Daily doings

There has been a pause in my posts recently as things have been super busy here what with munchkins, extra walks out and about in the stunning countryside around me, wedding planning and preparing for the Race For Life. That's right, I donned the pink and (mostly) ran the 5K at Inverness in aid of Cancer Research UK. All of this sort of took over and yet felt like I didn't have anything to post although now I look back and think how much I have been up to so here's a round up of my daily doings...

My crafting arsenal has another tool, a wool winder, which I have been using to rewind some balls of cashmere from Johnston's of Elgin into smaller single strand balls for use in fine lace knitting. It has been really relaxing and great when I want to do something that isn't knitting or crochet. As I separate the threads I wind them onto the cardboard tubes on the inside of loo rolls (how very glam of me!) then wind them into a single strand ball once they are all separated.

The wedding shawl has been knitted although I have been too worried to block it in case I see mistakes...I didn't say it made sense!! After knitting that I had some of the yarn, andean lace which is a silk and alpaca blend, left over so I made a corsage for my soon to be Mother-in-law from the same yarn. I sent her a picture and she loves it.

I have been knitting little bolero cardigans as a gift to go with a couple of baby outfits for a friend's beautiful baby girl. (The blue in the picture is not as light turquoise as it is in real life.)

the boleros...and you can see the wool winder box and the loo rolls in the background!

Walking out and about with JR, who has been even more attentive than usual, has been fun although one 'short' walk became 14.5km according to the app on my OH's phone (and my tired legs!). It has been good to get out and about and try some new walks as there are some stunning bits of scenery up here. All of the preparation, which was mostly worrying to be honest, for the Race For Life paid off and although I could have been faster I ended up walking with someone younger than me and we chatted as we completed the final 1.5km before jogging across the finish line.

always such a happy chap :D

I have been planting seeds in the greenhouse now the cold snap has passed as I am hoping to have lots of flowers to choose from for the wedding flowers although it is possible that there will not be many flowers in which case I will need to buy some so here's hoping. Other flowery business has included drying out flowers to make the confetti which is now in a big jar now that they are all dry and there is a sachet of silica gel in there to make sure they stay lovely. I just buy a bunch of roses when they are at a good price then as they start to look past their best I hand them upside down over Mrs Jones, the Rayburn, from the up and over drying rack until they are dry so i can take the petals off and put them on a baking tray in a single layer for a couple more days.

I admit all of this craziness is happening while trying, and succeeding, to lose weight. This is week six of eating almost exclusively from the Hairy Biker's diet book as we saw one of the episodes on tv and thought a lot of it looked tasty. We bought two of the books in that series and have been really enjoying the food. I have always avoided diets so my OH and I have been calling this our food plan as we plan to follow it for quite a while. We have a day when we are a bit naughty but the rest of the time with some careful planning around his shifts have been able to stick to this. I have been losing 1lb per week which has made me a happy bunny but the bit I am enjoying most is trying the new recipes. Some friends are going to give it a go too as they like the sound of some of the things we have been cooking up at home. I am sure that without a naughty day each week and a strict no alcohol policy we would be losing more weight but I don't think we could really sustain that for long and we do not want to end up resenting our new diet. I would babble on about it if only because now I have to get new exercise clothes for my Zumba class as my leggings keep slipping down so it is not just the scales noticing the difference! 

It's gorse, of course

It is everywhere! There are fields full, bushes laden with the flowers and when the wind dies down and the sun shines there is a rich almost coconut smell in the air. Having been eyeing up the gorse bushes that are lining the fields and pathways it was high time I went out to pick some and try making the wine that has been tempting me for so long. It is a country wine and one that is well reviewed by many and i have seen recipes all over the place in old books I have found on the subject. It does not even put me off that it will be nine months to a year before I can finally try some seeing as I can't seem to find bottles of it for sale anywhere. Admittedly finding Cairn O'Mohr has only inflamed my country wine making ambitions.

