Maryom's Home Page

Beans!!

2012-01-26T13:55:00.003Z

Decided this week to try some of our own home-grown, home-dried beans for lunch in minestrone.

Here they are - soaked but not yet cooked

I was just a bit on the wary side as we've never dried beans before but soaked and boiled them as for shop-bought dried pulses- and we're still here to tell the tale!
Also into the pot went home grown (frozen) tomatoes and leaves from the early purple sprouting broccoli (which isn't sprouting yet) along with supermarket's own organic carrots. As I was chopping these, I wondered about the feasibility of replacing them with parnips - we have lots of these to use at the allotment but no carrots.

Trousers into Scarf project.

2012-01-10T15:10:00.004Z

This is the third appearance of what was once a pair of orange velvet jeans. When the elder daughter was bored of them, they were cut into a pair of loose pull-on trousers for the younger one.

They've been worn and washed and eventually made their way to the 'charity bag' pile but I liked the material too much to let them go.
I've been wondering for a while what use I could make of orange velvet, then hit on the idea of a scarf - quick, easy, a couple of seams and done, hopefully.

The longest job was taking them apart and reducing them to 4 trouser shaped pieces. I carefully undid all the seams but needn't have bothered as I then cut all the edges off while turning into neat rectangles!
I was faced with two options at this point - either short, wide wrap or long thin scarf - and went for long and thin, sowing the short ends together....

...which made a long thin sausage to feed through the sewing machine.
Amazingly, even the turning right way round went easily
and

ta dah!!

finished scarf!

This definitely counts as upcycling as it's much more attractive than the trousers ever were!

Cold cure?

2012-01-05T23:31:00.001Z

I chopped up my last home-grown red cabbage for pickling this week. Cabbage layered with onions, a sprinkling of demerara sugar and covered with spiced vinegar.
It's a bit of a shame to hide the cabbage as I love the fractal-like patterns inside - ok, the same patterns are presumably there in green cabbage but not so visible.
I also love pickled cabbage on winter salads else I wouldn't be making it but while away at University my daughter and friends decided the vinegar from it made an excellent cold cure. Why it should, I have no idea - particularly as the same vinegar goes onto pickled onions and that apparently didn't have the same beneficial effects. Can cabbage really be that good for you?

Quinces

2011-12-17T13:56:00.000Z

I've just put the last of the quinces in the oven to bake and I'm wishing I'd had more! They weren't home-grown but I was lucky enough to pick some up through Freegle (freecycling) earlier in Autumn. This was my first experience of them but I'd heard people say how wonderful they are.

They're certainly odd to look at - something like a deformed apple - and at first were very hard. I wasn't sure what to do with them - there was a carrier bag full so I wanted to try them in various ways.

Someone pointed me to an article with various quince recipes in the Telegraph and the first thing I tried was Slow roast pork belly - nice but a little strange with unexpected taste combinations.

I then tried an adaptation of an old recipe from Country Living - originally for honeyed quince pandowdy, stewed fruit with a sort of scone/dumpling topping, I altered it to have a low-fat scone type topping. This was certainly a better way to let the unusually exotic taste of the quinces shine out - so we've had this several times! My daughter had complained about the smell from 'that strange fruit', as it sat ripening in a bowl but I thought it was delicious - strangely mango-like rather than the apple/pear taste I'd expected.

I have, of course, made some quince tablet or paste - basically a super-stiff jam set in a small cake tin - to either try with cheese or add to pork dishes long after the fresh quinces have gone.
I'm certainly going to be looking out for more on offer next year, but meanwhile I've sown some pips in the hope of having my very own quince tree.

So far, so good

2011-11-30T00:29:00.002Z

My current crochet project is advancing slowly but surely. I thought I had nearly enough of the motifs worked, so I sketched out the shape of the finished waistcoat (left front) and placed them on it - only to discover I had nothing like sufficient pieces! Back to making circles again for now - which is easier than joining up!

Giving Crochet Another Try

2011-11-07T16:24:00.003Z

I've knitted (almost) all my life and assume I'm quite good at it - certainly I can knit and watch TV, even knit and read a book (providing book stays open at right page) but crochet has always been a bit of a mystery.
Still, a couple of years ago I managed, very slowly, to make my daughter a crocheted top and since then I've made a couple of scarves, so I though I'd at last have a go something larger for myself.

I'm trying to adapt a Rowan design - with long sleeves - and make a waistcoat. Apart from the bit of having to get out the instruction book to remember how to make a double crochet or a treble, things have gone quite well. I need to use the pattern a lot more than with knitting and it's not so easy to watch TV at the same time but I'm getting there.

The pattern consists of lots of medallions - 4 in all - which have gone quite well. I'm now at the stage of fastening them together, which isn't as easy. I have piles of ready made circles, a paper outline and marks of where the joining up chains should go but things get skewed every time I try to join the circles up.
I seem to need an extra pair of hands to hold things still.
Hopefully I'll have a finished garment to post here soon - fingers crossed!

Saving for winter

2011-10-23T14:07:00.005+01:00

We seem, rather happily, to be inundated with produce this year, well, some sorts of veg - beetroot, runner beans, apples and tomatoes mainly.

The beetroot and apples are stored where-ever I can find space - in boxes, baskets, bags - whatever I can find. The beans have had to go in the freezer as I can't think of any other way to store them but I'm trying to NOT put all the tomatoes in there. I'm rather paranoid about the possibility of the electricity being cut off due to snow or high wind and everything in the freezer turning to slush.

