Kitty's Blog – Kitty's little piece of the Web

What I did today: Opened my arms to Autumn.

It has been really cold here in the north of England in the last few days and the silver birch, always the first tree in our garden to lose its summer green, is now displaying yellow and copper coloured leaves.

So how to welcome in Autumn? Well I noticed that, with the prospects of tighter lockdown restrictions, our local supermarket has run out of yeast and is showing shortages of bread flour and loo roll. I can’t really do much about the loo roll issue but I can make sure that we have a few loaves of bread in the freezer.

No yeast? No problem. I made a sourdough starter using just flour and water. Within a few days it will be ready for a first batch of sourdough bread and can be used over and over again. providing it is looked after.

Sourdough bread is quite rustic and great for making hot, open sandwiches and dipping in soup.

I also baked the first ham of the season. I made a glaze from fresh orange juice, sugar and cloves. I am not a meat eater but my husband and the cats all said it was delicious.

What to serve with the ham? I did some research online and found a recipe for a very old dish called pease pudding. I soaked some yellow split peas overnight and boiled them with onions, thyme and a bay leaf. Once they were soft I blended them into a rough purée and seasoned quite heavily. Some recipes I looked at suggested adding a beaten egg and boiling the pudding in a cloth until it reaches a cutting consistency. I am guessing this is what turns the purée into a traditional pudding but I really didn’t like the sound of this so I left the pudding in its puréed state.

It was really tasty and filling. I have frozen the leftover pudding as I am thinking that if I thin it down with some stock and add some vegetables it will make a tasty soup.

Ham, pease pudding, boiled potatoes, cabbage and mustard cream sauce. A hearty Autumn dish.

Using a bay leaf reminded me that I want to make some more herbal incense for Christmas so I have hung up some bay leaves to dry which will take a month or so I guess.

As the evening drew in the cats came back into the house bringing cold, night air with them and we lit our stove for the first time at this end of the year.

What I did today: Made the most of free gifts

It feels cold today. Almost like winter is paying an early visit. In order to make the most of the last of summer I have been busy harvesting and using the free gifts my garden has given me.

I have a tub full of rose geraniums. They haven’t flowered this year maybe because we have had a lot of rain. They have, however, produced loads of leaves which actually are more fragrant than the flowers.
Rose geraniums oil is used in skin care preparations as it is very soothing and helps prevent breakouts. So I steeped some of the leaves in hot water and, when cool, removed them and decanted the water into a little spray bottle.
This is great if you have to wear a mask at any time. I take my spray bottle with me whenever I go out and when I remove my mask I give my face a quick spritz.

I also dried some nettle leaves. These could be used for nettle tea but I made a hair rinse with them. A small amount of this massaged into the scalp and combed through before washing encourages hair to grow and leaves it soft, healthy and shiny. It has done wonders for my lockdown hair.
I let the dried leaves soak in boiling water and then strained and bottled the rinse. You could add a few drops of essential oil if you are not keen on the very grassy smell of nettles.

Remember the blackberry bush that had made its way into the garden? Well I picked the berries as they ripened and kept them in the freezer until I had about 600 grams.

With half the yield I made some blackberry vinegar by adding cider vinegar and leaving them to soak for about a week. Apples and blackberries are a tried and tested combination but if there is such a thing as pear vinegar I bet this would also work really well. After a week I boiled the vinegar up with about 200g of sugar and it was ready to bottle. I have used it in a salad dressing with feta and apples but it would also be fantastic drizzled over vanilla ice cream.

I used the rest of the blackberries to make blackberry vodka. I soaked the berries in plain vodka for four days with a tablespoon of sugar then strained and bottled. Blackberry vodka can be drunk neat as a liqueur but it also makes a really refreshing long drink with a good quality Indian tonic water and lots of ice.
It has just occurred to me that vanilla flavoured vodka would be an interesting base spirit for this recipe. There are no more blackberries left so I guess that is one to try next year.

