Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness....well,sort of....

   Oh Hell! It's that time of year again. At the risk of 'gainsaying Keats...... T'is a time of shroomfulness, fog and the all-pervading whiff of cow-shit!( It rains in Autumn, thus making it a sensible time to dung, hence the perfume.) It's foggy. No! Don't ask me why (it just is, I am not Wincy-bloody-Willis)and it's mushroom-time! (cool and moist, beyond that please consult a decent mycologist, I will take NO responsability for hideous poisonings!!!) John Wright's a good bet!
  Night comes several minutes earlier than last night, and the mornings start later and get chillier. Hell, my arse! I love this time of year. The colours, the light, the tang in the air.
  After the Summer we've had, the blackberries should be out early, so I suggest you grab a poly-bag,a good pair of gloves and a big stick and head for the nearest hunting ground. At the risk of becoming a "wifey", I can help you do magical things with your bounty ( yep, boozy beverages included!)

**********************************************************************************

Right, got some? Then I'll begin.....
 You will need...

a BIG pan (if you can snaffle grandma's jam-pan, perfect! If not, the biggest pan you can lay hands on.
a jelly-bag and holder (NO!! Don't panic if you haven't got one. A four legged stool/chair, an old tea-towel, 4 rubber bands and a bucket'll do just fine!)
some big jars with wide tops (the sort of thing you find pickled eggs in....(wash thouroughly, and stand for 24 hours with a teaspoon of bicarb. if they have previously been so abused!)
Some pretty bottles/ jars...scrubbed and given 30 mins at 100° in oven (leave them there 'til you need them) boil the lids, or through a hot cycle in dishwasher, again, leave closed 'til ready
Sugar (possibly lots, but cheap Aldi's own is just fine)
lemons
a folded newspaper,wooden board or tea-towel.



There is nothing that screams Autumn more than Blackberry and Apple.It's a combo made in heaven to celebrate this time of year, and you can go mad with it!

Apple & Blackberry Pie
 (this'll do a bottomless pie for4-6 people, if you don't live in our house, where it'll do2!)

(Do I have to tell you how to make pastry? Surely not, but just in case
4 oz pl. flour, 1 oz lard,  1oz butter, pinch of salt & cold water to mix... this'll give you top & bottom on  a small pie,top on a biggun)
 4oz plfl.
1 oz lard
1oz butter( cold)
cold water

1-1!/2lb apples
generous handfull blackberries
1-2 tblsp sugar


thickly slice, or chunk about 1 lb(500g) of apples (cooking apples are best, but surplus from a neighbour are fine)
juice of 1/2 a lemon
about 100mls of water

Fling the aforementioned(except blackberries) in a pan, and simmer  for about 10 mins, just to five the apple a head start When starting to soften, remove from heat and add a good handfullof  blackberries. Stir in sugar. Into a pie-dish. Top with pasrty, brush with milk, sprinkle with a little more sugar and bake at 180° for 30-40mins. Serve with custard or vanilla ice-cream

Apple& Blackberry Jelly (makes 7-8 225g jars, so feel free to halve!)

roughly 1 kg cooking/crab apple
roughly 1kg blackberries
roughly 900g sugar

Pick over the fruit. Remove anything that looks a bit manky. No need to peel or core the apples. All of the fruit into a pan with about 1.2 (2 pts) water. Simmer until all fruit is soft.
Tip into jelly-bag and leave over-night to drip
***If you don't have a jelly-bag, take a 4 legged stool/chair, turn it upside-down, twist rubber bands tightly about 2" down legs. Tie corners of tea-towel ABOVE rubber bands (they're there to stop everything sliding down!)so you have a sort of hammock in the middle. Place your pan/bucket beneath. Gently pour cooked fruit into hammock, go and have a drink, you've earned it! Leave over-night.*****

DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO PROD! THIS WILL MAKE JELLY CLOUDY !!!

Next day measure juice (should be about 1.2 lt/2 pts) For every 600ml /pt juice allow 450g/1lb sugar.

Bring juice to boil in a BIG pan (it rises, so big as poss, pls)Add sugar as juice comes to boil.Stir to make sure sugar has completely dissolved, then boil hard ( it should look properly scary!) for 5-10mins to reach setting point.( if you're posh you can get a sugar thermometer, or you can stick a plate in the fridge before you start. Setting point is when you plop a bit of your jelly on the cold plate, and in no time at all.....it sets!Funnily enough!)

Into warm, sterilised jars - see above, lids on and onto a wooden board or folded tea-towel until cold. Will keep for at least 2 years.

 BUT I HAVE SEIVE FULL OF FRUIT?????

Indeed you do, so make...

