Bean Sidhe

Before and After

Well, harvest time is here and the redcurrants have cropped well again.  We bought a new piece of kit to speed up the juicing process and it's a great success.  The first thing we made was redcurrant cordial.

Before

After

Of course I had to make a pie as well!

Under the weather

I was out of action for a while with an upset tummy.

Here are some of the get wells I received

Rita sent this one  - very elegant

Sam sent this one

And Christa sent this one

I also got lovely flowers from the Art Group and Craft Club members.  Thank you all.

Craft Club

Barbara is having her craft room refurbished so last night we both worked on some charity cards for a stall next month.

We used a combination of Crafty Individuals images and some Stampin' Up stamps and punches and a Martha Stewart Punch plus other miscellaneous bits and bobs.

Here are the ones Barbara made

And hereare the ones I made

We were quite pleased with them.

On the Time for Crafting Forum we had a slide mailer swap.

Here is my entry.

You can see all the entries here.

We also had a tag/bookmark swap, themed cuisine.

Here's mine

I got this one from Jill in France (pity I can't read French!)

Hope You've all had a Good Christmas

Thank you to those who visit and comment on my blog.  It's lovely to get feedback.  I hope you all have a good 2010 - just where do the years go?  It certainly doesn't seem ten years since the millenium does it?

Gifts - sent and received

I love wrapping gifts and making them pretty.  It's often 'nice paper, shame about the gift'.  Here are a few ready to distribute - mostly stocking fillers.  The shiny paper hasn't photographed too well.

Here are the gifts I received - who's a lucky girl then?

Terr a cotta casserole dish - can't wait to use it.  Hot water bottle in a fluffy cover with matching bed socks (they know me TOO well LOL!)  Three jumpers (now I can throw away those covered in ink, glue and fruit juice dye - just have to remember to wear my pinny more often - mind you, I always manage to miss the pinny and land on the jumper and/or jeans - altered clothing - I guess I could market it eh?)   Pestle and mortar - which will save the noise I make smashing things with the end of the rolling pin and the stuff flying all over the kitchen.  Two scarves - lovely and warm, I'll need those if this weather keeps up.  Victorian Farm DVD - I just LOVE that programme.  A smart purse (need some £ to keep in it tho') and a lovely scented candle - seems a shame to burn it but it smells GORGEOUS!  CD Spirit of Africa - lovely to listen to while I craft.  A nice book - I can read that while snuggled up on the sofa.  Some underwear, strappy t shirt/vest type things and and underskirt, much needed.  Two lovely hand crafted frames which are so intricate in the hand.  Some very posh chocolates - not that I eat chocolates normally of course you understand.  A lovely green (yes green) bracelet.  A gorgeous turquoise glass bead necklace and some special aloe vera toothpaste - makes a nice change from the Tesco brand - a bit posh this!

Thank you everyone - I just love my gifts and feel very, very lucky.

Baking

I did some baking on the dough mode in my bread maker.  This does all the hard work and leaves a lovely soft, pliable dough to shape and prove.  I made my Mum a couple of small wholemeal loves.  These taste lovely and I like the wee slices if makes.

I tried to do the same with the olive and sun dried tomato loaf.  No problem with the mixing.  However, half way through the baking process, we had a power cut!  Discussed with husband who suggested we try to finish it off on the big gas ring in the shed which we use to pasteurise the apple juice.  So, taking a very loose leaf from Ray Mear's campside cooking technique, we lit the gas ring, put the stockpot on top of two fire bricks and put the bread in there with the lid on.  It did 'sorta' cook and I gave it to my daughter as planned but whether it was edible I've yet to learn.  It looked ok tho'.

Card

This is the girl's verstion of the knitted baby card - well, the card's not knitted but the embellishments are.

Hamper

I am lucky enough to have regular meets with some of my former work mates and we do lunch and have a natter.  One of them is quite poorly so we decided to do a hamper for her.  It acutally turned into two hampers, one with the stuff for the freezer.  Here they are - I enjoyed wrapping these.

Altered Art - Domino Pendants

I made these pendants using images stamped with Stazon onto alcohol ink backgrounds.  Some of the images are on sticky printable fabric from craftycomputerpaper.com.  I coloured using Marvy le Plume pens.  I sealed the with crystal glaze.  The stamps were sent to me by my cousin in America because the seller won't ship to UK.

