A Birthday

Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on my tapestry. You are very kind.

This is just a very quick post as I have lots I need to do. Tomorrow is my dad's eighty seventh birthday! We went to the Greenbean in Banbridge for coffee plus a scone for me and a raspberry and coconut traybake for him. A lovely treat though we do it pretty often anyway!

I don't need much of an excuse to go out for coffee. Actually, confession time, we went yesterday afternoon as well. Just because.

I wanted to show you my pear tree. It hasn't flowered like this ever before. I'm hoping we'll get lots of pears from it this year.

This was one of the apple trees a few days ago.

Now all of a sudden it's flowering. The rest of the apple trees are just ready to burst forth.

The copper beech hedge is looking rather sad now that it is losing its old leaves. But the buds are there just ready to produce new leaves for this year.

As you can see, the sheep and lambs are now in the field beside us.

The sheep are quite heavy now and the lambs are growing really quickly. A couple of times a sheep has rolled over onto its back and not been able to get up again. The husband has had to nip into the field and put them back on their feet. If they're left too long like that they will eventually die.

I'm really hoping the weather will improve a bit. April was very dry but May is making up for it. We've had so much rain. The temperatures are low too though, hopefully, there won't be any more frosty nights.

There will be more birthdays to come soon. If it's yours today, or soon, then have a great day!

Rhubarb, Rhubarb

We've been having some beautifully warm, sunny weather during recent days though the nights are still very cold. Almost every morning we wake to a heavy white frost. All of which has resulted in the rhubarb going bananas. Well, not literally. It's still rhubarb. But there's so much of it!

I'm not sure what this plant is. It's growing beside the rhubarb. It doesn't smell very nice but it certainly attracts the bumble bees.

I pulled rhubarb ...

... lots of rhubarb ...

... but it has made virtually no impact on the rhubarb bed!

Have you tried roasting rhubarb? Normally I stew mine but I thought I'd give roasting it a try. I wish I'd found out about this long ago. It's so easy to do (as I found with the bit of forced rhubarb I'd already cooked) and is delicious. Just wash the stalks and cut into chunks. Mine were about 3cm long but you could make them a bit longer if you want. Spread in a single layer in a roasting tin and sprinkle generously with sugar.

Cover the sugared rhubarb with a piece of tin foil and roast in a hot oven for 10 minutes. Mine was done in the roasting oven of the Aga so about 250°C. You could do it a bit longer in a slightly cooler oven; say about 220°C. Remove the tin foil and cook for a further 10 minutes. The rhubarb should be soft but still hold its shape.

 Here it is, straight out of the oven and steaming away.

I made two trays at a time. I think it takes less sugar cooking the rhubarb this way. It seems to bring out the sweetness. I've also pulled the stalks before they got too big and tried to use mostly the pink parts.

I'm going to be roasting a lot more rhubarb before I get this patch cleared!

Thank you for your comments on my last post. Several of you were interested in how I wind a skein so I'll get the husband to take some photos and do a post about it soon.

All the best for now.

Snowy Days

Welcome back; it's lovely to have you visiting again. When I tried to do this post a few days ago, I couldn't load my photos because of a server error. I've no idea what caused it or how to fix it. Thankfully I have a new iMac, just set up today, and I'm able to load my photos without any problem.

On Friday last the husband was off for the day; I'm always off on Fridays. We were going to take the trailer and get loaded up with wood blocks but we woke to a white world. We decided that discretion was the better part of valour and didn't try taking the car out with the trailer attached.

We leave plenty of food for the wild birds and they really needed it. The feeders are next to our beehives.

 I couldn't resist taking some photos as it looked really lovely.

 All of a sudden the snow started falling again. It was beautiful to watch though it made everything look like the world was in black and white instead of colour.

The poor wee birds. They still had to come looking for food even though it was snowing.

These two daffodils are the only two in the garden that are blooming!

