A Very Merry Cranberry from Team Hagstones xx

Hello Friends,
Just a quick one from me today. My festive list is just about complete & we're ready for seasonal japes & jollity.

Albert Whiskers deigned to pose for a portrait.....though note to self for next year.........

........when I make my mini sausage pies, he can be sent for a run round the garden while the cat flap is temporarily locked. Never have I cooked anything where he's been so under my feet, meowing like a starving cat who has just spotted the Very Last Sausage in the World. He only discovered sausages earlier this week & they are clearly much on his mind. He even tried going outside & sitting under the kitchen window just in case one of my pies happened to fall out while cooling. It didn't, & he's had to make do with cat biscuits to fill the vast gaping chasm that is his tummy!

The cake is made & iced........

and I decided against the rutting reindeer when his other antler also fell off, so it's Frosty & Father Christmas this year.

The mince pies are made, using the cranberry mincemeat I made recently......which brings me onto the cranberries......those luscious red fruity jewels..... (hang on, I think I was channelling my 'inner Nigella' there for a moment) which we only see in December.

Whether you want to make cranberry mincemeat.......

......cranberry chutney, cranberry vodka - no photo due to obvious reasons - or cranberry & apple jelly.......

......then the canny time to buy your cranberries isn't now, it's just after Christmas. Cranberries are one of those seasonal items which most people only want in December. However, if you are a keen cook & like to make preserves for the pantry or to give as gifts, or you fancy having some cranberry vodka bottled & ready for festive slurpage this time next year, then you need to get hold of some a lot earlier than that, & this is the problem because they won't be around in the shops till it's too late to do much with them. As a very seasonal item, they're also expensive. £3+ for a very modest amount isn't unusual, but if you look in the supermarkets between Christmas & New Year, you can pick them up for a titchy fraction of this - our best bargainmongous ones were from Waitrose at 20p a punnet. They freeze brilliantly & easily last a year, so that's what I do, & I'm hoping to find some as soon as annual demand for them has peaked. So there's a little money saving tip.....but only if you a) like cranberries b) like actually doing stuff with cranberries. If not, just go to the sales as usual & don't waste valuable shopping time shouldering people out of the way in supermarkets in your search for cheapo small red fruits!

And lastly, of course, whether you, like us, celebrate the ancient midwinter feast, the birth of the son of your God, a welcome time spent with your nearest & dearest.....or a fusion of all three, we would like to wish you all a Very Happy & Peaceful Yuletide.
May your blessings be bright,
C x

Grow your own Christmas Tree - Winter Solstice 2014

Hello Friends,
Hope you're all enjoying this very mild winter solstice weekend. I'm talking Christmas trees today, which seemed an appropriate activity to be getting on with. We brought our winter tree friend indoors last weekend to decorate.

I'd love to tell you that I grew this from seed, but that would be a big, not very festive fib. We sent our old artificial tree to landfill several years ago, something I don't like to do if things can possibly be recycled. We then compounded this distinctly un-green act by buying ourselves a new one - a very stylish bare branch one, constructed from bound wired lights contorted into a tree-shape. It looked fabulous, so classy, but despite bowing down before its twinkly loveliness, there was for me, an undercurrent of unease about the thousands of 'Fake Tree Miles' (made in China) & the sheer amount of non-recyclable components involved. Decided we would mitigate this by using the tree for as many years as it lasted..........& therein lay the problem! We got about 3 years out of it before the wired branches started coming apart, half of it refused to light up & the insulation degraded leaving bare electrical wires all over the place. Like most electrical gadgets owned by myself, it was eventually pronounced an 'Expletive death trap' by the Big Hairy One in the relationship........before being binned off to landfill.  
We decided we could solve the ethical issues by buying a real tree in a pot & growing it on. We dithered about this for so long that by the time we went back to choose, there were exactly 3 trees left - one topless, one seriously wonky & one on the verge of expiry. A no-brainer - we purchased Wonky (pictured above) & it has just been adorned for its 4th Christmas. Despite received wisdom that potted Christmas trees are reluctant to survive for more than a couple of years. Wonky is kept well-watered, particularly in summer, repotted every March with a scoop of yummy bonemeal & puts on lush new pine-scented growth every Spring......

.....and this year, it even produced a couple of fir cones! (I think it's a Nordman Fir).

I so enjoy tending our own tree through the seasons, ready to bring inside for Yule, that I've today sown a packet of free seeds to see if I can raise some tinies. 

