Jam

I think I'm going to become one of those people who just can't make jam. Tried again this evening, this time plum jam. It's the recipe from the River Cottage Preserves book and calls just for plums, a bit of water and ordinary sugar so I reckoned it must be easy enough. But no. Boiled for just over twice the length of time given and it's even less like jam than the raspberry attempt of a few weeks ago. I definitely don't want to add any more sugar as it is already extremely sweet. If I have the energy tomorrow evening I might try re-boiling it and seeing if that helps at all. But seriously, it's like plum coloured liquid with bit of fruit floating in it - not even a pretence of setting!

I also overdried the tomatoes but ho hum. They're in a jar full of oil and some vinegar now and I'm sure I'll find them edible enough to add to a pasta dish of some kind in the winter.

Meal plan and various preserving efforts

Second attempt at making tomato ketchup today after having remembered to actually buy cloves this time. Looks good. I used a mixture of tomatoes as I had bought a mixture from the market yesterday to try and see which ones I liked best. Aren't they pretty?



But what about the insides?
Even better! I liked the yellow and the green ones the best - they were very tasty and very sweet. The darker green striped ones were my least favourite.










Forgot to buy onions though and only had about half the amount called for in the recipe so I decided to make up the difference with some courgette. The recipe calls for allspice and cloves to be used but I had a look at some other recipes as well and decided to add a touch of ginger and mace as well. Tastes nice although by the time I got it reduced to a ketchup consistency there wasn't much left. Have two small (I think they were 240ml) jars and another one two-thirds full. They had already been cooling for half an hour when I realised one of the lids wasn't tight. Looks like ketchup is going to be that thing this year that just never seems to go right!

The last batch is now being called relish and is tasty although not particularly ketchupy. I'm going to buy a load of mince next week at the market and have a burger feast.

I also have a kilo of tomatoes on drying as well as 250g bilberries. I've cooked chickpeas and mixed with tomatoes and feta cheese to have for lunch during the week (the rest of the dressing has to wait until tomorrow morning as I forgot to buy lemons). And I put most of the strawberries I had bought into a pot and cooked them down for ten minutes. They'll go in a jar in the fridge and I'll have them during the week with yoghurt. And best of all, I have cleaned and tidied up after myself.

Given my apparent lack of ability to control myself when I'm at the market (I was giving myself this weekend off from any major cooking or preserving efforts but all that went out the window when I got to the market and realised plums and all the different types of tomatoes had arrived while I was on holiday), I have decided to start doing proper meal plans again. It means I'll be able to use up the food I have properly and of course it does save the effort of having to put any thought into meals during the week. I tend to only plan for lunch and dinner as breakfast is the same all the time. I am going to try and plan in deserts for dinnertime as well though.

Saturday 1 August
Lunch: cheese, turkey salami, tomatoes, bread
Dinner: boiled new potatoes, broccoli, chicken (bought marinated in wild garlic, absolutely fabulous!)
Dessert: plum crumble with yoghurt

Sunday 2 August
Lunch: cheese, turkey salami, tomatoes, bread
Dinner: leftover potato salad with broccoli and mozzarella cheese [wasn't feeling hot enough for salad so ended up making an omelette with the potatos and broccoli, a few tomatoes and some cheddar cheese]
Dessert: yoghurt with some of the raspberry jam that never was, strawberries and plums [had a few strawberries but was too full for anything else]

Monday 3 August
Lunch: chickpea salad
Dinner: lettuce, tomatoes, seeds, dressing and bread [still had potatoes left so fried them with an onion and a couple of tomatoes - washing lettuce just seemed like too much effort after the day I had it work]
Dessert: stewed plums [following the plum jam which wasn't fiasco of this evening I don't want to see another one for a while - am finishing a bottle of beer for dessert and having a few squares of chocolate]

