Thursday, 30 April 2020

How Does Your Garden Grow?

More work for Tassel Pickles in the offing. This year's chilli plant seedlings are doing well...


we have...

Cowhorn Hot Peppers
Hungarian Yellow Wax Hot Sweet Peppers
Ancho Pablano Hot Peppers and
Explosive Ember Hot Peppers.

...all doing well. But there's more....

For Christmas I also bought Dawn these seeds - a Rainbow Salad Growing kit.


They are all growing well too.


 So I'm going to have to come up with what to do with a whole load of
  • Crystal Apple Cucumbers 
  • Amaze Lettuce 
  • Apache Spring Onions 
  • Rainbow Radishes  and 
  • Chioggia Beetroot
We also have about 120 Dill plants.


Hmm. Dill-pickled cucumbers will be on this year's Christmas Catalogue for a start I think!

Wednesday, 29 April 2020

Pickling Update

We ran out of pickled onions. Hmm. Maybe Tassel Pickles should go back into production. But there wasn't long till lunch so I needed a quick recipe. So I combined 2 recipes from my Joy of Pickling book - "Basic Pickled Onion Rings" (always great with burgers) and "English-pub-styled pickled onions" and used the shallots I had on the vegetable rack.


Yes. This is what was left after the meal. They still need a bit longer to fully pickle, but thuumbs up to the experiment.

Meanwhile we are working our way through last season's chilli produce. We are now onto one of the big jars of pickled jalapeƱos.


But we still have plenty left...



Chilli sauce, Chilli Jam or Chilli chutney, anyone?

Tuesday, 28 April 2020

The Old Ways


One of my retirement presents was this book, and it is now my bedtime reading. The Old Ways is beautifully written and poetically and very evocatively describes landscape, routes, history and characters. I am now about 1/3 way through it. I particularly liked Chapter 4, "Silt" with its description of walking the Broomway, which I remember my friend Joyce walking in 2018. Here is a flavour of the writing...

"We stepped off the causeway. The water was warm on the skin, puddling to ankle depth. Underfoot I could feel the brain-like corrugations of the hard sand, so firmly packed that there was no give under the pressure of my step. Beyond us extended the sheer mirror-plane of the water, disrupted only here and there by shallow humps of sand and green slews of weed.

Out and on we walked, barefoot over and into the mirror-world. I glanced back at the coast. The air was grainy and flickering, like an old newsreel. The sea wall had hazed out to a thin black strip. Structures of unknown purpose – a white-beamed gantry, a low-slung barracks – showed on the shoreline. Every few hundred yards, I dropped a white cockle shell.

With so few orientation points and so many beckoning paths, we were finding it hard to stay on course. I was experiencing a powerful desire to walk straight out to sea and explore the greater freedoms of this empty tidal world."

You can read more in an excerpt from it on the BBC site here.

Highly recommended, and not just by me!

Monday, 27 April 2020

Gin number 6

Here is the latest in the gin creation mission. My original 5 bases had the residual botanicals infused for another 2 days with another 100ml of vodka each and the resulting gins sampled and then blended with the original ones. Tasting and retasting, I came to my hypothesis of what I wanted my gin to taste like - all recorded in my Gin notebook, of course. What I was supposed to do is take one of the bases and modify it one bit at a time. But from my repeated tastings I knew that I needed to combine some of the best of each to get where I was wanting to get to.

My target recipe was guided by..
  • Less of the Allspice/Cloves notes of Gins 1 and 2
  • Yes keep some liquorice
  • Yes keep a bit of whole cardamom but a lot less than Gin 4
  • Have plenty of citrus but not as much as Gins 2 and 5
  • Keep some peppercorn from Gin 1, but try my pink one
  • Replace the powdered cassia bark from Gin 5 with some (non-powdered) cinnamon bark, and a bit less of it
  • Keep some Angelica root - Gin 3 rather than Gin 5 level
  • Add some floral top notes with some rose petals
  • Add some root ginger for a more gentle spiciness

This was my resulting recipe:
Juniper                                   9g
Coriander                               5g
Angelica                                 1g   (these 3 are from my Tanquerey inspired base)
Cardamom (whiole)               2g   (although I note none of the commercial gins described in the book use it)
Lemon                                    4g
Orange                                    4g   (a little less than Gins 2 and 5 and matching lemon and orange)
Liquorice                                1g   (as in Gins 3 and 4 - and it's in the blend for Tanquerey)
Root Ginger                            1g   (new)
Pink Peppercorns                    1g   (instead of black peppercorns)
Cinnamon bark                        1/2g (instead of cassia)
Rose petals                              2g   (new)

So how did it turn out?