Now it just so happens that on Thursday last week (the day before it snowed), I saw a pattern for crocheted socks in the Simply Crochet magazine. And, I saw where Daisy had actually crocheted said socks. In fact, she has since crocheted another pair for her mother. Well, when I saw the snow I knew what I simply had to do; crochet a pair of cosy socks for myself. I couldn't start right away as we braved the elements and went out for coffee. It was actually Friday evening before I could finally get out some yarn, my hooks and the pattern and get started. I thought it would be a good idea to work the two socks together. So make the toe for the first sock, make the toe for the second sock, work the first stripe of the first sock, work the first stripe of the second sock and so on. Things went really well until I had done the number of rows stated in the pattern before I was supposed to turn the heel. I have long, narrow feet which necessitated me having to work an extra five rows before the foot section was long enough! That held me back!! I crocheted like someone possessed as I really wanted to get them finished before going to bed. Anyway, I turned the heel on both socks and crocheted the number of rows that were supposed to be completed before the rib top. Again this was too short for me and I needed an extra three rows. Too late though for Friday night and I had to leave them to finish on Saturday.

The snow was still about on Saturday as there were some more snow showers overnight. It was a beautiful day so, after being out in the morning, I spent the afternoon in the kitchen. I made more blackcurrant cordial and a batch of cranberry sauce. We had some with Sunday lunch and it was delicious.

Then I also baked apple and blackberry tart using fruit from our garden. This is the first tart ...

... and this is the second.

Side by side!

These were also delicious even though I say so myself!

What about my socks? I got them finished on Saturday evening and took some photos on Sunday morning.

The socks are very cosy and I just love looking at them. They make me laugh every time I see them. I'm hoping you'll let me know what you think of them.

I'm just so excited to be able to get back to my blogging with this new iMac. It's taking a bit of getting used to but I'm picking it up pretty quickly.

Something else exciting happened. I won a giveaway! And my prize arrived today. It is a beautiful pink rabbit that Suzy very kindly sent me. You can see the rabbit here but I will also be taking photos of it and letting you see how lovely it is.

That's all for now. Thank you for all your comments and a welcome to new followers. I hope you are managing to keep warm wherever you are and hopefully not too warm.

Blackcurrant Cordial

Hello and welcome back again. Christmas has been and gone and we're more or less back to normal. The husband has taken the Christmas trees to use in the garden; the pine needles are especially good for spreading over beds with fruit bushes.

Talking of fruit bushes, we had a big blackcurrant harvest last summer. Rather than use the fruit there and then, I washed it, bagged it and put it in the freezer. This makes it very handy for making jam or cordial later on. I recently made some blackcurrant cordial so I thought I'd let you see the process. I got the recipe on the internet years ago and can't remember where. But it's just a basic recipe that you could find anywhere.

So, this is what you need:

450g blackcurrants
250g caster sugar
260ml water
whole lemon

De-stalk and wash the blackcurrants. You don't need to be too fussy with the de-stalking as none of the fruit ends up in the cordial. Just make sure there aren't anything creatures still there!

Place the blackcurrants, sugar and water into a saucepan. Melt the sugar over low heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.


 
Once the sugar has dissolved, bring the syrup to a gentle simmer. Simmer the fruits for 5 minutes.

 
Now add the juice and skin of the lemon. You can see I'm using two lemons because I made double the quantity.

Bring the syrup back to simmer for a further 5 minutes.


 

 
Let the cordial cool for 10 minutes. Meanwhile sterilise a glass bottle.

Pass the cordial through a fine sieve (or muslin).

 
This is what was left behind after the juice had dripped through. The wild birds eat it once it has gone cold.

 
Pour the cordial into the sterilised bottle, cool and keep refrigerated until needed. I like to strain it through my funnel to make sure there are no wee bits still left in the cordial.

 
There it is! You only need a small amount of cordial diluted with plenty of water.

 

This same method can be used for other fruits such as grapes. There are some grapes in my freezer that I must use to make cordial. The grape cordial is very mild and I really like it. Sometimes I mix blackcurrants and grapes too.

 

Back in the summer I made some pink elderflower cordial which I froze in plastic bottles. We had it at Christmas, diluted with sparkling water. Very tasty!

 

There are some crochet projects that have been finished and progress with knitting that I hope to show you very soon. Just need to get the camera into action again.

 

All the very best for now. Thanks for all your lovely comments; I'm looking forward to getting lots more this year.