Tuesday 4 August
Lunch: chickpea salad
Dinner: pasta with courgette, tomato, onion [more changes, very hot day today so in the 30 degrees it was at 8 o'clock when I got home I didn't feel like cooking at all. So I washed the lettuce (lots of little bugs on it, killed by the cold in the fridge I think - I look on it as confirmation that it really is organic, no pesticides on my lettuce) and had that with some tomatoes, some wine cheese and some farmers' cheese, the rest of the turkey salami, a few toasted sesame seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds and poppy seeds and a vinaigrette dressing with one slice of bread at the end to mop up the dressing. Delicious and just filling enough.]
Dessert: yoghurt with raspberry and strawberry [I actually had this as an afternoon snack and am now sitting with my last six small squares of chocolate and going to savour eating each one of them]

Wednesday 5 August
Lunch: pasta leftovers [as I didn't have any pasta yesterday it was more chickpea salad for lunch]
Dinner: eat out before choir rehearsal [worked later than planned so only had time to grab a brezel on the way to rehearsal and then had a couple of slices of toast, one with cheese and one with raspberry jam when I got home]

Thursday 6 August
Lunch : pasta leftovers or chickpea salad (assuming I'll have some of one of these still leftover) [the last of the chickpea salad, a smaller portion supplemented by a chocolate croissant from the bakery]
Dinner: pineapple rice [latish home from work and too hot for cooking. Waited until it was a bit later and somewhat cooler and had some more salad, same as Tuesday minus the salami].

Friday 7 August
Lunch: pineapple rice [am at home on a day off so lunch was the last of the salad with a couple of slices of toast, one to mop up the leftover dressing and one smothered in raspberry jam as dessert]
Dinner: bread and cheese

In other news I finally finished the patchwork blanket I was making for a friend's 40th birthday and managed to give it to him for his 41st. Was up early that morning trying to get it finished and it is decidedly more amateurish looking than I was hoping for but I just wanted to get it finished so wasn't being too careful about the end of it. I reckon the next time I visit him I'll have a go at blocking it and maybe that will help! Wish I could say it received a rapturous reception but unfortunately he was still half asleep when I was leaving so I just told him I had left his present there for him and when I phoned the next day to see if he had remembered to look I caught him just as he was heading out the door to work and all I got was a bit of a distracted 'yes, I liked it'. Disappointing but it's so nice to be finished I'm not that bothered. I'll probably visit again sometime in winter so if he's using it, well and good and if not then I'll tell him how much my brother liked it and offer to make him something else instead. I have a few dozen squares left of colours that I decided didn't work with the overall colours I was using so I am going to put them together into a baby blanket for a friend who had a baby a couple of weeks ago. Honestly the double blanket didn't work as well as I hoped and one of the problems was that it was just too heavy. If it is used, I'd say it won't be long until it's completely dragged out of shape (which kind of makes me feel better about not getting to finish it nicely).

I also finally had my appointment for an MRI on Friday to see if there's anything in particular causing my foot numbness. They hadn't told me though, that if I was going to get something to calm me down I would need to take the full day off work so I've rescheduled it for in a couple of weeks and gotten an afternoon appointment. I didn't think I'd be too bad, it's mostly my legs that are clautrophobic and if I had been able to put something between them then I thought I'd be okay. But they didn't let me do that and then bloody hell that hole they were trying to put me into was small! She also started moving me backwards much quicker than I expected so my plan to have my eyes closed before I went in didn't work. I only held out until about half my head was in and nearly had hysterics. I was surprised at my reaction being that extreme and it took me a good long time to calm down. They've promised me that when I go back and get an injection next time, I'll love it and want to come back every day. I'm not too sure that valium (which they mentioned and I assume is what they give you) is all that good and am very nervous about going back but it has to be done. At least the appointment is for a Friday afternoon so I'll have the weekend to get over it.

I am a snapdragon

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You?

Apparently mischief is my middle name, but my first is friend. I am quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh.

Doesn't sound like me at all, at all.

Tidying up

Doc confirmed I have a cold. He gave me a prescription for some cough syrup to get rid of the 'schleim' I have. Haha. It still cracks me up that the German word for phlegm is schleim.