Firstly here is the recipe I followed: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/mar/14/how-to-make-gorse-wine

I then set about finding the gorse because although it is everywhere the foraging laws are different up here in Scotland so it is stealing unless you have the landowner's permission. After finding my stand (aka lethal scratchy bushes) of gorse I waited for a dry sunny morning to pick it; a labour of love in itself up here this time of year. I decided to use a plastic tub to collect the flowers in, one with a white lid as it attracts the bug life to the lid which had happened quite nicely by the time I had returned home so I did not have much at all in the way of 'added extras' to the mix. As a picking tip I would suggest finding the gorse with clusters of flowers rather than single blooms ranging along the branch that way you can use thumb and forefinger to 'pinch and twist' the flowers off without being pricked by the rather nasty thorns. I cannot lie, my fingers were sore for a couple of days.

After following the recipe I was left with this in the big fermenting bucket I use...

The flowers are a lot darker after being heated and the smell wafts through the whole house so open some windows! Fermentation was obvious later on that same day and the bubbling in the corner was very loud so I think that worked quite nicely. I racked it off into a demijohn after 5 days to be sure that primary fermentation had stopped and now it is sitting in a dark corner of my kitchen where it still until fermentation has stopped and it can be bottled.

I have found it easier to label the contents of each demijohn on a brown parcel label which can be used several times and will not either drop off or become one with the glass that it takes half an hour to scrub off as in the case of some sticky labels.

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx

Tapping time and birch sap wine

It has been ages since I posted anything here but then things have been rather hectic as life gets from time to time but I have not been idle and now have two demijohns with interesting contents.

A very long time ago I read the Little House on the Prairie books and that was when I first became fascinated with the idea of tapping trees for sap and making syrup for pancakes and general sweetening but now, with all this brewing and country wine making I have been planning on making birch sap wine for a while now. I"d say it all starts with getting the sap but let's be honest; it starts with finding a recipe to try then we go to the sap searching.

I found a big wide tree a while back that I would like to tap so that when the day came I was ready to go as soon as I carved my 'tap' although you can buy them (amazon- tree sap taps) but being me I would like to do this with the minimum of expense and felt like I wanted to try to carve the tap too.

Using Rowan (white mountain ash) I cut a small section of live branch before peeling it and starting to cut the groove. My aim was to create something that was 'U' shaped for the sap to trickle down.

After doing this I used a brace to drill a hole in the tree at an upwards angle. I did a little a time to make sure it was not too deep; I do not want to harm the tree at all which is why a large tree was chosen and why I will not be tapping this tree again for a few years. 

After clearing out the 'ground tree' (which if it wasn't so wet could have been called sawdust) I put the tap in the hole and fitted the rubber hose to the end of it. I ran the hose into an empty water bottle through a hole I made in the lid with the brace.

This will fill slowly so it has to be left so I have tied the bottle to the tree in the hopes of it not falling down.

***a few days have passed***


Unfortunately we had a cold snap (as in a few days of snow showers!) so I think that slowed down the sap collection. I visited the day after tapping the tree (I seemed to have this odd idea that the sap might have started gushing out of the tree after I left it) then a few days later to see how much had gone into the 2 litre bottle which was not a lot but I decided to try with the amount I had and to scale down the recipe; after all this is a test batch and if I like it I can make more next year and if I don't then I will not have too much to drink down!

This is the recipe I used: http://www.7thrise.co.uk/Birch-Sap-Wine

One thing that I found surprising was when I poured the sap out of the bottle it looked just like water; not slightly thicker or at all syrupy which was what I was almost expecting. For the first week or so it was going completely nuts in the demijohn but has since calmed down which is nice because the gurgling in the corner of the kitchen was a bit weird, particularly in the evenings!

Soon this will be bottled as it has cleared a lot and fermentation seems to have stopped so it will be added to my collection of bottles in the cupboard under the stairs. The rate of depletion is very slow although we went out to a party at the weekend and my OH had some of the pea pod wine and it agreed with him! The alcohol content is higher than I expected and it is quite a strong wine although he felt fine the next morning.

Hugs from Haggis land,

Jx