So, I'm trying out other methods of storing them.
It's a long while since I've had enough tomatoes to make passata making seem worthwhile but I'm on my third batch this year! The first didn't keep well - one jar started to turn mouldy, so the other is being kept in the fridge (not helpful if there's a power cut).
The second batch had olive oil floated over the passata before sealing and re-heating - maybe I shouldn't have re-heated as the oil just mixed in with the tomatoes!

I then decided to 'sun'dry some tomatoes - with the help of the top oven. I sliced them up, placed on baking paper on the grill and placed them in the unlit top oven while the bottom one was in use. I've used this method on apples but I left the tomatoes till they were much drier. The plum tomatoes with thicker sides and less pips seem to have worked better than the juicy steak tomatoes. They're all very leathery now and packed into a jar. They should be covered with oil but for now I'm seeing how well they will keep without it.
Today though, I'm back to making passata. Smaller jars, no oil on top and we'll see how well this batch keeps.

More weird - and not so weird - preserving.

2011-10-22T16:04:00.005+01:00

Our first frost of the year this week so had to clear lots of things at the allotment - too many crystal lemon cucumbers and lots of tiny, tiny green cherry tomatoes - plus we picked up some windfall apples through Freecycle which won't keep for long so really need to be used - so it was time for the jam pan to come out again!

Having had an unexpected success with courgette jam, I thought I'd try the same recipe with cucumber. Basically 2lb peeled, chopped cucumber simmered with 3 lemons and enough water to cover.

When the cucumber's softened, squash with the potato masher. Leave to cool, chop the lemons into thin strips, then measure the pulp. Add 1lb sugar to pint of pulp and either boil to setting point straight away or leave overnight to soak first. The lemon is definitely softer if left overnight.

It looks and tastes like a lemon marmalade - and the first batch was such a success, I'm now onto a second (simmering right now!)

The tomatoes were a different problem - the normal sized ones went into chutney with some of the apples

but any chutney made with the tiny cherry ones would have been full of skins so I decided to try Green Tomato Sauce - a strange thing of my own invention but really a sieved chutney.

It doesn't look very appetising - I used granulated sugar instead of demerara because my sugar stocks were getting low but obviously the reason so many chutney recipes call for demerara sugar is to improve the colour and appearance. It contains a fair amount of chillies and I'm thinking of using it as a last minute addition to curries. It's not been tested yet though.

Last but not least, the most normal thing this week - apple and blackberry jam!

Summer cotton cardigan

2011-10-08T16:52:00.003+01:00

Finished at last!
The really tricky - and slow - bit was the crocheted edging. I'm still at the learning stage and have to have a 'How to Crochet' book handy to check on the different stitches which is why it takes such a long time.

Something didn't quite work out properly - the edging should have been more scalloped than this but I couldn't quite understand some of the instructions about putting the hook in several rows below.
Well, at least I finished it!
and I can have another go some time and get a different edging.

My next project looks like being a crocheted waistcoat,
so fingers crossed that that turns out ok!

Green Tomato Cake

2011-10-01T19:49:00.001+01:00

Having heard weathermen talking about the possibility of snow next month, I thought I'd start clearing some of the unripe tomatoes - and brought home 11lbs!
I started to use them by making chutney - there's a particular green tomato one that I like to have with cheese in a hot baguette - but wondered if there was any other way to eat them. I put out query on Twitter and a very helpful person sent me 3 suggestions - one of which was green tomato cake.
I'm never one to refuse a culinary challenge so decided to have a go - unfortunately the recipe had too much butter and far too much sugar, so I decided to combine it with Delia's bara brith recipe as follows :

In a bowl beat 1 egg with 4oz sugar, then mix in 8 fluid oz milk. Sieve 10oz SR flour and a teaspoon each of baking powder, ground nutmeg and ground cinnamon, into the mixture and mix well. Finely chop 12oz green tomato and add to mix.
Pour into a greased, lined 2lb loaf tin and bake at Gas No 4 for 50 - 60 mins

Then the important bit - tasting!
Surprisingly nice. It was lovely and moist from the tomatoes and tasted mainly of the spices.
I don't think anyone would identify the mystery ingredient as tomato - apart from one drawback. When cut into slices, you can see green chunks! Not the normal appearance of cake! Maybe we're too set in our ways about how cake should look but if I made up this recipe again, I'd bake it in small muffin or fairy cake cases.

Lemon and Courgette Marmalade

2011-09-30T14:25:00.005+01:00

I've had a lot of spare, super-sized courgettes over summer (particularly after a fortnight's absence for holidays) and I'm a firm believer in putting what I have to good use rather than letting it go to waste. Looking through old compilations of recipes and seeing how marrows were used, inspired me to try jams with courgettes. The courgette and pineapple jam was okay but not great, so I decided to adapt one I use for pumpkins -

2lb courgettes - peeled and chopped, I was using very large ones of 3 inches diameter
3 lemons - chopped very finely, I usually cut them into strips and after the first boiling cut really thinly using scissors
1 3/4 pints water

Place these into a preserving pan and boil till the courgettes can be broken down with a potato masher.
Remove from heat.
Add 2lb sugar and leave to stand for 24 hours.

Next day, boil rapidly to setting point.

