flavoured vodka, some chilli jam, and maybe some home-made cookies or brownies made nearer the time, i don;t think anyone would turn their nose up!

Thats another thing i was thinking-jam jars seem easy enough-but i can only find quite big bottles for the vodka, and id like to do some little ones so i can give people a bit of everything (cookies or something sounds brilliant-ooh im going to be popular haha!). anyone any ideas for finding smallish bottles?

We do chocolate brownies in a jar. See here for a recipe

Trygg Ikea again for smallish and large-ish bottles - they have a half litre size, plus a smaller one too I think.

Cookie recipe in a jar (and photo) on same page too, plus a recipe for cranberry and walnut muffins in a jar- (think christmas muffin) which smells lovely and christmassy.

I work in IKEA and iv only seen the big bottles, but il go and have a hunt, because iv not been specifically looking for them before so they may have passed me by haha! il certainly get some of the half litre ones.

oh waw.....just drooling over those brownie jars-see MN is brill-i dont have the imagination for all these things!!

we got the idea from an american blog - cookie mix / muffin mix in a jar seems very popular there.

There's a whole pile of different shapes and sizes here at Ikea - we usually use the slom ones, as I like the lid. Looks kind of rustic.

I have saved this page here
I thought they might be fun for parties

i think im going to use the slom jars with the ribbon tied round like you did with the brownie jars Pawan, for my jam... i cant believe its still august-im just too excited!

yay! just looked and tesco value lemon curd is 22p a jar so wil use that, and they buy a few kilner jars for my favourites going to hunt out some material now, and ribbon. god ive never been this organised

Trygg I've just come home from Ikea and was all excited to tell you about my find (until I realised that you work there!). They have the slom bottles but with pretty red snowflakes printed on them (or at least they do in the one in Edinburgh). This is what I'm going to put my Christmas pudding vodka in.

do they?? iv had a week off you see... not in the loop anymore haha. right well im going to do the jam in the next couple of weeks, and il hunt out those bottles before i start on the vodka. im going to try mincemeat and cinamon butter too seriously, i dont how many friends i think i have! fat christmas for me!!

The cinnamon butter is amazing! I made a tiny pot for myself to see what it was like and OH. MY. GOD! It's like Christmas on toast. Definitely on the menu for first thing Christmas morning!

is it butter cinamon honey and icing sugar? i want to just eat some now out the pot

Yep! It really is that simply - I think I added more cinamon than was suggested in the recipe but that because I love it! It really is that easy!

finish dissertation, and then spending spree! im going to look very weird going through the self serve in tesco late at night buying 30 jars of value lemon curd and some icing sugar . i was thinking a nice size jar if i wanted to give people the cinamon butter would be like those sort of sandwich paste/filler ones, but i think if i received a little festive butter thing and then saw the metal lid said prawn paste id feel a bit sick......