Blame it on the Victorians*

I know, its Friday. This is the second week in which there will be no Friday book review. Victorian Historians are to blame. I’ve been deep in research for an essay on history as written by Victorians and all that reading has left me NOT WANTING TO READ.

I’m shocked by my own reaction. I have LOVED to read ever since I learned. My passion was ignited at age 6 by Hungry Lambs** when I read the whole book in one sitting, ignoring the teachers direction to only read the first story. I think I’m in recovery now but I still have to write the essay, by Wednesday.

In absences of any useful content I thought I would put out some random stuff.

My girls caught one of these yesterday. It is a freshwater crayfish. They caught it in our stream using a net bought for them by a single girl at church. The net has been a wonderful toy, a great gift!

I’ve been noticing lately that there has been discussion in the media about how to reduce your food bill. One idea mentioned is menu planning. I’ve been doing this for years, like 10! I might share my wisdom and blog about it next week.

It’s only 2 weeks to the school holidays!!!!

My girls have just taken flattened cardboard boxes to the neighbours and are sliding down their hill on them. Even though they are about 400m way I can hear them squealing!

*I mean those that lived during the reign of Queen Victoria, not those who live in the state of Australia.

** Hungry Lambs was a reader given at school. It was the first book with more than one story in it.

Part two: In which our heroine makes a hot sugary liquid and does not burn herself

I’m really good at kitchen accidents and have experienced burns caused by hot sugary liquid. They hurt, a lot.

This is relevant because the next stage of making crab apple jelly was to add sugar to the liquid. I measured what had dripped out of the bag overnight. It was about 4 cups so I added 4 cups of sugar to the liquid and put it in a pot to boil. This is pretty standard jam making procedure, half fruit and half sugar. I dissolved the sugar before bring the liquid to the boil , also something I do when making jam.

The rest is pretty unglamorous. I boiled it until a skin formed on a spoon full, placed in saucer, and left to cool. This took about 15 minutes.

Then I had to do the part which has burning potential. I had to get the hot liquid into hot jars and put hot lids on them. At this stage the jelly was actually quite liquid, it took a bit of faith to believe it would set. I go it all in, no burns and only a little spill.

The result.

I got four jars, plus a little. If we judged food by how it looks this would get 9/10. But we know taste is far more important or we would eat those plastic grapes they have in supermarket deli’s.

It tastes sweet and appley, but slightly tart. I had some on toast this morning and it was a little bland. Maybe it would be better on scones with cream, but then everything tastes better with cream!

I’m not sure if I would try this again, I’ll see how many jars are left this time next year.

As a funny after note I ‘forgot’ to tell my children that the word ‘jelly’ in crab apple jelly did not mean the same thing as jelly out of a packet. They came home from school expecting a dessert. They were a little disappointed.

Golden Apples

WARNING: These crab apples were harmed in the making of this post.

The previous owner of our property planted a crab apple tree. As far as I can tell crab apples are useful for 3 things:

1) Bird food, birds love them.

2) Apples for dolls tea parties, their size means they look like a perfect small apple for a doll.

3) Crab apple jelly, like jam with out the fruit pulp.

Our crab apple tree has a prolific crop every year. In past years all of this crop has been used for either one or two. This is because to make jelly you need a piece of muslin to strain the juice from the pulp. Despite the fact that I do spend time in fabric shops I never got around to buying a piece of muslin. Until last year. But when I went down to check on the status of the crab apple crop they were all gone. I can only guess that birds were the culprits.

But this year I was prepared. I had my muslin and I was going to beat the birds.

I consulted cook books on the best method to make jelly, but in the end I combined the ideas.

First of all I took the pot down to the tree and filled it up. I then washed and halved the apples. I put in enough water to just cover them. The picture is of them in the pot.  I then cooked them until they were totally pulped, which took about an hour.

Then the fun bit began. I had to strain what was in the pot to separate the liquid from the pulp. One thing that all the books I read said was to let this process happen slowly and NOT to squeeze the bag with the pulp.

Now I’m sure you can buy flash gadgets to do this but this is what I rigged up in the kitchen sink.

I left it over night to drip.

In the next post read how I turn the liquid into something you can spread on toast.

The Week That Was

I got through the week.

After Tuesday I was really stuffed. Both physically and with bad food. The BBQ at swimming club fell through due and the organisers were left with about 30 kids and parents wanting tea so they gave us fish and chips which were no the best I’d ever had, plus they had no plates.

On Wednesday, the morning tea with the mayor went well. It’s the first time I’ve ever met a mayor.

The hospital appointment was very stressful. G1 did not like being sedated. She kept trying to walk and falling over. She wouldn’t lie down. As soon as we got home and she relaxed it worked really well, she slept for about an hour.

On Thursday I cleaned my house and made the truffles that I had planned to do on Tuesday. This turned out to be a good idea because I only ate 3 before we went to the schools concert/prize giving.

The concert/prize giving had the usual speeches and prizes. The main part of the evening was a play of the book ‘Badjelly the Witch’. Those familiar with the story might remember that when Rose and Tim go in to Binkle Bonk’s tree house there are glow worms lighting the stairs. In our version the glow worms were poi dancers

Here’s a photo. It was really effective.

Monday is over

I survived the first day! There are some changes thou. First of all the mayor is going to get a cake. It will be easier and look more impressive than the custard kisses I was planning. Second I’m getting the tyres today. It will take 2 hours after my doctors appointment, but it will leave Thursday for relaxing before Friday.