This makes a wonderful lemony marmalade that for once actually looks like one too.

Autumn makes #1 - New Hat

2011-09-21T16:01:00.007+01:00

Don't think I knocked this up after posting about Autumn plans - it's actually a re-make of my daughter's hat. It's no longer her style of thing and the ribbing was cracked, but it seemed such a pity to throw it away.

I didn't have any of the original red wool for the ribbing so it's been re-done in blue - and slightly larger to fit my head!
Seeing it on, daughter actually said "It doesn't look too bad" - high praise!

Autumn plans

2011-09-18T01:07:00.004+01:00

We're now more or less settled back into the school term routine and, after a lazy feeling summer, I want to tackle my 'to do' list.

There seems to be an endless round of harvesting and preserving at the moment as each new glut arrives. Courgettes and runner beans have been dealt with now and I'm moving on to green tomatoes - we have LOTS - and then apples. I started to clear out the fruit in the freezer this week and made 8 jars of redcurrant and raspberry jam - there's the potential for a lot more left though.

It's time though to tackle all the jobs and projects that have been neglected -
- to finish the summer weight cotton cardigan while it's still warm enough to wear it
- to rework the edging on an old beret to make it large enough to fit me
- to mend those old jumpers that have holes - and have been waiting since last winter
- to go through my recent knitting books and actually plan to make something
- to stop hoarding scraps of material and start to put them together as patchwork
- to act on all the ideas I had for art or craft projects, inspired by the artists I met on holiday

The guiding principle is to be Stop hoarding and planning and get on with making! We'll see how I get on before Christmas....

The many uses of courgettes!

2011-09-07T00:18:00.008+01:00

We've had an unusual courgette glut this summer - and some have grown too large for the title 'courgette'. Having eaten them in pasta sauces, curries, stir fries, roast with honey or balsamic vinegar, disguised in muffins and cake and frozen lots in the hope that they'll not be too watery and limp, I decided to move on to chutney and marmalade.
Back in July I made some jam with pineapple and a small batch of chutney based on the recipe I use for gooseberries.
I've recently been experimenting with a lemon flavoured courgette marmalade and another batch of chutney slightly different due to a lack of certain ingredients in the cupboard! The marmalade had turned out really well, very lemony and much better than the pineapple variety. Not sure about the chutney as I think I added too much cinnamon and it smells rather like mincemeat!

Passata

2011-08-13T23:04:00.002+01:00

My mother's tomato plants are now cropping fast and furiously so she's giving a lot away. Unfortunately, they tend to be watery with very tough skins, so when she suggested I made chutney with them, I thought I wouldn't. Instead they've been boiled up and sieved for passata. A lot of tomatoes didn't appear to fill many bottles when I'd finished but it tastes wonderful - I checked the dribbles - and is one thing that doesn't have to fit in the freezer!

Jam again!

2011-08-10T01:21:00.003+01:00

Yes, jam making time again! This time with mainly fruit from the freezer. I happened to go in there looking for something and realised just how much previous years' soft fruit I have hoarded. So, I pulled out a couple of bags of raspberries and some redcurrants, and Hubby suggested I add the blackberries he'd just brought back from the allotment.... and... da dah!..... lovely fruity mess boiling in the pot! It was actually a better colour than this - a deep vibrant plum which I haven't been able to capture on the camera. Still, the jam tastes good which is what counts.

Weird Jam

2011-07-20T19:46:00.005+01:00

I'm suffering from a surplus of courgettes at the moment - some have escaped picking and grown too large and marrowlike. I was wondering about making pickle or chutney with them but have quite a lot of chutneys in the store cupboard so wondered whether it was possible to make some sort of jam or marmalade.

Hunting through the recipe books I came across two in Farmhouse Fare, a compilation of recipes sent in to Farmers' Weekly.
The first was marrow, lemon and ginger - the second, marrow and pineapple.
I often make lemon or orange flavoured jams/marmalades with fairly dull bulky veg - pumpkins or rhubarb - so I thought I'd try the pineapple recipe.

The courgette is diced and layered with sugar overnight, then tinned pineapple added and everything boiled up.

It looks more like marmalade but tastes like jam - not very pineappley though!

Gooseberries!

2011-06-29T00:27:00.004+01:00

The cupboard where I keep jams and chutneys has been beginning to look a little bare
BUT
the soft fruit is starting to ripen - sometimes a little too much of it at once.

We have lots of raspberries and redcurrants of our own, which are being picked and frozen to be dealt with later, but my parents asked us to help clear their fruit bushes as well so we came home at weekend with more raspberries AND about 6lbs gooseberries.

Time to get out the jam pan!

A few hours of slaving over a hot stove and I have 2 jars of gooseberry chutney and 4 of gooseberry and lemon marmalade.

A little treat for my knitting

2011-06-24T00:03:00.004+01:00

I've been looking for a while for a new, larger bag to keep my 'in progress' knitting in and was delighted to find this - with a print from artist/illustrator Jackie Morris entitled Little Bo-ho Hippy Peep and her Sheep

In the panniers, the Sheep is carrying balls of wool and knitting needles - so just perfect for a new knitting bag.