    

I just used ordinary potting compost & a couple of recycled festive coffee shop cups. These then need to be covered with a clear plastic bag or you can make a little cloche by cutting up a plastic bottle, & placing outside somewhere sheltered, such as up against the house wall until the teensy trees have germinated.

In the spirit of a certain well-known sticky-backed plastic loving programme, here is one I prepared earlier.

This one's a Colorado Spruce, & grew from a sowing of an identical packet of seed about 3 years ago. Despite a good germination rate, I lost all but one tiny tree from this batch to a combination of weird, possibly Evil-Weevil induced wilting & a very persistent blackbird who was determined that the ultimate gourmet snack lay concealed beneath. Such is life as a gardener. You win some, you lose some.....but hey, it was free seed, & I do like to experiment with growing things.

So......if you are getting sick of all the plastic stuff imported from China at this time of year, which will find its inevitable way to landfill where it will never bio-degrade, & you have room somewhere in your garden for a modest potted tree, give it a go......buy one.....you could give a shunned imperfect tree like Wonky a deserving home, or go hardcore & sow some seeds. 

Hope you are all having a lovely winter weekend.

Bright Solstice Blessings from we three at 'Hagstones',

C x

Christmas card from your Tory MP?

Hello Friends,
Well, there I was having a productive December morning, house trimmed up.......

......front door adorned (for free, I might add, some unruly shrubbery & secateurs being a true money-saving combo at this time of year!).......

......& feeling pretty full of seasonal goodwill on the whole, when 'plop' onto our doormat landed a large cream House of Commons envelope. Was it a 4th response to my heckling in support of constituents' right to recall errant MPs? It wasn't. It was a Christmas card.......leading me to the 'What to do with the Christmas card from one's Tory MP" dilemma.

As dilemmas go, this one lasted all of 30 seconds. It's a cheery pleasant card, designed by a child at a local primary school (well done, Oliver, aged 11) 

 but I would feel more goodwill if our MP selected one of our local primary schools for his children's education..... or indeed, actually lived in his constituency instead of 100 miles away. The message inside the card wished me a 'Very happy Christmas & New Year', which was nice enough, but put me in mind of the dramatic increase in numbers of homeless people during his party's time in government, as well as all the families who will be eschewing turkey dinners for a food bank parcel this year. I thought about how our MP always votes in line with his party's cruelly divisive policies, regardless of whether they are of benefit to the majority of his constituents, as well as supporting those which are actively destroying our NHS, public libraries, youth services, Surestart as well as many other services I, my family & friends hold dear.

I thus found that I was unable to accept Festive Wishes of Goodwill from our Tory MP, so what to do with the card? We are a household hot on re-using & recycling.

Idea no. 1: Heavy duty litter tray liner. This would have been useful back in the summer, but now we have an outdoor 'come & go as I please' cat, we no longer need to provide a litter tray.

Idea no.2: Cat puke clearer-upper. Not a pleasant job, this, & being something of an emetaphobic, I have resorted to stiff pieces of card with past cats to assist with clearing. Albert Whiskers, however, appears blessed with a cast iron stomach, rendering such an innovation unnecessary.

And then a situation presented itself. For the last few weeks, we have been visited by 2 very large & equally persistent slugs. They seem to be breaking into the house via an air brick, compressing themselves sufficiently to squidge under the cupboards until reaching the apparent Slug Eldorado which is our kitchen floor tiles. They always visit together, late at night, just as we are thinking of going to bed, & have nothing to hand with which to remove them, so.............

Idea no.3: Slug scooper!!!  Just ten minutes later, the device was made........

......and you can see that by separating the card into its two halves, I have been able to create an additional back-up device, which will I am sure be useful as a replacement or indeed a 
re-enforcement should our unfortunate sluggy problem escalate. If you too are a conscientious objector where Tory MP's Christmas cards are concerned, you too could make this handy scooper using only scissors & the vast outlay of 2 staples per device. Just cut the card along the fold. Now fold both edges to the centre. Make a 4 cm cut into both the creases, then bend the resulting strips into the centre. Fold in anything that is sticking out to neaten, & secure with staples. Simple! Slugs, I am waiting for you tonight so as to be able to test run my not-yet-patented device. 

