In Praise of Preserves

When I was twelve, my very first piece of English homework when I started "big school" was to write an instructive piece on preparing food. We were reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and much of the book describes how Laura and her sisters were shown the homesteading skills necessary for their family's survival in the wilderness of "the Big Woods". I recall the vivid descriptions she gave on how to butcher and cure meat, tap for maple syrup, churn butter and make cheese. I chose to write about pickling onions, as I loved the whole idea of harvesting and preserving food to last all through the winter; it sounded all cosy, and appealed to my love of anything and everything vinegary.

I had completely forgotten about this until yesterday, when I prepared for my annual bout of chutney-making for Christmas. But as I started to collect the ingredients together I remembered that warm, cosy feeling I got from reading that book, and realised that every year I replicate this when I make my enormous vat of Christmas Chutney for friends and family. I unconsciously fulfil a deep-seated desire to nourish and bolster those I love.

I first made my Christmas Chutney when I was twenty. It's a Delia recipe, from her Classic Christmas Collection, and every year since I was twelve - the same year I read Little House actually - my mum, sister and I have watched the accompanying TV programme. We know it practically word for word, and have attempted several of the recipes over the years, but for some reason only the chutney has stuck (and I don't just mean all over my kitchen surfaces and hob top). I wanted to make some to give as Christmas presents, and it was a resounding success. So much so that I got requests to make it every year.

One year however I really couldn't be bothered: it was quite a faff to chop kilos of dried fruits and onions by hand, plus it was impossible to prevent the pungent aroma of the molten chutney from pervading every room in the house as it bubbled away for two hours. But my family were aghast! The following year my stepdad bribed me with treated me to a proper catering-sized preserving pan and I got a Moulinex food processor for my birthday, so I then knew there would be no turning back! This will be my 18th year of chutney-making. Thankfully it's grown to become less of a task that I sometimes felt saddled with in the past and more of a Christmas tradition, one performed cheerily and with immense love.

There is something hugely satisfying in bottling something you have made from scratch. You get a little production line going, lining the jars up before ladling the thick, warm, fruity mass into the funnel where it slowly plops down to fill the jar. Then out come the little wax paper discs, which are methodically trimmed down as necessary before being lain over the sticky goodness, sealing it within. Lids are screwed down tightly, and a couple of hours later you hear the 'Pop!' as their push-buttons get sucked into the vacuum created as it all cools. And it's only then that I think "Ah yes, a job well done."

My weeny little Kilner jars; ain't they beautiful?

So here I'm going to share with you how I make this yummy concoction. Delia has named it Christmas Chutney due to the inclusion of lots of dates, prunes and dried apricots as well as a large quantity of allspice berries. You are probably familiar with ground allspice, and would most definitely recognise the cinnamony, clovey, nutmeggy aroma it has. Some people think that allspice is just that; a mixture of 'all spices' (or certainly the three I've specified above). But it's actually just one berry, the allspice berry. 

Now, in all the years I've been making this I have NEVER managed to locate said berries in a supermarket. And believe me I've tried dozens. Delia's book was first published in 1989, long before the bounteous wonder that is online shopping came into our everyday existence, and when I first made it I couldn't lay hands on them for love nor money. So I just used ground allspice instead, and this seems to work just fine. Of course these days I could easily buy some online, but I'd be worried that it wouldn't taste the same so I stick with the ground.

I'm not going to provide an ingredients list here because:

1. I'm not entirely sure what the cyber-rules for posting someone else's recipes online are. Will I get a slap on the wrist or, horror of horrors, will I upset or offend my beloved Delia? We've all seen her when she's had a few, she looks like she could get quite aggressive if provoked.

2. It's late at night and I can't quite be bothered. 

Fear not! I provide below a link to Delia's original recipe in full:

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/chutney/christmas-chutney.html

Here are the raw ingredients for making approximately 4 litres of chutney:

When it comes to chutney, I know my onions.

Due to the time of year, I always seem to encounter problems in procuring the exact quantities of a particular dried fruit; I'm always missing 250g of apricots or 500g of prunes because Sainsbury's entire stock has already been bought to make mincemeat, Christmas cakes and puddings. So I just use what I can get my hands on, and make sure I have the ratio of fruit to onion the same.

