Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Rosehip and apple jelly

I've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, I post nothing much for over 18 months, and then two posts in one night! I suppose it's all about time, when you've got it, you should use it, which brings me to rosehip and apple jelly (neat huh?!). We have rosehips in the garden, there they are in front for the moobours:


and we have cooking apples from the tree that hangs over the fence from our other lovely neighbours, so I thought I should do something with them. It also gave me the excuse for getting yet another kitchen gadget!

I followed this chap's instructions. He explains things very simply, so simply in fact, that I was feeling confident!

I topped and tailed the rosehips, chopped up the whole apples, put them in the pot covered them with water and boiled the whole messy mixture up, just like that:


Then I used the newest addition to my kitchen gadgetry (is that even a word?!), a jelly sieve:
 
I put all the mush into the bag and let it drip through all day and all night:

 
It was a long, slow process, and I was very careful not to touch the bag, as it seems that squeezing the bag will make the jelly cloudy. All the juices had to be boiled up again,
 
 
with  sugar:
 
 
The recipe called for 1kg of sugar for every litre of juice. Luckily, I had exactly 1 litre of juice and 1kg of sugar in the cupboard. I am now the proud owner of four jars and one small pot of very set jelly:
 
 
 I can't quite believe I made this:


 

New neighbours, or should that be moobours?

We moved house in June, and we've gone from being townies to finding ourselves out in a tiny village (with only 300 inhabitants!). I can't lie, it's lovely. We are still finding our feet and the house doesn't feel like home yet, but we all seem more relaxed. The highlight of this week was meeting our new neighbours, who just moved into the field behind us. The Little People love running out to say hello to them as they peer over the hedge:






Wednesday, 4 September 2013

Old blog, new look...

A lot has happened since my last post, and I now have more time to go back to blogging (famous last words...), I really did miss it.

In an effort to get started I thought I'd start with the decor, gone are the kitsch cup cakes that I loved so much, but welcome to the far more tasteful (I think!) shapes and circles. More posts coming soon - really, really...