So there you are. Problem solved!
Hope everyone's having a good week. I'm looking forward to icing my Christmas cake, but the the reindeer I was planning to put on top has lost an antler & looks a sorry mess. I can either say I'm going for realism this year & that he's been rutting, or think again!
Cheers all,
C x

Christmas Songs & 'Helpful' Cats

Hello Friends,
Well, I'm getting 'proper festive' now. Yuletide....perhaps my favourite time of the year. This week, I've been doing things with cranberries (more of that next time), finishing my gift-wrapping, sorting out jars of my preserves for people's hampers & generally getting in the mood. I wish I could say that Albert Whiskers has been helping, but his contributions been dubious at best. At least kipping among the presents as I tried to wrap them meant he wasn't diving onto paper & string.

As I attempted to finish the last hand-knitted gifts, I kept coming across soggy lengths in my yarn where he had been sitting at my feet chewing it. No yarn out to play with? No problem, he will just fish something out of my knitting basket with his paw & toss that around. Helpful? Hmmm. Yesterday, his common sense all but deserted him. Such is his determination to check everything on the floor just on the off chance it might be a 'Dreamie', I spotted him pick something up in his mouth & chew it for a few seconds before spitting it out........it was an open SAFETY PIN!! What a nice little festive spend at the Vet that would have been!

I've had lots of Christmas sounds on this week. Having spent many years singing in choirs, I listen to a wide range of carols & other Christmas music too, but there are lots of times when I  want to listen to Christmas songs........& I think I'm slightly more tolerant of cheesy pop at this time of year, too. What are your favourite Christmas songs? These are my top ten festive favourites:

*Jethro Tull - Ring out solstice bells - I never tire of this winter folk/rock classic, even though back in 1976, I remember thinking Ian Anderson was a weirdo. As an adult, this has become my favourite 'pop' song of the season. Now, watching the video, I think 'Yep, I'd take him out for a drink. We could stand on one leg at the bar & talk about Yule-y stuff'. I've included a link just for this song, as it's my No. 1.

*The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York - Great song, great lyrics, especially the lines, "I could have been someone. Well so could anyone". RIP Kirsty, a talented musician who died too early.

And in no particular order:

* Slade - Merry Christmas, Everybody

*Wizzard - I wish it could be Christmas ever day.
OK, these two suffer from over-playing, but I have to include them, as I so clearly recall seeing them on Top of the Pops in 1973. What a year that was for Christmas songs! At home, we had neither a TV or pop-culture (both parents being totally classical musicians) so I relied on my friend's house next door for TOTP. If we'd fallen out that week, I had to make sure we were speaking again by Thursday night! Good songs like these made the seemingly endless 'Tomorrow's World' programme seem almost bearable.

*David Essex - A Winter's tale - No reason, apart from it being a well-crafted song, well sung, which has good DIY karaoke value when I'm making the mince pies.

*Greg Lake - I believe in Father Christmas - I always enjoy hearing this classic, as well as murdering it annually on my piano - sorry, Greg!

*Donna Summer - Winter melody - I think this one gets a little overloooked in amongst all the others. It's neither a stomper, like Slade & co, or a missable piece of cheese, I like the laid back intro & accompaniment & it's another good track for a sing-along. 

*Mariah Carey - All I want for Christmas - This is at the more cheesy end of my festive song-list, but it's a great one for singing along too, & while my vocal range isn't as many octaves as Ms Carey's, shove a couple of gin & cranberry juices in my general direction & I won't care about that! I always think the line 'I don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas Tree' is the lyric least likely ever to be sung by my sister, who likes presents extremely really very very much indeed!

*The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't let the bells end) - It's a bit of a 'break-up' song, really, but it's such a fun track full of all the rock cliches I insist upon for a top Christmas song, & the video never fails to make me smile. "You went away upon boxing day, Now how the hell am I gonna make it to the New Year"........I don't know, Justin....my concerns are more to do with how the heck you're going to pour yourself out of those trousers!

*Status Quo - It's Christmas Time - A 2008 recording but with all the feel of a proper traditional Christmas pop song, with guitars & hair (though admittedly not so much of the latter these days). A totally unpretentious sing-along track, so let's raise a glass to the Quo - still rockin'!