I have so enjoyed this opportunity to find creative ways to use the free gifts my garden has given me. Nothing I have made has cost more than a few pence and taken up very little time. I am already looking around to see what else I can use. The hazel tree is covered in green nuts. They should ripen in time for Christmas. I just have to keep up my running battle with the squirrels for them.
I have dried some lavender flowers and the winter jasmine is just coming into bud. The two flowers together should make a wonderful herbal incense.

My next big project is one which my brother has asked me to help him with. My dad has two apple trees that are loaded with hard, bitter little apples. As soon as these are ready for picking we will be attempting our first cider brewing. I couldn’t be more excited !

Serious Sunday: Living the Dream.

As part of teaching during Holocaust Memorial Week I would give my learners a drawing of a suitcase. I would then ask them to imagine there had been a knock on the door, their home invaded by uniformed strangers, told they had to leave and given 10 minutes to pack a suitcase.

What would they put in their suitcases? Some answers were practical. Medication, phone, phone charger, change of clothes. Some were poignant. Family photos, a keepsake, a favourite teddy bear. One learner chose a pet cat, a supply of cat food and a bag of cat litter.

How did the learners feel about this exercise? The most common response was that it was so hard to choose.

So close your eyes and turn your back on your room. Imagine a sudden bang, so loud it bursts your ear drums. Open your eyes. Everything you hold dear, the possessions you take pride in, the home you have worked so hard to create all gone. The dream you were living reduced to a pile of rubble.

You are a teacher, a doctor, a bank worker, a healthcare worker. You are anything and everything you worked for and dreamed to be. You are ordinary and you are special. You are the victim of a war you neither asked for or played a part in.

And you are lucky. Lucky that you have enough savings to be able to pay for a passage to a life. Not a better life because you already had a great life. But a life. You know you will not likely work in the same capacity as you have previously done. You know that your children will likely learn to speak and write a new language before you do and that they will likely miss school or college when you need a translator. This is not the life you dreamed of for them. You know that you will likely be exploited as cheap labour and forever be looking over your shoulder should your asylum claim not be granted but you will have a life.

So imagine you have to make a choice. Who will you take with you? Elderly parents or grandparents? Sisters and brothers? Cousins? Children? How will you choose?

Imagine exchanging your life savings for a perilous journey across land and sea.

Imagine clinging on for dear life to your hungry and thirsty little ones whilst the baby in your belly turns cartwheels.

Imagine finally sighting the land you have been heading for; so near yet it may as well be thousand miles beyond your reach as your companions desperately try to bail out the sinking dinghy that holds everything you hold dear in the world.

Imagine your peril and distress is pointed at, filmed, broadcast around the world. You are an educated woman. You know that Article 98 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea states that:

Every State shall require the master of a ship flying its flag, in so far as he can do so without serious danger to the ship, the crew or the passengers:

(a) to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost.
(b) to proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress.

You also know that nothing is allowed to get in the way of a good news story and that the same news agency that is profiting from your peril is also stirring up hatred against you in the country you are looking to for asylum.

Imagine waiting your turn to be rescued. Clinging on to your babies, boats circling like sharks around your tiny dinghy, every swell and pull threatening to sweep you overboard or drag you under. News reporters in their boats shouting to you. “Where are you from?” “How did you get here?” Welcome to the dream!

Border Force arrives to pick up a boat carrying around 20 migrants. @BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/HTimAhXM9S
— Simon Jones (@SimonJonesNews) August 10, 2020

What I did today: Decided its better not to know.

If you ever have a bit of time on your hands type into your search box: “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?” It is a strange tale of an unsolved mystery as is this post.

We always used to have a fairly laid-back attitude to home security until we were burgled a few years ago. As we were sat in the back room one evening intruders walked in through an unlocked outer door and helped themselves to my handbag and my son’s wallet.

After that a kind of security mania sprung up around our street. We all got alarms upgraded, better door locks, CCTV cameras and started a WhatsApp group so we could be better informed about any suspicious goings-on in our neighbourhood. If only we had just locked the door!

