Creativity in the kitchen

We have been really excited with our grapes this year. Planted initially to hide an unattractive archway which leads into our back garden. It had been my intention to plant a clematis but oh no the other decision maker in this partnership was determined on grapes. I had been adamant that grapes would not grow this far north and yes, the photographic evidence is there to prove me wrong.

Now we did not have heaps but enough for the littler boy to work with his Dad to harvest and collect the two different varieties for a few minutes on Sunday afternoon. The wee soul actually tripped up at one point and managed to fall on the ground stoically saving the grapes! Not one did he drop.

A beautiful collection! And we did what we do best, had a quick look thru recipes online and pulled up one for grape jelly. I have to be honest tho I tend just to use recipes as guides. I kind of read them and think that maybe doing it this way or that way instead might be better. A touch of arrogance perhaps or just some creativity? It is not like I have a proven track record on jam/jelly. Four jars in the fridge does not make me an expert. Well, clearly not!!

We gently boil up the fruit and Mike patiently pushes it all through the sieve to get rid of pips and skin. The pectin is in the pips, he had read, and he is a much more careful reader than me. He kind of gets more than just the gist of it!! So we throw the fruit back in the pot with the sugar and bring to a rolling boil. Well I was under the impression that a rolling boil was a gentle boil. I mean do you not think that rolling boil sounds like a gentle boil? Well it ain't! We had a jam jar full of juice you could have sooked up with a straw. So back into the pot and I set it to a rolling boil, which I had since read, was a belter of a boil. So boil it did and doing the spoon test after just a few minutes I had just a wee concern, a slight niggle, about how quick it had set, and set firm, in fact really firm. I did initially pour it into a jar but very quickly thought the better of it.

You see our precious grape harvest had been turned into a kind of grape toffee! Well, something more like a giant boiled sweetie. It has not set quite enough to break it into pieces. It has set just a little too much to be able to cut it.

It is now rolled up in a big wrap in our fridge. There is no way we are going to waste it but we have no idea what exactly we are going to do with it! Anyone out there got any suggestions?

Vintage!

This old lady is indeed seriously old but she is a game old bird. She has some real quirks about her and an ever increasing rust issue. I left her at the garage last week for her annual road worthiness test last week. We know there will come a time when it is far kinder to let her go, kinder to our wallets that is!!
"I'll call you!" said Alec, our local mechanic.
"I have no doubt you will!" was my reply imagining the conversation which would start with "I am really sorry to tell you but........." and he would reel off a list of things.
Well, the call never came and as the clock ticked on and we passed those lunchtime hours when I knew they had pretty much done their assessments I was beginning to have my suspicions. The call came at 4pm.
" That's your car ready."
"Unbelievable."
It is one of the oldest cars driving around the village. I know because I play a game when driving around seeing how many license plates record a car older than ours. I have my moments where I am kind of mortified, but you know what, you cannot aim for maladjustment and suffer from mortification. So get over yourself girl!! I am planning on designing a bumper sticker that says "Old, rusty but paid for!!" We have no loans on this car and with a very reliable engine (Honda, you know, very reliable or so I am told) we have paid nothing but wear and tear. Sure helps when we are working to be credit free.
I have been seriously tempted by the scrappage scheme. I mean £2000 would get us back more than we paid for her in the first place. Nice! A mere matter of about a £7000 loan however would push us to a place that my only working two days a week would not allow the sums to add up. I wonder how may folks have been encouraged again into crazy credit that they can't afford at a time we all need to learn some serious lessons about living within our means.
So the car and I keep our partnership. Alec warned me that she may be getting a little "soft" and might need some major welding if I want to keep her beyond next year so time to get saving some pennies me thinks!!

Is he really going to...?

This week saw the start of a momentous project, the removal of the last of the wall paper that this house was completely wrapped up in when we bought it. I mean, people,what were you thinking about?!! We have lived here nearly four years and we have had to take it one room at a time. Things like giving birth to the littler boy and the months of sleepless nights which followed kind of slowed the pace. The upstairs landing, the stairwell and the wee entrance hall were the most liveable with, covered in that thick kind of textured paper and painted white

We can live with it no more so this week armed with a scraper and a wall paper stripper, and a most excited pint pot sized helper, I got the project underway. There is something satisfying about stripping paper, particularly when it comes off in wonderfully large pieces. The littler boy was having a ball too, pulling at pieces which were running up the wall to heights way higher than him. The problem came for me when the wall paper pulled away from the ceiling and large chunks of very sticky gloss paint came loose like wads of chewing gum. Now I know what needs to be done. You need to run the knife along the edge of the paper leaving a tidy edge which makes the painting so much easier. I know this why? Mike has patiently explained this to me on a least two, actually make that three, occasions. Well, I had run the scraper firmly along. That was bound to have the same effect, right? Wrong!!