Now for the bottom of my Christmas Song Barrel:

-Gary Glitter - Another rock & roll Christmas  (Earworm)
-Elton John - Step into Christmas (Massive earworm)
-Mud - Lonely this Christmas (Just No)
-Wham - Last Christmas (Sorry, I know this won't be a popular choice for the Barrel Bottom, but I have had more than a sufficiency of this cheesy festive offering. I've never liked it, & I don't care if the video does have lots of snow in it, it's just not for me).
-Little Drummer Boy - As sung by David Bowie & Bing Crosby (or indeed by anyone else)......
......& finally, my worst Christmas song of all time......I was going to say 'to date', but I am confident that in all probability, there will never be another I loathe as much as this. It's......
-Mistletoe & Wine - Cliff Richard Why? I find this tune an earworm which, when finished destroying your ear, commences actually boring into your skull. The lyrics are wince-inducing, especially the dubious use of English as we know it displayed in the line "Children singing Christian rhyme". This would make sense in the plural, but would then require a change to 'mistletoe and wines", which sounds more like a festive header at the off-licence. Suffice it to say that I would rather be shut in a lift with a lively arachnid & only sprouts & whisky to sustain me, than ever hear this song again!

I'm going to play 'Ring out Solstice bells' again now, to expunge that thought from my head!

What are your best & worst Christmas songs?
Until next time, when I shall be bringing cranberry joy!
C x

Blackberry & apple gin

Hello Friends,
Hands up who's feeling festive! Me, me, me! I love December. I enjoy doing seasonal things just as our ancestors have done for generations before us, when there would have been a much greater awareness of the seasons changing. You won't find any air-freighted strawberries in this house, I can tell you. There are so many strong folk traditions around December, as well as things I look forward to doing all year. This morning, I've been getting on with just one of these things, as it was time to bottle this year's home-made fruit liqueur. This year, I made Blackberry & Apple Gin. 

It looked like this when I started it off in early October.........

  
......but the colour & richness gradually develops into a jar full of lush berry-coloured loveliness just in time for Yuletide.

It's so easy to make these liqueurs that I'm surprised more people don't do it. For Blackberry & Apple Gin, you need a standard size (about 750ml) bottle of gin.......& there's no need to squander your best Bombay Sapphire, the 'Like brands only better' varieties are perfectly fine here. You'll need a clean kilner jar or any large jar with a tightly fitting lid. Sterilise it first by washing in very hot water then drying it in a low oven. Scoop 250g blackberries into the jar along with a chopped apple which you've peeled & cored. If you've only got titchy little apples, use two. Then add 300g ordinary white granulated sugar. Seal the jar & shake. Now all you've got to do to make the Festive Purple Magic happen is to shake it every day for a week to ten days until the sugar has dissolved & the colours are starting to run. Leave for about 3 months in a cool dark place, then strain & bottle it.  

This is really easy. Scald a jelly bag by pouring a kettle of boiling water over it in the sink & use it to line a sieve. if you don't have a jelly bag, use a clean cotton tea towel scalded in the same way. Many years ago, I was told of a colleague who purportedly strained jams & jellies through her aertex knickers, but I would probably not advise going down this route myself........though if the rumour was true, fair play to her for resourcefulness, I say!

I like to let the fruit sit in the sieve to drain for about an hour or so. It's good stuff, you don't want to waste any! Then the final job is pouring it carefully into sterilised glass bottles & labelling it. The easiest option here is to use the original gin bottle, & I like to save small bottles too, for filling & giving as gifts.

Don't forget to leave yourself a tester. You wouldn't want to be giving sub-standard presents now, would you? What you do with the boozy leftover fruit is entirely up to you. I am feeling so totally chilled out, I'm wondering if the small bowl of this I ate with my lunch, kind of by way of one of my 5-a-day, was really one of my most top ideas, but later, with a sprinkle of sugar & a high-end vanilla ice-cream.....now I could be tempted by that!

As people who already make fruit liqueurs will know, there are pretty much limitless variations on this theme. Sloe gin is the traditional one, of course, & if you are confident with a bit of foraging, you can add blackberries & a few rosehips to sloes to make hedgerow gin. Damsons work brilliantly, though can be difficult to find in the shops & in the wild. Don't like gin? No matter, use vodka instead. Raspberry vodka is slurplicious & I made a Christmas cranberry vodka last year, using exactly the same method, but adding the zest of an orange, a few cloves & a cinnamon stick to the jar with the fruit & sugar. So, if you've never tried making your own liqueur, give it a go. They make great gifts (especially to oneself!) 

Before I sign off, I just want to share with you this tip I read in a magazine yesterday. I'm fascinated by strange household tips. Some are so fiendishly clever & are a way of keeping old wisdom alive. Others are frankly bizarre.  This one made me laugh so hard, I practically snorted biscuit crumbs out of my nose:

"If you are affected by sore runny eyes when chopping an onion, stick your head in the freezer".