The WhatsApp group is great and has been especially supportive during lockdown. Neighbours have put boxes of kiddies toys at the end of their drives for anyone to help themselves and someone has been making and selling face masks and donating the money to charity. Lost and found pets notices get posted on there with the latest one being Marley the Jack Russell.

There is always something going on. At the minute everyone is collecting bottle caps so my neighbour can create a bar top out of them.

It’s going to take a lot of bottle tops.

Occasionally things get a bit over dramatised. One evening a couple of weeks ago we could hear fireworks going off. The group chat exploded along with the rockets. A sense of incredulity and outrage: “Fireworks? Really?” Followed by rapid response: “I’m on my way!” To do what? Not sure.

The most serious chat threads are alerts with CCTV images of people up to no good. There is many a night when individuals can be tracked around the street, going into gardens, trying car and house doors and peering in through windows. Checking footage can get to be a bit of an obsession and actually sometimes it’s better not to know what is happening outside when you are in bed and asleep.

Like this guy trying our conservatory door.

Anyway back to my unsolved mystery. Remember my twig broom? Well, when I got up this morning it was in the middle of the hazel tree.

So when my husband checks CCTV footage later I am going to look the other way. I don’t want to see that someone has grasped hold of my magical twig broom, messed around with it and then put it in the tree. I don’t want to see what else they have been doing in our garden. Maybe it will turn out that no one has been in the garden which would be truly something for the group chat!!! Either way it’s better not to know.

What I did today: Gathered Lilacs

it hasn’t been the best summer weather-wise this year here in the north of England but alternate days of rain and sunshine have worked magic in the garden. The result has been a few amazing and unexpected gifts.

I bought a quince tree a couple of years ago. I read that it can take a good few years before any blossom or fruit start to appear but in early Spring my tree was covered in blossom.

Around the same time I was given a cutting from a mulberry bush. The kind person who gave me this said I shouldn’t expect any fruit for the next few years. The cutting didn’t look particularly healthy and it was one of the last bushes to produce any leaves but now, mid summer, is covered in fruit.

The berries are very juicy and have an almost toffee-like flavour. This makes total sense as mulberries are related to figs. Not enough yield yet for jam or wine so using what there is as a topping for Granola.

Earlier in the summer I caught my husband hacking a way at something that had made its way through the ivy and was launching a take-over bid for the top corner of the garden. He fought a gallant but ultimately lost battle and the intruder survived and thrived.

Today I saw that the lilac tree at the bottom of the garden had, unusually, flowered for the second time this year. Lilac flowers can be used to make a soothing facial toner so, as we are due more rain and the flowers are very delicate and easily damaged in bad weather, I picked the ones I could reach and hung them in the sun for a while so they would fully open.

Lilac flowers opening up in the sunshine

I then filled a jar with the flowers and poured hot water over them. The flowers were left to steep for an hour or so then I strained the toner into a bottle.

Lilac flowers left to steep in hot water.

Once bottled the toner should last a couple of weeks if kept in the fridge. It is a pretty pale pink colour and smells faintly of lilac. It can also be used as a cooling facial spritz if decanted into a spray bottle.

These things , the blossoms, the berries and the flowers appeared as if by chance and as unlooked for gifts from a garden that, to be honest, is a bit wayward and unruly but full of surprises.

What I did today: Made it make sense.

As there has been a lot of rain just recently the herbs in my garden have flourished and are ready to harvest sooner than I expected.

I have been researching alternatives to culinary uses and found an article on making herbal incense.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’m a bit over scented candles at the minute. I don’t use air fresheners so I thought a herbal incense might be a different way of introducing fragrance into the house.

I gathered a variety of herbs and dried them in a warm oven.

Lemon balm, Lavender, Rosemary and Lemon Thyme.

Once the herbs had completely dried out I ground each one to a powder using a pestle and mortar.

In the days before my twig broom gave me the gift of patience I would have mixed all the herbs together straight away and created an incense that might not actually have worked in terms of fragrance. Today, however, I ground and stored each herb separately so that I could get a clear idea of the aromas each would produce when placed on hot charcoal.

