Christmas present success.

Well I was successful in getting ALL of my Christmas shopping/presents done by the beginning of December, I got my last presents today so a day late, but who's counting and that included my mums birthday present for the 31st December - believe me, trying to get her a present between Christmas and New Year is even more of a nightmare than high street shopping on the 24th December!

So I will do some wrapping tonight. There are still a few home made food gifts to make, but I am not so worried about those as the ingredients can be gradually picked up along with my usual shops. I noticed when I popped into ASDA on Friday that the supermarkets are already beginning to be heaving and we have 23 days to go yet!

It is such a lovely feeling to get things sorted so early and I am definitely converted to early organising from now on. The gifts I need to send by post can be sorted in plenty of time with no mad rushing now and I can spend December feeling smug and doing enjoyable things like decorating the house and cooking nice things.

No debt was gained in my Christmas shopping but I still think I managed to get the right present for the right person, throughout, it is so enjoyable giving something when you know that the recipient is really going to enjoy it, even if it is just a bottle of home made Christmas pudding vodka and chutney which I will make this week.

Besides this, cake is made, mincemeat is made and cherry brandy is made. I still have a couple of bottles of elderflower champagne which I made back in June so I will just get some Christmas food shopping on about he 19th and that is me done.

Good stuff all around.

Christmas Pudding Vodka and mincemeat.

Hello Folks,

It's been an extraordinarily busy week, hence my lack of posts. I won't bore you with all the mundane stuff, but it has been a full but very good week.

So as a result I was a few days late bottling my Christmas pudding vodka. Oh well, a few extra days steeping can't hurt.

So the unpromising brown liquid, still has a rather unpromising look, but in actual fact it is absolutely delicious! Very Christmassy and very tasty indeed.

I have 2 bottles for presents and a small half bottle for ME.

I will decorate the bottles somehow before Christmas, to make it look as good as it tastes.

As promised, with the steeped fruit residue, I made Chirstmas Mincemeat, to use as filling for all my mince pies and anything else I can think of.

I made this in the slow cooker, because I didn't really fancy having the oven on for 3 hours just for that. It works perfectly in the slow cooker and really doesn't cost much to run.

All the steeped fruit went in, with some soft brown sugar, suet, orange and lemon juice (I had this frozen already from when I used the zest for the vodka), some almonds, spices and a chopped up bramley apple. I then had this on high in the slow cooker for an hour, then on low for 2 hours, stirring every half hour or so. When it was finished I left it to go cold in the slow cooker and then added a couple of tablespoons of rum. This went into 4 sterilised jars, 2 large and 2 regular.

It smells wonderful (OK, it tastes wonderful, couldn't resist a little taste). I now HAVE to perfect my pastry to make the most of this mincemeat in my mince pies. I have had some good tips from all of you, in your comments for the last few posts, so I will be making use of those, thank you all.

Silk purse out of a sow's ear and Christmas gifting.

Thank you to all those suggestions about rescuing my rather nasty homity pie. In the end, I scooped out the rather nasty potato mush gloop and mashed it with herbs and butter to make a surprisingly nice mash, shoved it back in the pie which was beginning to resemble Frankenstein's monster, put it in the oven with some chips, and had the whole thing with peas and loads of gravy. A bit of a carb fest, but you know what? It was actually quite nice. I am certainly happy to eat up the rest of the 1 and a half pies now (sigh).

I have been trying very hard to get all of my Christmas shopping sorted before the 1st December and I am thrilled to say that I am almost there. In fact I have got all of them sorted except for one. I even started wrapping some of them this weekend. The home made Christmas pudding vodka is nicely steeping and will be ready to bottle today, I have to stir it once a day and I couldn't resist a little taste when I did that today - it is absolutely gorgeous, so tasty and I am sure everyone who is getting a bottle is really going to enjoy it.

The only person I have not bought for yet is my mum and I am not sure what I will be getting her. Also there may be one or two people who get some Christmas gift extras from the kitchen, in the form of biscuits or cakes or chocolates and I will obviously not be making these until the week of Christmas. But besides that, I am saved from the high street through December and if I play my cards right, I can do one food shop when my friend comes to stay on the 17th (it is more bearable when it is with someone to share the Christmas supermarket horrors) and that will be me done with shops through December.

I know that I am going to feel unbearably smug now when I hear others moaning about having to go to the shops on Christmas eve :-)

It turns out that Nigella has nothing to worry about.

I do enjoy my cooking and trying new things and then sharing the yummy results with you here on my blog, but don't let that make you think that things always run quite so smoothly in my kitchen! Sometimes I have disasters!!!!!!!

