Caveat Emptor

Bill and I went into lockdown the evening of 16 March. I'd intended to nip into the Coop convenience store for milk and cookies for the WI Craft group that evening but when several members sent emails saying they wouldn't be coming because of the PM's announcement telling people to stay home, we cancelled Craft Group. I went to the Coop anyhow to pick up some fresh fruit and veg, not knowing what arrangements for shopping would be in future. Bill came home from his running club that evening and we were AT HOME.

Just that day, we'd been into every shop in North Shields looking to buy hand sanitiser and paracetamol. We found some water soluable paracetamol (horrible tasting stuff, but needs must) but no hand sanitiser in any shop whatsoever.

So I got onto eBay and ordered some. As I recall there wasn't a lot of reasonably priced stuff on offer, but I selected a seller that offered a reasonably large bottle for £11 and I ordered two, which somehow gave me a discount. We never had need of it since we didn't go out except to walk and we never needed to touch anything while walking (well, I never did, Bill forgets occasionally). So I forgot about having ordered the stuff until a few months later when I sat down with a bunch of papers to figure out where my money had gone. When I found the Paypal charge I realised I'd never received the hand sanitiser. It was by then too late to claim back from eBay.

The £17.60 wasn't going to break me, but I was annoyed with myself for not looking more closely at this seller. It was also my own fault for a) not following up promptly and b) being too lazy to read through all the instructions on eBay...all their FAQs are for irrelevancies and I couldn't find an actual person to write to for the protocol. So I figured the seller would likely continue to get away with this, though I see she's not sold anything for the past month, so perhaps there is a limit to fraudulent behaviour that even eBay will tolerate.

Then it occurred to me to contact Paypal. Fortunately their complaints procedure is much simpler. I just got in touch with the Chat line and they transferred me to the complaints department. It took a couple of weeks, but even though the seller never replied to their inquiries, they refunded my £17.60! I'm pleased I didn't give up even if I was very late in following up. Sadly I suspect this is like with bankruptcies, where the costs to the businesses are passed on to other customers. 

I will definitely be more cautious in my eBay purchases from now on.

Bill's Crackers (but you knew that)

This story begins with a bucket of yogurt. I've had reasonable success freezing and thawing yogurt for later use, but I've learned that success may vary with different brands. It always separates to some extent, but stirring generally does the trick. Not with this latest purchase however. Lovely and creamy when new, but not only did it separate but the solid part was grainy and Bill couldn't cope with this. 

So I strained it overnight, putting a double fold of linen towel into a strainer suspended over a bowl. The result was a jar of whey which I will put into some muffins and a tub of 'yogurt cheese'. I knew I could put garlic, herbs and salt into this to make a kind of dip but before I did that I asked Bill for ideas. His response was to make some cream crackers. I think they should be illegal. 

On the other hand, this is in keeping with the recommendation Michael Pollen makes in his book, In Defense of Food. If you want unhealthy snack food, don't buy it at the store, make it yourself. This will limit the number of times you'll eat it. Not that crackers are terribly unhealthy, they're just terrible. Because we eat them, not just with yogurt cheese but with peanut butter or regular butter. The carbohydrate and the crunch combined with something fattening is almost irresistible. I think this is the recipe he used. 

Whey.

So I'd best fight back by making those muffins, right?

Breakfast

On Fridays at our house Bill makes bread in the bread maker. I stocked a small tin of yeast for Brexit last year and had a few part-bags of various bread flours when we went into lock down. Since then we've shopped at Buy-the-Kilo, just down the street at the Metro station, to top up the strong white flour. 'Strong flour' has plenty of gluten, needed for making most breads, and is made from durum wheat. This is what all regular flour in the US is made from, apparently, something I only learned in the past few years. We enjoy toast and home made jam on Saturday and Sunday mornings - in bed, to be completely decadent.

The last of the birthday flowers: lavender alliums and some sort of white filler flowers.

During the week, however, we have breakfast at the dining table. Following advice from a former blog Like Merchant Ships (she stopped writing her blog in 2010, but carried on at Tumblr until October last year) to avoid using commercial labels at the table, we have decanted porridge oats (oatmeal) and Grape Nuts into glass jars. Also my instant coffee. In winter we have hot porridge.