The original recipe makes 1 litre, but I triple the quantities in order to make enough to sustain my loved ones throughout the year. (I know it says 4 litres above, but when you make preserves in this sort of quantity there doesn't appear to be as much evaporation required in order to achieve the correct consistency, hence three times the ingredients gives you four times the finished product. Bonus!)

Thank God I now have one of these! Can you imagine chopping all that lot by hand?!

First task is to process all the fruits and onions. I always do the onions first, because the dried fruit can get rather sticky when it's being chopped at high speed, and it coats and clings messily to the inside of the mixing bowl. So messy stuff always goes last. 

You'd get more than your 5-a-day from this lot!

Once I've put all of these to one side (and again, the volume I make is so enormous I just dump it all into my massive Jamie Oliver serving dish and keep this on the kitchen table because there's not enough space on the counter), I pour cider vinegar into my enormous preserving pan, along with fresh grated ginger, sea salt and a jar of ground allspice. 

I am never one to under-season a dish, and so I always pop a teaspoon of whole cloves and a couple of cinnamon sticks into an old (clean!) pop-sock, tie it securely and throw that into the pan too. Then I grate half a nutmeg on top of everything and whack the heat up.

Mmmm... pop-socky goodness

Once the vinegar has come to a boil (and it's at this point I make sure the kitchen door is firmly shut and windows are open, to avoid the acrid aroma from wafting into the rest of the house),  I add the chopped onions and fruit, and a vast amount of demerara sugar, then give it all a thorough stir with a rubber spatula. 

Raw chutney - not so tasty. Do not try at this point.

Once all that delicious demerara sugar has dissolved in the warm vinegar, it turns beautifully viscous and suspends all the pieces of fruit, onion and spices in an aromatic, rich conker-brown gloop (see below). I must admit, at this point I do like to try a wee spoonful. It tastes like hot Branston pickle at this stage, which is tasty as it goes but, as I say, I am rather a pickly girl, and what's not to love about a molten vat of sugar, vinegar, sweet, sticky fruit, onions and spices? Hell, it's virtually a jointed bird away from sweet 'n' sour chicken!

If only I could invent a scratch-and-sniff screen...

Then you turn the heat right down to its lowest possible setting and keep it on the gentlest of simmers for a good two-and-a-half to three hours, stirring now and then to make sure it doesn't catch on the bottom of the pan. 

I am always amazed by the alchemy of cooking. 'Tis truly magical.

When you can draw a wooden spoon across the surface, and the channel it creates doesn't fill up with liquid, your chutney is done! Here you can see how much liquid has evaporated by that rather lovely tidemark around the edge of the pan. It's now so thick you can stand your wooden spoon up in it, and thus full of mouth-wateringly concentrated flavours. 

And so, it all boils down to this.

I then leave it to cool for a good half-an-hour, usually longer, because the quantity I make is so vast, before dealing with the jarring and sealing. It's vital to sterilise all your jars, lids, and preferably the funnel you're using too; I accomplish this by running everything in a hot wash in the dishwasher, then placing it all in a low oven (120℃ or thereabouts) for five minutes. Make sure you use a clean tea towel or oven glove to remove everything from the oven too, otherwise you'll undo all your sterilising efforts and will have to start again. 

Ladly, ladly-ho. Or summat.

As soon as all your jars have been filled to the brim, smooth a wax disc carefully over the surface, ensuring no air bubbles are trapped beneath it.  Then screw the lids on tightly, and place your bounty somewhere cool and dark. I put mine in a covered box in the garage, that's perfect. They need to be stored as they have to mature for one month before eating, if you can keep your hands off for that long. This Christmas Chutney is perfect with all cold cuts, sausages, or just some good bread and a whopping lump of cheese. Enjoy!

All labelled and with their Christmas hats on. Don't they look smart?

Why Halloween Scares The Sh*t Out of Me (and it's not for that reason!)

What are you grinning at, sunshine?

Well, thank God that's over for another year. Once again the pumpkin carcasses have been extinguished, the kids' costumes lie strewn all over the house have been put away carefully, and it's officially November today. [Um, I did begin writing this post on 1st November, but as you can see from the actual posted date I took rather a long time in finishing. I will get better at this, I promise.] So that must mean that Halloween is once again dead and buried. And I say Hurrah for that. 

