Blue Skies and Bramble Jelly 2011

Over the weekend it was time to make bramble jelly from the berries collected on my Saturday cycle ride.

I checked last year to see which recipe I'd used. By the way, if you don't already have the "search this blog" widget on your blog I suggest you add it, it's very useful. Anyway, I used the same recipe again this year, it worked so why change.

One problem; I'd forgotten I needed some cooking apples. As I didn't have any I went out to the garden to check the crab apple harvest...

...not good! I think most of the apple blossom blew away with the storm we had in May so there was very little left to develop into fruit.

So, no crab apple jelly this year (things were looking so promising back in April, and I'd been looking forward to lots of apples since last September too), but the fruit could instead be used for the bramble jelly (the apples act as a source of pectin to help the jelly set)

All the fruit was boiled on Saturday evening and left in the muslin to drain over night. There was some amount of beasties in amongst the bramble berries. Before boiling I picked over each and every berry removing numerous millipedes, one centipede and a few spiders. Another reason why I prefer to make bramble jelly rather than jam (other than preferring the taste & texture) is that I know that even if I miss some of the bugs then at least they won't make it through the muslin when the boiled fruit is drained.

The next morning (Sunday) dawned beautiful and sunny, so the rest of the jelly preparation was left till later...

...in the meantime I took A, N and myself for a quick visit to the loch.

A was particularly taken with the sparkly water and insisted I photograph it for my blog.

I liked these teasels.

Much fun was had at the play park (quick, take the photo before I fall).

Then back again to the car. Loving the blue skies and fluffy clouds.

Looking across the wetlands and loch to the folly. A little umberllifer has managed to sneak into the bottom left corner...

...just asking for a silhoutte photo.

Such a gorgeous afternoon. Unfortunately it was a rushed visit as we had to be back for a 3 yr olds party which involved being shut inside a soft play area for the rest of the afternoon, grr.

One of the things I like about this time of year is that the evening sky as seen from our back door starts to look most attractive at times. As Saturday night fell and I prepared to boil the jelly, these little wispy clouds glowed pinkly pale in the setting sun.

Testing for setting - a spoonful of the jelly (when placed on a saucer cooled in the freezer for a few minutes) wrinkles when pushed. I have to boil the jelly for much longer than the recipe suggests. I expected it this year so the process wasn't such a trial as it seemed last year.

However, I was still a little disappointed with the yield. I'd rather optimistically prepared ten jars but ended up with only four and a little bit from 2kg of fruit. I'll just need to pick more berries, fortunately there are still plenty left ripening on the bushes.

For reference when I check back next year - I used a soup pan for boiling the jelly, and a ladle and jug for filling the jars which kept the kitchen jelly mess free.

On Monday I managed some charity shop browsing (the main reason for the shopping trip was to buy more pants for N, potty training is proving a slow process and some of the poopy pants (the full squidgey ones!) I just bin, especially if we're out and about when it happens).

I bought...

...another pot for the collection. It's the middle one here - a little hand thrown and painted vase for 49p.

...a good bundle of ladybird books, all 19p each. I don't collect all ladybird books but I do like the nature ones.

...some other children's books, amongst which was "The Cornfield" by Vanessa Luff. It's full of beautiful illustrations showing how the field and its inhabitants change through the year. Here are just a few of my favourites:


And to finish...

...a rainbow, spotted yesterday at tea time.

Saturday Morning Bike Ride

It's been a few weeks since I've managed out on my bike. I'm a bit of a fair weather cyclist and don't like setting off when it's pouring with rain. Yesterday wasn't too bad though (today is much better but Sunday is hubby's cycling day)

Off out the village and up the wood lined road. The trees are wearing their early Autumn colours, I like the varied shades after the blanket green of summer.

A favourite view, looking north.

Looking south.

