Head cold

Woke up on Thursday morning with the sniffles and can't work out where I've picked this cold up from, it's progressed now to a full head cold with blocked sinuses and neuralgia as well as the drippy nose. 

I was up at 5.30 this morning, unheard of for me, and did contemplate getting up as I was wide awake,   My nose was running and I didn't understand why my pillow wasn't absolutely sodden, or did it only start when I woke?? Strange.

Anyway, decided if I was up at that time, I'd not make it through the day, so went back to bed and did manage to drift in and out of sleep for another couple of hours. 

Not sure what I m doing today, wow, don't have many days where I've not got planned everything I have to do., but today is one of them. I have a hanging basket to make up for a friend, I bought the plants yesterday and need to get that done.

I also bought myself a small magnolia stellata and need to decide where I'm going to put that. I'm contemplating a spot in the middle of the lawn where I currently have a small bed with a standard rose in the middle, one of those supposed to be blue ones, but it has small rather uninteresting lilac coloured blooms on it.

Troughs and baskets day today

Got up and the rain was here, so not gone out on my gardening job this morning so we've had a nice leisurely breakfast and catch up on the Internet and I'm now going to sort out my hanging baskets and troughs. I moved over to wall mounted troughs rather than all hanging baskets a good few years ago as it gets so windy here, we look straight out over fields to the west and this is there the prevailing wind comes from around here.
I bought plants from a market garden in the area last week, plus I have many already planted up and so that's my job for today. I'm going to photograph when finished and then try and remember to keep a weekly log on them to see how they progress and when they actually reach peak.
They're nothing exciting and will be mainly fuschia, geranium and lobelia, but a few odds and ends too. I think someo of the tomatoes need repotting too and I'd really like to get the beans out, all this rain will help them settle in.
This is the view across the fields from the front of the house, pretty open.

The other picture is the current state of the wall troughs, ignore my finger at the top of the picture.

Home made butter

Just after Christmas a friend who knows my propensity for trying out new ideas told me to watch out for the supermarkets selling off all the overstocked fresh cream, as you can make butter at home with it apparently. She didn't know how, but said it just involved your food mixer. So of course I had to try it out.

I bought 3 pints of cream for something like 35p a pint and had a go, it was interesting and very messy, but the end result sure enough, was butter.

After this weekends cake stall, I was left with a load of whipped cream and half a tub of clotted cream so I've just done a batch. Just added salt crystals.

This is stage one, after the initial mixing, it turns in to butter all of a sudden, you can hear the change in your machine as it has this large lump going round in it instead of the cream and lots of sloppy buttermilk, which goes everywhere. I've tried wrapping the while machine in cling film, but it still just slops everywhere, so I've given up now and just give the whole machine a good wash down afterwards.

And here is the end result. It doesn't keep quite as well as shop bought butter, especially as the weather gets warmer, so I'll make it into smaller pats, wrap in cling film and then freeze, and we can take it out as we need it.

Curing olives

A month or so ago a friend was telling me about her daughter olive trees and that they are laden with little black olives, but when they tried them they were disgusting. I told her that the had to be brined or cured before you could eat them, but didn't really know much more than that. While researching recipes for my CDWM a few weeks ago, I came across a recipe for brined olives and I mentioned it to her.

Today she presented me with a bag of tiny black olives, so of course I had to give it a go. It's mainly about soaking them in water for a while, then a brine solution for a while. However the recipes all said you needed to slit the olives to allow the brine and water to penetrate them and remove the oleuropein which is the bitter tasting compound in fresh olives.

What I didn't realise is that the process would stain my hands a lovely blacky purple colour, not an attractive look!😒

Rhubarb Schnapps

A while ago I said I wanted to have a go at a rhubarb vodka/ schnapps type recipe, having looked on the internet there are numerous versions, including all sorts of spices and seasonings. I've decided to go with a basic recipe, which is in Nigella Lawson's Domestic Goddess book under the title Rhubarb Schnapps.

 basic recipe is :

1 kg rhubarb, washed, dried and chopped

300g caster sugar- didn't bother using caster, just used granulated

1 ltr vodka

Put everything in clean jars, it says sterilised, but I've not bothered, they are perfectly clean, and the vodka can do the rest, seal, then keep somewhere cool and dark, shaking the jar whenever you remember, ideally every day for the first month or so...hmm, not going to remember that every day.

Anytime between 6 weeks and 6 months, strain and bottle up.

My recipe hasn't quite filled the jars, and I think I'll add a bit more rhubarb when it's grown a bit more, I've been using quite a lot of it lately, either that or I'll get a bit more vodka and top it up.

Nigella  stuff looks lovely and pink and I wonder if she used the early forced rhubarb rather than the rather large chunky stems I used, so may need to add a bit more sugar too. Anyway..here goes.

                  

And this is it on on day 3, love the colour

 A quick note to myself..and I. Suppose to anyone reading this. The vodka/schnapps finally got filtered and it's gorgeous. Definitely need to make more of this next year, beautiful rounded flavour, I had read somewhere about only leave it sitting steeping for a few weeks, otherwise it will go bitter, well that's definitely not the case, wonderful stuff, just stewing up the pickled rhubarb now and will see how that tastes, either for pie fillings or a jam, undecided yet.

Cottage annual seeds planted

Just a note to myself that I finally got round to scattering - planting is not quite the right word for chucking around a few handfuls of mixed seeds.

Heavy rain is forecast overnight, so I'm hoping they get a good soaking in.

Exhausted

Wow, what a day that was, I was up at 6 and filling macarons, whipping cream for the gateau and reheating scones before away for 8.30 to pick up pal and get away to the fair. Now 6am may not be early for many, but it is for me, I'm much more a night owl than an early bird, or so I thought, and have always said if asked.

However, I did enjoy being up early and on the rare occasions that I do rise early, always enjoy the feeling, however, at the other end of the day, I can never go to bed early, as it seems such a waste of the day when there are things I can still be doing.

I wish I were one of these people who could survive on 3 hours sleep a night, but I always need at least 6, relatively consistently anyway. Anyway I've run out of steam today and am having to get an early-ish night for me.

Got gardening jobs booked for tomorrow but there is heavy rain forecast, so won't be too disappointed if it arrives.