The circular metal tray on a hardboard place mat (a British thing, most place mats in the US are fabric) acts almost as well as a Lazy Susan (I wonder, who was Susan?). In addition to cereals, coffee and sweeteners are containers with Bill's 'medications' recommended un-officially by his consultant after he cracked a knee cap while running a couple of years ago: glucosamine and cod liver oil (he pays me no attention when I mention dioxin concentration in fish oils). His knee no longer bothers him - other than I think he drags that foot a bit and needs physio / exercises - and he's thinking of giving these meds a miss when they run out to see what happens. He buys them by the million on eBay. (I see he has put them in plastic food containers that still have a label - must try harder!)

As well as the circular tray, we have our good china and silver, a teapot (full of tea) for Bill and another pot of hot water for me. Bill likes to chop his fresh fruit each morning. I make a box of a wider variety of fruits - including some tinned peaches or fruit cocktail - on Sunday afternoon in preparation for the week. There is also a small creamer jug filled with the last of a wine bottle of orange syrup, or sometimes rose hip syrup, and a large jug of milk.

We eat, then drink hot beverages until we are sloshing, or out of conversation, and then get on with our day.

Kitchen Issues

For years, every Thanksgiving, I have bought new containers of baking powder and of baking soda (AKA bicarbonate of soda) to be sure my holiday baking turns out well. (Also ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, but that is a different post). Not that I don't still have other containers of baking powder /soda in the cupboard, I just don't trust them - in date or out of date, they aren't always reliable.

One of the last times I did this I got rather fed up. I know that baking soda can also be used as a cleaner on bathroom fixtures, being a bit abrasive. It is also useful for absorbing unwanted smells in places like the refrigerator. But those bases are already covered with other out of date containers. Also, I was wondering if there was anything I could do with out of date baking powder. Turns out it's also slightly abrasive, so could in theory be used as a cleaner.

Another question I had was how to tell if they might still be good for their original baking purposes. So I looked it up. 

For baking soda, put about a quarter teaspoon of the baking soda into about 3 tablespoons of vinegar. It should fizz quite a bit as soon as it hits the vinegar (so choose a bowl large enough to contain this reaction). If it doesn't fizz or does so slowly, it probably won't act as the rising agent you want.

For baking powder, do much the same, only with a half a cup of hot water instead of vinegar. Apparently baking powder reacts twice in your baking: once when it meets the liquid and again when the mixture is heated. That was new news to me, for sure.

Another thing I learned was that unopened baking powder is more likely to still be active as it is exposure to damp that causes it to lose its lift.  Unopened baking soda lasts almost indefinitely and one source suggested that opened baking soda could last as long as about three years; other sources say indefinitely...so knowing how to test it is important.

I already knew that a mixture of baking soda and cream of tartar would make the equivalent of baking powder. The equivalent of a teaspoon of baking powder is made by mixing one-half teaspoon of cream of tartar with one-quarter teaspoon of baking soda. This adds up to three-quarters of a teaspoon of powder, not a whole teaspoon, which suggests that the homemade mixture may well be stronger than store bought. 

Finally, given that baking soda has quite a long shelf life so long as it is kept dry and cool, I wondered about the shelf life of cream of tartar. Given dry and cool conditions it apparently also lasts indefinitely. 

All this has made me decide to a) test my opened baking powder and if it bubbles, use it up sooner rather than later; b) buy more cream of tartar; c) make sure I only ever have one opened container of any of these items at a time regardless of any use-by dates; d) have a go at making my own baking powder. If I make small amounts when needed and keep the baking soda and cream of tartar dry, I might save a bit of money and prevent some needless waste.

Do you ever research questions like this?

Another Kitchen Day

I have dutifully spent time in the kitchen each Friday the past few months, with varying success, which is to say not a huge amount lately. In my last post about jam, I showed all sorts of apple jellies (it's taken me decades to work out the difference between these two terms, that's how daft I am). These were made with scraps - the peels and cores - mostly from the many cooking apples that my friend Pat gave me, but also with some apples from Vivien, another friend. I used the recipe from this blog and had great success, along with the 'zingers' mentioned on the Northwest Edible blog I mentioned in that other post. The rest of the apples were stewed, because Bill loves stewed apples with his porridge in winter.

Apple Syrup
I had not so much success this time. I'd saved apple cores from a lot of Royal Gala apples and when I couldn't cram anything else in the bottom scrap drawer, I made some more jelly but it never even pretended to set, not after two tries to make it work. For the 3rd time I pulled out the last bag of scraps which had some peels in and it almost - but not quite - set. So I've concluded that most of the pectin is in the peel. The failed jelly has been poured into a wine bottle and frozen with the label 'Apple Syrup'. As it also has ginger and brandy in, I'm sure it will make breakfast cereal or pancakes sing!