Shortly after this point I reach my goal for today's ride - bramble bushes! I spend about an hour filling two tubs I have brought with me in my rack bag. Many of the brambles still aren't ripe. Some are so ripe they gently fall into your hand with the slightest nudge -if you're lucky - most often these ones (in particular, the most juicy looking ones) fall deep into the undergrowth never to be seen again, I like to imagine the field mice will benefit from these. Once the tubs are full I'm back on my way. I'm intending making bramble jelly with them so it doesn't matter that the berries will get all bashed about while coming on a bike ride with me.

Another favourite view on this route.

Up on top of the moorland I join a B road for a couple of miles. Still hardly any traffic around.

Fantastic big bank of clouds.

The bare shapes of tree trunks and branches are becoming more apparent as the leaves start to thin.

Three buzzards wheel above this little copse of trees, their plaintive calls can be clearly heard in the otherwise silent land.

On zooming round a corner I think to myself that swallows must surely have left by now, but no, right at that moment I come across a large group of them sitting on the overhead wires. After my noisy arrival and sudden halt only these four remain for a photo, the rest are darting around the sky.

I love the dark blue of the water in the flooded ditch.

An unusually straight stretch of road.

A bench at the top of the last hill, it's downhill all the way home from here.

I collected just over 4 1/2 lbs (about 2kg) of berries. And no, there aren't any choc chip cookies left in the tin.

Whatever The Weather.

I do like to talk about the weather...

... and I know that in this country I'm not the only one!

The tail end of Hurrican Katia hit the UK earlier this week with much wind and rain.

This is what it did to my little hawthorn tree. I'd transplanted it as a three inch high seedling when we moved into the house and this year it was producing blossom and berries for the first time. It's not as bad as I first thought, there is a little split at the trunk but I've now staked it and am hoping it will survive.

The window boxes have had it for this year though.

Often our perception of good or bad weather (with the exception of extremes such as Hurricane Katia) is dependent on what we're used to. I do try to be positive about the weather here - I don't especially like hot weather, and I find the green countryside which results from all the rain very pretty, but sometimes such grumbles do make an appearance on my blog and also on the blogs of others who live in parts of the country which I think generally have much better weather than we do.

I find the following weather maps (available here, with lots of options to tweak) very interesting.

For example, looking at the above map, which shows the August 2011 rainfall compared to a 30 year average rainfall, it does indeed look like the east of Scotland and NE England have had a terribly wet summer, however...

...looking at this map which is the actual rainfall for Aug 2011, you can see that the rainfall for Scotland and Northern England is pretty much the same across the whole area. So for the same amount of rainfall east coasters feel that August has been wet and miserable whereas we west coasters feel it's just been a typical August.

Now to the temperature for August...
The anomaly map shows that compared to recent years August has indeed been colder than "normal" for the pretty much the whole of the UK and Northern Ireland.

The actual temperature map though shows just how much warmer SE England still is than the rest of the country - on average 4 degrees higher. So there you go.

Anyway, by Wednesday the winds and rain were gone and we at last had some beautiful September weather. I zoomed round the garden with my camera to record this moment while it lasted.

We've also had our first frost. It had melted slightly by the time I took the above photo on Thursday morning, but the dew is still pretty.

Jackdaws and the moon in the morning.

For me, a hopeful tray of bulbs. I hope I can remember where the gaps are in the garden to plant them, I hope we have more nice weather so that planting them is a pleasant job, I hope to have time to plant them before it's too late in the year (though it won't be the first time I'll have planted bulbs in December), and next year when they flower I hope that Spring and Summer will be here again soon.

Back to September - cows always appear in the field across the road in September, they arrived yesterday.

I made a cake and biscuits for craft night. The biscuits are my usual choc chip cookies (recipe link in my side bar) but with 1 oz less sugar (I'm cutting down on evil sugar!) and 2 tsps ground ginger as well as chunks of 70% cocoa chocolate. The cake is a cherry strudel cake from...

...this book. It's the first time I'd baked it and it was good. Everything I have made so far from this book has turned out well and as the book is intended for children all the recipes are easy. I'd thoroughly recomend this book and have used it more often than some of my more fashionable baking books.

Lastly, I've always wanted one of these. I found mine here. It arrived yesterday and was in use last night. Love it!