Elderflower time

2011-06-08T13:10:00.002+01:00

flowers, sugar, lemons and water preparing for Elderflower fizz
I can't wait long enough for it to turn alcoholic but drink it as soon as there's any fizz to it.
mainly using old lemonade/coke 2 litre bottles this year instead of having to track down corks for wine bottles.

another renovation

2011-04-02T16:23:00.004+01:00

yet another of my daughter's jumpers that she no longer likes!
It's not really been worn much and I quite like the big snowflake pattern so decided to make it over rather than send it to the charity shop.

It's a very snug fit but the main problem was its length. There was some left over yarn - a 100g ball of the red and some bits of white - not enough for a plain add on section but I wanted to leave the pocket patterns in instead of having to re-knit most of the front.

I unpicked the pockets and swiss darned the gap, undid the whole ribbed section, picked up there and knitted down to the bottom.
I've left the sleeves alone for now - they're tight and only three quarter length on me but it seems a lot of fuss to change them. As it's knitted in Aran weight pure wool, it's rather warm to wear it now, so I'll see how I feel about the sleeves in Autumn.

Pumpkin Marmalade

2011-01-29T21:56:00.001Z

I've had a busy couple of days unexpectedly making marmalade. One of our homegrown pumpkins was turning soft, so I decided to use lots, though not all, of it up quickly.

OK, normally marmalade is made with oranges or other citrus fruit but I've made it before with different things such as apple or rhubarb to provide the bulk and some oranges or lemons to give the citrus taste.

So, I took 3lbs pumpkin chunks, rinds and flesh from a couple of squeezed out lemons (saved in the freezer) and 2oz crystallised ginger, and boiled them all in 2 1/2 pints water till the pumpkin was soft enough to mash up. Mashed the pumpkin, chopped up the lemon rind into thin strips. Let them all stand overnight - to soften the peel. In the morning added 3lb sugar and let it stand again till afternoon when I boiled it up to setting point.

It made a lovely lemony, ginger marmalade - which I also tested drizzled over roasting parsnips.

So far, so good

2011-01-21T12:14:00.003Z

The knitting bit of this project is now finished. I'm intending using some old fake fur coat lining to make a collar for it. To make it trickier, I'd like the collar to be detachable.

So, instead of a plain button band I've made buttonholes the whole way round, up one side, round the neck and down the other, then I'm hoping to have buttons on the collar to attach it when needed.

I just hope I actually finish it. I haven't decided yet how it will fasten at the front but I've been wearing it already tied with a piece of ribbon and moved on to knitting some gloves - and this is how the fancy bits NEVER get done.

More Preserving

2011-01-08T14:59:00.002Z

We got rather a bumper haul of apples from our 'pippin' tree this year and not so blemished and grub-infested as normal. They're a strange apple - a rather tart desert apple but not ready to eat till mid-winter so they have to be stored carefully. Meanwhile they're in danger of rotting so I've been experimenting with drying them.

Most recipes suggest slicing in rings, threading them and hanging to dry. The ones I chose to start with were damaged in one way or another so wouldn't make nice rings. Instead I've chopped them into thin wedges, spread them on paper over the grill in the second oven

and left them there while the oven below is being used.
Strangely, they taste sweeter when dried
When they seem dry enough, not crunchy or leathery, I packed them into jars

I haven't managed to work out how long they will keep for though, as they're being eaten too quickly!

What is that?

2010-10-17T15:46:00.003+01:00

So, I've finished my latest knitting project, with which I'm pleased.

I've used up lots of those irritating odds and ends of wool left from other things, have a short-sleeved jumper ready for cold weather on its way and a little bit of space in the storage cupboard. It was intended to be a slip over but as I had some brown yarn left, it grew sleeves.

Showed it to the teenager who said "What is that?", "Why didn't you ask me before you made it?" and " You're not going to wear it are you?".
Well, I have worn it and I STILL like it!

Preserving summer

2010-09-13T18:07:00.006+01:00

I've had an extremely busy fortnight making jams and chutneys to make the most of a sudden glut of fruit and veg. We came back from holiday to realise that we'd not told the garden-minding neighbour to keep an eye on the courgette plants - so there were several marrows waiting for us.

The first of them was turned into chutney - a recipe cut from a magazine at some point in time but with a difference - I had a couple of pints of maroon coloured vinegar left after eating pickled cabbage. Having already been used for pickling I don't think it works a second time but I used it for the initial boiling down of the marrow and ended up with a lovely plum coloured chutney.

marrow and tomatoes boiling in the red cabbage vinegar

Then a friend offered us some - as many as we could carry - of his plums
- so I made jam

my parents offered blackberries

and someone local offered pick your own apples on Freecycle and we couldn't say 'No', so I made an autumn mixed fruit jam with apples, blackberries and a few plums

autumn mixed fruit jam

Meanwhile there were still some marrows left and some rhubarb in the garden needing to be picked

soaking marrow and rhubarb in sugar overnight turns the sugar to liquid!

So with some strips of orange peel and a chunk of ginger, they were turned into marmalade, basically the same flavour as rhubarb, ginger and orange preserve I'd made earlier in summer. I'm hoping not all of this ends up on toast as it goes very well with yogurt as a desert.

marrow and rhubarb marmalade

Jam

2010-07-16T19:43:00.005+01:00

a busy week of jam making.

started with 3lb of gooseberries from parents' garden with lemons and a dash of elderflower cordial.

rhubarb, lemon and ginger preserve yesterday - not really to be used as a spread but to add to plain greek yogurt with maybe ginger nuts sprinkled on top

and lastly - and certainly the 'pinkest' - apple and blackcurrant made with 3 1/2 lb of thinnings from the apple trees and about 8oz home grown blackcurrants to add flavour and turn it such a gorgeous colour.

wine making

2010-07-16T18:24:00.004+01:00

I've been inspired over the last month or so to take up wine-making again. I used to make gallons of it - most of which would be put in a dark cupboard to mature and then be forgotten about. By the time it was opened, it would taste more like paint stripper than wine.

