Chasing my tail

Good people, I have been absent for weeks...
I'm working hard, too hard probably
I'm finishing my degree in Modern Language Studies...
I'm studying a couple of free online courses with Southampton University...
I'm editing my novel, Flies in the Ointment, and writing a new adult novel...
I'm studying Swedish and practising  my French

Busy, busy,busy

I've just returned from the first of the year's trips to Brittany to clean the house, supervise the gardener, catch up with my Breton Tribe and stock up on cheap, fizzy, white wine
I was last to board in Portsmouth so fourth off the ferry in St Malo
First to board in St Malo so last off in Portsmouth - swings and roundabouts, I prefer the latter

I'll be picking up this blog during the coming week when I hope, finally, to have something interesting to say
Perhaps....

The Christmas Desk...

And yes, of course there's a picture from Brittany on one of my three desktops.

Making marmalade...

 
A re-post from my old blog, now moth-balled. Written in early spring of 2012. 

Marmalade fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits and water. The benchmark citrus fruit for marmalade production in Britain is the Seville orange thus called because it was originally only grown in Spain; it is higher in pectin than most oranges and therefore gives a good set. The peel has a distinctive bitter taste which it imparts to the marmalade. Marmalade can be made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins and sweet oranges or any combination thereof.Wikipedia

During my working week, and often at the weekends, I spend a great deal of time engaged in mental activity of the most intense complexity. I kid you not, much of the time even I do not understand what I am thinking and I often sit back and wonder what kind of weird and wonderful world this is in which I now find myself.

So much mental activity is not good for a person. Indeed I firmly believe that we homo sapiens are insufficiently evolved to cope with the technology that we have developed and are frantically running to catch up with ourselves.

Certainly the internet is changing us physiologically, recent studies suggest that our brains are changing, our 'soft-wiring' is altering as we spend more and more time in the 'wired-world.' Purely personally I find my attention span shrinking as my desire for instant-information gratification is expanding.

So it was time to spend some time in physical, real-world activities that do not require much brain power and yesterday I came across a post devoted to marmalade over at the blog 'my french country home' which I read daily (despite the ads) and decided that marmalade would be just the thing for a Saturday away from the office...

Marmalade is ridiculously easy to make. Actually much of that which we are offered on the shelves of the supermarkets ready-made, is easy to make, tastes much, much better and is free of nasty chemicals and I, for one, am slowly becoming a devotee of home-made.

For marmalade organic fruit is not just a luxury but a necessity. I will refrain from writing about the pesticides and waxes to which citrus fruit are 'treated' as they grow from flower to fruit but since marmalade is made from the peel and pith and pips as well as the fruit itself, all that you want in your pan is pure fruit and sunshine.

I like my marmalade with thin slivers of peel, they give it a pleasantly crunchy texture that goes perfectly with well-toasted, lavishly-buttered, brown bread, so I sliced but you could chop or dice if that is your choice.

However you prepare the fruit, the scents of citrus that are released as your knife slices through the peel are wonderful, especially on an early-spring morning when summer seems elusive and far away and the risk of rain is ever present.

Once sliced the fruit is popped into a pan, covered with water and left to soak. Overnight is best but mine only had a few hours because I wanted to make the marmalade in time for Sunday breakfast.

Time for a walk with the dog...

The only disadvantage to living in The Doll's House is the lack of a decent garden. The plot at the back of the house is too small and mean to be called a garden and I tend to ignore it, save for hanging my washing there. Well, few things in life are perfect, I make up for this by enjoying other people's gardens, albeit by way of secret glimpses through fences and hedges and the odd surreptitious and rather guilty photograph taken when no-one is looking.

Happily, the green is right on my doorstep and is a perfectly lovely garden for the dog and me. And it has the added bonus of a regular supply of nice people and their dogs so we pause, and exchange greetings and sometimes I walk alongside them while my dog plays with their dogs. I am quite fond of my 'other dogs' some of whom kiss my nose if I bend down low enough, it reminds me that if I were in France it is the men who would be kissing me and not the dogs but I don't mind, a kiss is a kiss...

Back to the kitchen...

The pips from the fruit must be tied in little muslin bags and added to the pan because the pectin in them helps the marmalade to set. I have no muslin, I am not so organised, a strip from an old, clean net curtain suffices. And then the fruit and water is boiled for a couple of hours and the citrus scents now seep into all of the rooms of the small house and are as lovely as an expensive pot-pourri but better somehow. And while that is all going on in the kitchen time can be spent on other things, in my case, my French studies and an intense session with past tenses that lasted for four hours and left me reeling.

After the initial boiling sugar is added. The same weight of sugar as fruit which realisation made me pause and wonder how I would know because the fruit was now in the water and had been boiled, until common sense returned to nudge me and politely suggest that I weigh another orange, lemon and grapefruit from the bowl on the cupboard. D'oh...

And then another hour of bubbling in the pan and frequent admiring glances as the whole lot becomes soft and syrupy and much dipping in of the tip of a wooden spoon because the taste is absolutely divine.