After 30 hours infusion I filtered off the gin and put the botanicals back in the jar to infuse for another 2 days in 150ml more vodka.

Just one sniff and  little taste and... wow!

Nose: Sweet and herbal
Taste (neat) :  Sweet citrus and perfume
Aftertaste : Very long finish with a slight spicy woodiness from the ginger and liquorice.

50:50 with water: The liquorice and angelica come forward but a long, sweet and light finish with just a little woodiness at the end.

And here it is with ice and tonic. Better than any of the others....


Doesn't that look pretty? Well that's because it is infused not distilled with colour from the pink peppercorns and rose petals. Dawn was pretty impressed too. The floral notes shine through but there is still a firm junipery base with some woody depth and the same long finish.

We had some during our family Zoom quiz yesterday afternoon.



Delicious and already unique. I'm not going to rush it, but will take a few more tastings before tweaking the recipe. I think I might ditch the cardamoms altogether and add a little more ginger and maybe some Hibiscus. More anon.

Sunday, 26 April 2020

Covid memes

I've so far resisted including topical posts not related to the core themes of my interests. But I'll make an exception for this. Quite the funniest meme of the Covid crises I've seen... See this video.

Saturday, 25 April 2020

Pop-up Beer Shop

No pubs open to visit, but there is a way to get beer... Brewshed Brewery in Ingham are operating a Pop-up Beer Shop, open Tuesday and Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. I contacted them last Tuesday to ask what mini-kegs they had available and was told they were sold out for that day, but I could reserve one for Saturday.

So I went to collect it today... a mini-keg of their delicious Sable Black  IPA....


All very well organised with proper social distancing. My reserved keg was on the pallet on the right along with the others that had been ordered for collection. Contactless payment, of course, and here it is at home.


I have to leave it to settle for 24 hours, but that's my beer (and Dawn's) for the next few days sorted. We're looking forward to it!

Friday, 24 April 2020

Nowton Walk

Familiar ground today... I decided to do the "Gentle Slopes Not Rolling Hills" longer 5 1/2 mile Nowton Walk, from Discover Suffolk, although it doesn't seem to be on their website yet. But I got the leaflet when the Bury St. Edmunds Ramblers did it in November, as you can see here.

Of course I had get to the start of the walk first and then get home again at the end, so I ended up doing nearly 10 miles. This was my route.


Here are a few of my photos.

On my way to the start I passed the cricket ground. Nobody playing, of course.


The lime avenue is fully in leaf now.


Some peony roses by the care home.


The folly in dappled sunshine.


I took the wrong turning at the panda and came out further along the road opposite Apple Tree farm with its alpacas.


The cottage had some lovely bluebells.


Sicklesmere.


These trees between the fields of oil-seed rape are in leaf now too.


Nowton church.


More oil-seed rape.


The sickly scent and garish colour of flowers make it my least favourite field craop to walk through.

But these  lesser stitchwort(?) flowers are nice. 


On my way home I came across these chalked games on the footpath just outside Sebert Wood School.



I got home just in time to cook the tea again.

You can see more details of my route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.

Haircut

I've been and had my hair cut today.... upstairs to the bathroom. Dawn decided to get some clippers and had a first go on William last week. This week it was my turn. Perhaps a bit more off than I normally get, but the result is quite neat....


Lovely job!

QC Blogging Day

Times Quick Cryptic No 1599 by Mara

A lovely quickie from Mara today, mostly quite straightforward, I thought, although the SE corner held me up a little. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if others didn't find it very easy as one or two clues (e.g. 1A, 21A and 24A) are, in retrospect, maybe a little tricky. I loved the combination of 3D and 13D and that our setter didn't cross-reference the clues, which must have been tempting. I also liked the sneaky definition at 24A. 22D and 15D were my last two in as I finished under my target time at 4:48. COD, I think, to 21A. Thanks Mara! How did you all get on?

Read all about it... )

Thursday, 23 April 2020

Crossword Practice

Yesterday's crosswords. As you can see I'm getting plenty of practice.