At present this blog is in danger of turning in to food blog. I’m really proud of my strawberry cream pie because I made up the recipe. I don’t do this very often. I’m good at following others recipes. Since it is all mine I can legally share, so here goes.

Base

125grms of wine biscuits (1/2 a packet, use the other half to make those truffles)

50grms butter

2 Tbsp sugar

Crush the biscuits in the food processor. Add the butter and sugar and pulse to combine. Press in to a spring form. A 20cm will give you a deep pie, a 23cm a shallow pie. Bake at 180c for about 7 mins until lightly browned. Be careful the base can burn quickly.

Filling

1 can of strawberry’s (you’ll find these in the can fruit section)

1 strawberry jelly

250g tub cream cheese

1 cup cream, whipped.

Empty the can of strawberry’s in to a pot and heat until boiling. Remove from heat and dissolve the jelly in to the strawberry’s. Cool mixture to room temperature. Place mixture in food processor. Add cream cheese, which should be slightly soft and cut in to small blocks. Mix to combine. This will also puree the strawberry’s. Once cream cheese is mixed through, chill mixture until it is the consistency of whipped cream. Then add the whipped cream, pour over base and set. Top with fresh strawberry’s to serve if you want to. Enjoy!

The progress of my pie was not as smooth as the instructions. I dropped the bowl just before I put it in the fridge to chill. The mess of pink sticky mixture is best left to the imagination. I had mixture in my hair. I almost cried.

I did recover to make the lemon honey, which was incident free. I would post pictures of my recovered pie and the lovely jars of lemon honey but I am cameraless. This is because the Hubster took the camera to his lab to take pictures of his important experiments. So here’s a picture of someone else’s lemon honey.

Silly Season

I have been absent in my blog duties for a while. This is because I have too much stuff to do. This week is going to be mad.

Monday: I have to go to the Police Station and make a victim impact statement. See Friday for why I’m doing this. I also have to cook a strawberry cream pie for a BBQ we are going to tomorrow and about 6 jars of Lemon Honey as presents for various teachers.

Tuesday: I have a doctors appointment at 9.15. I would have made this for Monday but I had a ring from the Police after I talked to the doctor. I have to do the victim impact statement on Monday so they have enough time to get it to Upper Hutt by Friday. I have to bake some biscuits for Wednesday and maybe another batch of Alison Holst truffles. I did make a double batch last week so that I would have two ready to go plates, but I um, ate a ‘few’.

The best thing about Tuesday is the evening. We have three functions. The excitement will begin with a swimming carnival at the the girls swimming club. This will finish with a BBQ, I don’t have to cook dinner. Then the Hubster has a BOT meeting. When that is finished, hopefully around 8pm we will head out with the strawberry cream pie to another BBQ. Note I am taking children aged 7 and 9 out at 8pm.

Wednesday: Try and wake children to get them to school. At 10.30 go back to school. Our school has won an enviroschools award and the mayor is coming to present it. G1 is part of the group who will receive the award. I offered to make a nice morning tea for the mayor some weeks ago, before I know about Monday and Tuesday. That’s what the biscuits are for. After I’ve eaten morning tea I’m bring G1 home with me. She has to go to the hospital for a test for which she will be sedated. It will take about 2 hours. The test is horrible and she threatened to run away from home when she found out what would happen to her. The thought of this is making me a little tense.

Thursday: We have to get new car tyres for our warrant. I think I will have to do this on Thursday. We also have the school concert/break up. After we have watched a production of ‘Bad Jelly the Witch’, sat through the excitement of the recorder playing and mass singing, there will be a ‘bring a plate’ supper. Roll on truffles that I made on Tuesday which, in theory, I haven’t eaten yet.

Friday: I’m driving for about two hours to Upper Hutt for the court case for which I made the victim impact statement. The reason for this is my father was killed in a traffic accident in June. The young man who caused the accident is having his first court appearance. I’m planning to drive home in the afternoon. I am also feel more than a little tense about this.

After managing this week I’ve decided that I have the organisational skills to run Telcom. And I’d get a lunch break.

Recent adventures

On the left we have before, on the right after.

This transformation took 14 hours, we started by sanding at 6am and finished wallpapering at around 8pm.It was so worth it. The room looks great and has inspired us to keep moving on redecorating our house.

I also had a less edifying adventure. I believe a world first may have occurred at homely wife.

I burnt something in a slow cooker.

This is supposed to be very difficult to do. I’m not sure if this makes me very stupid or very clever. For the record you can burn stewed rhubarb in the slow cooker if you leave it in there on high for 13 hours. You can compound the cleaning of the burnt mess if you added sugar. If this should happen to you e-mail me, I’ll give you tips on how to remove the burnt sticky mess.

Dusty

On Monday I bought this. The duster, not the child.

It is supposed to help with problems like this.

This may be a little large for a feather duster to deal with.

Don’t worry, the mess in the photo is largely gone. It was actually caused by a big cupboard clean up.

House work is one aspect of biblical womanhood I really struggle with. I have to constantly tell myself that house work is part of my service for God. He planned for me to care for and nurture a family, house work is part of that. If I don’t see it as an act of obedience to God’s calling on my life then I start to resent my family and wish I could afford a cleaning lady!

I am always looking for ways to make house work easier. So far my ostrich feather duster gets the thumbs up.