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December 22nd, 2009
Just a quick one from me to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year as I’m about to ‘blog-off’ for the festive season.
I hope that anyone who has to travel gets there safely given the weather conditions and that one and all have a happy, relaxing (?) Christmas.
I’ll be back in the New Year, refreshed and ready for the challenges of 2010 – and I hope to see you then.
xx  Helen
Tags: Green Living
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
December 19th, 2009
Like most people, I’ve got lots of family to catch up with over Christmas which involves a bit of tact and political manouevering to arrange. This year, we’ll see my parents for Christmas day itself and given that my Mum LOVES christmas and her house is like Santa’s grotto, my kids will have a whale of a time! So this weekend I’m seeing my sis, her partner and stepson on Saturday and on Sunday the outlaws, H’s sis and husband to be and H’s uncle are coming. It will be a hectic weekend but I’ve tried to do as much as possible in advance to avoid last minute panic.
Saturday will be easier as my sis is bringing Spag Bol and I just have to do garlic bread and desserts. 3 desserts mind you as we have to do enough for Sunday too, but luckily (?) H has offered to make a trifle on Saturday morning – and yes, that is pigs you see flying merrily high up into the sky. As he needs lots of egg yolks for his trifle custard, we’ll be doing a Pavlova and choc mousse cake too. Not too calorie laden at all…
On Sunday, we’re doing a full 5 course ’show-off’ menu:
- Pre-starter: Pea Soup Shot & Parmesan Crisp
- Starter: Homemade Gravadlax & Wheaten Bread / Chicken Liver Pate
- Main Course: Duck Crown with Sour Cherry Sauce, Roast Potatoes & Veg
- Pre-Dessert: Mulled Wine Sorbet
- Dessert: Choice of trifle, pavlova or choc fest
Although this sounds like loads of hassle, the pea soup, gravadlax, pate and mulled wine sorbet are already made and frozen, so it’s really only the roast duck that I have to do on Sunday, so it should be straightforward. And thinking about it, I might skip the pre-dessert and just offer the mulled wine sorbet as a dessert option as everyone will be full anyway. Here’s the recipe for those of you who’d like to try it (it needs a good bit of chilling and then freezing time too, so aim to make it the day before you need it).
Ingredients
- 175ml boiling water
- 175g caster sugar
- 1 orange
- 1 1/2 lemons
- 3 cloves
- 5cm piece cinnamon bark
- grating of nutmeg
Method
- Make sugar syrup by adding sugar to boiling water and stirring until dissolved. Refrigerate
- Add red wine, orange zest & juice, lemon zest & juice, cinnamon & nutmeg to a pan. Bring to boiling point
- Refrigerate red wine mix until cold
- Add sugar syrup and red wine mix and then add to ice cream machine, or still freeze (this means putting mix into a plastic box and freezing, taking from freezer twice at hourly intervals to mash up with a fork)
- Add egg white to Ice Cream machine / freezer box and freeze again
This is just lovely, really refreshing, can’t wait to see what everyone else thinks of it!
Tags: home-made christmas
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December 17th, 2009
It’s still not too late for those of you who haven’t made / bought your christmas presents. Home-made Lemon Curd makes a really lovely pressie and it’s easy to make too. If you’ve never tasted homemade lemon curd, then you should make this immediately as it’s just gorgeous, so different from the plasticky bought stuff.
Unlike the chutneys etc that take a while to mature before they’re ready to eat, this can be made and handed over the next day. It will keep for a few weeks in the fridge but is best eaten within 10 days.
Ingredients
- 4 Lemons (Zest & Juice)
- 4 Large Eggs
- 12 oz Golden Caster Sugar
- 8 oz unsalted butter (softened & chopped)
Method
- Whisk the eggs together with a balloon whisk in a saucepan
- Put pan on medium heat, whisk other ingredients in immediately
- Keep whisking until mixture thickens (about 7 / 8 mins)
- Turn heat to low and simmer for 2 mins
- Pour into sterilised jars (warm from dishwasher, or 5 mins at 180c)
This is great on toast but also makes a fantastic lemon meringue pie (very old-skool, I know!)
Tags: home-made christmas, Home-made Gifts
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December 15th, 2009
OK. I know you all think I’m a teeny bit weird, but even for me, this is a little bit out there. Via twitter, I came across a very interesting blog post from Recycle your day about their quest for a home-made deodorant.
