IF THEY gave Academy Awards for jam, Terry Paull-Edwards would be the proud director of an Oscar-nominated production.

Terry's Thick Cut Whisky Marmalade has won a silver medal in this year's Great Taste Awards - known in the catering trade as the UK Fine Food Oscars.

Terry founded the New Forest Jam and Chutney Company less than four years ago to try and make a livelihood out of a hobby.

Her business began with a dozen jars of home-made preserves and an honesty cash box on a small trolley outside her front gate in East End near Lymington.

But with inventive recipes like Too Many Strawberries Jam and runner bean chutney, Terry's kitchen table industry rapidly grew.

Now she employs six local people at a kitchen in Beaulieu High Street, and her jams, jellies and chutneys sell at 100 outlets all over the New Forest - and at selected shops further afield.

"Our preserves sell in one specialist shop in London, and in a little place near St Malo," said Terry.

"But I prefer to sell to village shops and post offices.

"I don't want to sell to supermarkets. It would mean changing the way we do things.

"In the last three years we have grown faster than I had dared hope for but this was always meant to be a cottage industry, bringing much-needed employment to this rural area.

"If we got too big we couldn't keep up the quality."

But Terry and her team - including Head cook Di Bright of Sowley and former Pylewell keeper Ray Walters - are delighted with their latest success.

"The Great Taste Awards have unquestionably the fairest and most stringent standards of any food competition.

"We are most proud of our medal," said Terry. But it is the regular local customers, who buy our preserves week in week out, who are our ultimate judges."