Cold Tea
I'm aware that this will be anathema to most Brits, but for me it is a celebration of lovely warm, sunny weather we've enjoyed these last few weeks (due to disappear soon, I believe). I make a pot of tea and when well steeped - more like stewed, probably - I pour cold tap water into an empty coffee jar and add the hot tea (don't want the glass to break!). It then goes into the fridge door to cool. I don't bother with ice these days - it's not that warm! - and in any case most of my ice cube trays are full of herbs in olive oil or the like. I used to enjoy lemon juice in my tea, but this isn't good for my tummy these days so I drink it black (pale brown, actually). I find it very refreshing. What can I say? I'm a Southern gal.

Carrot and Coriander Soup 
I pulled out the last (I hope) box of chopped carrots from the chest freezer. I may have mentioned elsewhere that we found ourselves buying horse carrots on a couple of occasions, in quantities that were just silly (but incredibly cheap). In each instance they began to go off before we finished them and so I had a session of chopping, blanching and freezing around the end of last year. Well, this box didn't work out as well for some reason and the carrots were all fairly mushy. Bill noticed our bowl of coriander was possibly going to bolt and he hoped I'd come up with a use for it before that happened. (That sort of thing always seems to be my job, but since he does so much other stuff around the house, I can't really complain). I wasn't sure I'd like the soup, but it was worth a try and as I only had one third of the carrots required for the recipe, we weren't overwhelmed with the amount of soup that resulted from mathing (that's a word, right?) the ingredient list down to one third. Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of the soup, but I can show you my coriander 'bed'.

Turns out I like carrot and coriander soup just find. There is a bit of the soup left and it will go into a curry recipe in A Girl Called Jack, by Jack Monroe, one of my culinary
heroes. 

Salmon Pasta
We've not had yoghurt in the house for a while but I found some available for delivery and this enabled me to use some of my Brexit stash - bottles of salmon paste - to make Jack's recipe for salmon pasta, even though we were out of onions, which are apparently in short supply these days. I used onion powder instead, and chili flakes instead of a chopped chili and it turned out fine. I've forgotten what a bottle of salmon paste costs but it's buttons and, combined with the yoghurt, it makes a wonderful pasta sauce. Which is a good thing, because putting salmon paste on crackers, probably what it's intended for, just doesn't appeal to me.

Crabby Lime (chutney??)

If my apple jelly didn't work great, Bill really enjoyed the last small jar of Crabby Lime something (I'm not a fan of chutney - other than mango - and wouldn't ever attempt to make any on purpose). I made this on a whim with the leftovers of the last of a batch of crab apple jelly (too little to make a full jar) and some compulsively hoarded lime 'endocarp' according to this website. I probably would have called it the 'meat' as opposed to the rind, or the juice, but endocarp sounds terribly erudite, doesn't it? I had got a bunch of limes inexpensively but hadn't known what to do with them other than put slices into tonic as a form of 'soft drink'. When they threatened to dry up, I wrung the little devils dry but thought all that ...endocarp... shouldn't go to waste so I scraped it out and froze it; the peels were definitely unattractive. Not knowing what else to do with it I threw it into the crab apple jelly - and crabby lime (something) was born. I thawed it and presented it to Bill to tell me if it was trash and he LOVED it.  Kitchen experiments are just my absolute favourite things. Looking up the definition of chutney, one finds that it can be a condiment made of sweets and acids, so chutney it is.

Have you played in the kitchen lately?

Vegetable Stock, Flour and Salt

I'm not sure if the ingredients in the title would combine to make anything tasty but, for this post, they are two separate topics.

One

You may or may not remember the bottom drawer of my kitchen freezer, mentioned in the post on using up orange peels, but on a recent Friday I made a batch of vegetable stock from a few cups of compiled ends, peels and bits of vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, carrots, onions, red peppers, etc. I'd not made veggie stock before so I consulted Love Your Leftovers, by Hugh Fernley-Whittenstall. I was a bit disappointed that he said to grate a carrot, an onion and rib of celery to cook in a tablespoon of oil, nothing to do with leftovers. So I did this and added a few cups of scraps and a liter, I think, of water. I forgot to take photos - not that it was particularly photogenic. I froze two smaller jars and left the larger jar in the fridge. I cooked rice in it that evening, since it's not really soup weather - or it wasn't that Friday. 

