Delayed gratification

One of the highlights of my lonely working-from-home existence is attending a coffee morning founded by UberBlogger, copywriter, web 2.0 maven and all round good egg Mike Coulter. This morning, at our regular table in Centotre, Mike, Jon and I had a bit of a deep and meaningful on the subject of the future and this article by futurist writer Richard Watson came up. In it, Watson predicts that delayed gratification will be a major trend along with make do and mend and hand/home made things.

What's all this got to do with Quinces? Lots actually: Quinces are delayed gratification in fruit form. They're rock hard, inedible without a lot of work and even when you've done it, you have to wait for months before you can consume the result. Still with me? Let's do the recipes!

Quince Cheese or Membrillo ( (as they say in Spain) or Cotignac (as they say in France)

This is a traditional recipe (there's more than one way to do it) but I followed Jane Grigson's recipe in her Fruit book because unlike this floozy Jane seems like the sort of apron by the Aga lady you can trust with rare fruit. I advise you to buy the book because Jane explains this in a far more elegant way than me.



Ingredients
1 1/2 kg Quinces
1.2 kg sugar
(this made us three kilner jars full but if you have a different weight of quinces, weigh the puree then add an equal amount of sugar - you can substitute crab apples for quinces if you can't get them where you live.)

Wash the quinces and chop them up roughly with the skins on and cores in. Put them into a fairly large pan, cover with water and bring to the boil, then simmer for 35-40 minutes. By this time the fruit should be very tender, so mash it up with a potato masher and press the lot through a sieve. Put the puree back into the pan and add the sugar. Stir over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil steadily, stirring occasionally, until the yellow puree turns bright pink (this is exciting, trust me) and is so thick the trail of a wooden spoon remains after stirring. As it cooks it will splutter and give, as Jane says, "an occasional fat burp." Pour into sterilised jars and seal. Leave for at least two months before eating. This is best served with sharp, strongly flavoured cheese or cold meats.

Quince Vodka

1 quince
1.5 litre vodka
1 cup (250 g) sugar
(you could also do this with gin)

Grate the whole quince, core and all, and place in a sterilised kilner jar with the sugar. Pour the vodka in and seal up the jar. Give it a good shake. Place in a dark cupboard for at least two months. Sample it and maybe leave it for another two months if you can bear to. Once it's ready strain it into a clean bottle and add more sugar to taste. Drink 'responsibly'. Maybe in a cocktail. Or put it in the freezer and serve as a frozen shot.



Oh, I nearly forgot: Happy New Year! I was going to write a post about resolutions but there are so many we could be here all day.

Hand made bathtime treats

It's getting to be that time of the year where everyone starts talking about self-improvement: getting fit, giving up vices and maybe introducing a half hour of meditation into the day rather than watching TV. Come mid-January many of us will be living in the land of broken dreams, our 'to do' lists renamed 'should have done...'. I thought it would help some of my nearest and dearest (and myself) to keep up our new regimes by making some indulgent, aromatheraputic bath products. The idea is that if you smell and feel good you have a slightly better chance of being good! Apart from the essential oils all the ingredients came from Real Foods, my local healthfood shop, so we're off to a great start. Here are the recipes:

Orange, Ginger and Geranium Body Scrub

1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon honey
1 cup almond oil
a few drops of sweet orange, ginger and geranium essential oil.

Mix the oil, honey and sugar together and add up to ten drops of oil in a blend to your own taste.

Rosemary and Lavender Bath Soak

1 cup dead sea salts
1/4 cup dried lavender flowers
Rosemary and Lavender essential oils

Place the dead sea salts in a plastic bag and add up to 10 drops of essential oil in a blend you like. Tie the bag closed and rub the salts as if you are kneading the oils into them. Add the lavender flowers and put the lot into a jar.

The scented candle pictured above is made using the method I demonstrate here.



I also made some lip balms and body butter!

Orange and Bergamot Lip Balm

Equal parts beeswax, almond oil and coconut oil
A few drops sweet orange and bergamot essential oil

Melt the beeswax in a double boiler, add the coconut oil to melt and then combine the almond oil. Add a few drops of the essential oil. Pour into little jars.

Grapefruit and Coconut Body Butter

1 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup almond oil
a few drops grapefruit essential oil

Melt the coconut oil in a bouble boiler and add the almond oil to combine. Add up to 10 drops of grapefruit essential oil. Pour into pots (I re-used ones from Neals Yard).

Here's my suggestion of how these should be used:

Light the candle and run a bath, throwing in a handful of bath salts. Shower quickly with the body scrub, then soak in the bath. Towel yourself dry and then slather yourself (a good Scots word that means 'to rub all over') with the body butter. Finally put on some lip balm and kiss someone you love. Enjoy!

The one where she creates the Moistmaker Sandwich...

If you don't know what this post is about, this video will explain all. I was never a huge fan of Friends (being more of a Frasier girl, myself) but I always wanted to make this.

