Bottling some winter sunshine

I've just enjoyed a week's holiday in glorious sunshine in Morocco so have been feeling the blues since I got back and all it seems to do is rain.

The other day I made some preserved lemons - thanks for the recipe to Alice Barnsdale who lives in Fez. It is so easy and really feels like you're bottling sunshine. For those of you who haven't tried preserved lemons, they are an essential ingredient of many Morrocan dishes - especially tagines and couscous. I have the Moro Cookbook (highly recommended - stick it on your Christmas list!) and have been frustrated by how many recipes need preserved lemons and had never got round to hunting them down (although I think Waitrose sells them).

Anyway making your own is a 5 minute job. Here's how:

Put 2 tablespoons of coarse salt in the bottom of a large sterilised jar. Get about seven or eight fresh lemons and slice them not quite in half, lengthways, leaving the halves still attached at the bottom. Make another slice at right angles to the first - again leaving the quarters attached at the base. Pull the sides apart gently (keeping them still attached at the bases) and cover the insides generously with salt. Rub more salt on the outsides and then squash them down inside a large sterilised jar. Cram in as many as you can fit, letting the juice flow. Top up with a bit more lemon juice to ensure the fruit is covered and a couple more tablespoons of salt. Seal the lid tightly. Turn upside down after a couple of days to get the juices flowing. Leave the lemons for a month or two then they are ready to use. Once opened store in the fridge - they'll last up to six months. When you come to use them rinse the salt off and you're ready to go. 'Easy peasy lemon squeezy!' (first time I've used that expression in a relevant context!).

You can add ingredients to spice it up a bit - for example coriander seeds, cinnamon, peppercorns, bayleaf, chilli - but I decided to go for the unadorned purity of the lemons!

Clare F Sphere: Related Content

Recycle Now Christmas Competition

We just got this email from Paul at Recycle Now:

"I'm emailing on behalf of Recycle Now, England's national recycling campaign, to let you know about the competition we've just launched as it may be of interest to you and your readers/users.

The Recycle Now campaign is trying to make people aware of the waste
created at Christmas and remind them that most of it can be recycled.

We've built a stunning one-off 6ft Christmas tree sculpture made from recycled cardboard  and are giving it away in a competition >> Enter here. 

We made the tree in three days using over 200 pieces of rejected cardboard stuck together with water based glue so it can still be recycled. >> See video on making the tree

We also commissioned the artist Michelle Reader to upcycle common household waste like aluminium cans, carrier bags and plastic bottles into beautiful Christmas tree decorations. >> Have a look

We've also illustrated some surprising facts about the amount of waste created at Christmas >> Festive Facts.

We hope you like what you see and will encourage people to enter the competition."
Paul Gill of recycle Now Sphere: Related Content

Council orders grandmother to dig up beloved garden to store unsightly wheelie bins

This headline appeared in one of the papers this weekend. Admittedly it was the Daily Mail and so there's always the temptation to take it with a pinch of salt, but it seems that this story is true….or at least according to various news agencies. 

Why didn’t I believe it at first? Because at no point in this story does it make sense!  If it does to you, can you please explain it to me?

I'm all in favour of sensible recycling, but Harlow Council have brought in two large wheelie bins and a collecting box to collect recycling.  Unfortunately for Sandra St John, she has nowhere to store them. At first the council suggested that she keep them out the back and manhandle them through her house on collections days. When she pointed out the impracticality of this, they told her she must pave over her lovingly tended front garden to make room for the two big bins.   Understandably Joan was upset: she's tended the roses and lavenders in her garden for 22 years and was attached to her garden.

A lot of local flooding is being blamed on people paving over their front gardens so that they can park.  This large scale paving of front gardens is apparently displacing the water and causing all sorts of flooding issues as well as destroying wildlife in urban areas. Last year the RHS flower show championed designs for front gardens that allowed for off road parking, whilst still remaining environmentally friendly. 
Moreover, as of October 2008, there are regulations in place to stop people randomly paving over their front gardens and you now have to apply for planning permission. Yet here we have a local council actually advocating this!

