Hedgerow Christmas Decorations

One of the things I love about Milton Keynes is that no matter where abouts in it you live, you are always within walking distance of a bit of public open space and greenery. On Sunday morning I took advantage of this and took my girls out into the cold, crisp air for a walk "in the country". I was armed with a plastic bag and a pair of scissors.

We headed out of the top north-west corner of Walnut Tree, towards The Open University at Walton Hall. Running along side the Walton Hall site is Church Lane, which has clearly been there for longer than Milton Keynes itself. Either side of the lane is well established hedgerow which in autumn yields such treats as elder berries, brambles and sloes. No edible fruit at this time of year but masses of ivy. I helped myself to 3 long strands, safe in the knowledge that I was not seriously damaging the ivy crop available here! Further down I snipped off some hawthorn berries and a few remaining rosehips.

At the end of Church Lane there is, no surprise, a church, and just beyond that, a bridge over the River Ousel. I snipped a few clippings from the yew tree then took the girls onto the bridge and gave them the option of either retracing our steps back up the lane home or to continue on our walk and head off to Caldecotte Lake. To my surprise they chose to continue along the river to the lake. So off we headed, spotting a rather cold looking heron along the way.



We paused at the lake to admire the view across to the Caldecotte Arms and before we knew it we had been joined by a flock of ducks, swans and gulls, clearly expecting to be fed. Sadly, it hadn't occurred to me to bring bread. Further round, the lake was frozen slightly. The lightweight gulls were stood on the ice, whilst the fat ducks were too heavy. As they moved towards us in the hope of food the thin ice "twinked" as it cracked around them.



Here the lake is close to the houses of Walton Park, some of which have an enviable view across the lake from their balconies. Rather than ancient hedgerow, the plants here are part of the municipal planting. I have long admired the municipal planting around Milton Keynes because it is clearly well thought out to provide interest and colour all year round. The red and yellow dogwoods may be bare of the leaves but their colours are stunning. Whilst my girls admired the waterfowl and tried to crack the thin ice by throwing sticks at it, I snipped off I few strains of the dogwood to add to my collection.



Finally we returned to the housing of Walnut Tree, admiring as we went the garlands on people's doors, looking for inspiration.

It was lunchtime by the time we returned home, feeling rosy and with a good appetite. Hurriedly I made some cheese on toast which tasted really delicious after our walk then after lunch I set about making use of our "harvest". The ivy, yew and berries I worked around a circular wire to fashion into our Christmas garland. To this I added a bit of red ribbon as a finishing touch.



Then, with the garland on the front door, I set about fashioning the dogwood twigs into star shaped decorations. This was fairly straightforward, just requiring bending or snapping into shape. I found it easiest to hold the twig in shape with sandwich ties then covering up the sandwich ties with coloured curling ribbon later. Well, I think they made lovely decorations.




What a lovely way to spend a Sunday - a refreshing walk rewarded with beautiful natural Christmas decorations.

Making hampers for Christmas

From the first year that I started making jams and chutneys I made hampers for friends and family for Christmas. Back then my preserves were bottled in a variety of reused jars and the labels were handwritten but they were still warmly received. This year my hampers will include a variety of Jammy Cow preserves, some Concrete Cow beer and Virtual Orchard cider as well as home make sweets and biscuits and will (hopefully!) look a lot more professional.

I was leafing through a Freecycled copy of Olive magazine from December 2007 the other day and there was a small section on food gifts NOT to buy for Christmas. This included a wicker hamper of food. What?! How could that be when food hampers are so beautiful and appealing? But on further reading I understood what they meant. They said that by the time you take the basket etc. into account, the food inside it is worth very little. So, all the more reason for making your own hamper, either from carefully selected shop bought items or homemade treats.

There are lots of places where you can get inspiration for what to include in hamper. Leaf through any gift catalogue at this time of year and you are bound to find a page or two dedicated to pre-made hampers to buy. These do always look great and seem to tick the box but don't you always find that the combinations of food and fruit inside just isn't quite right for the person you are hoping to given a hamper to? This is where making your own hamper is so much better because you can hand pick the items that go into it so that your gift is that much more special.