Two

Reading a Treehugger article about measuring ingredients to the side of rather than over a bowl (basic cooking) I got a picture in my mind of my salt jar. Because poring salt into a spoon is too fiddly and wasteful. So I put it in a jar into which I could dip a measuring spoon. This also allows me the space to level the top with a knife and push the extra salt back into the jar. 

For this same reason I put plain flour into an old yogurt bucket. The messes I've made trying to level a cup of flour over a flour bag don't bear thinking about. I've come to realise that measures by weight are far more efficient, but no American cookbook has them.

Mind, this old fashioned kitchen design with a flour bin and all sort of other clever conveniences is my dream. 

Candied Orange Peel

I have designated Friday as Kitchen Day. There are always chores to be done in the kitchen and grouping them together in one day seems an efficient way to tackle them...or procrastinating until Friday seems a more comfortable way to live, take your pick. The bottom drawer of my freezer in the kitchen is dedicated for collecting scraps of one kind and another. This is about the orange and satsuma peels I saved for a few weeks. 

I belong to a Facebook group about making do and mending - actually several groups - about sewing with scraps, up-cycling etc. Anyhow, one member talked about making candied orange peel with her scraps and her method really appealed because it wasn't fussed about removing the pith on the inside of the peel, a hassle that put me off the idea when I read it years ago in Tightwad Gazette. 

How do you like my replacement lid handle? A cork. Bill thought it ought
to be the fake cork instead of real cork but when he tried it, the thing melted.
I do love being right!

This involved boiling the peels until soft, then replacing the water and boiling for 20 minutes. You cut the peels into strips or whatever shape you like. Then you make up sugar syrup, 300 g sugar to 150 ml water. She didn't specify whether to use fresh water or that second boiling water so I did the later. Turns out it was supposed to be the former as boiling is to remove the bitterness. I didn't find my syrup in the least bitter, so I got away with it. She mentioned scaling up the syrup recipe and I wasn't sure how much I needed, so I made extra according to the amount of boiled orange water I had. This was a mistake as I had far too much! On the other hand, it tastes pretty nice and may be a great addition to some of my jellies. Or nice on cereal like we use rose hip syrup now. Over over ice cream perhaps? 

Anyhow, you pour the syrup over the sliced peels and cook over a low heat until the syrup is absorbed. The next time I do this I will make the minimum amount of syrup and see what happens. As I did it this time I had far too much and ended up drawing a lot of of it off. Then after a couple of hours I gave up and left it on the low heat only you know what I came back to...burnt orange syrup. 

The burnt ones are on the far side and they taste just as nice - maybe even
nicer - as the ones in the foreground.

I pulled out as many of the orange slices as I could, including some dark brown ones, and left the pot full of boiled water to soak. I carefully placed these slices on two cookie sheets and I put them in the front porch - the driest place in the house I could think of. Now drying foods in the north of England is sort of a race with the mould. I've heard of people's thick terry towels growing mould in winter, which is why I keep our tumble dryer in spite of the fact we only use it maybe twice a year for emergencies. 

The lady on Facebook said to turn the peels a few times to aid in drying and that it would take about 3 days. I turned them once, they were pretty much glued to the metal - turns out I should have put paper down first, she didn't mention that. However, on the third day they did come up pretty easily. Only they were still pretty sticky and I didn't want to keep them in the fridge as we would just eat them. (She told me this wasn't nibbling, it was Quality Control!). 

I must admit they strongly resemble worms - orange and brown sticky worms.
How appetising!

So I rolled each piece in regular sugar until it wasn't sticky anymore and placed them in jars (another reason to save them) and put them - 2 1/2 jars - in the chest freezer. I'm thinking they might make nice additions to the Christmas hampers we do each year for Bill's kids. However that might all work out this Christmas...

After being rolled in sugar they all look more the same, but now like
sugar-coated worms. They are delicious though!

Easingwold - Part II

Though the centre of Easingwold isn't very big at all, they kindly provided signs directing me to the Tourist Information Centre. There I met a very friendly lady who rattled off all the places she thought worth seeing. She was fairly modest about the place, it had no 'great' sights, but lots of 'moderate' ones (my words, not hers). She gave me a map of streets and circled a few places. [Note, the photos were somehow removed from the blog, so I've replaced them...mostly at the bottom. Will check back later to see if they remain.]

The village green. It wouldn't really be a village without it. Though,
properly speaking, Easingwold is a Market Town.