OK. I can see that extreme cold might be soothing & temporarily call a halt to onion-eyes, but we have one of the tall freezers with separate drawers. To avail myself of this handy tip, I would have to keep a drawer at shoulder height permanently empty,in which to plunge my head in the event of a severely rogue onion. Even after my sampling of those 100%-proof berries, I'm spotting a few logistical issues with this one! 
Hope you're all having a pleasant week with your own festive preparations. And down with Black Friday! Home-made blackberry & apple gin is where it's at, not some horrible soulless scrum for another piece of electronic tat we neither need nor can afford. Here's to the simple life! I'll drink to that!
Till next time, when I'll be making up my festive home made hampers.
C x

Braised red cabbage loveliness x

Hello Friends,
I'm still trying to get on top of our apple glut....& not very successfully, I might add. So far this autumn, I've made apple, cider & chilli jelly, apple & mint jelly, apple chutney, apple & ginger chutney, iced apple & ginger buns, apple muffins, blackberry & apple crumble, apple sauce, Norwegian apple cake, apple & ginger loaf cake, blackberry & apple gin, loads of brown sauce and 2 batches of braised red cabbage with apples. That's a lot of apples used.....& doesn't even include the two apples I've been eating most days & the basket of individually wrapped fruits I've put to store.. Now, it's free food, grown entirely by ourselves without the use of chemical nasties, so I  don't want to sound as though I'm not grateful for nature's bounty, but it's the end of November, & I still can't see the end in sight. These are currently awaiting use in the kitchen........

.......there are already more windfalls on the ground ready to collect, & there are still more apples on the tree. 

I do love to make jams & jellies, etc, but the pantry already looks like this..............

.......and that's without the jars I've given away! Well, it's officially Braised Red Cabbage Season now, which is a Double Good Thing: 1) Each batch uses up a lb of apples 2) Braised red cabbage is very nice, if cooked as below, so is very useful for people who consider the mere presence of sprouts on their plate to be utterly ruinous to Christmas dinner. Red cabbages are in season right now - 50p each on the farm stall on our local market......and only 8 food miles!

I pretty much use Delia Smith's recipe for my braised red cabbage, but I usually kick in an extra apple or two, double up on the garlic & replace a third of the vinegar with my own home made blackberry vinegar. Also, not many of us generally have a whole nutmeg kicking around, so I just use 1/4 tsp of ground. Cider vinegar is also fine, if that's what you've got. Unlike Delia, I always make mine in my Slow Cooker, so it kind of takes care of itself. Leave yourself more time to do all the chopping than you think you'll need. If you're thinking you've just got time to get it all prepped & into the slow cooker before you go & get glammed up for a night out.......you really haven't, unless you socialise with people who will genuinely enjoy the vague aura of cabbage clinging about your person.

The easiest way to tackle the prep is to have a big bowl into which you put the finely sliced red cabbage, a 2nd bowl for the chopped onion & apples, then a small bowl for the brown sugar/spice/garlic mix. Then get the salt & pepper ready & you are ready to layer it all into the pot.

Just ram it all into your slow cooker, aim for around 5 hours on high or 6-8 hours on low and remember to stir it a couple of times throughout. It will break down into a cauldron of gloopy purple gorgeousness & your house will smell of Autumn.

Braised red cabbage freezes brilliantly, so divvy it up & get any spare supplies into the freezer. Great addition to Christmas dinner for confirmed sprout-dodgers such as myself! Can also recommend it with sausages, leek mash & home made onion gravy. Never tried making it? Give it a go. Especially if you are also trying to use up a glut of apples.

Now, I'm not wishing to sound snipey here.....I am very much a cat lover as most people know, but I couldn't help noticing that whereas by 9.30 this morning, I had done the usual daily chores, plus a not insignificant basket of ironing, been down to the veggie garden to check for any problems, walked to the post box, made some bread dough & cleared my email inbox, THIS was Albert Whiskers impressive contribution to the daily smooth running of The People & Cat's Republic:

He's on a sulk this morning because I'm afraid the 'Love food, hate waste' policy in place here at 'Hagstones' also extends to cats, meaning that last night's wasted meat & biscuits have been served up again for breakfast. This has gone down like the proverbial lead brick & he's now staging a blanket related protest.

Well, my coffee's gone cold, which can only mean it's time to get the kettle on the hob again. Hope everyone's having a good week.
Till next time,
C x

Love your leftovers!

Hi Friends,
I've been absent for a while enjoying wonderful Wiltshire & wandering among lots of these.....