I haven't done half of what I wanted to do either in work or at home. Have a pile of washing up to do, badly need to hoover and it's now nearly ten o'clock so I can't. Will have to get up and do it before work tomorrow as I'm heading to the airport straight after work. Didn't finish bringing stuff down to the cellar either and that's just going to have to wait now.

I have hurt something somewhere which is making it difficult for me to walk this evening. I think I need a good massage to loosen up my shoulder and that will fix everything else. I felt a twinge in my back today and that only happens sometimes when my shoulder is acting up and I'm been favouring it without realising. A day or two later though I'll start to get twinges and cramps so I know it has happened again. I'm scheduled for an MRI at the end of the month for the problem I've been having with my other foot so it will be interesting to see if they find anything with that. I was just thinking about the fact that almost everything I have tends to happen on my left side. Possibly somewhat attributable to the fact that I'm a citeog and so obviously use my left side more. But I'm kind of wondering if the problems I had with my shoulder 14 years ago for the first time might actually be the cause of everything else. They eventually fixed that issue (which, now I come to think of it, the physio said was in my neck rather than my shoulder) with lots of physio but were never able to explain exactly what had happened or why. So it will be interesting. I'm a bit nervous as well because I remember my mum being told she had a trapped nerve and that was the start of the few months which led to more tests and the discovery that she had cancer. So it's one of those things I can be a bit irrational about. While I'm home though, I'm going to try and contact the doctor to get hold of her medical records. I don't even know what kind of cancer she had because my dad wouldn't talk about it. I only found out by accident that she had cancer about a week before she died, didn't think to ask any of my aunts or uncles at that stage and now that I'm older and realise it might be important to know, it's difficult to start a conversation with relations I've had so little contact with for so long and who may or may not actually have a clue what they're talking about. This was illustrated to me the other day when I was talking about this with my sister and mentioned that based on bits and pieces I'd overheard over the years I thought it was some kind of gynaecological cancer and she, for the same reason, was sure it was a colo-rectal one. I think it's time we just found out. I do know my dad had malignant melanoma and a brain tumour because we were brought into the hospice for a family meeting when he was moved there but it would probably be a good idea to get his records at the same time. I find as I'm getting older that I have difficulty remembering all the things that have ever happened to me so I have no hope of trying to remember if my mum or dad had x, y or z at any stage.

Better get on with packing. Nope, still haven't done that either. Nor did I manage to finish all the food I have. Still have a giant courgette in the fridge but I think I'm just going to take it with me. Have apples as well but will see what state they're in before I start planning space for them in my case. And I am definitely making sure to leave room for my blanket project. Yes, the wonderful patchwork blanket that I decided to knit for my friend's 40th birthday is still not finished but I am going to finish it on holidays. It is coming with me because on my way home after my holiday I will be visiting him for a day to celebrate his birthday. It's his 41st mind you but still. Better late than never.

Working too much

Have a few 12-hour days behind me now as well as having brought a document home to proofread yesterday. But am getting to where I want to be so that I have a chance to keep things ticking over better going forward so that is worth it at least. Got my email inbox back down to less than 20 emails and sent items emptied - it's always such a weight off my mind to do that. I'm heading back to Ireland for two weeks on Friday and when I come back I really want to make a big effort to not work any overtime. That means I need to be more efficient with my time but I need to do it. I sometimes think I have somewhat workaholic tendencies but really it's because of having grown up working in my dad's business. The line between home and work is very, very thin for me so I don't even notice the hours being eaten away out of my evening. I have friends who resent having to stay even a few minutes late at work but these are mostly the friends who only had to work during school holidays and never during school term. Whereas I started working when I was twelve and worked almost every day from then until I left home (left the country to make sure I was getting away from it) at twenty. I worked two or three hours after school every evening and then all day Saturday and Sunday lunchtime and evening or Saturday lunchtime and evening and all day Sunday. We all did it and at the time it didn't seem strange at all but now I'm sort of beginning to realise how it could have led to some problems in maintaining a healthy work/life balance. Yes, that's a terrible phrase but it's an important concept. And one of the reasons why I think I might just be better off if I can get to the stage someday where my life is my work and I don't need to go out and earn money but can just do all the stuff I want to to live my life.