She even knew the 'best' charity shop, right next door. So to St. Leonard's I went. They had a delicious display of scarves in the window, several of which were silk. For £1 each I bought any that fit into my colour scheme (cool, light, muted). I have now filled the pink gap in my scarf collection. Then I saw a lush piece of moss green chenille, probably something suitable for upholstery but for £3 it was irresistible. I was to regret that rather heavy purchase later in the day. 

I know I got a grey t-shirt and a blue silk sweater and another grey blue scarf plus some beaded necklaces and bracelets (more for the beads than the bracelet) and a very small book on home interiors by the lady who runs the White Shop for 50p. I spent just over £17 and filled two bags. Bad move at the beginning of the visit, but the shop wasn't open all day. 

Another place the tourist centre mentioned was on the other side of them, a community hall holding a fair to raise money for the burned animals of Australia. I didn't see anything I wanted, it seemed mainly aimed at children, but then I did find a gym bag for £3, only I gave her £5, saying my sister-in-law lives in Sydney. That made carrying my charity haul much easier, though I wished I not brought my handbag. 

After that I found The Regency Dress Agency. I wasn't feeling particularly 'elegant' by then, but I was determined to find anything worth having. The prices were of course higher but then this wasn't a charity shop and the merchandise was of a consistently higher quality. I looked at every single thing in the shop and came away with several tops, a dress and a pair of shoes. The best part was that the lady behind the desk was easy to chat with. I could easily have spent several more hours visiting with her. She recommended a tea shop across the square, which was also one that the tourist info lady mentioned.



On the way I found a boutique - I'd tell you the name, but I can't find it anywhere on the internet and Google maps doesn't go down the little alley towards Market Place, darn! - with a pair of grey jeans in the window, something for which I've been searching for over a year now. So in I went. 


Also, I wanted some silver earrings as I'd forgotten to put any on Friday morning and had also come away without my jewellery pouch. One feels naked without earrings these days. I found earrings and two pairs of grey trousers/jeans, very modern stretchy ones. They don't fit into my natural fibres goal, but they took me a long way toward my goal for lightening the colours in my wardrobe. I doubt there was one other thing in the whole shop I'd be seen in, though. I think a lot of modern clothes are ridiculous, that's how old fashioned I am.


I was desperate for some refreshment by then so on to the Tea Hee Shop I went (I remembered it as Tea Pee, shows how my mind works). I had just settled with all my various bags when I realised I'd left my handbag somewhere. It didn't have anything valuable in it, but a collection of small things that fit into a small bag. I gathered up all my shopping bags and re-traced my steps. It was nice to see the lady at the dress agency again and there sat my handbag, unnoticed in a corner. 

Back to the tea shop where I inhaled a pot of tea and a bottle of water while perusing the home decorating book. Then I pulled out the map and braced myself for a long walk carrying lots of bags. I still wanted to see the Georgian houses and so wondered in the opposite direction of where we were staying for a short while, snapping photos along the way. 

Then I stopped to chat to a lady gardening in front of a Georgian house just off the Market Square, asking her to verify I was going in the right direction back to our digs. She studied my map so long I wondered if I'd found a tourist who couldn't resist improving the flower bed, but she eventually confirmed I was headed the right way. I stopped and bought a sandwich at the Co-op on my way out of town.

It was a long trudge with the gym bag slipping off my sloping shoulders and shopping bags cutting into my fingers, along a sometimes muddy, bramble-filled verge facing into racing traffic. My boots were definitely not made for walking, though they just lacked support, at least they didn't give me any blisters. 

I took a guess at the roundabout which had no sign whatsoever for the Emergency Planning College (a lack of planning in my opinion) which fortunately turned out to be correct. My sense of direction is slightly better than I get credit for having.

I had a lovely old green brooch on my collar which got damaged with my sling bags onto my shoulders and I was sad to have lost one of the green stones, glass though it likely was. To my amazement I later found it at the bottom of one of the shopping bags. How lucky is that? 

How convenient to have a phone box in your front garden! People would
always be able to find your house.

Easingwold - Part I

Everyone here seems to count the lock down from the 23rd of March, when Boris was very firm and very specific. But I count it from the 16th, when our WI craft group was cancelled because of his announcement about staying home and not gathering, made at 17.26. I went to the church, a few minutes' walk, to check that none of our members had missed the cancellation email and was surprised to find a meditation group in our usual meeting room and a business meeting down the hall. Then again, Bill had left at 5 to go to the running club.

