Feijoa Jelly

When my grandparents retired in the mid-1980s they went to live on a farm in the Bay of Plenty. My poppa is a great lover of native trees and growing things, so instead of using the land to raise animals, a lot of their farm remained as native bush with some areas cleared for growing produce to sell and a couple of paddocks leased to neighbours. They had a large vegetable garden, kiwifruit and passionfruit vines, apple trees and a huge citrus grove. But by far the thing I loved the most was their huge feijoa hedge. Come autumn they would give us boxes of feijoas to gorge ourselves on. Visits to "the farm" meant Nana's feijoa and apple crumble, feijoa sponge pudding and best of all, feijoa jelly.

They have long since sold the farm, so I don't usually have a supply of free feijoas. I have been meaning to try and make feijoa jelly myself, and since the tree I planted in our garden last year only produced three fruit (!) this year, I had even considered buying some feijoas to make jelly. But last week my boss offered me some from his trees.

I used the Edmonds cookbook recipe because I don't have my Nana's recipe but I think it's pretty standard. This post at Laurasaur follows pretty much the same steps that I did. The end result is not quite up to my Nana's standard and is much cloudier than hers, but it sure tastes good and brings back memories. If you have access to a supply of feijoas, I highly recommend it!