Thrifty decorations

Over the summer I had a bit of a clear out and found piles of felt left over from an old craft project. There were a range of colours but a strangely large amount of brown felt existed. Naturally I began thinking what I could do with it and Christmas sprang to mind, which regular readers won't be surprised to learn, since I do love all things Christmas and often begin making decorations as soon as the tree is down in January - sometimes you just need to strike as and when inspiration occurs!

Anyway, the brown felt was pulled out, along with some scraps of white. The button pot was raided and the ribbon drawer searched. Soon, the raw ingredients for Christmas puddings (of the felt variety) were being assembled.

As you may imagine, cutting out felt circles creates a lot of small off-cuts, however close together you place your circle templates.  A friend spotted the growing pile of tiny bits of felt and suggested I use them as the stuffing. A brilliant idea, so these little beauties really are the epitome of thrift and waste-reduction. I have to admit to buying the green ribbon but everything else came from left-overs.

I have a tradition of sending hand made Christmas tree decorations in place of Christmas Cards and with this year's gift decorations already made, I had thought I was being very organised for 2019. However, my friend reminded me of the Christmas Fair that the local hospice holds at the end of November and so I have bundled up a pile of puddings and passed them on to be sold.

After all, I do have plenty of time to make more for 2019!

Finding Joy

I am convinced that happiness is underrated. Or at least in relation to other more material things. Yet, if we were happier I'm sure some of the more material things would become less important. I'm not talking about the basic material needs that enable us to live above the poverty line, but ... oh, I'm probably digging myself a huge hole here...!

Anyway, have you ever stopped and thought what makes you happy? Have you ever consciously decided to then include more of these things in your life? I have to say, it's a lot harder than you would like to think, since so many more hum-drum things seem to constantly get in the way.

What about things that bring you joy? I guess I'd define this as mini happiness, perhaps even a double espresso of happiness - giving you a boost, a tiny lift, a 'hit'? Any idea what this looks like?

Well, Ingrid Fetell Lee has studied joy extensively and I just love what she discovered.

Her talk is under 14 minutes so please watch it if you can find the time. I'm sure it will make you look at things differently, perhaps even help you insert a bit more joy into your life.

I also now know why I prefer round mirrors to square or rectangular ones, why fairy/cup cakes are so much more enticing than a tray bake, why polka dots can seem so much more frivolous than most other patterns, why the cerise cyclamen and orange violas I've just planted in the front garden make me smile, and why I wear dark clothes when I'm feeling down (and probably shouldn't unless I'm determined to wallow!)

Armed with this new knowledge I'm looking forward to a joyful Autumn!

It's beginning to smell a lot like ...

I'm finally enjoying a bit of free time, something that has been in very short supply for at least a year. Mind you, I'm finding my days very easy to fill and not always with the things that have been mounting up on my 'to do' list for longer than I care to remember.

One thing that really wasn't on my 'to do' list was to clear out my freezer. However, last week I read an article about a woman who challenged herself to feed her family for a month from what she already had in her freezer and kitchen cupboards, supplementing it with fresh essentials limited to a budget of £50.

Firstly, I am pretty sure that her freezer is a lot larger than mine, and secondly that her cupboards were fuller than mine. However, it did get me thinking about exactly what was filling the top drawer of my freezer and when I last cooked amaranth or camarague red rice. Anyway, a quick delve into the freezer revealed 2 bags of cranberries and this was followed swiftly by a flick through a few recipe books. Actually, I immediately grabbed Delia's Winter Collection - the one that resulted in a national cranberry shortage in the UK and sure to contain something I could make using cranberries.

The first bag and a half of berries was swiftly turned into Spiced Cranberry Chutney. I was down to my penultimate jar of chutney from last year so it seemed about time I made some more. I tend to make chutney in vast quantities and then get a bit bored working my way through the resulting jars, so vowed I'd make small batches from now on. This recipe resulted in three jars, one of which I instantly gave away, so I'm already on track. The resulting concoction of cranberries, coriander, cloves and orange simmering on the stove created a distinctly autumnal atmosphere (desperately trying not to use the 'c' word here!)

The question was what to do with the remaining cranberries.  However, a few pages on in the recipe book revealed a recipe for Christmas (darn it, I used the 'c' word!) Mincemeat with Cranberries.  It seemed to make a lot of mincemeat and, seeing as I'm opting out of the festivities this year, it seemed a bit excessive. I therefore halved the quantities and merged the volume of cranberries and apple, using whatever I had of each.

Since I absolutely love all things 'festive' and regular readers will know that I begin making 'festive' decorations as early as January, I was rather surprised to realise that I have never made mincemeat before. Incredible when I realised just how easy it was to do (and how pretty). Whilst the chutney was simmering away I threw all the mincemeat ingredients into a bowl to 'mingle' and that's were it stayed for the next 20 hours or so before being popped into the oven, yet again filling the house with the smells of you-know-what.