A truly lovely break, visiting the Rollright Stones & Stonehenge as well as Avebury, which is where we stayed. I always think the light is really interesting & special for walking during Autumn......but despite our great week in a truly mystical landscape, standing stones are not the theme of this week's blog.........for while the Big Hairy One was at large with his camera on this particular walk, I was back at the old cottage with my sleeves rolled up, enthusiastically dismantling a chicken to make a hearty post-walk dinner. Yes, LEFTOVERS. YAY!!  One of my specialist subjects!

Shortly before our Avebury trip, I heard that I had won a competition run by Lincolnshire Co-op in conjunction with WRAP. The competition involved devising a recipe using ingredients which are frequently thrown away. There were 4 compulsory ingredients : Carrots, cream, bread & cheese. The rules allowed seasoning, plus 2 ingredients of the competitor's choice, but nothing else. Well, people who know me well will know that the stupid, immoral levels of food waste in this country really winds me up. It seems ridiculous that when so many people are reliant on food banks (got to give Cameron & the Gideot credit for the growth of that sorry sector.....), other households are chucking food out because they can't be bothered to use it, they've over-bought & because we've become too reliant on fairly meaningless 'best before' dates rather than using common sense. Hard to imagine our Nanas chucking out a perfectly serviceable loaf of bread or bag of spuds because of a date on a sticker, isn't it? I think people have become seriously de-skilled in this area.......it's easy to tell if bread is past its best because it's either hard & stale (which makes it perfect for breadcrumbs or bruschetta) or it's got mould on it....(which would make nasty grey furry breadcrumbs & perfectly horrid bruschetta, so don't bother!) I recently bought a big bag of apples which had been marked down to 30p. I asked why & was told that they were 'on the best before date'. Eh? For apples? Apples are good till they get withered, & even then they can be made into apple sauce, muffins, stuffings, etc. I handed over my 30p & those apples were still perfectly good & completely unwrinkled over two weeks later. 

According to the Love food, Hate waste campaign, the most commonly wasted foods in the UK are bread, milk, potatoes, fizzy drinks, apples, cheese, rice & pasta, ham, tomatoes & yoghurt.  Fizzy drinks could perhaps be made in smaller cans, but the other foods on this list are easy to use in a variety of dishes & baking for the freezer, if not required immediately. What a big fat silly waste of resources & money! 

Anyway, back to my recipe. I spent a couple of days pondering cheesy carrotty combinations which were also creamy & crumby, decided to add potatoes & onion as my additional allowable ingredients, plus salt, pepper & sage, and concocted a Creamy Carrot & Potato Bake. To everyone who has asked me for the recipe, sorry it took me so long - I had stone circles to visit - Here's a link to the Lincolnshire Co-op article where it is featured. I won £50 of vouchers, which were promptly used to top up our sad looking wine rack.

Albert Whiskers had his first stay in the village cattery while we were away & didn't seem too nonplussed.....& there were 'Dreamies'. One thing he DID like about coming home was that his tight-wad owners had decided it was time to put a bit of heating on! 

This was his first night in front of the fire. Clearly better than roaming those tough streets of Eastwood, eh?
Till next time,
C x

Over-wintering chillies

Hello Friends,
We've had lovely Autumn weather here, but it can't last much longer, so I've been busy getting tender plants under cover & cropping the last few courgettes too, before pulling up & composting the plants.

I'm a keen chilli grower, & although I only have space for a couple of types each year, I always sow some seeds & usually get a good crop. Our best ever crop was a few summers ago. We grew the long red cayenne type & the crop was sufficient to freeze some to use in recipes as 'fresh' & to dry a supply for the next couple of years.

In fact, we're still using a big jar of chilli flakes we zizzed up ourselves in the food processor from that crop!

Over the years, we've tried various varieties including Padron (a mild tapas chilli), Cayenne, Pinocchio's nose (each chilli a foot long!), scotch bonnet/habanero types & Prairie fire. The scotch bonnets were a colourful Caribbean mix, which amazingly did pretty well even in a classic overcast mizzley East Midlands summer. A few of these things go a long way, as they are throat-numbingly hot. I used them to make a hot pepper sauce (a recipe I found online from Barbados). It was too hot for me, apart from diluted with mayonnaise, but being married to someone with an asbestos mouth has its benefits & it all got eaten! I've been using up the rest of the fiery fiends in a hot pineapple chutney, where they give it a good flavour too. That's something I didn't know about the Caribbean chillies, they're not just about heat, they do have a distinctive flavour from other chilli varieties.