This year's experiments started with a bumper crop of dandelions in my parents' front lawn, then elderflowers and lastly lemon balm and mixed herbs from the garden

elderflowers

I forget to read the whole of the recipe for the elderflower 'champagne' and only when I tested it, after being bottled for 14 days, did I realise that it isn't actually alcoholic - at least not at this stage - several people have since said that I should leave it several months to have proper alcoholic wine. Still it tastes lovely and bubbly, just like elderflower fizz.

straining dandelion wine

The herb wine is the only one still bubbling away and not bottled yet. Sitting on the kitchen windowsill, on dull days the bubbles die down but start up again with some sunshine. I'm hoping this works well. I've made a variant of it before which tasted rather like Cinzano Bianco (which rather sadly I love with lemonade) but this year there's no fennel in the garden, so no aniseed taste in the wine. Hopefully it will be drinkable.

herb wine bubbling

using up the odds and ends

2010-05-19T09:38:00.003+01:00

actually getting somewhere with using up all those bits of wool!

waiting to get started

2010-04-26T17:49:00.004+01:00

trying, yet again, to clear out some of the accumulated bits of wool - far too many half balls lying around and there HAS to be something I can make from them. so, a selection of brown, beige, green, tan with tiny bits of red and blue to try and knit a slipover - striped or fair isle.

new from old

2010-04-25T17:25:00.004+01:00

changes to old jumper finished at last. sleeves shortened and body lengthened with stripes from oddments of wool left over from other projects.

Rowan "Bruegel" jacket

2010-03-09T10:25:00.002Z

Bruegel from Rowan mag44 knitted up in some old mohair found in a drawer - it's been there for years! Discovered I was short of yarn so finished body, collar and front edging and knitted sleeves last of all. Started them at the shoulder and knitted downwards - the cuff should have been doubled and rolled back but there was no yarn for it - even had to undo the tension square to finish off and sew up.

renovating old jumper

2010-03-01T09:19:00.004Z

trying to give this much altered jumper yet another lease of life.

It started out as a cropped, high neck jumper knitted for my older daughter. When she stopped wearing it, the sleeves were shortened for my younger daughter to wear it as a long baggy tunic but she was never really impressed with it so I've started altering it to suit me.

At first I just took off the high neck but it's really too cropped and the sleeves are awkward at three-quarter length.
What I intend to do is turn it into a short-sleeved, longer-bodied tank top. Step one completed this weekend - sleeves un-ravelled and new cuffs knitted.
next step is to unravel the bottom and extend in with contrasting yarn.

cushions for the Den

2010-02-21T20:29:00.003Z

Daughter's wendy house is being slowly converted to an outdoor teenage den requiring something in the way of soft furnishings. She made the pink plaid one herself - with a little help. Her first time using a sewing machine, so a little bit nervy.

I made the flowery one as part of a 'how- to- make' post for Make It and Mend It

pink mohair jacket

2010-02-16T21:56:00.002Z

have run really short of yarn for this project. it was bought as a cheap bundle a long while ago and it isn't possible to buy any more.

the back, front and collar/edging are finished. I have 2 balls and some bits left, which doesn't seem a lot. the sleeves are only elbow length but with a turn back cuff. I'm knitting them downwards from the sleeve head and the length will depend on how much yarn there is.

leftovers soup

2010-02-02T23:46:00.004Z

Using up bits and bobs of leftovers to make soup for lunch.

Starting with about a pint of water/stock from boiling gammon at the weekend,adding a small carrot not much bigger than a finger, a slice cut from a turnip, half a sweet potato left sitting in the fridge, a handful of yellow split peas and half a chopped up onion. Everything in a saucepan and simmered for about half an hour.
Today's magic ingredient though was 3 or 4 tablespoons of sauce left over from yesterdays fake boston beans - I could always add a little tomato puree, a pinch of mustard and a very small dribble of black treacle another time to see if it tasted the same, but today's was a wonderful accidental soup.

fake boston beans

2010-02-01T13:58:00.002Z

SOMETHING NOT ENTIRELY DISSIMILAR TO BOSTON BEANS
to serve with cold gammon

first chop up a pepper, or half a red one and half of a green, put it in a saucepan, add a small chopped up onion, cover with water and start to simmer.
add - a tablespoon of black treacle, a teaspoon of mustard powder, half a teaspoon of chilli powder (could be more, or less, depends how spicy you like things)
simmer everything till the veg are soft
here's the 'fake' bit - add a tin of baked beans and warm through.

this serves 3 as a side dish or add a little more water and make soup for 2

THOUGHTS TO TRY

add mushrooms or courgettes
serve with pasta - only enough for 2
use as topping for baked potatoes

D I Y decorations

2009-12-24T15:48:00.002Z

been fiddling away at these parcels for a while.

originally they were intended for my daughter's den but she decoded she didn't want them after all and they've been sitting around unfinished. now eventually they have some sparkly ribbons and ties, and are ready in the sleigh.