What I also don’t understand is why, when Sandra is quite content with the recycling baskets she currently has and feels no need for any more, is the council foisting these giant wheelie bins on her…and god only knows how much the production of these monsters bins puts on our environment.  
Why can’t we just go back to weekly collections and recycling rates might even rise, as already proven by Gedling Borough Council in Nottinghamshire who when, they finally did a U-turn on weekly collections found that their recycling rates rose dramatically.
Even more to the point, why aren’t the government and the local councils encouraging us to reuse things rather than send them to recycling. We really don’t need any more encouragement to throw things away. How about supporting the MIAMI take on life and go back to the old skills. What alternative use can you find for those old curtains, those empty jars, that bubble wrap, all that compost material for your garden?

Come on guys, lets get a little perspective on this whole recycling lark  and think before your throw….because, as we keep saying,

life’s too good to throw away.

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If you want to get ahead get a hat! ... like Cheryl's

It seems these days Cheryl Cole can do no wrong and sets the fashion wherever she goes and whatever she wears. Last week was no exception when she braved the elements wearing a bobble hat.
Yes, you heard it right, the bobble hat, that bane of our childhood, when our mothers forced us to wear them, have now become big business and all thanks to Mrs Cole.
Expect to see bobble hats all over the shops and everyone wearing them. Knitwear is back in fashion and it’s time for you to get out there and grab yourself a hat.
Cheryl’s hat comes from Aubin and Wills and costs a mere £50! - but don’t worry if that seems a bit steep, because we've got really simple instructions for making your own Cheryl look-alike hat for a fraction of the price.
Why not make loads of them? - they'll make great Christmas gifts for all your friends

>> click here to make your very own Knitted Bobble Hat

For more knitting inspiration:

>> knit this very easy handbag

>> make your own knitted doorstop

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Tips and workshops from Christmas past

Want to pick up tips about ‘make do and mend’ Christmases? London’s Geffrye’s Museum, dedicated to the quintessential style of English middle-class living rooms from the 1600s, has a special Christmases Past exhibition focused on making everything yourself.

Get down there (all links below) between 24th November and 3rd of January to see how we used to decorate our houses for Christmas how we used to celebrate. The special Christmas past exhibition complements the museum’s ongoing Eco Home exhibition.

As well as exhibits, the Geffrye is putting on a series of workshops and events so you can learn how to make festive swags and garlands (12th December) and how you can make all manner of decorations by upcycling old fabrics (5th December).

What a great way to spend a pre-Christmas Saturday.

>> Get more information about  visiting The Geffrye Museum Sphere: Related Content

STOP PRESS: Christmas pudding shortage fears!

It seems the shops are in for a bumper year for sales of Christmas puddings because of our interest in the good old days and our craving for comfort food ... or at least they would have been if there were enough shop-bought puds to go round.

According to the Mirror newspaper, the UK’s biggest producer, Matthew Walker, is stepping up its production to try to meet this increased demand. But the worry is that it won’t be enough and people will have to go without... or (concept coming up) make their own!

And why not? Especially now you know it’s Stir-up Sunday this weekend (that’s 22nd November). This is the day when the family is meant to gather round the kitchen table to take their all-important turn at stirring the Christmas pudding ingredients. My mother always swore that this would bring all us stirrers good luck for the next year.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never made one before. They’re not difficult to make and there are loads of really good recipes about. In fact if you’ve got a family favourite, please let us see it. In the meantime, we’ve posted a really fab flour and sugar-free version on the website (tastes just as traditional - trust us). Follow the link below.

>> Christmas pudding recipe Sphere: Related Content

Hot comfort food

The recession’s being blamed again, this time for our growing indulgence in comfort eating! And while foods like baked beans top our list of comfort tastes Simon Cowell chomps his way through Angel Delight as his way of combating stress!

But Simon’s not the only one returning to his childhood taste buds. According to reports, treats like Crispy Pancakes are making a big come back and Black Forest Gateau is firmly back on the menu.

So what’s going on? From all these reports it would seem that it’s not just a little comfort eating we’re indulging in but, real retro-style comfort food.

Comfort food fulfils certain criteria for us - usually sweet, stodgy or tastes and textures linked to our childhood in some way. Foods like boiled eggs and soldiers, ice cream or cakes. Food that has the ability to transport us back to a time when we felt secure and had no worries other than arguing with our parents over bedtime.

In times of stress, such as a recession where we’re worried about money etc, we want to escape and find a little corner of the world that’s safe. During WW2 cinemas experienced a huge boom as people flocked to them to watch elaborate musicals that let them escape for a couple of hours and fun with a happy ending.