It is perfectly acceptable to individually buy all the items to go in a hamper but you may also like to include a few homemade items. This is a particularly good way to include children into the gift making process. Most kids love being in the kitchen and they can rustle up a batch of biscuits without too much stress. And handmade hampers don't need to be a big complicated deal. A themed hamper with, say, 3 items along a similar line is fine. Things that I have and will include in different hampers are items such as a jar or two of jam or chutney, some gingerbread men or another sweet biscuits, individually iced cubes of Christmas cake, savoury oat biscuit to go with chutney and/or cheese, some spiced seeds and/or nuts, fudge and homemade fruit pastilles, Turkish delight, peppermint creams, chocolate truffles or other sweets, and even granola.

Once you have decided on the contents of your hamper you need to find a suitable presentation container. This may be a traditional wicker basket, a reused decorative container, or an attractive gift box. Other useful alternatives are jute gift bags which you can buy online from companies such as the natural bag company or islepac.co.uk. These are handy because you just need to pop the jars inside and the job is done.

You can source baskets from many different places. I often buy mine from ebay and my last lot my mum bought for me whilst she was in a French hypermarket. The only thing I would say is think about buying baskets in the summer and autumn because the closer you get to Christmas the higher the demand for them so the more expensive and harder to get they are. I would also recommend buying a variety of different sizes and not go for anything too large so that you can fit your food items inside comfortably but you aren't struggling to fill it. If you are thinking of posting your hamper then consider forgoing the basket altogether as it increases the weight of the parcel quite considerably without really adding value to the gift. A cheaper and lighter alternative is a cardboard gift box and more and more companies are offering these now. I bought so lovely jam ones from Lakeland in the sale last January and I'll be filling one up this weekend with gifts to go to my brother- and sister-in-law in the USA.

For the presentation of the hamper you will also need some sort of packing material which can be straw (bedding for small pets from pet supply shops/garden centres), or shredded paper. I have bought shredded paper from ebay before and you can get it from craft supply shops too. This year I have been using gold shred from Lakeland. You will also need to buy some cellophane - extra wide is useful if your hampers are large. This I buy from ebay or Hobbycraft.

To put it all together, put some shred into the bottom and sides of the basket. Place the food items inside, tilting them so that the labels can be read and so that they look attractive. Fill the basket so that it looks full but not crammed, adding more shred around the items as necessary to hold them in place. Next wrap the whole thing in cellophane. Wrap the cellophane completely around the basket, ensuring that the ends meet at the back of the basket rather than underneath it. Tape it in place then make cuts in the cellophane on either side of the handles. Push the flap of cellophane through the handle and gather the cellophane together as if wrapping a present and stick it in place.

Hampers can look so attractive at this point that you may not wish to wrap it further in wrapping paper. If you do decide to wrap it so that the contents are hidden then consider wrapping it in a new t-towel. This can look fantastic as well as adding the t-towel as an additional gift. Use a few pins to keep the ends tucked in neatly then hold in place with ribbon. It's eco-friendly too as there is no wrapping paper to go in the bin or recycling.

Job done - a fantastic looking and well thought out gift that will be well received and for which you can feel proud!

Preserves for Christmas

Making a batch of Plum and Mulled Wine jam this morning and filling my kitchen with festive aromas, my mind turned to thinking about Christmas. This time of year is always my busiest in terms of sales of my homemade preserves so why do people want preserves for Christmas?

There seems to be two main reasons for this - one is as a gift for someone else and the other is for the Christmas table. It is also a time for straying away from the usual brands and looking for something "a bit different" and "special".

There are certain people who are very difficult to buy presents for - the ones who end up receiving a pair of socks or a monogrammed hanky. When I do Christmas fayres, some people admiring my stall suddenly realise that it does not need to be socks again this year. It seems to me that jam is the ideal gift for pretty much anybody from the secret Santa colleague to Great Aunt Ivy and Uncle Bert. And the small size of my jars makes them particularly appealing for this purpose as they are ideal for those people who live on their own and who have to eat up a whole jar on their own. They also seem to work out about the right price as a gift for these people. For Granny, a gift bag of 3 jams for £6 is perfect!