christmas decorations

2009-12-10T13:15:00.003Z

my husband has several tin-working project books but they always specify a certain weight tin foil to be obtained from the craft shop or hardware store. I've never seen such foil for sale at all so, working with the idea of re-using and re-cycling, I decided to try turning a foil faggot tray into Christmas decorations and I'm very pleased with the result.
I'd expected a struggle to cut the foil but the flat bottom section is easily cut with a pair of kitchen scissors. the cut edges are quite sharp at first but flattening by rubbing something over them reduces this - I used the scissor handles - it's not something for young children to try though.

the embossed patterns were made merely by marking with a pencil - again I was surprised how malleable the foil was. I did have to buy the silver thread but the beads came from the little packets of spare beads that come with decorated clothes - I've acquired a lot of these, as the spare beads are kept in my mending box even after the clothes they belong to have been passed on. definitely a project which "uses what you've got"

knitting - my favourite fair isle hat

2009-11-27T14:03:00.002Z

this is one really was a bit-user. some of the yarns are only used for 2 or 3 rows. it's the kind of thing I love to make - something brilliant (even if no one else agrees) made out of bits left lying around.

knitting - children's fair isle hats

2009-11-27T08:55:00.003Z

hats have to be my favourite way of using up all those leftover bits of wool. you don't need a lot even if the hat is single- coloured (it's less effort to knit a surplus ball and a half into a hat than to take the one un-started ball back to the shop and try for a refund). but once you start knitting stripes or fair isle patterns, almost any short lengths of yarn can be used up.

because a hat is basically a rectangle of material, shaped at the top and joined up the back, there are none of the matching problems that occur with, for example, sweaters -even with a stripy sweater the back and front generally match, so while knitting one half you need to be sure there is enough yarn left to make the second. with a hat, you just start at the bottom and knit whatever you feel like - if it looks dreadfully wrong, it will always unwind.
Give it a try - find a simple hat pattern with straight sides and all the shaping on the crown - and see what you can create.

knitting - mohair cardigan - 1

2009-11-16T10:05:00.003Z

have recently started a new knitting project. bruegel cardigan/jacket from Rowan book 44 but using some old mohair yarn I've had for years - one day I WILL use up all the yarn I've bought cheaply and hoarded. the tension is comparable to the specified yarn but I'm concerned about the quantity - I only have 10 balls of the mohair and I'm not certain that it will be enough.

Last Christmas - 3 - Cards

2009-11-12T22:26:00.002Z

These are my Christmas cards from the past couple of years. I don't actually make every one by hand, but start with an embroidery or collage I have made which is scanned and several cards of each design printed.

Last year's card was taken from an embroidery I designed and made several years ago. It was scanned and edited to include the wording before printing.

These four collages were used two years ago. For three of them I used hand made (home made) paper for the background and in all of them the image is made of a variety of materials - paper, cloth, tinsel, sequins, old cards etc

late Halloween chutney

2009-11-08T00:20:00.003Z

for Halloween I carved two of the pumpkins grown this summer and, of course, ended up with lots of pieces of pumpkin flesh. the trouble being that scraping out the shell for a lantern leaves small chunks that don't keep well - cut a slice or a wedge from a pumpkin and the remainder will keep quite a while in the fridge even if the exposed edges have to be cut off and thrown away. I didn't weigh them before carving, but 3lb of flesh went in marmalade and we seem to have eaten pumpkin in some shape or form with every meal since then - curries, stir fries, soups, in tomato sauce with pasta - there are lots of ways to eat it but it's getting a bit same-some. Some has been boiled down into puree and frozen for use in soups and curries but there was still far too much left over. I didn't want to end up throwing it on the compost so I've turned it into chutney, with orange peel and spices.

Last Christmas - 2

2009-11-06T16:03:00.003Z

another pony themed Christmas present for my younger daughter - a bag from home-made felt.

same yarn, different colour, but showing the knitted tension

it was made using some very old Rowan lightweight double knit wool; the yarn was knitted up doubled on quite thick needles and at a fairly normal tension
then, washed on a cotton cycle at 50 degrees in the washing machine
and it shrank a lot!

once it has shrunk, the knitting stitches can barely be seen

then I appliqued a pony cut out from shop-bought felt with mane and tail in embroidery thread and a small bead for his eye, some lazy daisy flowers and sequins and made a rope strap from the contrasting dark pink yarn.

halloween marmalade

2009-11-01T14:09:00.003Z

Halloween yesterday, so the pumpkins grown over summer were carved with faces ready for the treat-or-treaters. Lots and lots of pumpkin flesh removed in the process and only so much soup that anyone can consume. So, out with the preserving pan again - this time for a pumpkin marmalade flavoured with lemon and ginger.

personalised bedding

2009-10-31T23:51:00.003Z

My daughter had a set a cotton summer weight sheets with fairies but we couldn't find a similar set in flannel or brushed cotton for winter so I ended up buying plain sheets and embroidering them myself.