Mincemeat 'mingling'

Fresh from the oven

A satisfying stack of jars

Now I'm just working out what to do with the amaranth and camarague rice!

Playing with pesto

The herb garden is enjoying the hot summer weather and quite a few plants have become rather rampant. After a visit to a professional herb farm a few years ago, I did learn that cutting back chives mid-summer is a good thing to do. The basil is also about to bolt so, in an attempt to keep it going, that too needs a prune. Then there is the parsley which always seems to recover from a severe harvest.

The abundance of basil immediately made me think of making pesto and it took only minutes to gather 60g of basil which I popped into the mini blender along with a tablespoon of pine nuts, 25g of grated Pecorino Romano, a clove of garlic, a grinding of salt and 6 tablespoons of olive oil.

I then came across an idea for a Spanish inspired pesto. This had slightly different ratios of herbs, nuts, cheese and oil and this seemed to make a richer sauce. For this I used 50g almonds, 50g grated Manchego, 60g parsley, 1teaspoon of sherry vinegar, a clove of garlic and 100ml olive oil.

Using this recipe I followed with a chive, Parmesan and walnut pesto, omitting the vinegar. As you may imagine, this is quite strong but still delicious.

I've already stirred some of the basil pesto through some freshly cooked new potatoes which went brilliantly with some roasted salmon, olives, green beans, anchovies and tomatoes. The rest has been potted up and spread between the fridge and freezer and I'll enjoy stirring them through pasta and potatoes and using as a drizzle on fish and meat and to pep up salad dressing over the coming months.

If you too have an abundance of herbs I do urge you to give it a try. If you have a blender it takes just minutes and the results taste so much better than any pesto you can buy in a jar. I promise!

A greater understanding?

Many years ago I had a house mate who was dismayed at putting on weight in spite of treating herself to a nice piece of cake most afternoons. One day she decided she was going to make a cake. She had never made one before and so this was quite a big deal. A few hours later I returned home and asked her how the cake had turned out. She immediately began exclaiming how she couldn't believe how much butter and sugar went into making it and vowed to never eat cake again.

Having watched my mother bake and cook from an early age, I grew up understanding what went into most meals, even if I had no concept of calories, fat and sugar when I was little. I was therefore, quite surprised that my friend had reached her late twenties or early thirties with no concept of what she was eating.

Now, I'm not saying this from a purer-than-snow soap box because I consume my fair share of cake, cream, chocolate, butter, sugar and alcohol.  I could also exercise more and live a much, much more responsible life. However, we humans have an uncanny way of conveniently ignoring things if they are not what we want to be true. We ignore how it is that a t-shirt can cost less than £2 because why wouldn't you snap up a bargain, or convince ourselves that we'll give up smoking next week because I'm OK at the moment and a few more really can't hurt. Can it? As for that second (or third) glass of wine....

I began this blog because I wanted to take time out and be more creative. I also wanted to appreciate the hand-made when so much in modern society is mass produced. I suppose I wanted to have an element of my life that was 'slower' and also to have an appreciation of the things around me that I had perhaps taken for granted. There is, of course, also the pure satisfaction of having something that you have made yourself.

Earlier this year I have, for the first time, attempted to turn my hand to making, for want of a better phrase, beauty products. I'm now adept at cooking, making clothes, household objects and decorations but had no idea what makes up the products I tend to slather on myself. If skin is our biggest organ and has the ability to absorb, should I not be as keen to understand what I put on my body as what I put in it?

After buying a magazine I turned my hand to making a foot balm and also a body 'butter'. However, the body butter recipe in the magazine listed an 'emulsifying wax' as one of the essential ingredients and, after reading more about this and what they are typically made from, I decided to find a recipe that didn't use this. Essentially, its a wax or fat that has the ability to bind together oil and water in a pleasingly creamy way. I'm sure it does other stuff too.

In making this emulsifying wax-free product it swiftly became apparent that I was not going to get a body butter that resembled anything that you can buy in the shops. So, in using my homemade body butter am therefore placing oil on my skin as a moisturiser as opposed to a lighter mixture of oil and water. Does this matter? If the oil is the moisturising bit, why would you want to water it down? Or does adding water to the oil make it easier to absorb and so am I short-changing myself?

Still curious, I decided to sign up to a course that would teach me how to make oils, ointments and creams. If I wasn't getting the knowledge I sought from a magazine, why not learn from someone who makes these things for a living and have the opportunity for a two-way conversation that is not possible from magazines, books or the Internet? And I suppose this is where I had the equivalent of my house mate's cake moment. 

Now, I'm not a chemist - and if my former Chemistry teacher is reading this, he will readily vouch for me on this front - and I did only attend a very informal workshop that lasted a few hours, but at a very superficial level I learned that most emulsifying waxes are made from Polyethylene Glycol or PEG and, depending on their exact make up, may or may not be something you want to be applying to your body's largest organ.