As for the Christmas table itself, there are a some preserves which seem essential at Christmas. Mincemeat is the most obvious one and, with 3 different varieties on offer, Jammy Cow mincemeat can make a change from the usual supermarket jars. But there are other things too such as redcurrant jelly that go well with a nice joint of lamb or the Christmas goose. Chutneys too are a requirement with the selection of Christmas cheeses on the cheeseboard and for the cold meat meal eaten on Boxing Day. Again, the small sized jars I make mean you can buy a range of different chutneys to suit all tastes and meals.

I did once plant a cranberry bush but sadly it required ericaceous compost to grow and the heavy clay of Milton Keynes is far from ideal. It struggled on in a container for a while but never did bear fruit before succumbing to neglect one hot summer. Fortunately, fresh cranberries are available in the produce department of supermarkets from mid November and they are dead easy to make into cranberry sauce. Not being grown in Milton Keynes, I can't add cranberry sauce to my Jammy Cow range of preserves so instead I shall share my recipe with you - it is very simple. And don't worry that it makes more than you need for your Christmas Day turkey because it keeps well in its jars and can be used as an ingredient in flapjacks and brownies. Remind me in January and I'll share my recipes for those too.

Cranberry Sauce

Makes 2-3 1lb jars

2 Oranges

12 oz (275g) granulated sugar

5 fl oz (150ml) port

1lb 5 oz (600g) cranberries

2 eating apples

Grate the zest from the oranges and squeeze out the juice. Put the juice, sugar and port in a pan and heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Stir in the cranberries, orange zest and grated apples. Cook, uncovered, for 10-12 minutes until the fruit is soft and the juices are thick. Ladle into warmed jars and seal immediately. Job done!

Chelsea Buns

Years ago I cut a recipe for Chelsea buns out of a magazine, thinking that I would make them some time soon. However, the recipe remained unmade for a long time as every time I came across it I was reminded that I had neither strong white flour nor yeast in my cupboard. I was also somewhat hesitant to move away from the more familiar cake making technique into what was essentially bread making.

Since those days I have obtained a bread machine and indeed mastered the whole mysterious bread making technique with its help. So now, rather than being a slightly daunting recipe, Chelsea buns are something I make when I'm a bit too busy to fuss with making a cake. Thanks to my bread machine, it can get on for an hour and half, kneading, proving, resting and all that stuff whilst I get on with other things.

This weekend was one of those occasions. And having lovely stocks of mincemeat and jam, the whole process is made even less of an effort. All it requires is a few minutes loading the ingredients into the bread machine, then an hour and half later, knocking back the dough and rolling it out. Then I smear it with mincemeat, roll it up and cut into 12 pieces. These are arranged in a square tin and left to rise for another half an hour whilst I get on with jobs. Next into the oven for 20-25 minutes (another chance to do more chores). Finally out of the oven, onto a rack and a quick wipe all over with jam to glaze. Job done.

Today I used a combination of Figgy Pear Mincemeat for the filling and Pear & Vanilla Jam as the glaze, giving a delightfully fruity flavour. It would work equally well with Apple & Cider Mincemeat and Apple & Ginger Jam, or Plum and Orange Mincemeat with Plum & Cinnamon Jam. In my house, mincemeat is not just for Christmas!

Chelsea Buns (makes 12)

100ml milk

1 egg

225g strong white flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp caster sugar

55g butter, diced

1 tsp fast-action dried yeast

2-3 tbsp mincemeat

2-3 tsp jam

Whisk together the milk and the egg and put into the bread machine pan. Put the flour on top to form a complete layer. Put the salt, sugar and butter into separate corners of the pan and the yeast in the centre. Set the machine for dough. Once the machine has finished, remove the dough from the pan and place on a floured surface. Knock back then roll out until about 1 cm thick. Smear a layer of mincemeat over the dough, leaving about 1cm around the edges. Start at one edge and roll up completely. Cut the roll into 12 equal slices and place each slice onto a well greased 20 by 20cm square tin so that the swirl is horizontal. Cover and leave to double in size. Bake in a pre-heated over at 190°C, gas mark 5 for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden. Remove from the tin onto a wire rack then use a pastry brush to glaze the upper surface with jam.