The lemon balm was the biggest disappointment. As a fresh herb it has a strong, lemony, spicy smell. Once dried it didn’t smell of anything. Slightly frustrating as the plant escaped from its pot a few years ago and the garden is full of it. Maybe I dried it out too thoroughly. It was quite black when it came out of the oven. I will try again before I give up on lemon balm.

As for the other herbs, they each gave off their own distinctive smell when a pinch was added to the charcoal.

So now it was time to start creating a blend of the dried herbs. The rosemary scent had been very strong so I used a bit less of this in my blend. I used roughly half a teaspoon and mixed it with a teaspoon of lavender, thyme and sandalwood powder.

I lit another charcoal disc and covered it with my incense blend. The smell was, I have to say, just wonderful I could definitely pick out rosemary and lavender and the thyme added a grassy top note. However, within a couple of minutes the incense had burned completely away.

The incense started to burn straight away.

I had an initial sense that I had blended time and patience in with my herbal incense for not much of a reward. However, never underestimate green magic!

It made perfect sense to me when I went back into the room an hour or so later and the aroma of the incense was still there. It had mellowed and I couldn’t really pick out the thyme and but the rosemary and lavender had left behind an almost spicy scent. I’m guessing that as these two plants are more woody and robust some of their essential oils remain after drying.

I am so happy to have discovered this new way to use the herbs from my garden.
I am going to give the lemon balm another try and dry some lavender flowers to add to my next blend.

I have also thought about an incense for winter. My husband always says Christmas really begins for him with the scent of bay leaves and cloves coming from the kitchen. So maybe a blend of these with some dried Night Scented Stock flowers would be a good combination to try.

What I did today: Swept Clean

So for the past few weeks I have been thinking about making a twig broom. Why? Well a twig broom can be used to purify the room it sweeps, dispelling negative energies. I am very interested in green magic but also, to be honest, I wanted something to do.

I was thinking of this as a more long term project as there are not many dead twigs to be found at this time of year but then, as Lockdown was eased, I went to visit my dad.

He seems to have spent most of his spare time cutting down and cutting back trees and bushes in his garden and in the woodpile I found a stout piece of fruitwood exactly the right size for a broom handle. I also salvaged twigs pruned from Dad’s ancient fruit bushes and most appropriately a broom tree he had cut down.

A twig broom should always be connected to a place that is special to its owner. My broom is maybe made of wood from an apple tree planted in my childhood. Or perhaps from a “Kerry” cherry tree planted to remember a lost child.

The twigs are from gooseberry bushes that, at the height of summer, were always loaded with fruit and from which my mum used to make gooseberry crumble.

Any way I got my bundle of wood home and started to think about how I would actually make my broom. I tried a few things but kept running into problems; twigs not sticking to the handle, my lack of patience and the cats running off with bits of the string I was using to hold the twigs in place. Then, unexpectedly, my husband got involved.

Endlessly patient and practical he figured out the best way to attach the twigs and suggested not trimming any longer ones before the broom was completed. The process has been a long but not laborious one. Attaching a few twigs at a time and leaving the broom out in the sun to allow the glue to fully cure has slowed time and sharpened focus.

There has been heavy rain and thunderstorms this past week. At times when the rain has got too heavy I have had to pull on wellies and rush out to rescue my broom and bring it indoors. The cats have weaved under and around the broom at these times sniffing and pawing at the twigs.

The broom was half-way finished when my son visited and accidentally knocked it over. Two of the twigs snapped. They were two of the longer ones I had wanted to trim and were now the same length as the rest.

It has taken the best part of the week to finish making my broom. Only today my husband sawed the handle down to the right length.

This broom definitely looks homemade and a bit untidy but it is surely magical.

This broom is tied to my childhood home. My mum’s fruit picking and baking. My dad’s digging, planting, pruning and cutting.

This broom holds my husband’s ingenuity, my son’s fateful act of clumsiness and the cats’ curiosity and playfulness. It has absorbed the elemental intensity of thunder, lightening and sunshine and has given me the gift of patience.

