A first time for homemade chutney

Clare O kindly shared some of the bounty from her veg garden and pressed a load of tomatoes on me - some ripe and some green.  My first intent was to make Lina's recipe for green tomatoes under olive oil - but then realised that half the toms were very ripe and had I put them under salt I'd be left with nothing after the liquid drained off. Hence Plan B - chutney.

I mixed the chopped tomatoes with some chopped apple and shallots plus some raisins and sultanas, added mixed spice and ginger and cooked it in a syrup of brown sugar dissolved in white vinegar. I think - as I was guessing at quantities by eye - I rather overdid the vinegar and sugar solution, so had to simmer if for 3 hours before I got to the required viscosity - you test a chutney not with a cold saucer - but by running the wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan - it needs to leave a clear trail so you can see the base of the pan without the mixture quickly collapsing in on it. This took a very long time! Rather appropriately for chutney,  I happened to pass the time by watching an Indian film  (highly recommended : Lagaan - all about a momentous cricket match in the days of the Raj I can testify to being a complete non-cricket fan but I  loved it!)

Anyway I digress - the chutney is now bottled up and I'll have to leave it for a couple of months before seeing if it tastes as good as it looks.

Oh and by the way the kitchen smelled WONDERFUL!

Loads of advice from our main site on preserving and making jams and pickles

Clare F

Lavender blue dilly dilly

I've decided to make some lavender bags for Christmas (I'll be sharing the how on the website shortly) so I've just been out to harvest the crop.

I've got a couple of different varieties and they have progressed at different levels so some flowers are already starting to dry out. Apparently they lose some of the esssential oils if you leave them outside too long - but I think across the lot I've got it will probably average out.

I pulled off the foliage at the bottom and gathered them into two bundles, securing them with elastic bands. I'm a first timer at this so if I've done this wrong please tell me people! I don't want to lead anyone else astray and so many of you are so expert at this stuff.

I've bunged my bundles inside the cupboard where the immersion heater and boiler live as that should help the drying process and it's also out of the light, although not completely dark. I'm planning to leave the bunches there for a couple of weeks and then we'll see how they go. I'd love to hang them from the rafters only I don't have any rafters (well apart from in the roof space - but as the builders are up there converting it into a loft room I don't think that would be a good idea!)

On the main website we have some lovely recipes for lavender biscuits and lavender ice cream.

and how to make quick and easy ten minute lavender bags

Clare F

Hello from the Make it and Mend it team

The Make it and Mend it team are having a team meeting and lunch today at Clare O's. When we arrived we were greeted by this trayful of home grown tomatoes from Clare's garden. We're now looking forward to tasting some of the chutney and tomato pickles she's bound to make soon (yum yum).

Clare has really excelled herself with her urban garden this year. Here are some pics:

The veg garden also featured at lunch - with home-grown chard and tomatoes. Clare also showed her MIAMI creds by serving us a delicious soup based on her leftover chicken casserole. We're now looking forward to tea and home-made cake while debating what content we're going to create for the MIAMI website

Clare F

The conversion of the reluctant jam maker

About a year ago I wrote a piece on our main website entitled Confessions of a Reluctant Jam-maker. I thought I would need to be dragged kicking and screaming into making jam, seeing it as the preserve (sorry!) of the Women's Institute and retired people. Despite a shaky start, I quickly discovered it to be a very relaxing and enjoyable activity with the added bonus of making the kitchen smell delicious and your mates and family grateful to receive your sweet donations.

Since then I've become positively evangelical about it. In the last few weeks I've made raspberry, strawberry, fig and gooseberry/elderflower jams. There's a big pile of rhubarb on the table waiting for me to get stuck into tomorrow. The biggest pleasure was making fig jam from my own home grown figs. I'd originally planned to eat the figs with Parma ham, if I was lucky enough to harvest any, but in the end there were so many I was able to do that and make a few jars of jam.

Today's effort - gooseberry and elderflower jam was another double-whammy, as it was made with my own homemade elderflower cordial, this giving me two bites at the elderflower cherry! The recipe was from the good old Women's Institute, whose jam-making book was a Christmas gift last year.

I haven't ventured into pickles and chutneys yet, but my homegrown tomatoes are looking very green so if they don't turn red I'll be giving our Italian recipe for green tomatoes under olive oil a try.

If you haven't had a go at 'jamming' yet, do give it a try!
Check out our big Jam-making page with loads of info

Clare F

Beer can sculptures

We've published quite a few pieces on art from recycled materials - but it's been a while! so I thought I'd remedy that today. One of our earliest blog pieces features the Buddhist monks who built a whole temple out of beer bottles - see here

Today's recycled art has another beery theme but this time it's cans rather than bottles and we're amazed at the ingenuity of some of the creators. From this giant peacocks to full-sized cars and more, the sculptures make great use of old cans.