Fruit Leather
Squish the cooked fruit through a seive. Taste. Add more sugar, honey or lemon juice as you see fit, but should be on the sweet side, keeps better. Take two baking trays, line with baking paper (no! not alu-foil!!!)Spread your fruity mush thinly on each tray and "dry" at 50° for hmmmm...up to 12hours(warming oven overnight if you're lucky enough to have a Aga)When dry, but just sticky to touch, the leather should peel easily from paper. Wrap in fresh paper and store in an air-tight tin/tupperware. Cut strips off for lunch boxes, to dissolve in fruit salad etc. will keep for yonks(and looks great on X-mas tree!). You can do this with any thickish fruit puree, plum&cinamon is lush! or cook down 500g apples with 500g toms and a big dash of bloody Mary seasoning for a savoury version.

Finally, BOOZE!!!
 Okay, everyone's heard of Sloe Gin (which I shall give you the idiot-proof way of making next week)
but Blackberry Whiskey?
 Knocks everything else into a cocked hat!

Big, wide-necked jar

Bottle of whiskey (I leave the quality up to you. This will make a hooch into a tipple, and anything decent into something to hide from your friends!)

about 2 kgs/4 lbs Blackberries
225g/8oz sugar (this will give a medium liqueur) more or less to taste, but not too much less, the sugar helps it keep.
Hoy the above into a big jar. Shake every few days. Do this until sugar has dissolved.(or put in boot of car for1 month). Strain and bottle.Store in a cool, dark place. NB Put some in a small bottle to be sampled this Christmas, but hide the rest! It is defo one worth waiting 12 months for. Will continue to improve for 2 yrs.



All recipes are variations on a theme of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Pam Corbin

Madge and Mucky Books

"If you go down to the woods today..." chances are you won't find anything half as interesting as some of the stuff you could find there 30 years ago....But woah! I rush ahead of my self!
   I wanted to start by asking what in God's name has happened to Madge? Madonna, queen of reinventing herself, a woman I have to admire for still kicking out some damn good tunes after 30-something years  (and who I have deeply a personal reason to despise....robbed me of a grand weekend on the lash by getting married when she did....friends in bands, pah!) She's gone from being a fine, well preserved, slim and toned pop matriarch to something bearing a scary resemblance to the last chicken in Sainsbury's Sorry love, but there does come a point when toned tips over into scrawny, and frankly I wouldn't use an old broiler like that for soup! As for the last publicity shots...legs akimbo in fishnets and black satin hot-pants??? I've seen more erotic pics in Reader's Wives. Come to think of it, I've seen photos more likely to light my fire in Readers Digest, and I think their last centrefold was Phil Drabble in the 1980 Cumberland & Westmoreland Sheep-Dog Trials Special!
Which brings me neatly on to the woods. As you read this, on your pc or smartphone, you have a world of filth at your fingertips. It's hard to imagine that not so very long ago, if you were an adolescent, and wanted to see boobs & co. you had to go on a scouting expedition into the nearest woods/bushes. Invariably there one could find an abandonded "scuddy mag". Worth their weight in gold when applying for membership to a "gang".(Gangs in those days being lead by the kid with the biggest shed and mum most likely to supply cola and biscuits, rather than the nutter most likely to stab someone ) How did they get there? Why? This was a time before the internet. If you wanted to oggle Swedish Aupairs there was nothing else for it but to brave a trip to "the mucky book shop" In my home town this was a dingy little gaff down the alley next to the cinema. I would never have known, but my dad took me to see Return Of The Jedi  (so we're going back a year or two), and the cinema was packed. The queue was threatening to block the High Street, so we were made to queue down the alley. I was fascinated by the constant stream of furtive looking blokes who guiltily dashed into the "second-hand book shop". The lights were on, but the windows were so grubby the light barely penetrated the patina of decades of secrecy  (I swear you could see traces of the tape they used for the black-out paper!) As an avid reader I wanted to pass the time by browsing, hoping to find a rare Enid Blyton, so in order to prevent me from pressing my nose to the barred and grotty window, my dad had to tell me that this was not WH Smiths!
 Maybe this has something to do with why we're all so porky today. Back then you had to work for your jollies, getting it, disposing of it, and recycling it, and why the death of the High Street has been reflected in the drop in sales of  macs and brown paper bags.
:-)