My cold is hanging on so I'm going to go to the doctor tomorrow. If nothing else, I want to be able to say to the people at the airport that I really do just have a cold. Although when clearing out my inbox I re-read the email we got a couple of weeks ago after swine flu cases started happening in the town I live in and apparently at the first sign of any cold-like symptoms I should have gone straight to the doctor and not gone near the office. Oh well. I have no aches and pains, no fever and what I was sneezing and what I'm now coughing is clear so I'm fairly confident I'm flu free.

The heat over the weekend was oppressive again. I should have spent a few hours at least cleaning and tidying my apartment but I didn't manage to get much done at all. This evening it is mercifully cooler but I only got home from work at half-nine and really need to go and sleep soon so I don't think I'll get much done.

I did make raspberry jam yesterday and oh my, it is delicious. I got four jars plus a half one from the 900g of berries I had and half of that half one is gone already. The recipe said I might end up just eating it straight out of the pot and I thought it was just another piece of chef's hyperbole but it really is that good. Don't care if it stays that runny either, if so it'll be a fantastic sauce for rice pudding, maybe some ice-cream. Oooh, sponge cake and ice-cream with this raspberry jam would be amazing. Hmmmmm. I used the recipe from the River Cottage Preserves Handbook. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's really just absolutely fabulous.

I also made tomato ketchup yesterday but despite having gone to the shop on Saturday specifically to buy cloves I, for some completely unfathomable reason, bought ginger instead. More ginger to be precise because I only bought a huge bag of it recently. No idea what I was thinking of. I know I was distracted trying to figure out if I should buy whole cloves at the same time since I'll need them in a few weeks for making chutney but how that led to me picking up ground ginger instead of ground cloves I'm not sure. And of course I didn't notice any of this until I was tidying up after having put the ketchup on to cook i.e. after I had added ginger instead of cloves. Haven't tasted it yet - might be interesting.

I have a large courgette still to use but not many days left to be cooking before I leave so I'm thinking of making this pizza crust from it.

And I did take some photos of my vertical gardening attempts but will have to post them at a later stage. I found several catepillar types growing in the leaves of my spinach today so have removed and disposed of those leaves affected. They were really inside the leaves though, not just on them. Very strange but then again I've only had catepillar problems once before and that was on parsley so maybe that's what just what they do if they can. It was like they were sucking all the green out of the leaf around them.

Don't know what's going to happen while I'm away. I have no-one to leave a key with and ask to come in and water plants for me so hopefully I won't arrive back to an apartment full of wildlife and completely dead plants. Still, I was looking on my attempts this year as very much experimental so I don't mind too much not getting anything from them. I wasn't really expecting to so have essentially been too surprised by actually getting some salad leaves and spinach to use any of it. Have had a few tomato flowers appear, only to wither up and die before really opening properly. Two more plants have a few flowers now so maybe they'll do something.

Sniffles

I have a serious case of the sniffles. Despite the fact that the birch tree pollen I found out recently I am allergic to is not supposed to be a problem anymore by June, I have been sneezing all day. I've read a fair few accounts of the flu symptoms though, including people who have had swine flu recently and sniffles isn't anywhere high up on any of the lists so I'm not really worried about that. I do think I've got a cold though as my head is starting to feel stuffed up - happens in summer sometimes and I've been so hot the last few days, every time I move for more than a few minutes I start sweating buckets and then I have to stop and cool down and I think it's just my body adjusting to it. Of course I'm going to knock everything out of whack by going home to Ireland for two weeks at the end of next week. Although they have been having warm weather as well. Not the 30 degrees it is here today (that's 86 fahrenheit I think) but still into the 20s. I have sooo much work to get done before I leave though that I really don't want to be feeling under par for the next few days.n Heading to bed now with a spoonful of Night Nurse which can usually knock me out fairly soundly and hopefully a good sleep with cure more than any medicine could.