And then the bottling...

Did I say that marmalade is easy to make?

Alas, something fundamental went wrong with my marmalade. I suspect insufficient pips. I had thought as I sliced the fruit that it was distinctly lacking in the pip-department, and was a little worried but hoped that using sugar with added pectin would be enough.

It wasn't. My marmalade is runny.

I am not despondent. I shall pour some onto my Sunday-morning toast regardless because the taste is so very lovely and the rest, the other two jars, I will use to add to sponge-puddings and tarts and cakes, a kind of sharp syrupy kiss.

And one day in the week, when my head is too stuffed-full of complex computer code and the latest bank Trojan trickery, I shall return home to spend a sane and peaceful evening making Marmalade Mark II.

A little gift of sunshine and citrus from this Oxfordshire village...

November means...

NaNoWriMo

Last year I produced the best part of my first novel during November.
Flies in the Ointment is now actively seeking an agent which process is, I am learning, rather like speed-dating. No, I have never tried speed-dating and never will but I'm pretty sure that's how it feels to try to find an agent who will love my novel.

This November I am working on a second novel.
It's not the sequel to 'Flies', that's already in my head, this is a rather dark, quite erotic, often crazy story set, as are all my books, in Brittany, France. I'm not accustomed to writing such explicit stuff and I'm just grateful that neither of my parents will ever read it. I did ask myself, 'Can I really write explicit sex scenes? What will people think of me?' And then I remembered that the novel also contains sadism and a death, so I can safely say it's all fictional, and spare my blushes.

So this is why I am not blogging much...
Two novels and my final O.U course, and in between I have to fit in the Day Job

Be back in December
    

Foraging...

Or food for free

I am an incorrigible forager.
There's nothing that pleases me quite as much as finding something on my daily walks with the dog and bringing it home as chuffed as a prehistoric hunter returning to the cave with a haunch of deer over his shoulder. Honestly, I am like a child. I collect feathers, firewood and fruit, if I lived near the sea...

And isn't it so lovely to be taking steps, however small, to do that which our ancestors have done since those first hunter/gatherers? To take nature's bounty and store it for the winter.

This year there were the cherries.

The fat, fleshy cherries on the tree that someone planted in memory of a loved one.
And the tiny so-sweet wild cherries that I popped into my mouth, crush with my tongue and savoured.
All of which were harvested and turned into jam and pies and, best of all cherry vodka, brandy and liquer.

And there are walnuts.
Many, many walnuts.
Lying in the wet grass like jewels.
Which makes my daily walks with the dog a pleasurable treasure hunt.

And there are apples.
Which means that my kitchen now smells like my grandmother's spare bedroom in which apples were stored under the bed all winter long, and that makes me feel comforted. 
And there is apple cause in jars and in the freezer.
And The Ragazza and I have eaten our body weights in apple crumble and pies.
 
And last weekend I found a bush heavy with shiny, red rosehips, hanging like jewels.
Which was a very opportune discovery because I have spent the last three days in bed battling some horrid bugs and am acutely aware that it's just the start of a long winter of such onslaughts.
So this evening I'll be out there happily filling the pockets of my jacket with rosehips until the dog becomes bored. And then I'll be making rosehip syrup. It's ridiculously easy and so satisfying. And since rosehips contain five times more vitamin C than oranges and the syrup is smooth and tangy and packed with goodness it may, just may, help me to fight the winter's office bugs.   

  Here's my first jar of rosehip syrup, made last autumn.

How I make it...
200 gms of rosehips, washed, 'topped and tailed', blitzed in a food processor to chop them into small pieces and put in a pan with 300 mls of water.
Bring to the boil and leave to stand for 20 minutes
Sieve to remove the syrup which is poured into a jug
Then put the chopped rosehips back in the pan with another 300 mls of water and bring it to the boil, leave to stand, sieve etc
Repeat that step twice more
Then add 200 gms of sugar to the syrup and bring back to the boil
Pour into sterilized jar
Keep in a cool, dark place and once opened refrigerate and use within a few days

Can be used as a refreshing drink diluted to taste with mineral water.
A perfect early morning boost for this hunter/gatherer.

Let it Snow

It's autumn.

We've had a fabulous summer and now it's time to look forward to some snow!
 

snow -> noun [mass noun] 1 atmospheric water vapour frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer.
- ORIGIN Old English snaw, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch sneeuw, and German Schnee, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin nix, niv- and Greek nipha (OED).

NEIGE n.f (de neiger). 1. Precipitation de cristaux de glace agglomérés en flocons, dont la plupart sont ramifiés, parfois en étoile.Quand la température des basses couches de l'atmosphère est inférieure à 0 ºC, la neige se forme par la présence, dans un nuage, de noyauxde condensation faisant cesser le phénomène du surfusion.
(le Petit Larousse 2007)



How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated!I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat."--Henry David Thoreau

Picture courtesy of Snowflakes and crystals

You can buy stunning pictures of snow crystals here (I bought half a dozen in a bout of apres-ski trip nostalgia, and a book. I'd have ordered some snow too if it hadn't been too warm to post it)

Yes, we have been known to keep snow in the freezer...




