We are all on a budget now, it seems, whatever our profession or calling. This was brought home to me very directly recently when we stayed in a house in France lent to us by friends, a well-to-do professional couple.

The pleasure of making jam and other preserves is that we make them in season, when fruit and vegetables are at their peak and prices are at their lowest- Frances Bissell

I opened the larder cupboard looking for a jar of mustard. Where there were once puddings from Fortnum and Mason, tins of truffles and jars of foie gras, now stood rows of jars of marmalade, jam and jelly; mirabelle, red currant, quince, blackberry and redcurrant.

In the past they had done little with their crops of fruit, but for the last year, whenever they went to France, if there was a crop of fruit, they harvested it and preserved it, some of the soft fruit frozen as they discovered how much the French enjoy a traditional English summer pudding.

I like to think I might have had something to do with this hive of activity, because whenever Tom and I have stayed at the French house, there has always been fruit to pick, and I would make pots of peach or greengage jam. I enjoy doing this as it makes me feel at home, and I like to leave behind a present ‘for the house’.

In Tuscany I have made pear and Chianti jam, crab apple jelly and blueberry jam in Pennsylvania, quince jelly in Connecticut, lemon curd, sun-dried tomatoes and persimmon jam in Gozo, and fresh purple fig and red wine jam in the Languedoc .

I learned much more about preserving fruit and vegetables when I first came to Malta, which has such a rich tradition of preserving produce such as capers, tomatoes, both sun-dried and kunserva, figs, carob syrup, limuncell and cheeselets, and many of these recipes and techniques have become part of my repertoire.

Often I do not have the proper equipment, especially for jelly making, and I can confirm that the upturned stool with a scalded clean tea towel or pillowcase suspended from the legs makes a perfectly adequate jelly bag and rack.

Preserving foodstuffs in times of plenty, to provide nourishment during lean times, has always been a part of the human experience. Making strawberry jam after a visit to a roadside farm stand is an atavistic memory of those times when our ancestors would preserve the summer glut of fruit and vegetables for use in the winter.

Of course, we can buy strawberries from every part of the globe in winter, but who would buy expensive, and often tasteless, out of season strawberries to use in jam? No, the pleasure of making jam and other preserves is that we make them in season, when fruit and vegetables are at their peak and prices are at their lowest.

Thus we can store a thrifty hoard of gleaming jars on our shelves, to give to family and friends as presents, or to brighten up the breakfast table with a jar of home-made marmalade or the barbecued spare ribs with a pot of fennel and chilli jelly. Of course, now that our friends have become such experts at preserving, I shall no longer feel comfortable about taking my own jams and jellies as hostess gifts.

But this column is not about filling shelves and shelves with home-made preserves. Who among us has that kind of space in our kitchen? And who wants to spend hours chopping dozens of cabbages or huge pumpkins?

No, this is about using what you might find at your local hawker stall one Saturday morning, or what a friend might bring you from their house in the country. It’s about thinking beyond a fruit salad or a smoothie and considering how you might preserve those rich ripe flavours for a while longer.

It’s about planning ahead to give your friends a small edible treat for a birthday or Christmas, something that is all your own work. It is really easy, I promise you, with no recipes calling for 10 kilos of tomatoes, or a bushel of peaches. With just a kilo of fruit, you can make a few small jars of exquisite jelly or unusual chutney.