My favourite variety to grow is Jalapeno 'Summer heat'. The germination rate seems good, they generally behave themselves & produce a really decent sized crop.

 This year's was particularly good & I've picked & frozen several bags for the freezer. Jalapenos are really versatile because they are hot without being incendiary, & I use them in pizzas, chillies, curries, fajhitas, quesadillas, tortillas & stir-fries, as well as in chutneys & jellies.

A couple of years ago, I heard that it's possible to over-winter chilli plants. Our winters are too cold for them to survive, but in their natural habitat, they are apparently perennial plants. I brought a couple into the house in the autumn & tried to coax them into staying alive. By January, they were looking like proper mingers, but they gradually started back into life in Spring & I had a decent crop from them, which I was able to start picking over a month earlier than those I sowed afresh from seed. It may have been beginner's luck because I tried again last year & they by-passed the minging stage & went straight to 'dead!' 

This year, I'm trying again. I've selected 3 plants which looked in good nick, pruned them back to new growth & have sited them on a bedroom windowsill. 

There is no heating on in there yet, as I'm notoriously stingy with heating until it's actually cold. So far, they don't seem to mind. The sulks & strops will come later (them, not me!) when the radiator starts to make the air too dry.

If they all turn their toes up & cark it diva-style, then I've lost very little, but if they make it through, I should be picking a few lush chillies in early summer. If not......well, it won't be the first time I've been beaten by a plant!

This week, I heard that I've won a cookery competition I entered recently......I wasn't very coherent when the organisers phoned to tell me because Albert Whiskers raced into the room after me (like the phone call was going to be for him?) & started biting my legs!  It was a 'Love food, hate waste' type of competition. I have to have my photo taken in store tomorrow, so am glad I sorted out my nightmare roots. I'll share my recipe in a blog post soon, although I accept that everyone may not be as evangelical about leftovers as me!   

Have a great week - Autumn has so much of true loveliness to offer us.
Till next time,
C x

My clay flower-pot room heater

Hi Friends,
Well, it's a bit of basic experimental science from me today, as I've been trying out a low-tech DIY room warmer. I was able to put it together using only items I already had and if anyone fancies experimenting further with this, there are plenty of instructional websites & videos online. I'll admit you won't get many physics-based blog posts from me......decades later, I still recall the words of my 3rd year physics teacher, the aptly named Mr Newton all too well.........

"Despite her obvious lack of interest in this subject & extremely inconsistent approach to handing in homework, Cathy somehow managed to achieve 31% in her end of year physics exam"..........

Well, take this, Mr Newton, because Cathy of the 31% has constructed a flowerpot room warmer, willingly, of her own volition, following online instructions from Those Who Know!!

Aim of the experiment:To find out whether a flower pot room warmer will have any effect on the chilly temperature of 'Cathy HQ' (my small upstairs office). 

Equipment required:

Two clay flower pots, 1 2lb metal loaf tin, 4 tea-lights & a 10p coin or similar metal disk. (I used an irritating Canadian coin which some skanker managed to offload in my change the previous week!) 

For safety, you will also need something heat-proof on which to stand your contraption, & a box of matches. This is basic, but doesn't involve rubbing 2 sticks together while appealing to the Elements.

Arrange the 4 tea-lights in the tin as above, then light them..

Place the smaller clay flower pot over the tea-lights, then block the hole in the top with the 10p coin.

Now carefully place the larger flower pot over the smaller one, & stand your completed room warmer on a heat-proof surface or trivet & site it where you want a little extra warmth. 

A couple of the online instructions I found suggested using a squidged-up (genuine scientific term) aluminium tea-light case to block the hole in the smaller flower-pot. I tried this initially, but found that more heat built up when using the 10p coin, presumably because it's heavier.

Now, as Ms 31% in Physics, I'm not about to astound you with a full scientific explanation of how this contraption works, but I do know it is to do with convection. The heat from the tea-lights builds up in the smaller pot, heats the space between the two pots & flows out of the hole in the outer top & from underneath. Clay pots seem to have good heat retention properties as the outer pot gets nicely warm, but when I removed this to investigate the smaller pot, I found that this was too hot to touch.

So, did it make a difference?

The results: Having installed the only temperature-taking device in the house (a Gallileo thermometer!) on a shelf in 'Cathy HQ', sufficiently far away from the flower pots as to avoid skewed results, I can report that after 2 hours of burning time, it progressed from this.......

i.e all glass globes clustered at the top, therefore 'Room is cold'...........