Since I was out anyhow I nipped into the Co-op and bought fresh fruit and veg, a bottle of wine and a pizza for when he came home. I saw my neighbour, Dave, there and he was bemoaning the lack of paracetamol anywhere. I commiserated as Bill and I had searched North Shields that day for any hand sanitiser or paracetamol or even hand washing liquid (Bill's preference, I like bars) and came up with only some strange dissolving paracetamol tablets (that taste awful). I've not been in - or even to - a shop since.

But this is about Easingwold, where we'd just been the previous weekend, attending the Annual General Meeting (another phrase I never met until coming to Britain) of the Long Distance Walkers' Association. I had misgivings about going, but I knew Bill would go without me. If there was anything being passed around there he'd just bring it home and I'd spend the weekend worrying, so I went. I'm so glad I did.

Not only was it our last taste of freedom, but I met a different set of people this time, people who were great conversationalists and they always seemed to remember my name! Also, I got to know some of Bill's walking buddies a bit better. As usual the food was pretty good and definitely plentiful. Our digs were unusual. We were staying at the Cabinet Office's Emergency Planning College, which somehow seemed appropriate. 

We arrived on Friday afternoon and there was a series of walks of varying lengths planned for Saturday morning, one of which Bill planned to do. I could have taken a coach trip to York with a bunch of the other wives, but I've been to York quite a bit. I'd investigated charity shops at Easingwold and nearby villages online and when a gentleman at the front desk recommended Easingwold I was set. He described it as a 'lovely little village full of Georgian houses, clever little boutique shops, great charity shops and wonderful teashops'. Who wouldn't be sold? 

I decided that since it was only 2 miles to the village I would walk as parking cars can sometimes be complicated. Besides I'd had a large dinner the night before that needed addressing. The 2 mile route was on a main road without a place for pedestrians, though. I asked for and received a map of the area and saw that there was a short cut across fields, but did I dare? Another gentleman suggested that their walk would begin along that exact route and that I could accompany them to the village and then go my own way. So I did.

I was trying to notice markers so I could get back the same way. We went across a very bumpy field, then over a stile into a smooth field. We went across at an angle to another stile and then along a fence to two stiles, one right after the other. Then we went through a gate...and then I don't know what all. We were in the village. Much as I tried turning around to see how it would look on the return I was pretty certain I'd be coming back along the main road. 

The original - it was a big field! I do so love the lacey trees.

I had a lively conversation from a retired medic originally from Ireland, County Mayo. He had a lot to say about 'caring' as well as 'curing', which I found quite refreshing. I got some insight into why people might spend hours and hours each week wondering around together in all sorts of weathers.

There were no women on this walk, or if there were they were at the front. I chatted with a couple of men designated as 'sweepers'. The back group found my attire quite amusing, though they described it as 'elegant', which of course was ludicrous. One of them even asked to take my photo, saying I should be on the cover of Strider Magazine as the 'best dressed walker'. I thought he was crackers but I agreed to a picture. It hasn't appeared on Strider, but it did show up on the LDWA Facebook page.

My cropped version.

Jars

I have a whole other post drafted about hoarding collecting of things most people would throw away. I hope to develop in to show why this is not crazy, but useful.

For the moment I will show you the jars I've collected, with the help of Vivien, I might add. The reason I started saving small bottles was because of the fruit alcohols I make for Christmas presents. It turns out that few bottles look right other than small (187 ml or thereabouts) wine bottles or slightly larger ones with nice shapes. A salad dressing bottle seems only destined to hold salad dressing or a lemon juice bottle only lemon juice. Perhaps it's a lack of imagination on my part.

Keepers.

However, wine bottles are great for freezing rose hip syrup. And then Bill took up making homemade wine. I was pleased to see him find a new hobby. So far there have been few results I call really drinkable, but every now and then he comes up with something really nice, like elderberry and damson wine. We tend to keep bottles with a punt (a dip in the bottom) for dealing with sediments for his wine making. Flat bottomed bottles are for rose hip syrup.

When Buy-the-Kilo opened up at the metro station near us, she sold her products either in expensive (to my mind) new jars and bottles (£2/£3 each) or she took community donations of jars which she cleaned and sold on for 50p each. Mostly she encouraged people to bring their own containers. I am amazed I've not written here about her marvelous shop, but then I've not written much here of late at all. It deserves its own post, I think. Anyhow, I saved jars to take to her.