In the programme Monica makes her brother Ross a sandwich with all the Thanksgiving leftovers. The best bit is that she soaks a pice of bread in gravy and puts it in the middle, which she calls 'The Moistmaker'. If you are a reader from the US, let me tell you: your sandwiches rock! In the UK taking an American friend to a sandwich shop is a really fun thing to do: you watch the horror spreading over their face as they realise someone is about to charge them £3 for two tired slices of bread with hardly anything inbetween. So I've decided that Stateside sandwiches are the way to go, and this one was going to be thick and hot! In order to use up all the elements of the Christmas Day leftovers I began with some bread sauce on the first layer of (sourdough) bread, then turkey on top of that.



Stage two was to add some stuffing and the famous 'Moistmaker' layer of bread soaked in gravy.



Then some sausages and brussel sprouts to add 'healthiness'. The final layer of bread was spead with some cranberry sauce.



I then wrapped it up in foil and cooked in in a high oven for 15 minutes. I even ate in in the foil so that it all felt a bit more authentic. It was (imagine the Queen's voice here) Bleddy Maaahvelous!



The 'Moistmaker' was the best bit and I think we now have a new Boxing Day tradition!

Christmas Cheer!

I do like people to relax and enjoy themselves on Christmas Day but my guests were well warned that it would mean A LOT to me if they wouldn't mind admiring the wrapping paper for a while before they opened their presents! The one above with the purple ribbon is my gift from my husband but I didn't mind wrapping it myself as I knew what was in it already (very sexy shoes, since you ask - so gorgeous that they are going to have to have a dress made specially for them!).



I used paper from i-D - an uber-cool fashion mag. Yes, there are topless ladies in there but we are very open-minded in our house.



A couple were made in bag form so they could be re-used. Oh and the best bit about hosting Christmas is that you get the ribbon back!



You may have noticed that we have a 'minimalist' home. Seriously, it's practically a Zen temple. So the decor had to match.



I laid some strands of ivy over the table and placed some glass holders with tea lights in amongst it and some little LEDs below the leaves. The crackers were made from silver paper with some sequined fabric round them and finished off with a white satin bow. Our dining table is made from a zinc covered door blank - lots of people remark on how unusual it looks but it was very inexpensive. We sit it on trestles for dining but it also goes on wooden blocks to make a big coffee table.



Here's my lovely husband cooking his brussel sprouts. He's a genius at this! His method is to par-boil the sprouts then stir fry them with a little goose fat, pancetta and flaked almonds, then he finishes them off with a touch of double cream. Here he is after his Christmas lunch - don't you agree he 'lets it all hang out' with a certain kind of style?

Technorati

Technorati Profile

Get your party hat on!

This is me on Christmas day last year with my party hat on! I had bought loads of lovely shiny card and suddenly got a notion at 5pm on Christmas Eve that our christmas lunch simply wouldn't be the same if we all didn't have party hats. So, much to the amusement of my long suffering husband, out came the cutting board...



I find bent card really difficult to stick down so I thought I would 'corset' it up instead. I punched two rows of holes where I wanted each edge of the card to meet, measuring it out so that they were the same distance apart.



This is what all the holes looked like on a cone shaped hat:



I then threaded ribbon through the top holes to secure it.



And threaded it through all the holes like you'd do with shoe laces or corsets. I had some long lengths of ribbon so i wound them round the hat and tied them off at the top. I punched holes above the ears and threaded ribbon through that to tie round the chin and took a piece of scrap fabric to make a veil. Here is the hat being modelled by the gorgeous Ros:



This showgirl hat was the easiest to make. I cut some long lengths of card in spikey shapes, fanned them out and punched two holes through the lot then made a band to go round the head and punched two holes in the side. The fan shape was tied on with ribbon through the holes. Here's my good friend Pat modelling it.



This is my mum and dad being a golden queen and king!



...Roz's husband Dave being a pirate..



...super-cool DJ Lenny Love with a fez...



...and finally, my eco-friendly husband Tim as The Green Man...

Last minute 'forager's' wreath

This is a 'forager's' wreath because most of the elements are collected from the wild - actually my local cycle path. I have no problem with taking wild ivy as it's the kind of stuff that pulls down walls and kills trees. I got the holly from the same place but was sure to prune it off a large tree.



I began by forming some long strands of ivy into a circle, using gardening twine to secure it.



I then tied on pieces of holly and some pine cones that we had collected earlier in the year and sprayed gold. It was all finished with gold ribbon.



I'm off to a party tonight and as the host is a rather stylish fellow with a lovely big front door I thought he'd like a gold version.



I sprinkled a bit of glitter on the leaves after giving it a light covering with spray mount. An elegant black bow finishes it off.



Once I had the leaves it only took me about 20 minutes to make each of these and it cost almost nothing. I really love the way the loose leaves blow around in the wind.