Had a lovely birthday with lots of great gifts, cards, visits and 'phone calls.  Some lovely hand crafted items, which will feature later when I've scanned them.  To those who've sent them THANK YOU!  I really appreciate the time and care that's been put into my choosing and making my gifts and cards.

Had family to dinner (or is it lunch? - well, it's dinner when I eat it mid-day).

I have been watching too many episodes of Masterchef I think - I tried out some new (to me) recipes.  However, the constestants can rest easy for now - I don't think I'll be giving them any competition!

For starters we (my assistant chef and myself) did salmon mousse in cucumber on a bed of watercress (recipe from Mrs Beaton's book).  It set well and I was pleased with it.  My guests said it tasted good too.

The main course was roast beef and roast veg and you all know what that looks like, so no photo. 

For my birthday I had an ice cream making machine so my first attempt at ice cream,  rich vanilla, was put before the testing panel and pronounced a huge success.  I had decided to attempt brandysnap baskets (never done them before, nor seen them done).  They looked somewhat agricultural (a big feature of my cooking), they tasted gorgeous BUT wow, were they hard!  They ended up in the bin because I couldn't afford a dental bill.

So, undeterred, I decided to try a tuille biscuit (never done one of these before either).  One trayful resulted in a mess of crumbs, nice tasting but useless for icecream.  The other trayful, which I cooked slightly longer and left to cool a bit, came out useable - albeit not very atristic.

I also made a boozy jelly using the fruit and juice from my Rumtopf . 

My sister in law brought me a beautiful light sponge birthday cake - it's a wonder it didn't float away - but I'm glad it didn't!

Here are my gifts - a distinct cookery theme this year.

My niece brought me these - I LOVE them when they are fresh and juicy (no, they are NOT conkers - they are chestnuts).

Art Group

On Monday Jane showed us how to make a start on Encaustic Art (thank you Jane) and I finally got around to using the kit which Dorothy had loaned me (I'll bring it back soon Dorothy).

Here's the result of my first try.

Well, no, I'm not ill!  I just thought I ought to tidy up my card and paper.  I've found lots of folders containing those 'useful' bits and bobs that will come in handy 'one day'.  Now, I'm not sure when this day will arrive as these bits and bobs have been lurking around, untouched, for months (if not years).  So, my quandry is - do I throw them away?  Or, do I steel myself to use them up?  I'm a bit of a squirrel (well, that's an understatement) so throwing things away is against my nature but I'm rapidly running out of space!  Decisions, decisions!

Decoupage

In this midst of this 'tidying' lark (which is really just moving stuff from one place to another) I found some decoupage which I'd cut and assembled so I got sidetracked into making cards with it.  It's a shame to waste these as they are pretty.  No idea why there's a colour cast to the card because it's white!

Gardening

The birds and wasps are attacking our apples.  To rescue them, the Discovery apples have been harvested.

  They taste gorgous!

Cookery

Just thought we'd test the windfalls to see if they were any good - even though they are still immature.  A few redcurrants were added to make them tastier.

 That tasted good too!

It all comes at once of course so it's into production with the jams, chutneys and wines.

We don't have many blackcurrant bushes so this was the total of our crop for the year.  It's made a yummy batch of blackcurrant jelly!  Lovely on home made bread.

We've had a terrific yield from the redcurrants (despite the blackbirds).  They all sported hairnets a la Ena Sharples (the bushes that is - not the blackbirds).  So redcurrant jelly, redcurrant wine and redcurrant muffins were the order of the day.  I did try a redcurrant syrup but I boiled it a bit too long - I'll do better next time.  However, the first, thick, lot will be great for on pancakes or icecream.

Yeah, ok, they DO look a bit agricultural but they taste great!  I'm not good at making sponges but my friend gave me this muffin recipe and it works brilliantly (even for me).

The gooseberries suffered this year and were badly marked.  We removed the skins by straining them through a muslin and they made a nice batch of gooseberry jelly.  IWe also made some gooseberry and elderflower cordial jelly (yes, we did make the cordial ourselves).

Not sure how this will turn out but it's working away well at the moment.  Elderflower wine and redcurrant wine.