It’s not just escapism that lures us back to comfort food. Food we eat can have an effect on our brains and encourage a release of the feel good endorphins: it can directly affect how we feel.

Neuropsychologists based at the University of Sussex studied the ‘nurturing emotions’ which some foods set off. They looked at ingredients consumers’ reactions to the smell, taste and colour of the dish (this was done by strapping electrodes to their heads!).

They then created a comfort index of food based on temperature, texture and ability to recreate a childhood feel. They found that the five dishes with the highest scores were beans on toast, followed by sausage and mash, tomato soup, chicken and mushroom pie and then macaroni cheese…. I would ask where the chocolate, ice-cream and Angel Delight was, but as this research was funded by Heinz, I won’t!

Suffice to say, comfort foods can be good for us, but only in moderation. So don’t spend your whole time justifying eating comfort food or you will only end up feeling uncomfortable!

Feel like indulging your comfort cravings? Go on, you know you want to...

>> Try our left over potato cakes
>> Mars Bar cookies
>> Very dangerous chocolate mug cake
>> Bubble and Squeak Sphere: Related Content

Rehabilitating hobbies

Now that the days are drawing in and everything looks so gloomy, it's a good time to think about taking up a hobby.

We've had a bit of a rant before about how boozing seems to have become the hobby of choice for so many people and that the concept of hobbies has become corny and nerdish, which is a great pity.  >> Has drinking replaced hobbies?

So Make it and Mend it is going on the campaign trail for the rehabilitation of hobbies! Or maybe it's not so much hobbies themselves that need rehabilitating, rather the word hobby? It's been the subject of too many curled lips and rolled eyes - let's make it cool again!

Why do we need hobbies? When you have a hobby, you never need to be bored. As well as the pleasure of the activity itself, the sense of achievement that making things can give you is both lasting and self-affirming.

It was Laurence Stern in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy who first coined the term hobby - or hobby horse. His usage was not exactly positive though - being something the idle rich indulged in to the point of boring the pants off other people! Hobbies as we know them really took off in the years following the second world war - and it seems to have been the cynical go-getting 1980s that marginalised them.

There's  lots of evidence that having hobbies helps reduce stress. This is particularly important for those whose work can be all consuming. Doing something completely different helps takes the mind off your worries and can provide a bit of space and calm. Hobbies can improve self-esteem - as well as self-efficacy: the belief in your own ability to achieve a certain goal.

Hobbies can give people the opportunity to have more personal control over something when this is denied to them in everyday life or work and so it can be very self-affirming.

Hobbies can also be opportunities to fulfill our otherwise thwarted personal aspirations - hence the popularity of amateur dramatics, Karaoke and talent contests for wannabe "slebs".

So this is a call to action! Let's celebrate hobbies and make them sexy again!

Please let me know what hobbies you have and how long you've been doing them. Have you rediscovered a childhood passion? Taken up a long cherished dream? Is it related to your work or completely different? Do you do it alone or with others?

Either post a comment here or drop me an email to claref@makeitandmendit.com Sphere: Related Content

It's National Baking Week - so I had a go

I was amazed at the lip-smacking descriptions of the cakes baked by members of our Facebook page and so was inspired to have a go at baking myself.

I haven't creamed any butter or beaten any eggs since I was a girl - being single it always seemed to much of an indulgence and then if I have people to tea it's easy to nip out and buy a cake, so it's never seemed worthwhile going to the trouble to make one.

Remembering that I'd had a Damascene conversion on the jam-making front after a lot of scepticism, I decided to see if baking could work it's magic too. I got the food mixer out of the cupboard and set to work, while listening to the X Factor on Saturday night. A couple of people in the Facebook thread mentioned lemon drizzle cake - and I happened to have plenty of lemons. There's something so sensual about the word drizzle that had me licking my lips before I'd even broken the eggs!

Readers I loved it! It was so easy. It was so satisfying. The kitchen smelled heavenly. The sponge rose beautifully. The lemon drizzled oozily. And it tasted absolutely scrumptious.

The only problems - I forgot to take a photograph - the one here is not mine (thanks to pudontour on Flickr - I picked it as it looks the most like mine). And I scoffed the lot - so I don't think I dare risk doing this again until I have people round to share it or I'll be turning into a sweet-toothed Tellytubby. So... if anyone fancies coming for tea next Sunday afternoon?