When I hold this broom in my two hands and sweep it from side to side all these natural and personal connections flowing through it will stir up and break up negative energies contained within the room and sweep them out like dust.

The long, slow process of attaching the twigs.

Serious Sunday: How the other half live!

Before Lockdown it was estimated that 4.5 million children in the UK were living below the poverty line. That number is set to grow by at least one million during 2020.

What does this mean in real terms? Well for some of my learners it means having only one set of clothes to wear. A set of clothes that is often still damp from having been washed the night before and, over time, begins to give off a musty, mouldy smell that sets apart the wearer in every sense of the word.

For other learners it is going without regular meals so that younger siblings can be fed. Such learners can apply for a means-tested free meal allowance using a thumb-print payment method. Every individual human thumb-print is unique but as a collective, in this instance, they mark off individuals as living in poverty.

What has really struck me whilst teaching during Lockdown is that it is a poverty of opportunity that is having and will continue to have, the most negative impact on the futures of those caught in the poverty trap.

A system is in place to monitor engagement with remote learning. For my particular group of learners engagement has been, for the most part, hit and miss.

Were they less inclined to engage with remote teaching and, if so, why? They were usually good attenders, maintained focus in class and responded positively to learning opportunities. They are very tech-savvy and had no problem interacting with virtual learning platforms when in college.

What was going on with these guys that was causing them to drop off the college radar?

I finally got to speak to one parent who explained that she had four children all trying to access school and college work from one laptop that she had borrowed from someone.

Another mum told me that they do not have access to WiFi and are using up data allowance on their phones to try to get the children’s school and college work done.

Yet another mum spoke to me in whispers down the phone. She didn’t want her daughters to know that their violent father, who mum has a restraining order against, had forced his way into the house and smashed up the one tablet they had because he thought mum was using it to visit dating sites.

Any learner without access to ICT equipment and/or WiFi can request to borrow a laptop and dongle. Unfortunately some will not receive these until early June when the academic year is nearly at an end.

There are other solutions. I have mailed work to some of my learners but due to cost and safeguarding constraints, they have no way of returning it once completed.

If a learner is able to submit electronic versions of their assignments I can mark these electronically, give constructive feedback, track progress and ensure that learning is sequenced and structured just as I would in a classroom.

Learners who are receiving work through the mail are excluded from this essential element of the learning process and are, as a result, at a disadvantage compared to their peers. How do they know what they have done well? How do they know what they need to do to improve? How do they recognise opportunities to push through barriers so that learning does not plateau?

Add to all this the compound loss of routine, interaction with peers within the virtual classroom and meaningful contact with teaching and support staff.

“How the other half live!” I once wrote this as a rather flippant comment on a report for a learner who, when asked why he was late back to class in the afternoon said “Well I went to Wetherspoon’s for a bit of lunch.”

Lockdown, remote teaching, difficult conversations with parents have truly shone a light on how the other half live.

What I did today: Ladybird Days

The other day I bought a watering can. I went with the intention of buying a large plastic one that would water all the pots in one go. Instead I ended up with a little galvanised can, painted green, which was half the size and twice the price of the one I had intended buying. Why? Well it reminded me of the illustrations in the vintage Ladybird books that were given to my son when he was a little boy.

The books are long gone but looking online I found hundreds of examples of illustrations from Ladybird books including one of a little girl following her mum round the garden with a watering can just like mine!

There were other illustrations of children, free from adult supervision, roaming through woods and camping out. One little boy is attempting to kindle a fire using a magnifying glass so that his sister can fry a pan of sausages. Another boy is using a knife to whittle a toy plane out of a piece of wood.

It seems unimaginable today that we would allow our children such freedom or exposure to danger.

When we, myself, my brother and our friends, were children we spent the long summer holidays outdoors from morning till dusk. There never seemed to be any adults around and we were never bored.

