Fruit preserves

Fruit preserves are preparations of fruits, vegetables and sugar, often canned or sealed for long-term storage.

Many varieties of fruit preserves are made globally, including sweet fruit preserves, such as strawberry or apricot, as well as savoury preserves of vegetables, such as tomatoes or squash. The ingredients used and how they are prepared determine the type of preserves; jams, jellies, and marmalades are all examples of different styles of fruit preserves that vary based upon the fruit used. In English the world over the plural form "preserves" is used to describe all types of jams and jellies.

Regional terminology

The term 'preserves' is usually interchangeable with 'jams'. Some cookbooks define preserves as cooked and gelled whole fruit (or vegetable), which includes a significant portion of the fruit. In the English speaking world, the two terms are more strictly differentiated and, when this is not the case, the more usual generic term is 'jam'.

Jam apart from being a particular type of preserve (spreadable containing the fruit) is also used as a general term (in British and Commonwealth English) for any type of fruit preserve (e.g. "the jam factory in Tiptree") while in the US the term jelly is preferred; e.g. a jam donut or a jam sandwich in the UK, Ireland and Canada is a jelly donut and a jelly sandwich in the US.

Azzurro

Azzurro [adˈdzurro] is an Italian pop song composed by Paolo Conte and Michele Virano. Its most famous version was recorded by Adriano Celentano in 1968.

Conte wrote the song together with Vito Pallavicini especially for Celentano. Together with Via con me and Sotto le stelle del Jazz, it is one of his most famous works. The song is about love, loneliness and summer in the city. The song is typical for Conte's way of writing, combining simple melodies with catchy but unusual compositions; here he combines military march music with an everyday story, told in a poetic language full of images. Although typical, it is from Conte's early work with pop songs and not resembling his style later on. He recorded the song himself in 1985, not until having had a 10-year solo career as a singer.

Lyrics

The first line of the song goes: "Azzurro, il pomeriggio è troppo azzurro e lungo per me . . ."

Cover versions

The song was covered by numerous Italian singers, like Mina, Gianni Morandi and Fiorello. Even the Italian football national team has sung the song on one occasion. German covers were done by Peter Rubin, Dieter Thomas Kuhn, Die Toten Hosen and Peter Alexander. French cover by Régine. Spanish cover by Gabinete Caligari.

ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum (UK /zɛd ɛks ˈspɛktrəm/) is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd.

Referred to during development as the ZX81 Colour and ZX82, the machine was launched as the ZX Spectrum by Sinclair to highlight the machine's colour display, compared with the black and white of its predecessor, the ZX81. The Spectrum was ultimately released as eight different models, ranging from the entry level model with 16 KB RAM released in 1982 to the ZX Spectrum +3 with 128 KB RAM and built in floppy disk drive in 1987; together they sold in excess of 5 million units worldwide (not counting numerous clones).

The Spectrum was among the first mainstream-audience home computers in the UK, similar in significance to the Commodore 64 in the USA. The introduction of the ZX Spectrum led to a boom in companies producing software and hardware for the machine, the effects of which are still seen; some credit it as the machine which launched the UK IT industry. Licensing deals and clones followed, and earned Clive Sinclair a knighthood for "services to British industry".