Beans and things

Was very brave today and tried cooking with chickpeas for the first time thanks to a recipe I saw on this blog which I had almost everything on hand for. So easy I can't believe how often I have intended to do chickpeas and have chickened out. I can see them playing a much bigger part in my future eating. Especially since the heat here is making me wilt - anything that adds more options to cold eating for me is a good thing. It's not outrageously warm really but compared to how Ireland normally is, it is sweltering and I reckon it'll take a good few years for me to get used to it. Must have been about 30 degrees yesterday and it was due to be 27 today but it is really humid with it. We had massive thunder storms yesterday afternoon and loads of rain but within an hour you could barely tell it had rained.

Today I feel like I have spent most of the day in the kitchen but I'm doing something for half an hour then need to sit down and rest while I cool down before going for it again. Can't believe it's almost nine o'clock. The tomatoes have finally arrived back at the farmers' market and I was going to attempt my first water bath canning and make some ketchup. But I haven't gotten to it so am going to wait till tomorrow after work.

What I have done:

Cooked chickpeas which I had soaked since yesterday, chopped up tomatoes, feta cheese and combined with the dressing of lemon juice, mustard, olive oil, black pepper and garlic.

Cleaned and de-stalked blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and strawberries. Ate a fair few of the strawberries and made the rest into a rough purree to have with yoghurt for breakfast or desserts this week. The blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants are in the dehydrator - it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

Did what seemed like neverending amounts of washing up.

Used gooseberries to make pectin stock. I want to try and make more jam next weekend without having to use jam sugar.

Cooked broccoli and cauliflower to make a bake but couldn't face turning the oven on so that will be tomorrow's dinner. Also cooked some turkey pieces to add to it - will have some of those now with bread as my supper and leave the rest to add to the bake tomorrow.

Podded, blanched and froze a kilo of broad beans (350g podded weight).

Drank lots and lots of water. And watered some plants I just haven't bothered to for a couple of weeks.

Hung up the load of washing I did this morning. Naughty me doing washing on a Sunday again but the heat had me so exhausted yesterday I forgot about laundry until it was almost eight o'clock.

In other news I am working my way through visits to doctors. My bloods are all fine, even, surprise, surprise, my cholesterol (my diet isn't as bad here as it was the last few months in Ireland but I haven't exactly been making a big effort to cook and eat healthily). The colonoscopy was clear of any problems and I just have to go back in ten years for another and in the meantime try to get a hold of my mother's medical records so we know once and for all exactly what type of cancer she had. German doctors are very interested in prevention being the best cure. I did find out that I'm allergic to birch tree pollen so that's interesting. Appointment with the orthopaedic doctor tomorrow about my feet and that should be everything.

And finally I am getting places on my patchwork blanket. I knew when knitting it that I should have been taking care of the end bits as I went along but I didn't so now I just have hundreds of squares that need to be finished before being sewn together. I'm not quite halfway through but it is getting there and going fairly quickly now. Finishing things off is probably one of the most important aspects of most crafts and it's the one I'm least proficient at and could do with working on.

Oh, and I did an online IQ test yesterday and apparently have an IQ of 131, which according to one page I found (obviously I am going to take the one with the most favourable explanation :-) ) means that I just make it out of the highly intelligent category and into gifted. Since I got a good result I think I am going to stop being so dismissive of IQ ratings as a method of rating intelligence!

Edited to add: while I was destalking the currants earlier I thought to myself they might not be all that suitable for drying as they are so small and so juicy - what's going to be left. They've been in the dehydrator for six hours now and, given their small size, I would have expected them to be shrivelled up to nothing but they're not. Really not sure they're going to work out but even if they don't it will have been worth the experiment.