Yesterday I thought that I would make a homity pie for the first time, this is a very frugal dish with onions and potatoes and cheese and in principle should be delicious.

NOT SO IN MY CASE.

I really did a very poor job of it, even though I followed the recipe carefully. The pastry is not that nice (as you know, pastry is not my strong suit), the potatoes were overcooked which meant that they are more of a mush (that's mush, not mash, mash would be an improvement) and the whole thing has a rather bland flavour and unpleasant consistency.

And do you know what is the worst thing:

I made two of them!

I actually just want to throw them away, but that really goes against the grain. I have frozen the little one and half of the big one (it will lurk at the bottom of the freezer now in the hope that the pie fairy will go in there and transform it into something delicious) and I will eat the remaining unfrozen part this weekend. What a prospect. I'm thinking that maybe with some chips and SMOTHERED in gravy, it might improve slightly.

Anyone any other suggestions to make this unappetising feast better?

Home made Christmas present number 1

This rather unpromising brown, sludgy liquid is, believe it or not, going to become 2 Christmas presents. I am making Christmas pudding vodka which I will decant into two 350ml pretty bottles and tie up with ribbon for 2 of my friends.
Here is the recipe.

300g mixed dried fruit
75g sugar
2 cinammon sticks
6 cloves
a teaspoon of grated nutmeg
2 teaspoons of mixed ground spice
zest of a lemon
zest of an orange
1x 700ml bottle of cheap vodka.

Most of this stuff i had in the cupboard, but the total price comes in at about £11 if you use the cheapest vocka, not bad for two Christmas presents.

Simply put all the ingredients in a bowl together and cover it with clingfilm and put it in the fridge for 3 days, stirring every day. After this drain it through muslin or a coffee filter paper and bottle in 2x350 ml sterilised bottles, prettier the better. Decorate the bottles with some ribbon and a nice label.

The great bi-product of this present is that I will use all of the alcohol infused fruit after I have finished to make some nice mincemeat - so not only a good present, but a useful one for me too!

I'll let you know how i get on with it.

Laundry liquid - the results

Well to say that I am thrilled is an understatement  It is not every 39 year old man that get's excited that home made laundry liquid actually works, but this one really does! Makes me a bit odd but who cares.
So I have tried it with first rate results. It makes the clothes come out fresh and clean and I have even tried it on a cold wash with excellent results of fresh clean clothes, no residue.
I used about an American cup size of liquid for a wash, maybe I could use less, I will experiment  but so far so good. I also used a small amount of white vinegar with it in the fabric conditioner section.
No more shop bought washing powder/liquid for me, and I can't really say why it has taken me so long to discover this in the first place!

Baking

Today has been a nice day for baking. The sun came out late morning and was flooding into the house which was a little treat.
I wanted to try making some soft bread rolls and as the oven would be on for this, thought I would make a cake too. I've been having a few too many cakes lately, if I am not careful my waist band will be getting even tighter.
I let the bread machine make the dough, it is a good setting that I don't use enough, but it does take a good 2 hours 20. I got out the dough and shaped it into 13 rolls (not sure how it ended up 13, it was supposed to be 12) and then left them in the sun with a damp tea-towel over them to rise some more.
After an hour or so they went into a hot oven for 15 minutes. Nothing like fresh home baked bread rolls.

Then I made a couple of lemon drizzle loaves. These are so delicious, made so mostly by the drizzle. I heat up the juice of 2 lemons with 4 tablespoons of sugar and dissolve and then pour it over the two finished cakes as soon as they come out of the oven. Makes the cake lovely and sticky.

These are two fairly small cakes, one will go in the freezer for another time. I have put 7 of the bread rolls in the freezer too.

I made a frugal lamb tagine too in the slow cooker (which probably, officially means that I can't really call it a tagine).
This was just 2 lamb steaks that I had bought for £2 with a yellow label some time ago and left in the freezer, cut into pieces with a  grated onion and red pepper, an array of good Moroccan spices, can of tomatoes, some stock and some raisins, all shoved in the slow cooker and left to cook all day. It was really good and there are a couple of portions left.

 It's very 'saucy' as there wasn't much lamb in it, but there were plenty enough chunks for me. I filled the couscous with some of the herbs I have growing. It was lovely.

A great day of cooking very frugally. I am rubbish at totting up the individual prices for things, but I do know that, firstly, I didn't go out and buy a single thing for anything that I cooked today, it was all from my store cupboard and secondly that the reduced lamb was by far the most expensive ingredient used today.

I checked on my laundry liquid this morning, it has gone lovely and gloopy, just like laundry liquid should be. I am actually looking forward to my next load of washing now to check it out!

A couple of people asked me for my home made shampoo recipe, I will do a post on it soon.