For Jackie / re-cycling

Then when I began wanting to make jams I needed the type of jar with a dimple on the top. (Jam making in Britain is a whole different process to most food preservation in the US. I won't pretend to have the expertise to explain why this works). I wanted smallish ones, so that I could spread the varieties out and interesting shapes were nice, too. Since we'd recycled most of our marmalade jars from the past and honey jars don't have dimples, I needed help with this. Vivien also went through a jam making stage but she kindly shared a few of her jam jars. When I got really desperate I went down to Buy-the-Kilo and bought jars from her for 50p each. She had some nice square ones on offer.

Having been on holiday to Vienna with Jane and Chris, Bill's sister and brother-in-law, we discovered not only that Chris liked stewed apples but we did as well. So I began saving coffee and other large jars for freezing stewed apples to eat with our porridge or cereal. These coffee jars were also useful for filling up with dried fruits or popcorn at Buy-the-Kilo.

More keepers.

We got all these jars out of the loft or under the stairs because I understood that Jackie, at Buy-the-Kilo, was running out of her community donated jars and bottles and I had placed an order with her. Our original plan was to take these jars down to her when Bill picked up our order. Then she changed her mind about this and was using her full price bottles. All her dry products she was putting in paper bags and charging 10p each, what they cost her. It may be that people are nervous about used jars or she doesn't now have time to be re-cleaning them all.

Of course, jars can be used to store food, much like the plastic containers we're all used to. The freezer has lots of glass jars in there with various contents. The same as with plastic containers, they need to be under-filled to give room for expansion when the contents freeze. With plastic containers the lid will pop off while glass may shatter. 

My button collection is stored in jars, sorted by colour group. That deserves a photo by itself when I get a moment. How can just staying at home feel so busy?

In the end, I picked out all the jars I thought I might want for jams, stewed apples and purchasing post-pandemic at Buy-the-Kilo and we recycled the rest. I didn't have to heart to ask Bill to haul them all back up into the loft. Hope I don't find I needed those after all!

"Not Just Jam and Jerusalem"

That's what they always seem to say about the modern day Women's Institute.  I've always thought "What's so bad about jam...or Jerusalem for that matter?" Other than it is impossible for me to sing and I think William Blake was crackers.  

For Americans reading here, Jerusalem is a hymn, the words of which were written by Blake. The first line is "And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green", referring to Jesus having possibly visited England. See what I mean? It's got a nice tune though and a room full of women singing is often quite majestic. There is a fun part about a chariot of fire and a sword in there. My favourite line is the last part about "England's green and pleasant land" which is absolutely true. But our WI doesn't sing Jerusalem at our meetings.

So what is the Women's Institute you might ask? For the moment, look it up in Wikipedia. Or visit their national website. If one day you might have access to Lucy Worsley's programmes, which are excellent, she did one called Cake Bakers and Trouble Makers. There seems to be some cross over between the Suffragettes and the Women's Institute in that they both rose to fame in Britain around the time of WWI. But enough of history.

Blackberry Jam and Apple Brandy Ginger Jam

What I really want to talk about is jam. My jam. My homemade jam. Although we did get a jam making demonstration some years ago, I never really got into jam making. I figured I wouldn't be able to do it 'right' and all that worry about it setting properly was too much of a headache.

At some point I wanted to find information about gardening in a location with similar weather to ours up here in Tyneside. Seems like most gardeners are down south, like most of the people in Britain, and it's not the same weather at all. I don't know if I was right in picking Seattle, Washington as a similar location but I grew to love the blog northwest edible life. And when she wrote about pectin free jam, I had to try it. She doesn't write much for the general public, I guess all of her new stuff is for Patreon subscribers or maybe she's retired on the proceeds of her book The Hands-On Home - A Seasonal Guide to cooking, preserving and natural homekeeping, by Erica Strauss. Of which I have a copy.

Strawberry Ginger Jam and Cinnamon Apple Rum Jam

I've pulled it out the last couple of autumn's when we started foraging and when my friends with apple trees shared their bounty. Anyhow, inspired by Erica's pectin-free recipe and even more by her dry zingers (spices) and wet zingers (alcohol/liqueurs) I started experimenting. Instead of using pectic she simmers the liquid out of the fruit until it is a jam-ish consistency or thereabouts. It's a lot more fun than the serious jam making you read about elsewhere.