Last Christmas - 1

2009-10-24T13:16:00.001+01:00

it's that time of year when one begins to think of Christmas and all the present buying that comes with it. instead of just dashing out to the shops on a spending frenzy, we decided to make some things ourselves - mainly for our younger daughter. I'm not going to post any of this year's ideas; instead I'll put up those from last year.

this daughter is into anything "horsey" and all her magazines are full of horse- related things to buy as presents but we were looking for something a little special and hit on this idea of a pony mobile. the ponies are mainly made out of MDF offcuts from other projects as they are only about 2"(5cm) nose to tail; they're all cut to the same template, a fairly basic pony silhouette and painted in pastel pinks and lilacs (from tester sized pots) to co-ordinate with our daughter's room; they're suspended from pink crossbars with fairly heavy pink knitting cotton (again oddments of leftovers) and the purple felt saddles hide the point at which the cotton is glued to the pony. ALL of the materials for this project were leftovers from something else, which must make it one of the most environmentally friendly presents my daughter received last year.

more of last year's Christmas presents to follow

Lace making

2009-10-22T12:51:00.002+01:00

several years ago I was given a lace-making kit complete with bobbins and polystyrene cushion. since then I've acquired lots more bobbins and another cushion, this one made of horsehair. unfortunately, it seems that no matter how many bobbins I have, the patterns require more!

a small bookmark made by my daughter, then aged 9

edging for a mat

finished at last.

2009-10-20T22:58:00.006+01:00

I have AT LAST finished my current piece of knitting. I had the impression that this would have been an easy knit but the number of different colours in the stripes and a troublesome 54 row pattern repeat slowed everything down a lot - always stopping to find the next yarn, joining bits in, cutting yarns off - not difficult stitches but just slow and tedious. the pattern is from Rowan magazine No 41 and was intended to be knitted in Summer Tweed but I was looking for a pattern to use up a lot of oddments of Shilasdair yarn left over from Di Gilpin knitting kits - although mainly aran weight pure wool they give a similar tension so it was possible to change the yarn. I think it's turned out well, now for something a little quicker.

using what you've got -green tomatoes and pasta

2009-10-15T19:02:00.004+01:00

have been clearing out tomato plants at my parents and came home with nearly 4lb of green tomatoes. MOST of these have been turned into chutney but i was checking out other things to do with under-ripe tomatoes and thought I would try cooking them in some way for lunch. the problem with the recipes I found was that they seemed to finish with the addition of lots of double cream - this isn't something I wanted to do as I was looking for something low-fat. So this is what I came up with; put a slug of olive oil in a saucepan, add 8oz chopped green tomatoes and let them start to sweat. add a small chopped up onion and a crushed clove of garlic. while these are cooking put sufficient pasta in a separate pan and cook (ours was intended as lunch so only 4oz dry pasta for 2; adjust the amount to suit). cook the tomatoes for about 5 mins, they'll lose their bright green colour and turn khaki, then add a couple of slices of ham, either chopped up or cut into ribbons, and continue cooking till the pasta is nearly ready. drain the pasta and return to its pan. add the tomato mix to it and stir in 3 to 4 tablespoons of low-fat cheese spread. stir everything together and allow the cheese to melt slightly and coat the pasta.

jam again and chutney

2009-10-04T14:59:00.003+01:00

turned the last of the rhubarb into jam with ginger and some candied orange peel.
having a glut of cucumber at the moment so have boiled some up with tomatoes to make chutney - think I may have over-done the chillies a bit though, it is very hot.
have made apple,lemon and ginger marmalade with windfall apples before they rot.

jam making again

2009-10-01T23:42:00.000+01:00

seem to have been busy lately with the jam pan . have been given lots of fruit by various people - plums, damsons and windfall apples, so I now have 6 jars each of plum, damson and a mixed one using apples and redcurrants and raspberries from the freezer, plus 2 bottles of damson sauce.

baskets

2009-09-30T19:05:00.001+01:00

among the craft books I picked up recently I found one on basketmaking. this is one of those crafts that always looks so simple but I felt it was necessary to buy willow or an equivalent to have a go. well,one of the suggestions in this book is to trying basket weaving using dried leaves from plants such as irises or montbretia. now the irises in my garden are new gifts this year so I don't want to start chopping them down but we have a lot of montbretia and, if it's not cut back before the first frosts, it soon turns into a slimy mess. so, as I've chopped it back, I've gathered it into bunches and hung it in the garage to dry. more news later if it works.

books for free

2009-09-23T19:06:00.001+01:00

picked up several boxes of craft and sewing books today through Freecycle. lots of really interesting things to sort through and perhaps gain some inspiration from

make-over ; trousers into cushions

2009-09-14T09:12:00.004+01:00

I have a pair of daughter's old trousers in purple velvety material with beading, sequins and embroidery. they are now far too small, but the material is largely unworn. I'm hoping to turn them into cushions for her den.

plum jam

2009-09-08T18:34:00.003+01:00

collected about 5 pounds of Victoria plums at weekend. some were windfalls and aren't keeping too well, so I decided to turn some of them into jam.

