Patchwork, Pudding and Peas

One of my favourite pastimes is sewing patchwork quilts;  I've been making quilts on and off for over 20 years.  I don't pretend to be brilliant at it or an expert but I do love it.  I handsew the quilts as I find something infinitely relaxing about quiet rhythm of needle and thread.

I'm lucky enough to belong to the village quilting group; a group of lovely ladies who meet up twice a month to chat, drink coffee and tea and sometimes enjoy cake - and yes some sewing takes place.  I'm an oddity in the group as most of the ladies use machines and produce the most beautiful work;  one of the joys of the group is the open hearted admiration and support for everyone's work, as well as the wealth of knowledge when it comes to troubleshooting problems with techniques.

At the moment I'm sewing a simple nine-patch quilt for a friend.

I'm using the paper piecing technique, where each part of the quilt is backed with papers (which are removed before the backing and stuffing are added). It's an old fashioned technique but very easy to learn and gives you nice sharp edges to the blocks.

 I'm using florals and cream to create the nine-patches which are arranged in a random colour way on an 8x8 grid with each colour appearing only once in each column and row - hence the carefully numbered piles of blocks, so I know what block goes where!

 Blocks joined into strips.

Strips being joined together.

The blocks all pieced together.

A close up of the colours which sadly look a bit washed out in the rain drenched light.  :-(

They look really crisp and pretty in real life - honest.

 Ironing edges in the first border strips.

I still have to sew up the simple narrow blocks for the outer border and then add the bias binding before I start to take out the paper pieces - a tedious task I have to admit -

and then the quilting begins; I'm going for a random selection of different sized heart shaped outlines.  

Hopefully our friend will love it.

Now for something completely different....

all this rainy weather with below average temperatures has meant that the usual salads and light quiches has given way to more autumnal meals and as it poured down last week I dug into the freezer for the ingredients for ....

 ...steamed steak and kidney suet pudding.

This sumptuous comfort food is a real favourite with Jean-Luc and takes over 3 hours to cook as you cook the filling first.  The great thing about this is you can make loads of filling and then freeze the excess for another day.  The recipe is from Nigella's  Domestic Goddess book; which, as you'd expect, is filled with wonderfully luxurious recipes to treat yourself with.

I had some leftover suet pastry and having found some leftover damson jam in the fridge which was a little past its best for smearing on toast but perfect for spreading over the pastry which was then rolled and baked for jam roly poly.  Oh yes we had it with custard and resulted in a very happy albeit very full Jean-Luc.

We served the steak and kidney pudding with light vegetables including our first small crop of home grown peas.  Hooray!  They are along with the lettuce, chard and hopefully broad beans are the few meagre veggies which have defeated both the slugs and the dreadfully cold and wet summer this year - unlike the kale and courgettes.

Oh well, lessons learnt I suppose but extremely frustrating, especially after my glowing visions of abundant produce filling the freezer for winter.  Pffeh as the Nu would say.

Glorious and delicious garden produce.

Diamond Days

Today the weather is dismal, stratiform cloud and associated persistent and heavy drizzle; however on the bright side, the garden and surrounding environs are wearing filmy veils of pearlescent grey studded with diamonds.

 One of the plants that wears this look best is the bronze fennel with its delicate tresses set off by the tiny diamonds of rain caught in its foliage.

Of course it has competition from the necklaces of spider silk and diamonds that dazzle from spiders webs.

When we were children my sister and I used to come across these beauties in the early mornings and imagine that fairies would gather these necklaces to wear to their festivities and even now I find something magical about their delicate elegance.

A reminder to me that even the dullest of days contains its own unique beauty.

Odds & Ends

I just had to post a picture of this stew.

This is a delicious cannellini bean, 3 tomato (canned, fresh and sun-dried) and pepper stew.

It's 340 calories and on a 5:2 fasting day that was cold and wet, it was the perfect warming dinner.  The portion looks huge, tastes great (yes even Jean-Luc likes it!) and is full of healthy veggies and beans.

