Israel

Syrian Preserves

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

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.

A brief un-banal moment

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

There are times when writing banal stuff about an easy life seems not quite to the point.

This week an agreement (of sorts) has been made with the Greeks – and you should listen to Tim Hartford’s More or Less Greece Special on Radio 4 for good stuff about the numbers and allegations. I have to say I feel for the Greek people but definitely not their political class – and if I was Lithuanian or Irish, I would not be that sympathetic to their current government. And I am not. I agree with Guy Verhofstadt and you can see a great video of his arguments on Facebook.

And then, there is an agreement with the Iranians – which will please the Israeli young woman and Iranian young man in my group of international PhDs last week (they were wary of swapping email addresses in case their governments found out) – and which pleases any right minded thinking person, so that won’t apply to the US Congress or Israeli government.

Meanwhile, our government plans to make any trade union member opt in to paying a levy to the Labour Party but does not feel the need to make every shareholder or staff member vote as to whether their big boss should donate to the Tories.

And in a continuing saga of misery, more than three million Syrian refugees are in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq – I understand by February this year we had taken 187. Another six million are internally displaced which is a nice way of saying they are not in any sense at home and safe.

So, I just wanted you to know that even here in Deepest Sussex, we do get the news and we do care about it.

But, as any reader will have gathered by now, we don’t talk about it much.

If you feel that banal stuff about an easy life should not be on the same page as serious issues, don’t worry you can stop here.

I am hoping that you are doing great stuff with refugees or politics and have better things to do, and there is a lot of me that wishes I was too – but I am not, so back to banal.

But for those of us in Deepest Sussex who are not doing anything amazingly useful with our lives, three issues this week – a new laptop, some alarming dog-sitting and the new computer till at Oxfam – you get the point.

So, anyone who has not got better things to do can read on for the next blog in which all will be revealed.