Making rose petal jam

Hello, everyone. If you wonder why there are lots of food in this presumably ceramic blog, it's because Mike and I really care about what we eat. I would rather remain hungry than eating something I don't want. I have been adamant with what I choose to eat since I was very young. My mother could tell you so many anecdotes of me refusing what I decided not to eat. But I can enjoy eating the food I really love repepatedly without being tired of it. (I can also enjoy listening to same music repeatedly. My BFs in past used to make music tapes which consists of one song, just repeated over and over, until the end of the tape. I guess some people don't know what the tapes are.)

Rose petals in a pan

I love rose petal jam. I tried it at a breakfast in a back garden of a ground floor flat in Istanbul 23 years ago. It was made by the step-mother of my friend. She picked petals from her rose gardens. She had various colours of roses. There were pink ones, red ones and yellow ones. I liked yellows one best because of strong scent. Scent sounds too weak to express the aroma. It is very strong, and it should be definitely described as 'fragrance'. Since then, the best jam of the world to me has been the rose petal jam I had in her garden.

Breakfast next morning (Notice the Pyrex collecting the petals falling!)

Some days ago, there was a storm. A long branch of one of our yellow roses was bent double. In order to protect the plant from snapping, I cut it. The branch had about 30 flower buds and several flowers. I cut them to shorter pieces and put them into vases. I only grow yellow and gold roses because I love their scent. Some white ones have strong scent, but I found in my gardening mad time, yellows have the best scent. It might be related with the climate here. As I have read reds have strong scent in the Mediterranean.

Close-up of the jam in yogurt and jam jar

I looked at the roes in vases, I decided to try making my own rose petal jam. I did a search for recipe Internet. I found several. In the end, I opted for the one with least sugar per the weight of petal. There was only 75g of petals, so I though we would soon finish it. I also tweaked it a bit. So here is my own version of tose petal jam recipe;

75 g of petals
75 g of sugar
2 tea spoon of orange juice
2 tea spoon of lemon juice

I cooked them until it boiled, and put it into a clean jar.

Whilst cooking very strong fragrance has wafted into the house. It was heavenly. I tasted it. Oh! it was so delicious! Surprisingly petals were chewy. There is no pectin added, so it is more like petals in syrup. So you eat 'fragrance'. It is very strong. It goes very well with yogurt or white bread with butter. We imagine that it would go very well with scones, too. We will try later this week.
 
In fact, it was so lovely that I have already made a second batch today. I told you, I enjoy eating same food I really love, over and over again.     

My second batch of rose petal jam in the making