Bloody Halloween has been a thorn in my side since September 1st this year so it feels as if it's been a very l-o-n-g time coming. Dude started school last September, therefore this year was his very first experience of long summer holidays. Now, you don't have to be a parent to realise that all the 'Back To School' fodder is stocked in shops across the country precisely the day BEFORE schools break up for the summer hols; by the same token, all the Halloween crap first begins showing its cheap 'n' nasty face during the FINAL week of summer hols. Just to give the kids something else to go barmy about as if they didn't have enough reasons already. So Dude has been literally counting down the days until All Saint's Eve for the past two months. And now I'm done, baby, I'm so over it.

So why am I so down on this particular celebration? Aside from the fact that we have it rammed down our throats for weeks and weeks leading up to the event itself (but then that's true of all modern-day First World "celebrations" so I can't single out Halloween for this reason), our family never really acknowledged it when I was a child. It wasn't a 'thing' yet, wasn't something worth getting hot and bothered about. It was an amusing little anomaly on the Christian calendar that we vaguely knew our American cousins were really nuts over. We were aware of the practise of Trick-or-Treating, but our teachers wagged their fingers and told us to NEVER EVER knock on strangers' doors and accept sweets from them because there might be chopped-up razor blades secreted inside, or poisoned toffee apples a la Snow White. So we didn't 'do' Halloween.

I have also never really liked sweets. I can literally feel the enamel melting from my molars if I succumb to even the smallest little nugget of artificially coloured sugar, yuk! No, I am a chocolate girl through and through. But Halloween is all about the sweets, am I right? Much easier to divvy up a bucket of neon-coloured plastic-coated hard, chewy and crunchy candy to the little monsters who knock on your door than an enormous bar of Dairy Milk, isn't it? Also, sweets have the added bonuses of neither melting nor expiring – have you ever seen a lollipop with a best before date? Me neither. 

My children's Holy Grail.

But the real reason I dread Halloween so much is because I suffer from anxiety, am incredibly introverted and an HSP to boot. (That's an acronym for Highly Sensitive Person for those of you who have never heard of it. Don't worry, neither had I until last year, but that's another story. Do Google it if you're interested, apparently Alanis Morrisette is one too!) So it's not the prospect of any eggs being flung at my house or any spooky, supernatural goings-on that scare me, it's just the fact that there will be an awful lot of PEOPLE coming round and KNOCKING ON THE DOOR. 

Under usual circumstances just having one unsolicited caller is enough to give me the willies and get me so jittery I have to retire to do some deep breathing for a bit after they leave. So when it gets closer to 20 separate visits from all the Trick-or-Treaters who live in our little village, my heart is hammering like a train.

I've always been what one might call "nervy" or "highly strung", but it's only since I became a mother that the way I feel has really impacted my life. See, the thing nobody ever tells you before you have kids is how much goddamned socialising has to be done. First there's the gamut of baby groups you feel compelled to haul your newborn to so that they get to 'socialise' with other babas (lest they grow up to be a freak like you); then it's the Mother & Toddler groups where you get to experience all those wonderful mummy-cliques; THEN they start school where not only do you have the twice-daily torture that is The School Run, but also the multitude of birthday parties to which your children are invited AND YOU ARE ALSO EXPECTED TO ATTEND!!! 

I am, and always have been, utter pants at small talk. Nothing is guaranteed to make me start sweating like a pig on heat more than the prospect of having to THINK OF THINGS TO SAY to someone I don't know particularly well, or indeed at all. I find this utterly excruciating and exhausting in equal measure, and am constantly worried I am going to blurt out something stupid that makes me look and sound like an idiot. 

So here's a summary of how these 'afflictions' affect me:

1. Anxiety: persistent feelings of worry, self-consciousness, low self-esteem and experiencing "excessive feelings of... dread in relation to feared social situations". These feelings occur before, during AND after the event.
2. Introvert: feeling drained after spending a period of time in the company of others, needing to retreat and recharge by spending time on my own immediately afterwards. Thoughtful and intensely private.
3. Highly Sensitive Person: easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input (loud noises, bright or flashing lights, coarse fabrics, strong smells). Very aware of other people's moods or a change in atmosphere. Startles ridiculously easily. 