Clare Flynn

>> I used this recipe from Woman's Hour
>> Confessions of a reluctant jam-maker
>> Our Facebook Page
>> National Baking Week Sphere: Related Content

Blog action day - hang your washing out!

It's Blog Action Day for climate change and we're getting behind it at Make it and Mend it. Check out the main website for our piece on Climate Change and your Kitchen.

We've also been lending a bit of support to our US friends at Project Laundry List, who are campaigning to encourage Americans to hang their clothes on the lines instead of always using the dryer.

Our highlighting of their efforts has piqued a lot of interest from our UK readers and Facebook fans, many of whom have expressed amazement about the fact that 50 million US homes are actually banned from using dryers and line-drying is seen as a potential dampener on property values (yes - didn't you know - all those sub-prime mortgages and greedy bankers had nothing to do with it - it was the few brave citizens who dared to hang their sheets outside!).

To stop all us Brits from feeling too smug, I thought we'd share a few facts about tumble-drying over here in these fair isles. It may not be banned by law and the practice of hanging your smalls out is not generally viewed as scandalous, but an awful lot of us are still very attached to our dryers.

• We spend £1.1million a day on electricity for tumble drying. That's equivalent to the amount of electricity needed to run 2650 (dryer-free!) homes for a whole year.
• Dryers use about 60% more electricity than washing machines.
  
• The average tumble drying family could save themselves £70 a year if they switched to line drying.
• The average dryer is responsible for emissions of 310kgs of CO2: avoiding this is roughly equivalent to draught-proofing the average UK house.

If you're feeling coy about hanging your undies on the line, then hang these on a rack or airer indoors and save the washing line for sheets, towels and pillow cases.

And don't use the lousy British weather as an excuse. We got by perfectly well before dryers were around! You can always dry indoors on bad days, or don't do a wash if you know it's going to rain - or you can even buy covered washing lines to protect the clothes from the elements.

Even if you can't give the dryer up completely, please do give line drying a try on a dry day (it doesn't have to be sunny!). You'll love the smell of air dried clothes - there's nothing like it.

I've never owned a dryer myself - apart from a brief flirtation with a combi washer-dryer that was so useless I never bothered to use the dryer function. I do have a confession to make though! 25 years ago I worked on the UK launch of dryer fabric conditioning sheets. I spent my days beavering away trying to come up with ways to swell the tiny numbers of dryer owners here in Britain. It sometimes seemed an impossible task - if only it had proved to be!

Clare F

>> Read our original post in support of Project Laundry List
>> Check out the debate on our Facebook Page
>> Project Laundry List

Versaline Washing Line Eco friendly washing lines for inside and out. save money and help reduce CO2

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Tell us about your tins! - well, how you cook with them

It doesn’t matter what sort of culinary whizz you may be in the kitchen you still need a few cans in the back of the cupboard for emergencies and mid-week dinner staples. However, my confidence did fail me when I was confronted with this picture in a recent copy of the UK Times.

What you’re looking at is a ‘Mock crown roast’ from a 1949 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. It was sent in by a Times reader as their contribution to the World’s Worst Recipe Competition.

The central ingredient is four tins of luncheon meat, smeared with marmalade and then roasted in the oven; served here with tinned potatoes, tinned asparagus and tinned pineapple decorated with strawberries.

>> Read the full article here

Even this concoction couldn’t put me off tins for good. So to rectify the canned goods good / bad balance I want your recipes that include something in a can as part of the ingredients.

'Chilli con carne made with tinned kidney beans' you say – ‘Who has time to soak and boil them these days?’ But I think that’s a bit too obvious. The more inventive the better and, unlike the Mock crown roast, it has to be something totally delicious.

Send your recipes to info@makeitandmendit.com

We’ll publish the best of them and may even offer a prize for the winner. Would a tin of luncheon meat do?

Anne Caborne. Make it and Mend it Sphere: Related Content

Have you entered our knitting photo comp yet?

We're giving away 5 copies of Debbie Bliss' fab new knitting book Tips for Knitters - plus an exclusive free download of a section of the book and 25% discount off the price of the book. Check it out here

Here are some of the entries we've had so far - first of the 5 winners will be announced this weekend. So get those photos in - the competition ends on 31st October 2009. Sphere: Related Content