I have to say when it comes to deodorant I am NOT adventurous at all. I’ve been using Sure stick since I started using deodorant in my teens (right after I worked out that Impulse sucked). I’ll be completely honest, as long as I didn’t stink, I was happy. But there was a little niggling voice at the back of my head who kept remining me that deodorants are full of nasties, like aluminium, which is good for wrapping your turkey, not so good to rub on your skin.
I read the recipe and realised that I had all the ingredients to hand – but I didn’t fancy smearing it on out of a pot. I kept reading and realised that there was a ‘Quick Stick‘ version which sounded more appealing – especially since I had an almost finished stick deodorant ready to fill.
So I tried it – and guess what, it works! I waited until today to write the post because I wanted to test it out properly, on a night out and at the gym. Result – no smell! Seriously, I had a good old sniff and it was absolutely fine, no bad smell at all, just a faint tea tree lemon smell.
I tweaked the recipe as I didn’t have coconut oil to hand. Cornflour is a natural moisture absorber, baking soda is a natural deodoriser (try it on mattresses wheich have been puked on…a lifesaver!) and tea tree lemon which stops any nasty niffs occurring.
Home-made Deodorant Recipe
Ingredients
All my measurements are approximate because I didn’t weigh the cocoa or shea butter, I just used similarly sized chunks of butters and added the cornflour and bicarb in alternating spoonfuls until the consistency was right.
Method
- Melt your butters in the microwave in a glass bowl or similar
- Add a tablespoon each of bicarb of soda / cornflour at a time until your mixture is a stiff paste
- Add essential oil. I used about 15 drops for my mixture and that seems fine.
- Pour into empty deodorant stick & leave to harden
 Use with a light hand – you don’t need loads. And if you rub your arms into your side once after applying that seems to spread it nicely without needing to smear it with your fingers.
At the moment it’s winter so I’m not sweating much anyway (aside from the gym of course). So we’ll see how it does in Summer – because of course it’s not an anti-perspirant, it’s just a deodorant.   But for the moment I’m really pleased. Let me know what you think…
Tags: Green Living
Posted in Green Living, Soap Making Recipes | 2 Comments »
December 10th, 2009
 So, it’s Wednesday evening. My darling husband is out at his 2nd christmas do and I’m home alone with the littl’uns asleep. I decide to watch ‘Kirsties Homemade Christmas’ which I’d Sky +’d from Tuesday. I didn’t watch any of the original series (not sure why) but having seen last nights programme, I’m disappointed that I didn’t.
If you’ve been reading my previous blog posts you’ll know that I’ve been doing a lot of homemade bits and pieces for Christmas. So when I saw Kirsty making salt-dough decorations I switched off the telly and decided to give it a go myself! At that stage, the detail wasn’t online, but it’s very straightforward to make:
- 1 cup salt
- 1 cup water
- 2 cups flour
I just bunged it all into my kitchenaid mixer and let it work for about 5 minutes, then got to work and started rolling the dough out. I found that I had to add extra flour as my dough was too sticky – it definitely got easier to work with as I went on, mainly because I’d added more flour to the worksurface for rolling out.
I tried cutting stars but they were too tricky (again probably because my mixture was a little on the wet side) but had a lot more success with heart shapes. Once I had them cut out, I nuked them in the microwave for about 3 minutes per plate, which was enough to dry some of them out but not others – the last batch went in the oven this morning at 180c for 15 mins.
Once cooled, I sprayed both sides with gold spray paint which I just happened to have to hand (randomly). I then threaded red bias binding material through, but you could use ribbon instead?
I thought about creating a garland, but wasn’t sure what I would actually attach it to, so decided on creating a centerpiece over our table instead. I’m chuffed with the result – they definitely look homemade but isn’t that the point?  Would love to hear what you think.
Tags: home-made christmas
Posted in Home-made Gifts | 3 Comments »
December 10th, 2009
I can’t let today go past without sharing my LOVELY piccalilli recipe which I made 6 jars of last week as part of my christmas hampers. Why today? Well, I just sampled some for the first time, with a cheese and ham toastie. It was perfect, good and crunchy, tangy with a bit of a bite to it. The recipe is dead easy but you have to start preparing it the day before.