This range of symptoms therefore always ensures Halloween is the single most terrifying/stressful 'Celebration' of my year. First there's the dread part: spending the whole day preparing myself mentally for the onslaught of noisy little screechy strangers demanding free sweets that evening. Then there's the actual moment they knock loudly on the door... and I jump out of my skin, even though I know who it is and am expecting them. Next comes the 'having to talk to other people' thing, which actually isn't that difficult when it's just a pair of gormless teenagers standing there in their lacklustre costume of mask and black saggy tracksuit. However it's mostly smaller, louder children who arrive with their parents in tow, which not only assaults all my highly-attuned senses at once but also leaves me umming and erring thinking of something to say after they've yelled "TRICK OR TREEEEEAAAATTT!" in my face. 

Honestly, sometimes I feel like one of those pathetic blonde teens in a cheap B horror movie who is afraid of her own shadow all the time. It's the stuff of nightmares, I tell you, and not the spooky sort you'd usually associate with Halloween, just my everyday life. Well, at least now I only have the fireworks every evening to make me jump a foot off the sofa. But my tension is easily diffused by being able to shout "Oh, feck off you noisy bastard!" to a firework. You really can't do that to Trick-or-Treaters.

Hello Lovely Peeps!

Hi there, and a warm welcome to you! Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to read this, you're a star! You are reading the very first post of my blog so a big "Cheers" from me. I am going to confess straight away that I'm still not entirely sure of the direction in which this blog will take me: basically I want a platform where I can ramble, record, take delight in, share, vent, empathise and point at stuff I like. And post some pretty photos too.

So a little bit about me then: I'm a 38-year old SAH mum of two living in the West Midlands with Bloke, my husband of 11 years, and our two gorgeous chiddlies, 9-year old daughter Monkey and 5-year old son Dude. (These are not their real names, obvs, but cyber-pseudonyms for the sake of their privacy in the future; blogs never die, so it would indeed be a travesty if the kids were to come across a particularly embarrassing story about themselves once they'd grown-up, especially as I would no doubt have to fork out for their respective therapy sessions as a result.)

Me and my darlings at Penshurst Place Sept. 2014

Since becoming a mum I have worked as an administrator, a shelf-stacker, an NCT newsletter editor, a shop-assistant, a cleaner and both assistant editor AND editor of a monthly papercrafting magazine, but presently I'm doing the hugely important job of being a full-time SAH mum to my two wee ones. I could complain about the mind-numbing tedium inevitable boredom that sometimes arises from performing the same tasks day in, day out, but that's not exactly news is it? They are growing up so fast, I want to be there for them as much as I can while they still want me to. It's good to remind myself of this too, my Mission Statement if you like.

When I'm not looking after the kids, running errands, doing the school run, supermarket shopping, cooking, cleaning, paying bills or attempting to reach the summit of Mount Laundry, I love to immerse myself in a bit of crafting. I have been a papercrafter for over ten years now, and make greeting cards to give to friends and family, and scrapbook albums and decorated canvases as presents. 

My cardmaking assembly-line. The desktop doesn't always look this neat unfortunately, but that's artistic licence for you!

Watercoloured stamped image. Ain't butterflies beautiful?

So far I have yet to find another pastime that gets me sufficiently "in the flow" - it really concentrates my mind and prevents it from ruminating and rehashing things over and over, as I tend to do about almost everything. When I am blending brightly coloured inks together or smearing paint onto a canvas or colouring an intricate stamped image, everything else just falls away and time slows down; I don't have to think about anything else that might be going on in my life when I craft, so it's like a more productive and satisfying method of meditating if you like. Crafting is therapy, and I highly recommend you give it a go if you haven't already. 

(Oh, and my Mama Magpie moniker? I like sparkly, shiny things and can spot 'em at fifty paces. Plus I am a typical Virgo and therefore all about the details, so it's always been in my nature to pick out the little things and have a good long look at them.)

I must say, this feels weird, writing to an audience that doesn't even exist yet; I think that's the reason I have held back on blogging for so long, I didn't know who I was supposed to be addressing. I've since read that you can't be an Every(wo)man in your blog, that is you can't possibly "speak" to every type of person who happens to stumble across your words at some point. You've just got to be authentic, and then likeminded peeps will find you... or something like that. As I said in the intro, I've not exactly worked out all the details yet. It's like, organic, man!

So, I think I've laboured over this all-important yet not-that-important-really-as-who's-gonna-be-reading-it-anyway? first post for long enough now... I'm clicking on Publish! Yes, I am! Look, here I go, I'm doing it... Shit, no turning back now ;-)