The estate we grew up on was newly built, surrounded by fields, farms and little country lanes that always led to somewhere interesting. At the top end was a field that had been used by the builders to dump excavated stones and excess building sand. This dump was, to us, a magical place. We called it The Desert and spent sunny evenings playing in the sand dunes. One summer there was a rumour that a “pervert” had been seen hiding in the dunes watching children as they played. No one stopped us from going there. My friend’s mum just said “Make sure you take next-door’s dog with you!” We never did see the pervert.

Another summer we had a craze for building bogie-carts out of old pram wheels and bits of wood. The steering mechanism was made from a piece of washing line and the braking system was your foot. Our road was on a fairly steep hill leading directly onto a busier through-road. No one intervened when we raced the carts from the top of the street not even when we tied the carts together and went down the hill as a train with very little chance of stopping at the bottom!

At least once every summer one of our friends would wander off leaving the rest of us to search and shout after him and then have to return home and inform his mum he was missing. No one ever suggested calling the police. Instead the whole street would set off as a search party, find our friend fishing for sticklebacks and end the evening picking blackberries.

These were indeed Ladybird days. I remember the first summer I passed without grazing my knees and I think I must have known these days were numbered.

The other thing I noticed whilst looking through the Ladybird book illustrations was that there were lots of examples of people eating delicious food. So today we had high tea in the summerhouse and had our own Ladybird day. Lots of sandwiches, cakes and lemonade.

What I did today: Red sky at night: Angel Delight!

In a post a few weeks ago I wrote that, to celebrate the end of lockdown, I want to hold a 70s style buffet party. I have been given loads of advice, solicited and unsolicited, about what I should serve and what has really intrigued me is what people have said they remember about desserts from the 70s.

The checkout lady in the supermarket said “Birds Trifle. My mum used to make two, one orange and one strawberry flavour, whenever we had a party”.

One of my friends told me they always had a huge Sara Lee Black Forest Gateau. These were bought frozen and there was a very small margin for error when defrosting. The difference between still frozen solid in the middle and thawed to the point when the piped cream started to disintegrate was maybe 10 minutes.

I vaguely remember a dessert called Sweetheart that came in a can. You had to mix it with milk and leave it to firm up before eating. We also used to have tinned fruit cocktail with evaporated milk until my brother said it made his nose feel funny.

So; thinking about my party, I have had a go at recreating a couple of these fabulous desserts starting with Birds Trifle. We used to love these when we were children, especially the topping but I remember they were quite expensive so I guess we only had them for birthday teas.

The box doesn’t look as if it’s changed since the 70s.

Biggest disappointment: The packet of sprinkles had no sprinkles inside so I had to buy some.

So the instructions were easy to follow, everything went according to plan and the end result looked fantastic. The trifle tasted exactly as I remember. Weirdly though the cats didn’t like the Dream Topping even though it’s made with milk.
I think trifle might turn out to be a more of a “sit down at a table to eat” dish so, sadly, I don’t think I’ll serve it at my party.

Jelly and custard which looks a bit lumpy but actually wasn’t.

I borrowed Mum’s old trifle dish from my dad because that’s what she used to make trifles in.

I then started thinking about Black Forest Gateau. I want my buffet food to be bite size where possible so guests can pile up a plate and mingle. At one summer party I had, a slightly tiddly woman, who actually no one would admit to inviting, cut herself a slice of chocolate cake, watched as it slowly slid off her plate and surreptitiously ground it into the carpet with her foot. I’m not risking that again.

So I baked a batch of mini chocolate sponge cakes., split and brushed the bases with cherry and kirsch syrup*, filled them with black cherry jam and chantilly cream, topped with more cream and sprinkled with grated chocolate.

* I used the syrup from a jar of Opies Black Cherries with Luxardo Kirsch to brush the bases.

I think the cakes turned out really well. My husband tried one and said it tasted just like Black Forest Gateau!

Finally, on my 70s desserts journey into the past:

Strawberry Angel Delight with sprinkles.

Made in minutes, tasted delightful and the cats liked it!
I just have to think of how I can use it in a recipe for my party.