The problem with pears

To look at pears you would think they would be as handy as apples, being so closely related and all, but they aren't. Instead, they are as awkward as their shape. Firstly it is really difficult to catch a pear at its perfect point of ripeness. This is because they ripen from the inside outwards so that by the time the outside is no longer firm to the squeeze, the inside is already going brown and squelchy. And to make matters worse, they continue to ripen off the tree too so there is no hanging about even after they are picked.

So given the need to use them up before they ripen to mush, it would be handy if they could be made into jam or something similar but no! Pears are a low pectin fruit so are very difficult to get them to set when made into a jam. They aren't even the best ingredient for making into chutney as they don't go pulpy the way apples do.

Still, they are a lovely fruit with a beautiful flavour which is worth capturing if at all possible.

One of my favourite ways to capture that lovely pear flavour is in my Figgy Pear Mincemeat. This needs grated raw pear in it and as it doesn't need to reach a setting point the pears can be anything from under ripe to ridiculously overripe. It is then left over night in a bowl with the dried fruit and spices before being cooked and bottled the next day. It is a delightful recipe that fills the house with festive aromas.

I do also love the combination of pear and vanilla flavours and I have used this combination to make ice-cream and cheesecake recipes. And with a little perseverance I have finally come up with a recipe for Pear & Vanilla Jam that actually sets. This is done by including the skin and cores in a muslim bag as a I cook the pears as most of the little pectin that pears contain is found in the skin and core. A little lemon juice helps to extract more of the pectin. Then finally, the addition of pectin I have previously extracted from apples or crab apples adds enough to allow the jam to set.

Of course, all this fiddling about is forgotten when it comes to eating this lovely jam. It is a sweet jam, which probably explains why my daughter loves it, and this lends itself nicely to baking. I have used it for making butterfly cakes, replacing the butter icing with a splodge of jam instead. This week I decided to use some of it to liven up a bread and butter pudding and it went down a storm.

This weekend Frosts Garden Centre are having a Festival of Autumn flavours, featuring pumpkins, apples & pears. I'm pleased to say that my Figgy Pear Mincemeat and Pear & Vanilla Jam will be there, along with my Apple & Cider Mincemeat, Apple & Ginger Jam, All Hallows Marmalade, and two chutneys. I, on the other hand, will be at home, cooking up more of the same from the end of the autumn harvest.

Bread & Butter Pudding

2 eggs

1 tsp caster sugar

2 tsp custard powder

12 fl oz (350ml) semi-skimmed milk

A few drops of vanilla extract

1 oz (25g) butter

4 slices of white bread

1 tbsp spoon Pear & Vanilla Jam (or similar)

3 oz (75g) sultanas

Beat the egg, sugar and custard powder together then add the milk and vanilla. Lightly butter a suitable ovenproof dish (wide and shallow is better than narrow and deep). Butter the bread and then spread with the jam. Cut the slices of bread into 4 triangles then layer two slices worth of triangles into the dish then scatter over half the sultanas. Lay the remaining triangles on top and scatter over the sultanas. Pour over the milk mix and place the dish in the refrigerator until needed or for at least 15 minutes to soak. Preheat an oven to 180°C, gas 4. Bake for 20 minutes then increase the temperate to 190°C, gas 5 for 5-10 more minutes until the bread on top is crisp and golden. Serve hot with custard or cream.

Solar Powered

Doesn't it make a difference when the sun shines! Having a beautiful few days of bright sunshine and warmth at the end of September, beginning of October made a huge difference to all of us I think here in Milton Keynes.

Do you ever think you are solar powdered? It does seem to make us more cheerful, give us more energy and make us want to do things.