At the workshop, we had the option of using a vegetable-based emulsifying wax. Although entirely natural, it didn't produce a cream that was as thick and luxurious as the cream produced by using the PEG alternative. I guess this is why cosmetics companies continue to use PEG products, even those that are studiously avoiding using SLSs, parabens and all those other chemicals that some shampoo and shower gel bottles now gladly state that they are free from. This is not to say that the beauty industry isn't heavily regulated and, in theory, the products you buy in the shops are perfectly safe. However, so are the cakes you buy at the bakery, supermarket or farmer's market but that does not mean that you should eat them in large quantities or shouldn't intersperse them with time and plenty of vegetables, salad, fruit and pulses.

Does this mean I'll never use a product containing a PEG from now on? No, it doesn't. In the same way I will still eat cake and drink alcohol in moderation and, inevitably, buy some clothes without thinking of the conditions the people who made them were working under. However, I'm glad I have a slightly better understanding of what goes into beauty products and will be more careful in my purchases in the future.

As they say, forewarned is forearmed and an informed choice is always better than an uninformed choice. I'm just grateful that I have a choice at all.

An oil, an ointment and a cream...

My PEG-free face cream

Banana Bread

I walked through the door yesterday, having had a few days away on a business trip, to find a fruit bowl full of bananas, many of which were looking very much past their best. Although not my first priority - that went to having a power nap having had 3 hours sleep prior to travelling for ten hours in hot and sticky weather - I decided that the best solution for some of the riper fruit was to make banana bread and so that is what I did last night.

I found myself in a similar banana situation at Christmas when I managed to order twice the quantity I needed and only had half the people around to eat them. When I asked my Mum for suggestions as to what to do with the surplus she had suggested banana bread, not least because it freezes well. The advantage of the freezing bit is that you don't just end up eating a load of cake in place of a load of mushy bananas.

Anyway, this great suggestion had clearly stuck with me (well, Mums often know best) and so I dug out my 'usual' recipe, which happens to be the BBC Food Gluten-free Banana Bread one.

It calls for cherries but I only had a few of the glace variety so used these instead.  I also recalled reading that 'most chefs agree' that cutting up to a third of the sugar in a cake has no impact on the flavour, it may just make the cake a little less moist. With all that mashed banana I thought I may be fairly safe on the dryness front so cut the suggested 110g caster sugar to 85g.

With the mixture safely in the tin, the oven still warming and three more rather dark looking bananas I decided to quickly whip up a second loaf. This time I replaced the cherries with some chopped mixed peel and kept the sugar content to 85g.

I had heated the oven to the suggested 180C and set the timer for 1 hour 20 minutes before going to cool off in the garden. I'm not sure if I should have set the oven to a slightly lower temperature because it was on a fan setting or if the lower sugar content meant the cakes cooked a little quicker but I sort of wish I'd taken them out about 5-10 minutes earlier. However, no one here is complaining.  The cherry one was a little less brown so that has gone in the freezer and the citrus one is already proving very popular.

As for the lower sugar content, I can honestly say I think it's perfectly sweet enough and think I'll opt to add less sugar to all my bakes from now on.

Mind you, having done all that there are still about ten nice yellow bananas in the fruit bowl so it'll be bananas chopped onto some sort of cereal for breakfast for the household a few days yet. Unless, of course, my Mum has any other good ideas...?

Focusing on the journey rather than the destination

I can't quite believe June is here already. In part, I began this blog to make myself take time out from work and other responsibilities and do something creative. The blogging isn't the creative bit, it's having something I have made. And to have made something to blog about I must have taken time out to make it. Simple, right? Alas, I feel that 2018 hasn't been the most creative year to date. In fact, it has been pretty stressful.

In an attempt to take time out and have something to blog about I decided to give myself a bit of a break today. I made a conscious decision to put aside the 'to do' list. Instead I put the parasol up in the garden and got out my bits and pieces.

Armed with a mug of coffee and the sound of birdsong it couldn't have been any better. Gradually, as the heat increased, the birds quietened and the noise of the city took over. Really it was just background noise, but to help keep the background noise of my own thoughts at bay I reached for a pair of headphones and the reassuring voice of Stephen Fry. I'm not sure I can imagine anything more relaxing.

Anyway, with about a week to go before I head off on holiday I decided I should make good on a promise I made myself over a year ago - to make some felt pouches to transport jewellery. I first made some as Mother's Day gifts last year and so quickly referred back to the post I made then to jog my memory.

Sorting through the scraps of felt it turned out that I didn't have many pieces big enough so the colour palate was fairly limited but am very pleased with the result. They may not be earth-shatteringly original or hugely creative but this very much feels like a situation where the journey is more important than the destination. And when so many of us are rushing around from one thing to the next it is no wonder that we often end up feeling frazzled and frustrated.

Now I just have to decide what to pack inside them to take away. However, that can wait until next weekend since I am determined to make the most of my now very relaxed state. I really should do this more often...