#everybitcountschallenge Day 15, 15 August 2022 - Blackcurrants and Blackberries

 Today has been another busy day.  Lots of bitting about as usual, lots of little projects.

All the usual suspects like the wines, the Sourdough starter, burping the garlic and honey ferment etc have been dealt with.  Once you get them started, they are pretty easy to maintain it is just a matter of keeping track of what needs doing when, and with my memory these days that can be a bit hit and miss too. Thank goodness for mobile phones, and calendars on computers otherwise I would be up the creek without the proverbial paddle.

I have checked on the dried Orange peel today and that is nice crisp and dry so I have popped that into a storage container.  I will add to it as I go along, but at least I have some now to pop in a stew or casserole if I need to.  I do not like wasting stuff at all.

I have also got my Pickle jars all clean and sorted out ready to start shortly with the Pickling Onions and then hopefully the Shallots.  Shallots are my favourite.

I also found another bottle of cured fruit vinegar which was hiding on a shelf.  This one is Blackcurrant, and I have sweetened it in a similar fashion to the Blackberry one I dealt with the other day.  That is all nicely bottled up and labelled.  I have three full bottles from this one.  It smells wonderful and I think it will be gorgeous on salads, dribbled on roast meat or on my old faithful Goat's cheese.

I also made a sugar syrup up today using 8oz of sugar to 1/2 pint of water.  You bring it to the boil for about a minute, and then you add another 1/2 pint of water to cool it down and stir together the two liquids to make sure that the sugar syrup is integrated with the water.  

As my jars were warmed, I used the warm syrup to three quarters fill the jars.  You bring to the boil and process for 2 minutes (instructions from The Good Housekeeping Complete Book of Preserving ISBN 0-7126-4718-X.  

It is a favoured book, and one in which I have added handwritten recipes I have come across on my travels. for my own use.  Have been collecting recipes for years.  These will eventually go into a binder I have created for my favourite recipes or useful recipes.  I have a lot of books that I have collected over the years, many of them out of print although I believe you can get a lot of them through second hand book sites.

I am pleased with how they have come up and the lids have already pinged!  Happy dance.

And a few more things off the "To Do" List.

We have the nice gentle rain constant and doing some good as I type this.  However, we still need more.  The trouble is that the ground is that parched it is not soaking up the wet very easily.  Hopefully things will resolve themselves.  I think all of us need water barrells in the garden from now on in to ensure that any plants we have would survive in the future.  Our climate is changing and if we do not look after it we will be signing our own death warrants.  I do not think that the infrastructure for feeding ourselves and growing is up to snuff and I certainly think that the Water Authorities really ought to start stopping the leaks, and also having storage water facilities to store the rainwater until it is needed as in the drought conditions we are faced with now.  They do not at present.  We see the reservoirs and yet there is no long term storage. These businesses if they are not going to invest should return essential services for life to the public domain.  There has been so much unnecessary waste of resources, food, water and yet people are starving and going without.  I am all right Jack attitude is not really acceptable in the circumstances.

Not quite sure what I am going to do tomorrow.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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