"Oh no!!," said I to the little helper, "Your Dad is going to kill me!"

"Ahhh," said he surveying the damage obvious even to a four year old. "Just don't tell him."

You what? You are just a little person, you have not even run wild through the school playground and your immediate reaction is to lie, or to at least lie by omission. So I gently had a wee chat about the fact that telling the truth is always the best option, even if it will land you into a bit of trouble.

"But Mummy, will he really kill you?"

Are you kidding me? Mental note to self - drop that expression from your repertoire!

"No sweetheart. Daddy knows that Mummy get things wrong lots of times. He will be able to fix this. He might just be a little cross that is all!"

We live in a world of spin and untruths. We need to consciously teach our kids to be honest and to value that.

This was reinforced this week when the little girl did something which will remain between her and I, and a few folks I trust with the story, and blamed it on her imaginary dog! There clearly needs to be some work done here. Telling the truth seems more important than teaching her to lie well!!

Recipe for Bramble and Apple Jelly

Ingredients
Brambles
Apples
Sugar

Method

Say "yes" when two small children ask to go out for a cycle round the village when you would really rather have a Sunday afternoon nap on the sofa.
Pack two carrier bags in your pocket just in case.
Take the route your better half suggests because he clearly has a plan. He packed the bags after all.
Listen carefully to two small children squealing about spotting loads of berries.
Stop and have a good laugh picking, and eating, as many as you can.


Pause at an apple tree randomly growing at the edge of the road, spotted previously by the route deviser, and stretch precariously to reach the ones that are high up, knowing that someone got there before and picked all the easy ones.

Give all the fruit a good wash, rough chop the apples and throw the whole lot, seeds, core and all into a pot and bring to a gentle boil, very slowly.

Run to the shop and buy a pair of tights because you do not own a jelly net and somehow you have to let the juice drip through leaving all the seeds and stuff behind.

Leave the fruit to drip for a couple of hours and quickly realise that the fruit is such a thick unjuicy mixture that the tights were a waste of a run to the shop.

Spend thirty minutes pushing the mixture through a sieve.

Test a little, a lot and often, just to enjoy the sheer yummyness of the very, very thick juice.

Put in fridge because it is now way too late on a Sunday night to do the next stage.

After a tough day at work, and at least two hours of homework ahead, take timeout to boil the fruit up for ten minutes with a 2 to 3 ratio of sugar to fruit. (g to ml!)

Pour into a jar

Enjoy!

Enjoy a whole lot. Eat lots of toast at various times of the day and night. Make a batch of scones. Make a Lemon Drizzle cake for friends who are coming over (hey, I have lemons that need to be used up!) so you do not have to share any of that deeply fruity goodness.

Anyone want to go for a cycle?

Food miles

This is Richard and he has come to live with us for a couple of weeks. At least two of us are most excited about it and at least one of us is quickly realising the responsibility of a pet! That would be me! Is there something written into the mum job description? And rest assured that the title of this blog does not apply to Richard. His family are off to Spain for a well deserved break and figured he would be happier with us.

We hear a whole pile about food miles these days. These most fabulous tasting plums were gifted to us this weekend fresh out the garden of friends of ours. Just a few miles on these. There were more but they were so good that the eating became more important than the photographing.

Check these out too....!

We have a dining room full of peppers, chilies and tomatoes. Our outside growing attempts may have been poor, in fact downright embarrassing in some cases, but we are having nice success with our greenhouse/indoor plants. When I say "we" I mean "we". Three families have been involved in the looking after of these beauties. Food miles has taken on a different meaning in our house. These plants, and more on other window sills, have been transferred round three houses on a fair few occasions in the last few months to ensure they have had the care required clocking up some food miles. I'll also clock up miles going over to my mothers greenhouse which is full of tomatoes. We are now all a bit confused as to whose plants are whose in fact. The rule is though, if there is something ready to harvest then enjoy!!

So while they all living it up in sunny Spain we are about to have a nice wee harvest to ourselves.

Result!