Saturday 10 September 2011

Doing Saturday.

Having a very lazy Saturday morning, muse and I are lolling around in bed drinking coffee and tea respectively and munching on granary toast topped with homemade damson jam. Latterly we played with gadgets, me my iPad and muse his supaandroid phone, the fruit of our fiddling is these pictures.









- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Monday 5 September 2011

Adventures in Chutney Making

Following on from my Jam success and possessing yet more damsons, I decided to try my hand at making Chutney. I found plenty of recipes for Chutney, they ranged from 25 ingredients to about 10 ....urgh. I went for the recipe that I already had the ingredients for:

3lbs damsons
1lb apples (1 big one) chopped quite small
1lb onions (1 big one) chopped quite small
250g soft brown sugar
2 pints of vinegar
1tsp salt
1tsp ginger
1tsp mixed spice
1oz currants
1oz sultanas
1oz raisins

Pop all the ingredients in a pan and boil for around 2 hours, after the first hour you need to stir it continuously, basically all the liquid should evaporate. It's about 2 hours now, Muse is stirring as I type, evaporate dawgonnit!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Damsons Make the Best Jam

I acquired a whole lot of damsons this week and I knew exactly what I was going to do with them, make Jam!




I had watched Mam make jam from the frequent gluts of blackcurrants and raspberries our garden produced, but I have never had a go myself. It was pretty straightforward really, just 3 ingredients: 1.5 kg of Damsons, 1.5 kg sugar, (just the ordinary kind) and 500 ml of water. Boil up the damsons and water for 30 mins, then add the sugar boil furiously. Check every 10 mins for setting point. I did remember my Mother's method of popping a saucer in the freezer then take it out place a blob of jam on it, if it wrinkles when you give it a push with your finger, you know the jam has reached setting point.

The jam passed the taste test, yummy straight off the spoon and equally yumtious on hot buttered toast.





Thursday 1 September 2011

Long Time Coming

I thought I would do a little blogging, it's been awhile since I put finger to keyboard and pixelated my thoughts or what I am up to.

So, what has happened?

1. An eagle landed
2. I got a much wanted gadget
3. Walls came tumbling down
4. Mini adventures
5. More fairy cake baking

These are the things I will most likely be writing about in future, more regular posts!