......to this......1 globe dropped to the bottom of the tube, meaning room has started to warm up. There was no other heating on at all in the room at the time, neither was I executing manic star jumps with a view to influencing the results. The room definitely felt a little warmer. Using tea-lights purchased from a well-known Swedish Purveyor of Household Goods, total spend is 8p per four hours.....plus 1 match! (Please note, I don't require any maths geeks to supply me with the cost of one matchstick!!)

Conclusion: Cathy HQ is a small room & I think that the clay flowerpot room warmer could have a role to to play in helping to keep the temperatures up in winter. Our heating goes on in November, but I think I will continue to experiment with my flower pots, to find the optimum spot to site them for extra heat while I'm sitting at my desk or playing the piano. I may check out some of the additional online modifications (some people use 3 flower pots plus tech it up with, nuts & bolts!), but I like the thought of keeping it basic.......& of potentially paying a tiny bit less to energy companies. In the continuing words of Mr Newton, as he summed up my physics prowess at the end of the third year,

 "This is not a subject I would recommend Cathy to consider taking at O-level"................

...........which was absolutely fine by me, as there would actually have been fractionally more chance of me opting to become a tarantula trainer!

Till next time,
C x

Albert Whiskers - Is this the furry face of an addict?

Hello Friends,
Well, Albert Whiskers has something to confess today. He needs to take himself in hand or I may have to find a local primary school prepared to let him attend their D.A.R.E sessions. Yes, I'm afraid he's showing all the early signs of addiction. 

I know he's cute, but he is developing a serious habit. No, he hasn't been taking over my greenhouse with hydroponics & heat lamps and he hasn't been caught smoking behind the shed.......This or rather THESE are the culprits:

'Dreamies', the 'treats cats crave'. What IS is in these things? They are like crack cocaine for cats! Albert Whiskers absolutely loves them. Once he's had one, he'd do absolutely anything to obtain 
another one. I'm convinced he'd stand on the corner of our street & barter his his bed, bowl & blanket just to get hold of his next packet!

The ingredients listed on the packet are vegetable protein, cereals, oils & fats, meat & animal derivatives, minerals, fish & fish derivatives, etc......nothing really untypical in the composition of dry cat food.
'Shake the pouch & watch your cat come running' .........He certainly does come running, zipping under your feet, positively sprinting in the direction of the bag, meowing like a cat who hasn't been fed for a month. 'Feed up to 20 pieces a day'......well, good job he can't read, because Albert Whiskers only gets about 8 pieces a day, & not every single day, either. I have bought many different cat treats over the years, including some rather interesting green herbal ones made from compressed catnip, but I've never known any cat treat to have such an effect on a cat as these. Intrigued by this, I decided to take a closer look.

This, friends, is a 'Dreamie'. And this is a 'Dreamie' up close........if not exactly in focus!

In the interests of citizen science, I decided to eat one myself this morning to see what all the fuss is about. This one is 'Scrumptious salmon' flavour. With a glass of water & bottle of mouthwash at the ready, I cut one open & investigated the inside. The coating is a very crispy cereal-type material, quite biscuity, but light, with a vaguely savoury flavour. There's a tiny bit of paste inside which I scooped out on the tip of a knife. It's a little bit like the inside of a chocolate truffle in texture, but obviously fishy instead of sweet. I wouldn't particularly elect to eat another one, but it wasn't actually unpleasant. It reminded me a little of those scampi flavour crisps which were around in the 80s, although not as salty or overbearingly sort of 'rock-pooly'. Bearing in mind that cats, & not curious women of a certain age are the intended demographic for these treats, the experience was not as overwhelmingly fishy as I'd anticipated. Perhaps they taste stronger to Albert Whiskers? Perhaps it's not just the flavour he loves, but the very crispy texture. I don't know, but last night, his addiction moved up a level as he realised he might be able to extract them from the packet himself!

So, in conclusion to my experiment, I don't really feel I've got to the bottom of why Albert Whiskers loves 'Dreamies' so much. Suffice it to say that he does. We will continue to ration them (despite the modest calorie content of 2 per piece) & hope that we do not have to report him booking himself into Rehab any time soon!

Until next time, when I will be talking about overwintering chillies & my attempt to build a clay flowerpot room heater. 
Oh....& I've responded to feedback about it being difficult if not impossible to comment on my blog posts by altering my settings. Thanks those readers who flagged this up. Have tested new settings, should be fine now.
Have a great week, everyone,
C x