Marmalade

I am not sure how much I inherited from my late Father but one thing I definitely picked up was a love of Chivers Olde English Thick Cut Marmalade. In our house, growing up, it was the only type we ever bought. Nothing else would do. I am not even sure Chivers still exist properly (I think they may have been swallowed up) or if you can still buy this style now but I have since maintained my love of thick-cut marmalade although I have never made any.

Now that we are 'small holders' and getting involved in jam making and other forms of 'putting food by', I decided to give the marmalade making a go. I began asking back in November in local fruit shops where I might get the Seville oranges and struck lucky in a small shop in Ballaghaderreen called "Dew-C" (geddit?) who promised they'd have some in 'after Christmas' and then eventually "next Thursday".

By happy coincidence it turns out that the oldest niece, Kat is also a marmalade-whizz who not only likes the family choice of rather tart thick-cut but also makes her own and has published a recipe with attractive pictures in her own blog. I promptly abandoned my book research and attempts to choose a 'professional, published' recipe and went with the 'family' one. Thank you, Kat. If you, the reader, fancy giving it a go, then the recipe is on

http://katherineeats.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/seville-orange-marmalade/

Mine was a 3 kg batch of the oranges to which are which 4 lemons, 4 kg of sugar and 5 litres of water, to make 12 good sized jars of the product. We save our Hellman's mayo jars for the purpose, some of which are the 600 g size, so you'd probably get 14 jars or more if you stuck to standard jam jars.

I love the easy-going, chatty, style of the recipe notes and I was smiling at Kat's getting bored with "finely shredding" the peel half way through the job and deciding that "coarse" is perfectly fine. I must admit I soldiered on with the fine but I could see where she was coming from.

My other comment on the recipe, if you are trying it, is that the original as per Kat is for 1.5 kg of oranges and 2 and a half litres of water which are probably manage-able quantities. We doubled up and ended up with a bit of an issue of fitting the muslin-bagged pulp, water, juice and peel into even our biggest jam pan. I had to leave one litre behind to be added 'downstream'. If you are doing a 3 kg or even a 4 kg batch, check your jam pan is big enough!

We also had a bit of an issue getting a fast enough boil to set the marmalade, even on our bigger back ring on the hob, till we discovered that the gas cannister (no mains gas here - we are on those pale yellow exchangeable cans of (?) propane) was running low and pressure was falling off. Once I'd swapped out the cannister we were away and quickly got that wrinkly-surface to our cooling blobs on the freezer-cold saucer we were using to test the stuff.

It only remained to decant via our plastic measuring jug, select the correct lids, cool  and label It is a beautiful looking bright marmalade, delicious and reasonably well (if a little softly) set. It will join our Blackberry and apple on the shelf for using up, giving away as gifts, or bartering in 'swapsies' as is now our favoured method of trade.

Thank you very much for the recipe and the inspiration, Kat. What's next?

Photo Sharing

Just to let y'all know that Mum has now put dozens of Dad's pictures up on photo-sharing website Flickr. They are on www.flickr.com and look for user Cuigcead. They are not quite up there yet, so try again in a few hours/days.

On the website, type cuigcead into the search field, then when it fails to find any pics call that, click on "people" and you should get Cuigcead listed with a small purple flower icon. You will need to create an account and then set Cuigcead as a 'friend and family'; which she will need to accept. Hope it's all worth.

Deefer

Dad's Back!

Dad finishes his latest stint aboard SB Cambria
and is back home by lunchtime. This morning he's been showing a party of school children the barge, from a school nearby to St Andrew's Wharf (Chantry School?). It was a bit hair-raising, he reports, 29 small herberts (9-10 years old) chasing about perilously close to the knee-high rails, peering down companionways and down through hatchways trying to get the attention of their classmates who were below decks, and so on, but Dad and his colleague Basil managed to keep everything together for the hour, let the School teachers and Trust people take their many many photos and filed the kiddies all off again onto the solid concrete without damaging any body. Big sigh of relief!

Across the week, they have had a brilliant time, being visited by many many more people than they ever get in Faversham, receiving lavish thanks and praise and getting a 'war and peace' sized wad of positive comment in the visitors book. Aside from the first night aboard, where they got a bit of hassle from some inebriated Eastern European 'youths', they've had no trouble at all, quiet comfortable nights of solid sleep except where they were obliged to set alarms for the 01:30 highest tides and nip up on deck to check the mooring lines and fenders.

But now it's all over. Cambria finishes her open-to-the-public stop at Gravesend and will next be used on another 'young carers' sail-training charter on 7th to 9th October. Meanwhile she will be pulled off the moorings at tomorrow's high tide and moved 100m out into the deeper water to be moored to a pair of 'trot' buoys (mooring buoys fore and aft so you can tie up both ends and don't swing around through 360 degrees as the tide turns each time).

All clever stuff

Deefs

How Comfortable?

How comfortable does any one dog need to be? This is Haggis's latest sleeping position of choice, up on the pillows of Mum and Dad's bed, between their heads. He likes his head to be higher up than his body, so pretty much sleeping like a human. Gives the impression that he'd be even happier if someone was to tuck him in, with the duvet tucked under his little chin.

In another first for this blog, this picture contains Dad - well... the top of his head anyway, fast asleep.