3lbs plums, 3lbs sugar,10fl.oz water, 14 cracked kernels = 4 pots of jam

gooseberry chutney

2009-08-09T23:22:00.002+01:00

3lb gooseberries - washed, chopped in half
1 1/2 pints vinegar
1tblspn each of black and white mustard seed
8oz onions, finely chopped
1 chilli,finely chopped
1 chunk stem ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspn salt
1lb demerara sugar
8oz granulated sugar

place 2lb gooseberries in a large preserving pan along with 1pint vinegar, mustard seed, onions,chilli,ginger and salt. Boil till the gooseberries have disintegrated - maybe an hour.
add remaining gooseberries, vinegar and the demerara sugar. boil till the fruit is soft - 20-30 mins.
add the granulated sugar and boil till the chutney thickens - 20 mins.
pot into clean,warmed jars.

using what you've got - cooking

2009-07-11T11:37:00.002+01:00

pulled the first of this year's beetroot from the garden yesterday. baked the roots as usual, probably to use cold in salad or sandwiches, but was wondering what to do with the rest.I often add young,clean leaves to salad but we have so much lettuce at the moment that it seems pointless. I've seen recipes for cooking the stems and leaves but never tried them, so, last night, we decided to give them a try. the recipe said boil for 5-6 mins so I added them to the saucepan at the end of cooking broad beans and cauliflower(also from the garden). I was a bit worried about the other veg turning pink -though this might have improved the cauli which was a bit slug damaged- but there wasn't that much colour leakage. the water was an interesting purpley shade but the other veg were ok. how it all tasted is what matters though - slightly odd as,it being a leaf, I was expecting a cabbagey taste and was surprised that it tasted of -you've guessed- beetroot. having got over this strangeness, I enjoyed it. the taste is not as strong as boiled beetroot and some people may prefer it.
my parents never eat beetroot other than cooked and pickled in vinegar - is it an age-related idea? I've tried it various ways including soup (though I find some bortsch recipes too strong in beetroot flavour) and a Nigella Lawson cake recipe and believe it's much more versatile than a lot of people think.

using what you've got - cooking

2009-07-10T18:15:00.003+01:00

this week we've had a glut of lettuce. all of them - the red salad bowl, the clarion(a green butterhead type) and the little gem are running to seed so either they have to be eaten up somehow or thrown away. there's only so much lettuce you can eat in salad, only so much you can persuade the neighbours to take and I can't imagine it would freeze very well so it was out with the recipe books. first we tried lettuce with peas and pasta,in a cheese sauce - this was a proper recipe so it turned out to be a success though neither of the daughters would try it. then we had a stir-fry with some of the red lettuce - this wasn't as good, the lettuce was stronger and tougher, perhaps should have been cooked for longer.so back to the pasta idea, this time pork with a tomato based sauce and it turned out very well. maybe it's a good idea to try to think "outside the box" with surplus food, certainly it's better than wasting it

using what you've got - cooking

2009-07-08T22:20:00.006+01:00

seem to have spent the last couple of weeks in a constant state of making jams and chutneys. I've made 2 batches of my "own recipe" gooseberry chutney, 3 jars of gooseberry marmalade, 4 jars of gooseberry,raspberry and redcurrant jam and, today, 6 jars of "mixed berries from the freezer" jam (all unearthed during de-frosting). have also stewed and sieved the thinnings from the apple tree with some blackcurrants to make a lovely cloudy pink puree to flavour yoghurt.

can't bear to part with it? - sewing

2009-07-08T14:34:00.003+01:00

some years ago my youngest daughter had a pair of funky jeans, with frayed edges and embroidered flowers. when they grew too small, or she grew too big, they sat in the spare room waiting for a new lease of life. my first thought was to re-cut them into a skirt, but this project took so long in the making that my daughter grew between measuring for the skirt and it getting finished. for a while, she'd been saying " that would look good as a bag", so,for her birthday, I cut the skirt back up and turned it into a shoulder bag, and hopefully she thinks it's turned out well.

freecycling

2009-07-04T12:14:00.001+01:00

I've only discovered freecycling in the last year but I think it's one of the most useful things ever. as our youngest daughter was abandoning her baby toys we found we had lots of things,a little worn and tatty but with life left in them. we no longer knew anyone with children small enough to appreciate these things or even a toddler group that might have liked them and so a lot of things ended up in the dustbin.
freecycling provides a way of finding homes for such items. in the last few months we've re-housed the high chair, a toddler trike, hot wheels cars, children's cooking items, a child's ironing board and books. we've also discovered that we have other things that people may like -for example, when lifting and splitting plants in the garden, I now always offer them on freecycle; we have found people who wanted our elder daughter's hair curlers and curling tongs, a bumper and various car spares.
of course you can also pick things up from freecycle - in the past few months we've collected things like - plant pots, roof insulation that someone was removing, welsh linguaphone course,a video recorder, various types of craft materials, old needlework and heritage magazines and lots of books including a new copy of Nigella Express.
today I am heading out to pick up some knitting wool.

using what you've got

2009-07-03T14:53:00.000+01:00

my parents have 2 gooseberry bushes full of unwanted fruit so naturally, when offered some, I've picked-my-own(and some for them). I picked the first batch a fortnight ago and decided to turn it into chutney- we get through a LOT of chutney and pickles- but couldn't find a recipe that matched my store cupboard. So, on the "use what you've got" principle, I took my free fruit, some home-grown and dried chillies, some ginger in syrup(normally for stir-fries), a mix of demerara and common granulated sugar and malt vinegar and, after a while boiling away, have some excellent chutney.
a second helping of gooseberries have gone to make a rather strange-looking but good-tasting marmalade with the help of home-frozen organic orange peel, which gives most of the flavour. some of the gooseberries have had to go to the freezer- I would have preferred to jam/chutney it straight away - storing in a jar isn't a constant drain on the electricity, but the weather this last week has been far too hot to stand over a hot stove.
if you want a recipe for either of these then please leave a comment below. we would love to hear from you.