cooking

Another Day in A Life

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For regular readers, and I know there are one or two ( thank you very much), this might be a bit repetitive – more on the life of an ordinary Oxfam bookshop.

And some days it feels a bit like that for me too, but then you have those days when you stumble across all sorts of weird and wonderful books.

So here is what I found at the bottom – it always is at the bottom – of a box:

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Well, well, I thought, there is indeed a book out there on any subject in the world you can think of. And, dear reader, thumbing through it was a real eye opener.

Dedicated readers will know of the Petersfield Porn shelf in our shop where we stash all those rather racy books we cannot put out on the shop floor, and we keep for the owner of the second-hand bookshop in the town who buys them in a job lot.

Even more dedicated readers will recall that our book expert wants Petersfield to be the porn hub of Oxfam on the basis that erotica gets thrown out, but some of it is worth a lot of money – so all the other bookshops should send theirs to us. He made this impassioned appeal at a volunteer conference but sadly, none has yet arrived.

And then there was this – handed to me by a fellow volunteer who said, ‘You will put this in a blog I expect.’ So, here it is.

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Then there were the several, actually many, boxes of Mills and Boon. I would not say it was the complete oeuvre on the basis that would be so many books, we would be filled to bodice brimming – but certainly there were a lot of them.

We used to send them on to the shop in Cosham which relished – and sold – them but sadly Cosham Oxfam is no more.

They were all in very good condition which suggests they were recently bought and read, and the feminist in me is appalled – but maybe given a spare moment, I might want to know how the seductive miss worked….and where else would you see the word ‘reprobate’ on a book cover?

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And then there is this gem. It is a lovely book with all sorts of illustrations and samples of wood to show the cabinet maker what they were working with.

The cover is designed by Talwin Morris who was, according to Wikipedia ‘ a prolific book designer and decorative artist working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly known for his Glasgow Style furniture, metalwork and book designs.’

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Finally, I was jus wondering what to do with two donated camping stoves when I came across this little gem and thought there is a box of camping stuff to be started here so should you have any books on camping or caravanning that you have no need of, please drop them off.

I have to say that the ‘cheese a broccoli rolls ‘ did not sound all that appetising….

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Syrian Preserves

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I do like to cook so I don’t want the reluctant housewife thing to suggest I am far too busy and cosmopolitan and interesting to be bothered with the stove.

Nothing I like better than pottering about the kitchen, but I never saw myself as a jam-maker.

Still, I had a tree full of crab apples and one of the builders doing our kitchen extension started nagging me to do something with them.

At the time he was dowsing with a wire coat-hanger to find our water supply whilst I was beating nettles out of the way so he could get a better fix.

He did find the supply and also told me of various ways to ensure the best crab apple jelly.

So I made some and handed it around the neighbourhood to the (few) people round here who don’t make their own extensive range of preserves. ( I am of course talking women.)

Last year we had more crab apples – that being the way of nature, though this year the tree isn’t well and is – thus far – in a crab apple sulk or perhaps feeling very under the weather.

Down the road there was also a tree laden with elderberries and of course, being the crunchyside, there were blackberries.

I had been re-upholstering chairs and selling them in aid of Syrian Refugees – see what I mean about being a Sussex housewife – and so decided to make a shed load of pickles, jams and preserves and have a party at which everyone was morally (and insistently) obliged to buy them for the Good Cause.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise – it is a long and daffy process making preserves but I persevered. (sorry)

Courgette relish for burgers, elderberry vinegar which I have to say was rather the star of the show crab apple jelly of course – and it got rave reviews when it landed up in a Scottish restaurant via a friend, blackberry jam, pickled peaches for serving with ham – I could go on….

Then I caught sight of myself preening over preserves.

Panic-stricken at the thought of being that woman, I hot-footed it to an exhibition in London and read a book on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

Still, the Syrians got a couple of hundred quid so all was not lost.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

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It is that time of year again when I get into the whole making preserves thing.

I am sure I have said before, and no doubt will say again, that jam-making is not how I saw the trajectory of my middle age.

I had seen myself more doing something interesting with my life – writing a book, being a smart interim manager bringing light and general good things to despairing organisations, working for the UN and getting some trips to New York where I would broker alliances……not all of those things at once, of course.

Anyway here I am already with ten jars of Povidle. (Look it up – its an interesting Eastern European plum ‘cheese’ which can be used to go along with a cheese board or sweet Hungarian dumplings – not being a Hungarian dumpling-maker even at this stage of my housewifery, I shall substitute eggy bread made with brioche & sprinkled with sugar. And I added cinnamon sticks to the mix in case you are thinking of having a go.)

For the last two years our crab apple tree has not been forthcoming with its fruit and I was sorry – it is lovely tree – and, of course, you cannot buy crab apples in the shops so it was nice to have it in the garden – it gave me a smug feeling of nature’s bounty and all that stuff.

This year it has gone overboard, and so crab apple jelly is on the cards again – and I am alarmed at the extent of nature’s bounty.

For those of you who don’t do the preserve thing, let me say that it is a pain in the arse to make crabapple jelly.

There is no getting round it.

It is not complicated, but it is a long-winded business which starts with picking up the windfalls ( the best beloved did a bucket full today), then you have to get rid of the bruised bits –  but actually I get bored with that cutting up and, after a bit, I throw whole crabapples into the pan, willy-nilly.

Then you have to cook them and then – and this is the real pain bit – you have to strain the juice.

So, you need to imagine my kitchen with broom handles resting between chairs and muslin bags strung on the handles full of crabapple mush which have to drip into containers overnight.

And then you have to start with sugar and boiling points, jam jars which need sterilising and their labels removing, etc etc etc.

By the way there are a few jars of something down in the cellar which I made earlier in the year and cannot for the life of me remember what it is – some pickle or another….but forgot to label them. I will think of some pickle name and then make up some labels – another long-winded process.

And then there are the blackberries.

My best beloved would like a good bramble jelly as made by his mum but that isn’t going to happen for two reasons – one I have tried it and it came out like jellied concrete and the other is that it needs that dripping malarky and I am not doing that twice in a year.

So, I will beg and steal some apple windfalls and then some blackberries and there will be some jam.

Of course, unless you are willing to spend every minute of your life at this time of year making preserves, you have to freeze stuff so that you can do it when you get round to it.

That means clearing out the freezer.

So we are currently eating stuff out of the freezer in strange combinations – who knew fish-fingers could go with roasted peppers, for example.

We have some people coming for meals this weekend and they will be surprised by the unusual combinations – I shall explain it is a Hungarian traditional feast, and pass them the Povidle.

I will say in my defence of preserve making for the reluctant housewife, we sell them at our winter lunch for Syrian refugees. ( Best beloved says they must be bloody fed up with jam by now but I think that this year, brandishing a jar of Hungarian preserves might be useful….)