 Cheeky Wipes: Piccalilli My recipe is from the fabulous book Preserved, by Nick Sandler & Johnny Acton which is available from Amazon and full of yummy things to make. Preserved lemons are next on my list to make from that book… Anyway, here’s their recipe, which I actually tripled because my cauliflower on it’s own weighed a kilo:
To make 3 x 300ml pots
- 1.2kg (2lb 10oz) mixed veg*, diced in cubes
- 2 tablespoons salt
- 1 tablespoon turmeric powder
- 50g (2ox) mustard powder
- 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 50g (2oz) plain flour
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 5 tablespoons cider vinegar, plus another 150ml (1/4 pint) cider vinegar
- 250ml (9fl oz) malt vinegar
- a dash of water
*The recipe recommends carrot, cauliflower, shallot, turnip, baby corn, parsnip and pickling cucumber. I used red onion instead of shallot which makes it a very pretty colour, sweetcorn for baby corn and courgettes instead of pickling cucumber. I skipped turnips, bleurgh yuck.
- Dice your veg & place in a large bowl.
- Sprinkle salt over and mix well. Leave overnight to draw out the liquid.
- In your biggest saucepan, mix the turmeric, mustard, white pepper, ginger, flour, nutmeg and the 5 tbs of cider vinegar to a smooth paste.
- Whisk in the remaining vinegar, then add the veg, malt vinegar and a little water – enough so that most of the veg are covered but not all.
- Gently heat the mixture until the sauce thickens (about 15 mins). Stir constantly or the flour will stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Store your piccalilli in sterilised jars (straight from dishwasher, or warm after spending 5 mins in oven at 180c)
- Piccalilli will keep for 6 months in cool larder and mature nicely. Once opened refrigerate and eat within 6 weeks.
Tags: home-made christmas, Home-made Gifts
Posted in Home-made Gifts | 2 Comments »
December 8th, 2009
You’ve guessed by now that I’m not a massive fan of Christmas (or Xmyth as someone called it today. Google it. I like it.) Mainly because it makes me sad to see people going mad, buying loads of presents that are unwanted and unnecessary. It’s worse with children, who are so fickle and what they might play with for hours on end at a friends house is only given a quick once over at home and then relegated to the back of the toy cupboard from Boxing day.
So I thought I’d share the top 3 presents that my children have loved to date. If you’re a grandparents or aunt / uncle in need of pressie idea, these are guaranteed winners:
Stacking Cups: All kids love playing with stacking cups.  When they’re little, they’ll just be chuffed that they can hold them. As they get older they’ll actually start to stack them. And by the time they get to 2, they’ll be using them to serve you imaginary cups of tea. Fabulous.
Walker with bricks: Need I say more? This does exactly what it says on the tin. When they’re learning to walk your littl’uns can haul themselves around with this sturdy walker. The bricks make fabulous ammunition for throwing at your head – and also for stacking and knocking over of course. Immature parents can also amuse themselves by making rude  words from the letters on the blocks. Our walker was a christmas pressie for no1 son and 5 years later no 3 child is still having fun with it.Â
Little People Farm: This farm is just brilliant. It’s robust and sturdy, it makes funny animal noises when you press random bits and teaches your littl’uns animal names. There’s bits to poke and pull, places to drop things through and lots of animals to play with. Again, this was bought for my 5 year olds 1st christmas and is still being enjoyed by his siblings 5 years on. There’s a more up to date version available here.
Hopefully that’s a few ideas although I appreciate that they’re focused on the under twos – by next year I might have a few more recommendations!
Tags: buying for baby, christmas gifts for babies
Posted in Buying For Baby | No Comments »
December 6th, 2009
I know that I said that this year I was focusing on mostly bathing related pressies, but I couldn’t help myself…I couldn’t let a year go by without making some chutneys. This year however, I made just one batch of chutney on my own (the spiced orange and apricot).
On Monday I got together with a couple of Mum friends of mine who were interested in sharing the workload and the washing up!. We brought our littl’est kids, all 4 of them and met after the school run. Fortified by a loaf of banana bread from my freezer (see previous post) and a cup of coffee each, we got to work on making christmas chutney.
After that, we moved on to the most painful part of the day – harissa paste. My friends had both had better luck than me in growing chillies, to the point of having a glut to use up. However we only had 250 ml jars which we all agreed were much to big to hold this pungent paste. I was dispatched to the local supermarket to buy some tiny jam pots – we decanted the jam into one of our bigger jars and hey presto, problem solved. The pain involved was through the heat of the tiny birds eye chillies – everything we touched stung like mad for about an hour afterwards!
Lastly, we finished off with some Green Tomato chutney. Again this was using up a glut of green tomatoes so it was rewarding to see them turned into something useful and tasty.
