Saturday Snippets (11)

As autumn is now well and truly with us, I thought I'd post a couple of my favourite recipes.  Not sure what to suggest if you live in the sub tropics, (or tropics for that matter) but maybe you could use substitutes?

Rose Hip Syrup

This is a rich source of vitamin C, and is much cheaper to make than to buy.  It is best stored in small bottles.

I have such fond memories of my children making patterns on ground rice pudding of happy faces.  Now I am introducing it to my older grandson, and the little one will get the occasional spoonful when he is old enough as well!

This is what you do:

Take two and a half pounds of ripe red rose hips, wash and remove the calyces.  Put through a mincer (I use a food processor), and then pour on 3 pints boiling water. Put in a pan and bring up to the boil.

Draw aside and stand for 15 minutes. Strain through a jelly-bag or muslin.  

Measure juice and, if more than one and a half pints, boil down in a jam pan until the juice measures that amount. Add one and a quarter pounds of sugar, allow to dissolve, then boil hard for 5 minutes.  Bottle and sterilise.  (I usually put a sterilising tablet in my bottles overnight before I use them, or you could warm them in the oven like jam jars).

It keeps all winter and is sooooo delicious!  Dan adores it!

Sloe Gin

Ladies, if you drink too much of this, and there are consequences - don't come running to me!  

Very easy to make - here's how:

Take half a pound of ripe sloes and roll them in a damp cloth to clean them.  Then prick them all over with a needle.  (I get bored with this and so I tend to use a fork, but you only want one or two holes piercing in each sloe!) 

Now you need a bottle of gin (only use cheap gin for this!) and a little over a quarter a pound of granulated (the type you put in your tea) sugar.  Put sloes, gin and sugar in a large jar with a screw top, or a large bottle.  (I make a large amount of this each autumn and I put it in a very large jug then decant it into old gin bottles I have saved during the year.)

Screw the lid on tightly and then every day or two remember to give it a good shake.  Over the weeks you will see it darken to a deep ruby red like Port.

At the end of three months - longer if possible! - strain off the liquid and pour it into clean bottles.

This is best made and kept for a whole year to mature.  So if you make some this year, try to keep some of it to drink next winter.  Once you are making it every year, you will always have plenty.  The longer you keep it (we have some five years old) the better it gets!

A friend sent me this a little while ago, and I have been meaning to post it.  Seems to me that it is very true!  Even though I am on HRT my hormones sometimes go up and down which in turn make my moods go up and down like a whore's drawers!  Can't understand why.  We women are complex creatures! I tried to come off them once, and in the end I was reduced to crawling into the Doc's practically on my hands and knees and threatening him with all sorts of Armageddon unless he renewed my prescription!  

Another friend sent me this gem of a picture.  Don't know where she got it from.

I've done some funny things, but I've never pressure-washed a cow!

Dan is at a soccer match this afternoon, so the house is very peaceful.  I've planted up all my terracotta pots with winter pansies and violas, and I'm feeling very virtuous. I've filled up all the bird feeders, and collected a load of kindling, re-hemmed some new jeans that were a couple of inches too long, written out a load of Christmas cards, and now I am planning on making a load of 'Tiny Cheese, Onion and Olive Scones' to put in the freezer to serve when we entertain during the Christmas period.  The sky outside has turned black and it is going to rain cats and dogs in a minute.  I think I'll make a large latte!

All Dan has to do this coming week (cough!) is to sort out our log pile and get the logs undercover before we start to get snow.  We are lucky because so far the weather hasn't been too bad apart from the gales which keep blowing in from the Atlantic, and as we are on the other side we don't suffer so much.  We do enjoy our crackling log fires in the evenings though. I'm telling you, I'm a reincarnated 'frontier wife'!

I can't remember where I got this from.  I tried to make it bigger but I've already got it on extra-large. I hope you can just about read it.  I thought it was a good note to finish on, and no apologies if I am reproducing something someone else around here posted, because it really puts things into perspective.

See you later alligators!