The 5:2 is going well, I've lost a stone, despite over a month off when we were on holiday and I was ill with bronchitis.  I feel healthier, some clothes which didn't fit me now do and I'm not finding it difficult to stick to it at all.  I love the fact that although I normally fast on Monday and Thursday I can change the days I fast around to fit in with the rest of my life; this week I'm meeting a friend for dinner on Thursday so have changed my days.  I love the fact that if I choose to eat a muffin on a non fast day I haven't 'broken' my diet, if I eat pizza or chocolate (in moderation), that's ok.   I love the fact I don't have to say I can't eat that, I say I can't eat that - today.  I don't worry about 'sins' or 'points' or whether I can eat carbs, fats or drink a glass of wine.

 I love the fact I can establish a healthy relationship with food and lose weight. 

On a completely different topic, we received some post today.....

.....and yes the Nu has more economic cachet that we do.  She was sent two free food sachets and two vouchers for cat food; obviously someone at Tesco had spotted her food purchases and sought to curry favour with the most influential person in this household.  Unfortunately, they hadn't done all their homework as she doesn't eat this food; I did offer it to her but she wasn't convinced.  I rang Tesco clubcard customer services on her behalf - her suggestion was that a local cat charity might benefit from any future presents; I had a laughter filled conversation with a charming man (I think he was relieved it was such a trivial issue) and he quickly said he would make sure her food preferences record was corrected and that any future bribes should meet her standards.  

I find it incredibly creepy and intrusive that a supermarket is monitoring our purchases but hilarious that when they use that information they get it so wrong.
We certainly won't be shopping at Tesco's any more frequently than we do already and we certainly won't be 'faithful' to that supermarket.
The Nu prefers to keep her food preferences private.

Laundry Loveliness

I'm going to admit I'm not a great fan of housework; I know it's the thing to be embracing housework as an empowering thing but for me no matter what I try, this approach eludes me.

I should say here, that doesn't mean my house is a pit of filth and dirt; I do clean but not with joy in my heart but with resignation that this needs to be done.

However, I have found that some things do help make it less of a burden.

Cheerful tools, sweeping rather than vacuuming and making my own cleaning products.

Today it was the turn of the laundry liquid.  

Now considering the adverts on television you would think this needed a chemical lab, umpteen exotic ingredients and various cartoon characters singing as you make it - a sort of 1950's housewife version of Walt Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Well no; actually it's incredibly simple and requires 4 ingredients of which one is tap water.

 Yep that's right, grated soap, washing soda crystals, borax and tap water.

 You add 1 cup of grated soap toe 1 1/2 litres of water and then gently heat until the soap dissolves.

 Next you add 1/2 cup of borax

 and 1/2 cup of washing soda crystals

You take them off the heat and stir them all together until they are dissolved and the mixture begins to thicken.  At this point I add any fragrance I want to put in; usually something fresh such as lime or floral like lavender.

 

You should end up with about 1.8 litres of liquid.

 I then divide this between my six 1.5 litre bottles, so that ends up with 300ml (0.3l) in each bottle. 

I then top up the bottles with tap water to get the right dilution.

And so there you have it - 9 litres of laundry liquid.

and the recipe?  Well Rhonda of course!

Summer Solstice

It's the summer solstice today - the longest day of the year, one of the two turning points on which the year hinges.

It's a magical day, marked with dawn vigils and singing, dancing and picnicking in the sun; unless you live where I live where it means 'whoops we slept in', 'that wind's a bit cold when you sit still', and 'oh well, I'll mow the lawn then'.

So I took advantage of the breaks in the cloud to record the party that was going on in the flower borders; red carpet day for plants and everyone has their best frock on.

I have to admit a slight touch of pride in this border.  It wasn't here 18 months ago, although many of the plants, especially the cranesbills, had been with me for years in pots in the old back yard.  The young apple tree which you might just be able to see behind the yellow lysimachia has also spent it's formative years in pots and is now relishing unrestricted root room. :-)

 I have to own up to loving riotous colour in my flower borders.

 I adore it when plants intertwine and the contrast between the 'Johnson's Blue' cranesbill and orange Fox and Cubs just makes my heart sing.

The lysimachia looks scrumptious with the red geum and Fox and Cubs.

Fox and Cubs is an orange hawkweed, a wild flower come weed that grows on rough ground (doesn't say a lot for the quality of our soil) and it shares with the lysimachia that strong belief that it should be present in the entire garden.  It requires a strict hand but is worth it in my opinion for the gloriously cheerful flowers it gives you.

 Slightly quieter but no less lovely is this white Jacob's Ladder, it has the most delicate perfume and subtle violet edging on the inside of the petals.