It will soon be snowtime which is, in my small family, the best time.

In the absence of snow in the UK, we have strong winds and blue skies interspersed with downpours, all I can offer are photo's taken in Finnish Lapland, above the Arctic Circle, in 2006...

and my own tribute to snow...

The reindeer farm where we took part in a hilarious hijacking by reindeer. We were paired up and placed in a sled with a mad reindeer hitched at the front and then we were left to the mercy of our furry friend.

The reindeer took off at a canter, racing each other, trying to stay in front of the herd, jostling for position as we were tossed about in our sled, giggling hysterically.

After which we bought souvenirs, including a skin that has continued to shed all over my carpet, pictures and a slab of meat to cook back at our cabin.

Sorry Rudolf, it's a dog eat dog world out there!

We also took part in a husky safari


I can't express in mere words the wonder of a journey through a winter wonderland of snow-laden conifers, deep, thick blankets of snow on either side of the track, the silence pierced only by the panting of the team and our shrieks of laughter.

Pure pleasure...

One of the log cabins in the woods just outside Levi. I believe that the residents of this cabin may have witnessed an English woman of a certain age rolling naked in the snow outside a neighbouring cabin just after midnight on January 1st, 2006.

It's traditional, yes?

Especially after several tequila slammers and a hot sauna


The sun rises late during the winter months above the Arctic circle. By 10am it is just starting to spread a pinky, orange, golden glow across the morning sky.

And by 2pm it is sinking fast, colouring the sky with a glorious rainbow

I had thought that the lack of daylight, the merest glimpse of the sun for a few hours would induce a severe bout of SAD in me. Interestingly it didn't. My body adapted rapidly to the darkness and the thick, gleaming snow more than compensated for the lack of the sun's rays


Everything you ever wanted to know about snowflakes can be found at Snow Crystals

Everything, that is, except how to make it snow in Brittany. Now for that I would pay a handsome price!

and there's a museum dedicated to snowflakes, the Wilson Bentley Museum

I tried, and failed, to buy a pair of their snowflake earrings, a foreign credit card is not to be trusted it seems, tant pis, there will be other opportunities to indulge my passion...

The Perm International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival has been held since 1995 to develop international friendship, mutual understanding, to establish artistic and aesthetic space through the art of snow and ice sculpture, and to position the city of Perm as part of the global art community and a place for international projects.


Wikipedia has an article that explains how to construct an igloo
(Inuit language : iglu, "house", plural: iglooit or igluit)

Incidentally, it has been said the Inuit have many words to describe snow. Probably true but so does English, and if one considers that there are several languages termed Eskimo-Aleut languages, then English begins to compete in the snow-word stakes. For example and according to Wikedpedia, Yupik, spoken by the peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral ALaska and the Russian Far East, has been estimated to have around 24 — but English has at least 40 words that describe frozen water, including "berg", "frost", "glacier", "hail", "ice", "slush", "flurry", and "sleet".

Still, the idea of linguistic relativism states that our langage affects and reflects our view of the world. The belief that Eskimos had hundreds of words for snow led people to think that an Eskimo's eye-view of snow is vastly different from, say, that of a Mexican, or a man late for work and trying desperately to shovel the snow off his driveway.

Linguistics aside, for now, and speaking purely personally, I see snow as a beautiful, enchanting and fun phenomenon and I will continue to play with, roll in, ski over, throw around and eat handfuls of snow as long as it continues to fall from the sky...

 

A link to a translation of Hans Christian Andersen's Sneedronningen, The Snow Queen

A website that is All About Snow

And one for the kids amongst us who wish to spend the long winter months making paper snowflakes to hang from the beams of a Breton house

All I can say, in conclusion is

LET IT SNOW!

September...

Life has been so full here that at times it threatens to spill-over.

Summer was wonderful, as I overheard a woman telling her friend in Waitrose, "What a lovely summer we've had, just like the summers of my childhood!"  and I had to smile and silently agree with her.

There was a visit to France that will feature in future posts...
There was time spent working on my book...
There were birthdays for The Rags and I...
There were trips to the British Museum...
There were many days spent making cherry vodka...

And now it's autumn.
The days grow shorter as the walnuts grow plumper...
My final O.U course has started and I am become a mature student again...
Work continues to take up far too much of my time and energy...
I begin to send my novel submission to a few agents...   
Plans are afoot for my return to Brittany when The Universe deems that the time is right...
 
The planet circles the sun
and the tapestry of life is woven
All is as it should be

Update:
Today I was approached with a quite unexpected and interesting suggestion...
Would I care to move to Singapore for two years?
A very generous package, a very interesting role, a very large leap into the dark
The question is, how brave do I feel?