Wednesday, 22 April 2020

Bury St. Edmunds Meander

I got out this afternoon for a bit of a meander and took my camera to see if I could get any decent spring photos. My route encompassed the 10 acre field, Natterer's Wood, the Abbey Gardens, a wander through the town centre and a stretch of the River Lark. In all it was about 6 1/2 miles.

This was my route.


Here is a selection of my photos.
















What a lovely afternoon stroll!

You can find more details of my route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.

Val-de-ri Val-de-ra

This is, I hope, a gentle themed puzzle with mildly cryptic or straight definitions. Two clues have an additional anagram part as extra help.


You can find a PDF version to print here.
You can also do the puzzle online here.

Oh. And the earworm to with it is here.

Do let me know how you get on.

[Update 25-Apr: 6D should have read   (2,4,7) (now amended)

And you can find the solution here. ]

Tuesday, 21 April 2020

On a Mission to Creat the Perfect Gin - Next Steps

This is a new project which, if successful, may generate some Christmas presents for some friends and family. You may have already seen The Beginnings, when I unpacked my still, my cleaning run and first distillation of some Apple Brandy. Before I start distilling some gin, though, I need to do some preparation.

I am following a process outlined in a book I got for my birthday, Still Magic, A gin distiller's guide, by Marcel Thompson.


The first steps include getting to know your gins by doing a comparative tasting. Well we have 3 gins in the house at the moment. Tanquerey Export Strength GinKelso Crow Man's Gin and Greyson's Seville Orange and Persian Lime Gin. For each gin you put a shot of gin and add the same amount of water and then smell and sip and make notes of what you think. I had a go first.


And then Dawn and Sarah had a go.


Sarah's descriptions were the best, including "Lemon sherbet", "Chalky lovehearts" and "Herby mouthwash" but Dawn had the most derogatory. She said the Tanquerey was "Like hand sanatiser". I thought that was her favourite gin!

The next step was to make some initial gin bases  by infusion of 5 different recipes in vodka... a quick and easy way to make a gin. The 5 bases are based on Marcel's experience of different gins and the aim is to do a comparison, as we did with commercial gins, to learn the effects of different botanicals in the mix.

Firstly I assembled my botanicals. Some came from the cupboard. Others I had sourced via the Intenet over the last couple of weeks.


Now I got out my scales and labelled a jar for each base.


I weighed out the botanical recipe for each base and added them to the respective jars. It was here that I discovered our kitchen scales are not precise enough to measure out accurately enough, so the mixtures are maybe a little approximate. Base 2, for example required 12g of juniper, 3g of coriander, 6g of lemon peel, 3g of orange peel, 1g of fennel, 1g of allspice, and 2g of cloves. I also discovered I needed more corinader seeds and needed to use some ground coriander instead for some.

Then 200ml of vodka is added to each jar, they are closed and given a good shake.


24 hours later it was time to pass each mixture through a sieve into a bottle. I kept the spice mixes and put them back in the jar with another 100ml of vodka to see what further infusion for a couple of days more would produce.


Here are my 5 bottles.


As these are infusions rather than distillations they have all been coloured by the botanicals. I left them for any particulates to settle for a day [I think I will use a filter paper in the sieve next time].

And so, tonight, to the tastings, notebook at the ready again. The little thistle glasses were perfect for holding a small amount extracted by pipette from each to sip neat. Dawn had a go too.


Just to the side you can see my new scales which arrived today andhave a  0.1g level of precision. Perfect for my next mixing and I was able to measure out 20g of garlic precisely for our Nasi Goring for tea.

And so to the gins. All quite powerfully flavoured! My notes on each are:
1. Orange and spicy from the allspice and peppercorns even though there is only a bit of orange in the mix.
2. Light and sweet with the cloves coming through a strong citrus flavour.
3. Very junipery and rather earthy, from the angelica and liquorice.
4. Very floral dominated by the large amount of cardamom in the mix.
5. Christmasy with an orange taste. The cassia is what made the difference here, I think.

OK so far. But how about in a gin& tonic. I made one from 1 measure of Gin 2 and 1/2 measure of vodka on ice and topped up with Schweppes tonic water. 1 for me and 1 for Dawn.


Cheers!


But that's enough gin for today, we can try the others with tonic over the next week.