There is of course evidence to show that putting your face into bright sunlight for a few minutes (even with your eyes shut) is enough to change your brain chemistry and stop SAD syndrome. But there are less scientific reasons why we feel better when it is sunny. Everything is just easier - we can get about without getting cold and or wet, we can make plans without them being spoilt, we can enjoy the garden and outdoors more rather than feeling cooped up inside.

There is no denying that sunshine is wonderful but it is also extremely important. Without the sun our planet would be a cold, dark and lifeless rock in space. The perfect position of the Earth from the sun allows it to have life upon it. And the most important thing of all, it allows photosynthesis to happen.

Photosynthesis!!! Do you remember that from science lessons at school? That dull equation you had to learn because you knew it would be in the exam.

water + carbon dioxide => food + oxygen

Yeah, yeah, yawny, yawn.

But no, wait! Somehow science lessons managed to turn this absolutely amazing thing in to the dullest thing ever. Just look at what photosynthesis is and what it really means. Plants are able to take the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in water and carbon dioxide and using the energy from the sun rearrange them to create carbohydrates and oxygen. So from water and air they make food and oxygen. That is truly amazing and without it no food chain on the planet would exist. So every time the sun comes up, plants do their magic and grow.

Yep, I am a huge fan of photosynthesis! And of the sun in general for that matter. But now I have gone a step further in my sun worshiping... I have had solar panels installed on my roof. It was good timing to - just before the hottest weekend in October ever. So there I was at the weekend, standing in the garden admiring all that lovely photosynthesis that had produced an abundance of fat pumpkins, squash, broccoli and potatoes. Even the tomatoes where FINALLY getting ripe in the lovely warmth. At the same time, the sun was busily drying my washing for free. And back at the house, the sunlight was being converted into electricity. Now that is almost as amazing as photosynthesis!

So now, as I stand over a boiling pan of chutney I can marvel at the wonders of photosynthesis that made the vegetables, sugar, vinegar and spices in the pan, coupled with the wonders of solar panels that turn sunlight into the electricity powering the hob.

A crab apple challenge

I suppose in any family we will have our favourite. Well, it is certainly true in the Malus family. There is no doubt that the apple is by far the most popular fruit in this group, and why not when it is so versatile and will sit so happily in your fruit bowl all week without going off, ready to be snatched up for a convenient snack. The pear is probably the next most popular Malus but there is a big gap between the first and second places in this popularity contest. The pear is an awkward fruit, even in its shape, and can go from too hard to too squidgy in the blink of an eye. And then there is the quince... Quince... who on earth eats quinces? And finally the crab apple. Well, there are lots of those in the world. Sure, they look pretty for a short while on the tree before they start dropping in abundance, just to be squished under foot. Such a shame to see all this fruit dropping onto the path, making a mess, but what can be done with them. It's not as if they are nice to eat and even if I went to trouble of making crab apple jelly, it is so out of fashion no one would what to buy it.

But then my friend Jane handed me half a bin bag full of crab apples from her neighbour's back garden. Hmmm... what to do with them?

One of the great things about crab apples is that they are so small and fiddly that you don't even think about peeling and coring them. So where doing anything with apples is a bit tedious because you first have to peel and core every fruit, with crab apples you just bung them straight into the pan and start boiling them up. They don't take long to cook either as they are small and within a few minutes they are soft and pulpy and ready to be strained through a jelly bag. Job done, sit down, cup of tea... walk the dog... cook dinner... have a bath... go to bed... In fact, it needs at least 8 hours to finish dripping through the jelly bag.

But what then? Really, no one is going to want to buy 20 lbs of crab apple jelly!

Well, it took a week to work my way through the whole bag and I did make one batch of crab apple jelly. Towards the end I added a couple of spoonfuls of rose water just to add a bit of a twist to the flavour and when my daughter tasted it she said it tasted like lemon meringue pie. But I also made chilli jam, Jamdelade (sweet orange jam) and blackberry jelly from the crab apples. I also froze several pints worth of the liquid to use in any recipe that uses a low pectin fruit so expect crab apple pectin in the pear jams I shall be making next.

So in the end I was pleased with my supply of crab apples and of the creative challenge they presented. Next year they shall be an essential ingredient that I actively seek.