Not fishing in Whitby

Posted by louisa on Thursday 18 August 2011 in goals | 8 comments

I’ve had “go sea fishing” in the North Sea on my goal list last year but faff and disorganisation meant it didn’t happen, so it was pushed onto my goal list for this year. Eight months through the year, faff and disorganisation were at risk of having their way with things again, so rather than postpone any longer, we decided to go risk going in the busy summer holiday period yesterday.

We found an afternoon “taster trip”, took the doggie to her granny & pop-pops’ house for the day (she’s their granddog) and organised our schedule with a good hour/hour-and-a-half buffer zone between getting there and needing to go to the boat, just in case we got lost, got stuck in traffic or had trouble finding a parking space. That hour/hour-and-a-half buffer zone would have covered one or two of those eventualities but, as it turned out, not all three. It took us nearly twice as long to get there as it should have done, and we missed the boat (literally) by about ten minutes. Somewhat annoying.

Lemons/lemonade – we were in Whitby, my favourite seaside town (sorry Southport, you might have birthed me but your sea is, frankly, a bit rubbish) and had already mentally committed to having an afternoon off so we played tourists: a walk on the beach, fish & chips, donuts, some casual jet jewellery window shopping and some serious seagull watching. We parked at the Abbey so got to have a distant gaze at that too.

I also indulged my craft bone with a visit to Bobbins, the mostly yarn/some antiques shop in the shopping area on the east of the harbour. I stroked various yarns before buying some King Cole Riot DK (very nice, even though it’s 70% acrylic).

It’s a shame we didn’t get to go fishing but we still had a jolly pleasant afternoon in the sunshine. We were hoping to actually go fishing next Wednesday but as the Whitby Folk Festival starts next Monday, I suspect it’ll be too busy for us – but we will get there, we will eventually, we will!

(Photo from a previous wintery trip to Whitby – we didn’t think it would be sensible to take an expensive camera out on a fishing trip so didn’t have one yesterday. Imagine the same shot with a brighter blue sky and about a hundred times as many people :) )

UK people – have you been to Whitby? What are your favourite spots there – any recommendations for places to eat/drink for when we do return to fish?

Alphabet in August – I to L

Posted by louisa on Monday 15 August 2011 in meta | 0 comments

This is a month-long creative exercise led by Chiot’s Run: descriptive words and pictures about me/my life starting with each letter of the alphabet. Most people are doing a letter a day but I’m doing it in groups instead ;)

• Alphabet in August – A to D
• Alphabet in August – E to H

(I love it when it’s icy in winter and I have a good excuse to hide inside near the stove, crafting with animals on top of me :) )

I is for…

• Interested: in everything. All the time.
• Introspective: this exercise is an example of this! I’m generally much more negative when introspective in my own brain though and have had to stop keeping diaries because they just became negative introspection feedback loops.
• Introverted: I came across this list of myths about introverted people a few months ago and nodded a lot.
• Insolent: I generally don’t mean to be but I often come off that way because I don’t blindly abide by a number of social pleasantries for the sake of it (see “introverted”). I also usually beat myself up about it for hours afterwards (see “introspective”! ;) )
• Idler: Different from being lazy (which I also am, see below), I greatly value regular periods of idling – downtime playing computer games or relatively mindless crafting etc. With those distracting my conscious brain, my subconscious can figure things out all sorts of things for me or produce a variety of creative ideas.

(John, my favourite meatbag. Well, human meatbag. We share a brain as well as a home but we rarely share dessert, oh no.)

J is for…

Wild plum/cherry plum ketchup

Posted by louisa on Thursday 11 August 2011 in cooking, preserving, wild food | 2 comments

As I mentioned yesterday when discussing my SUPER AWESOME YUMMY jam (it’s gooooooood), I used the rest of our last plum-type fruit harvest to make some ketchup.

Last year, I made jam and spicy chutney but this year I was inspired by a tweet from Jono from Real Men Sow‘s tweet linking to a cherry plum ketchup recipe a few weeks ago.

Since it was a bit of a test, I quartered the quantities of Norfolk Kitchen’s original recipe (although accidentally only halved the amount of onion) and added about 10ml of Worchestershire Sauce as well the vinegar because I thought it would add some nice undertones. I also added a little water, maybe 100ml in total, while it was simmering as I thought it would be getting a little sticky for ketchup.

My quartered amount – based on 500g of plums – made more than I thought it would – 3 bottles full of sauce (this old Heinz bottle and two Encona ones). I imagine a week or two of “aging” will help the flavours develop but it’s already pretty tasty – fruity but savoury. It’s a lovely colour too – a proper full-bodied deep red – first taste with the eyes and all that ;)

Like Tracey, I’ll probably use it with things I wouldn’t normally Heinz up, like cheese on toast. I’m also interested to know how it will work with the Swillington Farm pork and plum sausages we have in the freezer – double plum action! :)

This year’s wild plum/cherry plum jam

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 10 August 2011 in cooking, preserving, wild food | 4 comments

I wasn’t planning to make any jam from the mysterious plum-like fruit that grows outside our kitchen window but when John said he wasn’t sure if he could be bothered making wine, I had to do something with our first harvest. And boy, am I glad I did.

It was about 1kg of mysterious plums (pre-stoning), about 300ml of water, about 750g of sugar and 2tsp of vanilla extract/flavouring.

I’m not sure whether it’s the vanilla or the fact that the plums were super mega ripe when I used them but YUM. I think it’s far nicer than last year (although to be fair, it is a while since I ate last year’s jam so I might be misremembering it/confusing it with something else).

I only made about 3lb because I wanted to make some ketchup with the rest of the plums I had to hand (that’s cooking as I type) but it’s so nice that I want to make more straight-away. Thankfully it looks like we’ll get a few more kilos of fruit yet!

The purse of faffiness

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 9 August 2011 in making | 1 comment

One of my August mini goals was to make myself a new purse. My old purse has been gradually falling to bits and been on my “replace imminently” list for at least a year – the fabric on the other one was see-through it was so threadbare.

I wouldn’t usually blog about such a simple make but I feel like I’ve sweated blood for this one so need to record its completion for posterity ;)

I don’t know why but it just wouldn’t come together. I tried handsewing it at the weekend using a pretty feature of original garment (a pyjama top) but that ended up super wonky so I decided to machine sew another attempt this afternoon – only to find that my replacement for the dog-chewed spool pin had gone missing. I turned the house upside down looking for that (and got somewhat distracted tidying/decluttering) then ordered a replacement for the replacement before realising the machine worked just about ok with the cotton on the bobbin-filling nub. So I cut out my fabric for the second attempt at the purse, only for it to be too small when sown together (I didn’t measure twice, cut once, tut tut tut). Then I couldn’t find the wonky one I made at the weekend (I needed the zip from that for the new one) so turned the house upside down a second time before pilfering one from something else instead. All in all, I’ve put a ridiculous amount of time/effort into making such a simple thing!

But it’s together now and I like it. Plus, it’s almost entirely made from recycled/reclaimed materials – the only new bit is the cotton thread. Now to catch-up on all the stuff I was supposed to be doing while I was faffing around with this…!