Crabby Lime Chutney/Marmalade, Elder Apple Jelly, Blackberry jam

We've had cereal for breakfast for years but this winter switched to porridge and when it looked like spring was coming Bill decided to get out the bread maker; my scales have nagged me ever since. But we've been working our way through my home made jams. I gave away a lot of it at Christmas and we've gone through a few jars. However, I have a jar of home made pectin (from crab apples) yet and I may have some more fruit in the freezer. If not, I have quite a bit of tinned fruit and alcohol soaked fruits from my damson gin and blackberry whiskey Christmas gifts. Also some gifts from Vivien in the form of alcohol soaked fruits. I'm torn between getting ice cream to eat them over and turning them into jam. We'll see how it goes. And there is a load of sea buck thorn juice in the freezer. That's probably another post altogether.

I can't tell you how much satisfaction I get each morning, eating jam I made on bread Bill made.  I highly recommend having your own go at jam...and you could always learn to sing Jerusalem as well.

Ironing Board

A few years ago Bill redecorated my craft room - three years ago almost to the date. I got some new carpet at the time and when there was underlay left over, I kept it (of course I did). I had a couple of ideas for how it might be useful.

One was as shoe liners. UK size 3 is the closest I can get to what is size 5 in the US and probably with age I need more of a 5.5. Size 3 fits better than it used to but I need liners for a lot of them so I don't slide around inside. Unfortunately, I found that the shoe liners I cut from carpet underlay were far too thick for this purpose. So I moved on to the next project.

We have two ironing boards in this house and I can't recall why. One is standard size, lives in the kitchen pantry and Bill uses it to do most of the ironing that gets done in our house. It gives him something to do. I don't mind ironing at all except when it comes to sheets and he's the one who likes ironed sheets so I let him get on with it.

The one in my craft room is extra wide. I remember Bill bought it and came home with the story that two little old ladies in the queue behind him remarked 'That's an unusually large one' and he turned around and said he didn't hear that often from ladies, which made them giggle. I was just glad I wasn't with him.




It wasn't terribly long before the pattern of the metal grid showed through the thin padding and the heat-proof cover. It actually marked the pattern on the fabric being ironed. So I put a couple of fluffy terry cloth towels in for extra padding and added a wide binding to the cover so it would fit over the layers. This worked for a few years, but of course the towels got flattened and the grid showed through again.

I decided the time had finally come to tackle this.

I was impressed at the thin foam padding still being in one piece even though it was so deeply marked. As you might guess, I didn't throw it out, but put it in a bag in which I collect tiny bits of fabric and thread, thinking it might be useful as stuffing one day.

My old friend, Joanne, crocheted hanger covers after padding the wire hanger with foam rubber. Like me, I doubt she bought the padding, it was no doubt left from something else she had. I still have the hangers she made for me.

I pinned the padding to my carpet underlay and traced it with a felt tip marker. Then I put the padding aside and moved the project to the top of the ironing board. I'm too old to be crawling around on the floor any more than I have to.

It was a challenge finding something to cut the thick underlay. Scissors hurt my hand and I wasn't prepared to wait for Bill to hunt his utility knife down. I had my own utility knife but wanted to keep it sharp and doubted I had extra blades for it. I went through my collection of X-acto knives to find the one I did have more blades for and then hacked my way around the outline. I ended up doing this twice as the old padding must have once gone over the edges of the board, but this underlay was way too stiff for that. Eventually I had the size I wanted.

Then it was a matter of re-stringing the cover. I'd cut the old cord, made from 3 strands of some sort of silk or cotton crochet thread. I didn't throw it away but doubled up each of the single strands and added it to my ball of short bits, for knitting Innocence smoothie hats. I have made these for Age UK for several years now. Frankly, though, they don't really serve any practical purpose other than to net Age UK 25p for each one made. Kids collect them but I expect they eventually find themselves in the trash bin, so why waste good yarn on them? Scrappy yarn makes quite interesting hats and pom poms after all. 

Anyhow, my recent gifts of fabric scraps have piled up in the corner and so I can't get to the crochet thread collection at the moment. Instead I used a skein of orange embroidery thread for the new cord. I tied it to a large paper clip to slip it through the binding. I wrapped it around a metal bar I've had for a while, part of another collection someone gave me, to help pull it tight without cutting my hands. 

Lo and behold, a long cap came off this bar to reveal a needle fine crochet hook. I can only imagine trying to crochet with sewing thread, this hook is so fine. I never knew that's what this bar actually was!

So, I now have a nicely padded ironing board, ready to do some sewing! It "only" took me three years to do this and it feels almost that long since I sewed anything. I'm looking forward to it.