Beautiful

 

 This is my so called woodland/ fern border.  The field maple to the left of the Jacob's Ladder is another old friend enjoying its freedom from pots and in spring it shelters the wild garlic and violets that grow under it. 

The ferns are growing into just the sort of cover a cat might need in order to keep up undetected surveillance of the bird table - not how we planned it.

And last but definitely not least this bronze fennel wears the most beautiful smokey foliage which goes wonderfully well with nearly all fish dishes.

Behind it you can just glimpse a climbing rose which I was lucky enough to skip dive from a neighbour who was having a clear out at our old house.  It has the most delicate white roses but I think this year it's going to spend most of it time on growing rather than flowering.  I can't wait to see what it does next year.

Happy Solstice everyone!

Is this really news?

I'm sitting here on a Friday night watching the news - and one of the leading stories is that Mo Farah has missed two drug tests over two years.

Now let's just dissect this: 

1. Mo Farah has not been accused of taking perfomance enhancing drugs.
2. Allegations have been made that Alberto Salazar (Mo Farar's trainer) practiced doping techniques in a Panorama documentary.  No organisation has confirmed this. Salazar has not been convicted of providing performance enhancing drugs to any athlete.
3.  Mo Farah has missed two drug tests - according to Ukad rules (UK anti-doping) an athlete who missed three tests in any 18-month period could face up to a two-year ban. Yes that's three, not two.
4. Farah's first missed test was in early 2010, months before he joined Alberto Salazar's training programme.
5. As Dan Roan, the BBC sports editor said "Anti-doping regulations state athletes must give details of where they will be for one hour every day. But inevitably, on occasions, they're not at home when the testers come calling. We know that in 2011, around the time this story relates to, nine UK athletes missed two tests. But that number can change. In 2014 it was only one, so it's not common but it's not unheard of either. But the ramifications of missing a third test can be very serious."

So to recap here.......

Mo Farah isn't accused of taking performance enhancing drugs.

He's within the testing attendance parameters set by the UK anti-doping.

Someone he works with has been accused (not convicted) of providing performance enhancing drugs but not to Mo Farah.

 =

NO STORY!

On the positive side this man did win two gold medals in the 2012 London Olympics.

My big issue here is that this is NOT news.  It is conjecture at best.

In the grand scheme of things this is not important.  

Important things that news should be about are:

climate change

environmental degradation and wildlife poaching

peak oil

fracking 

economic depression, 'sustainable growth' and austerity

human trafficking and slavery

war and terrorism

poverty

Showers and soap

So guess what I did today?

Yep, that's right it's soap making day.

I don't know why but I always end up making soap when it's raining - something to do with the flowing water perhaps?  

It's a job that I truly love and here's my gear ready to go.

Scales for weighing everything, rice bran oil and coconut oil (I forgot to include the olive oil), caustic soda to add to the rainwater, old stockpot and spoons to cook the soap up with, fragrance and tea tree oil.

 I start by adding the caustic soda to some rainwater to make lye and as the resulting chemical reaction cools down to 50 degrees C, I heat the oils up to the same temperature and then add the lye to the oils.  

It starts to change almost immediately.

Now I stir, and stir, and stir..........

....passing through the 'caramel sauce' stage.....

...

.

....until finally it reaches 'trace'; this is when the ripples from stirring stay on the surface.

Now is the time to add any fragrance. I always add tea tree oil for its antibacterial qualities and this time I added some perfume oil from Lush, the warm and furry smelling 'Exhale'.

Time now to pour it into the molds; as you can see I use old Carte D'Or ice cream containers, they are firm enough to get a good set but are flexible enough to get the soap out fairly easily.  I have tried posh silicon molds but they just don't seem to cut the mustard for me.

I've included Rhonda Hetzel's book 'down to earth' as this recipe comes from Rhonda's blog - as anyone who reads this blog will know, this is my go-to source for nearly all things frugal and simple.

Tomorrow I will take the soap out of the molds and cut it into slices; then I just have to wait 6 weeks for the soap to cure - during this time the soap hardens off and the harder the soap when you start to use it, the longer it lasts in your bathroom.

The final soap lathers beautifully and is very soft on the skin, leaving you with out that dry feeling that some soaps and shower gels can do.