Fear and Loathing In Suburbia

 Coming home to find the wife/ girlfriend standing in a doorway, hands on hips, looking wistfully into a room is enough to make any man who's been in a relationship for more than, ooh...20 minutes or so, break out in a sweat. And as she turns, smiles sweetly and says "You know, I've been thinking...." the blood, now running ice cold, drains from his face as he is hit with the sure and certain knowledge that his weekend is fucked! He'll either spend it up to his arse in emulsion and swatches of fabric that, frankly all look much the same, (N.B. Most men cannot differenciate between claret & maroon, taupe and mushroom, olive and avocado! It's red, brown or green I'm afraid, and if he can there's a fair to middling chance he's deceiving you, or himself!) or juggling sofas and sideboards to the tune of "No, left a bit. No! Not that far! Actually, can we try it over there by the window?" And after all that, after he's ruptured his truss, slipped several discs, and popped a hernia the size of a rugby ball, the beloved will return to the doorway, return the hands to the hips and say "Hmmm....maybe I preferred it the way it was..." And he needn't expect any sympathy for his agonies either! He may mutter through clenched teeth "What do you mean 'Just pop it over there'??? It's a solid oak Welsh fucking Dresser!!!!!" but he's likely to be answered with "Well the chap that brought it from the shop managed to move it on his own just fine." And it's no good saying  "Yeah? The "chap" in question was built like a Bulgarian olympic weightlifter you daft cow!!!!!!" She won't hear him . She'll be on the phone to her mum/sister/best friend to suggest they come round that evening for a barbeque and bottle of plonk to celebrate the new-look room.
 As a result of years of such abuse, my husband just gives me his best "sceptical husband" look whenever I mention furniture shifting, which I find rather annoying, so I dont mention it any more. These days I just wait until he's out of the way, have a quick game of hunt the toolbox, and set to myself. In this way I rearranged the youngest's room on Sunday. The only problem was that I was determined to un-bunk the Ikea bunk-beds, and this involved getting my hands on that holy-of-holies, his good set of allen-keys. After many hours, much sweating and swearing and the dumping of several bin-bags full of crap I was  happy. The room looked great. I turned to put away the keys I'd been using.....Aaaarrgghh! Oh bollocks! Where the Hell was the rest of the set? On the beds? In the beds? Under the beds? On the dining table? No! No! No! No! Having checked all of the most likely places, and some pretty unlikely ones, I had to conclude they'd gone out with the rubbish. Nothing else for it but to don the rubber gloves and get rummaging. Still no sign of the damn things. Fortunately they turned up today in a toy-box, so I'm off the hook and so's the husband. If they'd been lost forever I'd have had to argue that it was his own fault that I'd lost them, as if he'd been helping me, he wouldn't have lost them! ;-)

Maybe now would be a good time to introduce myself properly. Kids in bed, and Himself grunting away on the sofa. I'm a 30 something (a biggish something,granted, but still...) Scottish mum. I've lived in Germany for about 13 years now. No major religious affiliations, but do believe what my mum told me as a child."If it's for you, it won't go past you!" Life over here defo has it's plusses....warmer Summers, snowier Winters and efficient public transport, but there are many things I miss. Friends and family come top of that list (some higher than others), but self-raising flour comes a bloody close second!
   Most of what you read here will be absolutely true, although I reserve the right to change the facts to protect the innocent. If you should find anything here offensive, please feel free to not visit again. I might say it out loud, but chances are,you were thinking it ;-)

 Unlike many out there, I really do  rather love my mother-in-law. That's not to say that she doesn't, from time to time, do things that make me wish I was single however. Like just now. She's off on a Rest & Recuperation jolly at the mo, and Himself just gave her a call to see if she was having fun yet. In the background the youngest decided it was way past time to kick off, so Oma "had a word". Actually she had many, and while I'm very grateful that this seems to have brought a major strop to a peaceful conclusion, did she really have to tell the kids about the talking budgies she had as a girl??? I now have two kids squawking and making a hell of a racket, and it's WAY past Gin o'clock!
 Speaking of Himself, he's on top form tonight. Bloody funny for a German, even if I do say so myself. Was bewailing the fact that Facebook only sends him updates from a select few of his FB friends..." If I want notification of someone's posts, do I have to mark them with a yellow star? FFS! I thought those days were long gone!"

  So, that's it. All over for another 4 years, and less than 36 hours after the flames went out I'm so bored that, at the suggestion of a friend, I've decided to give this blogging lark a go, and after only 3 hours or so wrestling with URLs and suchlike it would appear that I am at last hot to trot!

  Haven't the last two weeks been fantastic though? From the sheer WTF? of Mr. Boyles opening ceremony and BoJo getting himself strung-up, as it were, right through to Eric Idle and the Morris Men, The Who and another whopping dose of WTF? from the closing bash it's been a joy. And all over in less time than it took the athletes to get into the stadium at the big kick-off, it feels to me. My days seem so empty without the action, the emotion, and, as a trainee dirty old woman, Tom Daley and his tiny-weeny budgie-smugglers! :$

   So now I need something else to occupy my time. Am thinking of starting a campaign to have Danny Boyle put in charge of everything that normally bores to tears...the opening of Parliament, the Queen's Chrimbo address...I can just imagine him having her Majesty bursting forth from a giant cracker pulled by Charles and Camilla while the DoE and Prince Edward get down to some serious Twister in the background...hmmm