Between times we had a rustic lunch. Seeded bread and a couple of big whacks of cheese served with a dollop of the christmas chutney – delicious! It was a lovely morning, well spent and it definitely reminded me of days of old (did anyone else watch ‘little house on the prairie’?) when women got together to ‘put up’ the seasons harvest, preserving and pr eparing for the winter ahead. Although we have no need to do so nowadays, it’s a great excuse to have a bit of a get together with the girls. And do your eco bit for christmas too.
Tags: Green Living, home-made christmas, Home-made Gifts
Posted in Home-made Gifts | No Comments »
December 3rd, 2009
A few weeks back we took delivery of a new chest freezer. I’ve been wanting one for AGES because until we’ve only had a little 3 drawer freezer inside which was about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Mainly because it was so full that I’d lost track of what we had in there.
With 3 kids who like to eat traditional kids grub (fish fingers, spag bol, shepherds pie, casserole, pizza) I tend to cook in bulk once or twice a week on the days that I’m not working. So, for example I’ll cook Lamb and Apricot Tagine, but I’ll make it using 3lbs of meat so I’ve got lots spare. Whatever isn’t eaten that night is frozen in bags (small and large) for later consumption.Â
Now I know that this is all pretty standard ‘cooking in advance’ stuff which most of us to do some extent. But, oh my god, if you can get to a stage where you’ve got lots of things to choose from it does make menu planning SO much easier. And it makes daily life a lot easier and greener too:Â
- Less dishes to wash upÂ
- Very little preparation time
- Less trips to the shops to stock up – saving time and petrol
- Less energy used in cooking as you’re doing loads at the same time
Â
But there’s added benefits too. The sort that just make you feel good about yourself and think ‘actually I’m doing OK in the domestic goddess stakes if I could only lick my fingers and stuff my face in the middle of the night’. For example:
- Last week I made two loaves of banana bread to use up bananas which had gone spotty. (Pat on back for using up stuff, not throwing it out). I froze one loaf. Yesterday when it was my turn to bring the treat for coffee morning, I just lifted the banana bread out ( recipe from the superb Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache) and trotted off. The bread was lovely and I felt good about the hassle-free pleasure of bringing it.
- Last night I had sorted dinner for the kids and wasn’t sure about what us adults would eat. I spotted some mozzarella which needed to be eaten before it went out of date, promptly thought ‘Pizza’ and it was literally 5 mins effort to lift 2 frozen home-made pre-cooked pizza bases (left over from previous weeks pizza making), defrost some tomato base and pop them in the oven. Quicker than waiting for Pizza delivery, cheaper AND gives you that saintly glow from using up food before it goes off and cooking it all yourself.Â
I definitely think I’ve saved money on shopping, more because I don’t have to pop to the shops for essentials like bread and milk as I’ve got a ready stash in the freezer. And you know those ‘pop-ins’ always end up costing you £20 as you buy stuff you don’t really need.Â
If you need any more persuading, because I can keep the Ice Cream maker bowl frozen and ready to use, lovely Ice Cream is only minutes away…
Tags: Green Living
Posted in Green Living | 1 Comment »
December 1st, 2009
When I was first pregnant, I remember my Mum asking whether I would use cloth or dispoable nappies. My immediate reaction was ‘Disposable!’ remembering in horror the mahoosive terry nappies my little sister used to wear – and the big scary safety pins (and the fact that she crackled when she moved because of the plastic pants!
But…I did a bit of reasearch online anyway and realised that cloth nappies had moved on a bit from the bad old days. 5 years later, with no3 in her Itti Bitti’s, I thought I’d share a few of my reasons for going cloth (and staying with cloth…)Â
- Saves money. If not for the fact that I had a little girl and was vain enough to want a trimmer nappy on her, then my Motherease nappies would have lasted 3 children
- The cute factor. Snuggly baby bums in fluffy nappies as they’re learning to crawl are just the cutest thing ever
- No nasty chemicals from disposable nappies against your baby’s bum
- The environmental thing….better for the environment as long as you don’t boil wash and tumble dry every time (as if??)
- Comfort – after all would you rather wear cotton or paper pants?
- Much less household waste (and less smell too!)
- Emergency help for unprepared mothers. I have been known to flick poo off a fleece liner , turn the liner over and put the nappy back on again. You couldn’t do that with a disposable!
- Smug Mummy feeling…for when your lovely clean white nappies are blowing on the clothes line
- Extra bottom padding. For those upsy-daisy learning to walk by falling over days
- Great conversation starters – particularly the Itti Bittis!
If you’ve got any reasons you’d like to share, please feel free!
Tags: cloth nappy, washable nappy
Posted in Green Living, cloth nappy | No Comments »
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