Me? I like to be on the bed too, but in my case I hate to be too warm, so there's no snuggling up or being at all "under" the duvet. I like a nice cool, flat stretch out in my own bit, well away from anyone else.

Meanwhile, mildly worrying developments in the Diamond-in-Hospital saga; some new symptoms which might or might not be significant. With both Mum and Dad now snuffling and coughing through man-flu (Dad sold it to Mum as a going concern) there can be no hospital visiting at present, so we've got this from Diamond on the phone. Hang in there Diamond. We're all rooting for you. All except Haggis who is asleep, but he's almost certainly dreaming about rooting for you!

Deefski

Here to serve

Winter's suddenly seriously here, with proper frosts and North Winds. This unfortunately coincides with Mum's car's heater deciding to stop working, so her car is frozen inside as well as out today and she's scrabbling around (getting nice and warm) trying to defrost the car, and then trying to get into the 2CV. She did, though, find time to take this rather good pic of a rose in the back garden.

Dad gets in stores of coal and logs. We already have a stock of old newspapers, and a good supply of old house-structure wood for kindling after the Panini brothers had done their stuff.

Dad feels like he's "here to serve" today, racing between various sites for work and then at lunchtime it's works Christmas Dinner in the canteen, and the Managers traditionally serve the colleagues at these do's. So Dad and his fellow Managers get a taste of "waitering" dressed in obligatory silly hats, setting out festive settings and scurrying between tables and food-prep areas with trays of food, plates, glasses of (soft) drinks while three sittings of guys and gals get processed through between about half 11 and 2pm. He takes his hat off to anyone who has done this for a living.

Tonight, more "servitude", representing the views of the allotments tennants as the local Town Council starts to negotiate taking back control of allotment running from the wider Borough Council. We await with interest what that will bring.

Deefski

The Way to Dad's Heart

The garden is a-buzz with signs of Spring, starlings whizzing about with enormous bits of grass for nesting, blackbirds, finches and sparrows, blue- and great-tits, the robins, dunnocks and collared doves. The starlings in particular seem to think that if they use really big bits of nest material, the nest will be completed that bit sooner because they'll need fewer.

The collared doves efforts are usually laugh-able. They tend to build a platform in full view from above, then lay a huge white egg which might as well say on it "This way, you Magpies!". They last about 5 minutes. Last year we did have a successful nest in the Albertine rose and it was built of such rudimentary stuff - wire, a few bits of stick and then a solid layer of baby-pigeon guano. Cup shaped and lined with downy fluff, it was most definitely not! At least the wire was stripped bits of telephone wire, so there was a bit of colour there.

Mum and Dad have a long running joke about this in which they adopt the nasal Dubliner voice of Dustin the Turkey "a left over bit of angle iron and a scrap of 4 by 2". Mum is brilliant at this, hailing as she does from that City (but not, she hastens to add, from "those parts")

Tonight though, we can do no wrong. It's Dad's birthday and to him, the absolute best music in the world is guitar blues, so anything he can get hold of featuring BB King, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler etc. We have bought him for his birthday, tickets to Mark Knopfler.

Yay us!

Now enjoying getting spoiled by chosen chunks of duck carcase.... It's a tough job but somebody has to do it....

Deefer

Dad takes a Dive

Sometimes I'm so proud of my Dad - tall - strong, protective, a cunning hunter-gatherer and all other alpha-male attributes..... and then again....

We'd barely set out on tonight's walk and Dad was juggling the three of us, as ever, on the flexi leads, trying to look not too much like a maypole. We'd crossed the road OK and then turned right up a side street. Dad had just steered the H from going straight on across the T junction, when he kicked into a big crevasse in the pavement.

In a "dive" that would have done a Premiership footie player proud he landed on his hands and a knee, dropping all three flexi leads and shooting his mobile phone forwards out of his top pocket so that he heard the skittering away of it but had not seen it. He may have sworn under his breath. I have tactfully forgotten.

As ever, when we're walking, I was up front and pulling, so my lead accelerated out of his hands and barrelled up behind me; Dad saw the departing of it but not where it went, as he was concentrating on not getting injured. Meg and the H were behind and dragging, so their leads shot back towards them, blocking their paths and stopping them in their tracks.

Feeling foolish and embarrassed, Dad scrambled to his feet, dusting himself off, rubbing grit out of his palms and checking his trousers for tears and holes. He was quickly able to grab up the leads of Meg and the H, but looked ahead and couldn't see me so, thinking I'd be round the next corner, which was a car-less cul-de-sac, he stooped to look for the phone. This involved more hands-and-knees, whereupon he attracted a concerned old guy saying "Are you OK?" and had to explain the circumstances. He found the phone face down wedged under the tyre of a parked car. Lucky.

He, meg and the H then set off in "hot pursuit" of me, racing to the corner but still no sign. Then, back the way they'd come, they heard the unmistakeable "meep" of a Deefer in distress. Racing back the found me trying to emerge from under another parked car, where the cord of my lead had become wrapped round the road-contact-patch of another tyre. I was stuck, three quarters under the car, and invisible from most directions

Thank goodness for "Meep!" as a noise. No harm done to anyone or anything...

Except for Dad's pride. he now feels there's no fool like an old fool!

Deefs