You make all these efforts

And for what? Oh it looks nice alright. And I can tell you it tastes good too.

But unfortunately I was rather too lazy busy and so I didn't take the time to check it had reached setting point. So yes, it's still rather liquid. No proper jam for me yet. So guess what I'll be doing tonight? Putting it all back in the saucepan to have another go.

I will not be defeated by raspberries of all things!!

Busy hands

That's me. Well, that was me, last weekend. Boyfriend was out for a big chunk of Saturday and I had the flat all to myself. And what is a girl to do in those circumstances apart from doing all the things she enjoys? Well just that of course! So I finished off some things I'd been thinking about making for a while, and jumped right into others. Wanna see?

Well first there's the birthday cards. I'd made one a few weeks ago for Boyfriend's dad and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed cutting out all the necessary letters from old magazines. Guess it was a little bit of a flash back to childhood crafting! So I made my scissory way through an old magazine, and here you have it!

Then, I decided it was time I tried out this recipe I'd seen in a Good Food magazine not long ago. Rhubarb and vanilla jam. Now, I can't tell you if it tastes nice because I haven't had any yet, but I can't see how it could have gone wrong. Ah, actually, thinking about it, I've just realised I forgot to add the lemon juice. Oops. Oh well, three and a bit jars of it, I'm a happy bunny. This is the official start of my preserving effort for 2010!! (Hopefully I won't forget any ingredients next time...!)

And finally, there was a lot of crochet action. Here's a photo of Caerphilly I took on Sunday. There are now 80 squares. 80!!!! Wow, that's rather scary I think, don't you?!  I have to admit, I'm dreading the assembling process... I couldn't do this join-as-you-go thing, because I wanted to explore all the colour combinations methodically first.

So there you have it, a rather nervous Petit Filoux with jammy fingers and a rather large collection of birthday cards.

Match made in heaven

Good Tuesday everyone! I managed to do quite a bit of cooking at the weekend (feeling low does not stop me from enjoying spending time in the kitchen - unfortunately for my waistline!), and I thought I should share it with you! Yesterday’s post was long enough, I though it was best if I saved some news for today. First of all, let me show you the last batch of cherry plum jam I made a couple of weeks ago. Not sure why I didn’t end up writing about it earlier, but I just didn’t get round to it, you know how that just happens sometimes don’t you. Well anyway, here it is! Went from this:

to this!

This did involve butchering my fingers (I wanted to get the stones out), 3 hours of hard labour and 4.5kg of fruit ready for action. But it was all worth it in the end. The thought that this jam was made with local fruit that grows around the corner from where I live, that I didn’t have to pay a penny for it, that I picked it myself (with the invaluable help of Boyfriend on that sunny Sunday morning with a stool to reach the higher branches – thanks again!), just fills me with joy! I thought these would make cute additions to some Christmas hampers too perhaps. I know I know, I mentioned the C word!!! Please forgive me, but I guess I’m one of these people who gets very excited by it all. I’ve done more C work and research, but I’ll save that for another day ;-)

So back to my weekend delicacies! Farls. Irish soda farls. A weekday breakfast without them is a sad one. There are sooooo yummy, you just won’t believe me until you try it. To be fair, it might not be to everyone’s taste, but I need energy in the morning. I have breakfast at 6.20am, do a fair bit of walking to get to work, and don’t have lunch until 12.00pm, so I need something that’s going to stop me from snacking all morning. And boy does this work. Have them cut in half, toasted, with some jam, and it’s a heavenly start to any day. I promise!

So here’s the recipe. It couldn’t be easier - though it is a little messy, but I’m getting better and better at containing the mess everytime!

Ingredients:

• buttermilk – the tub I get from Sainsbury’s is 284ml
• 300g flour
• 1 heaped teaspoon of baking soda

Mix the flour and baking soda in a bowl. Make a well in the middle and add the buttermilk. Mix until you get a soft dough (about 5min or so). Leave the dough to rest for about 10min. Knead very lightly on a well floured surface (and I mean WELL floured – add more flour if you feel you need to, otherwise it does get very sticky). Form into a flattened circle with your hands, about 1-1.5cm thick and cut in 5 sections.

Sprinkle a little flour in a frying pan, put it on medium heat. When it’s hot, add the farls (you may have to do this in 2 batches depending on the size of your pan, as you don’t want them touching each other) for about 6min on each side, until they’re nice and golden brown. Store in a Tupperware for up to a week (they may last longer, mine just never get to last more than that!).

Come back tomorrow to see what else I got up to! xx

Red jewels

This is it, Sunday night. Already. Oh well at least I'm on holiday at the end of next week, can't wait! Had quite a busy weekend to be honest. Didn't end up doing any blocking in the end though (Friday night ended up being one of those nights in front of the tv with food and knitting!), but it's still on my list of things to do. Went fruit picking yesterday which was brilliant! Ended up getting tons of gooseberries, raspberries and redcurrants, it was just so much fun! The raspberries were wonderful (and so tasty!),

the gooseberries very ripe, but my favourite were by far the redcurrants. They were so beautiful, like jewels on a bush - simply amazing!! Couldn't stop picking them!

Gooseberries were a bit of a mission to pick though, I still bear the scars from that! Definitely not something to do with children! But anyway, went home to get lots of jam on the go. Raspberry jam, redcurrant jam, gooseberry jam, gooseberry and redcurrant jam, can't wait to try it all! Still have plenty of raspberries and redcurrants left over so tonight for pudding we'll be having a raspberry and redcurrant fool! Yum! Anyway, feel a bit down now, not really sure why, guess it's this depressing grey and windy weather :-(

Hope you all had a nice weekend and made the most of the sunshine! x

Internet restrictions :-(

Hello! I'm having to spend three days this week at another office where the access to blogs is forbidden. I am NOT happy!!! It sounds a little pathetic, but honestly, I have a million and one things I want to write about! First of all, I'd like to thank you for your lovely posts, they've put a massive smile on my face! I can't believe how kind random strangers can be, it's astonishing. Actually no, it's fan-tas-tic!

Thanks for your advice on blocking, I'll try it out this weekend when I have a little more time. Or maybe on Friday after work (I'll have the place to myself while boyfriend goes to the football - hooray!). I'll let you know how it works out.

Now for the news. I am officially starting as a French teacher. To my boyfriend that is. I'm not a teacher by training, but I am French, so hopefully that'll help. On the other hand, he's a typical Englishman in the sense that languages aren't his forte... Wish me luck! I have been told and I quote "I know what you're like, don't let it go to your head!" - who, moi?!!!! No way ;-) Unfortunately we'll have to start with the boring bits, like grammar and tenses, and work hard on the oh-so-very difficult pronounciation. Who would have thought "r" is hard to pronounce??!

And finally, back to the mirabelle plums. If there are any specialists out there, I'd like to apologise, I got a little mixed up. The photo I took was of (unripe) cherry plums, not mirabelles (pictured below). I realised there were two different types when I went back to have a look at them on Monday evening. Only to realise there are about five mature cherry plum trees, and one little mirabelle one in the middle! The cherry plums are still all green (but will turn red), however the mirabelles have already turned yellow. So I picked a few and made a little batch of jam today!!! Can't wait to try it out! Would tomorrow morning for breakfast be a little early/ greedy?!