But it's not just sculpture. We like these bags that Sarah Roemer makes and sells on Etsy. (Sorry purses for our American friends). You can buy Sarah's beery creations here

Whilst always ready to make sacrifices in the cause of fashion I think I might draw the line at these wonderful creations from Nikos Floros, a Greek scupltor who made a series of beer can based opera costumes for an exhibition. I find pointy toe stilettos a trial when they're made of soft leather, I think wearing these canned shoes would be like having root canal work.



Have a look at our other posts on recycled art
New life for dead shopping trolleys
Art from the floors of China's factories
Art from toilet rolls

Recycling small electricals

At Make it and mend it we've long been advocates of recycling rather than just taking stuff to the tip, but broken electrical goods present a difficult problem. If you're not an electrician or an expert you can't fix them. Charity shops won't take electrical goods and it doesn't feel right consigning them to landfill.

I was therefore pleased to discover that my own local council, Hounslow, now offers kerbside recycling for small electrical goods. Items, including hairdryers, kettles, toasters and irons, small enough to fit into a supermarket carrier bag can now be placed, in the bag, alongside your other recycling boxes for collection each week (but no more than one carrier bag per week).

A list of the types of electrical equipment that will be accepted is available on Hounslow's website. If residents have an item that isn’t on this list, they can contact the council's environment team which will be able to let them know if it is suitable for collection.


How good is your own local authority at collecting materials for recycling?

For more information on recycling electrical goods (including big ones) see our website post on this  How to recycle electrical goods

A Yen for cutting emissions!

I loved this little snippet that I caught on the news the other day – a real Make it and Mend it approach to cutting carbon emissions. In their vast wisdom, the Japanese have come up with a way of cutting carbon emissions without spending a Yen. 

Apparently the Japanese government is telling the people to go to bed an hour earlier and get up and hour earlier, and this will dramatically reduce their emissions. This claim is based on the fact that a staggering 20% of their energy output is consumed in the final hour before they go to bed when people potter around making their last cup of tea, brushing their teeth and catching that final TV programme.

This sounds like a brilliantly simple solution, however surely there is a basic flaw in this thinking? Surely somebody must have thought about the possibility that by moving your bedtime forward will just bring that 20% surge forward by an hour – people are still going to be making cups of tea, and still brushing their teeth etc.

Unless they have an extra hour asleep, this just isn’t going to work…or am I missing something here? 

Hilary 

Make and Mend your new iPhone4?

We're all for spreading the art of making and mending, but it's a bit much to shell out  £500-£600 for a state of the art iPhone4 and then find it only works if you follow Mr Jobs's advice to "hold it the right way".

According to Apple you can avoid the problem by avoiding "gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases".

As these "many available cases" cost upwards of £25 that's a bit rich after already forking out so much, so  people are resorting to nail varnish or duct tape to get round the problem !

I'm a big Apple fan (I have a Mac, an iPhone and an iPad) but I feel we're all cutting Apple so much slack these days. I had a Genius appointment booked for today to get the casing of my MacBook replaced (design fault that leads to the casing cracking at the front). As I have another unavoidable engagement this afternoon I called the White City store to rearrange the appointment. I was advised by the recorded message that my call was number 9 in the queue. After waiting 5 minutes I was still number 9 so hung up. I tried again 3 more times and each time I was and remained number 9 in the queue. Maybe Apple have figured out that 9 is the magic number that makes people automatically hang up? As they have no traceable email for White City  I've just had to be a no-show. Not very good for them - and whilst frustrating for me I suppose I can always book another appointment as you can do that online even though you can't cancel it.

And the iPhone4 has other problems - yellow spots on the screen, upside down volume buttons and jammed cameras, that are I fear the worst for Apple long term - pissing off your customers this way is never a good idea even if you do make highly desirable products. And when those highly desirable products have to be held together with a dab of vermillion nail polish or a bit of gaffer tape, the magic soon wears a bit thin!

What make and mend methods have you employed to get your Apple gadgets working?

Thrifty idea - get your car to make money for you!

 I recently came across a new website, WhipCar which you can use to rent out other people's cars by the hour, day or week - or even better rent out your own to other people. This is a really nice way to get the most of out of a vehicle and a low cost way of using a car without owning one. If like me, you have to have a car but actually use it only occasionally, you can make a bit of money on the side by letting it out.
Here's how it works.
Car owners. You register your car on the website, you can upload a photo, describe the car's condition, list the mileage etc. You then get a suggested rental price but you can raise or lower this to whatever figure you want. You can also enter dates when your car is available. If someone wants to rent your car you get a text and an email and you can say yes or no.
Renters. You browse the site for suitable cars in your neighbourhood or any location where you want to pick a car up. You find one you fancy and make a booking.
All the insurance is covered by WhipCar once the booking is made. They take a cut of your rental fee and pay you the balance. Once you've registered your car, they send you a little pack to help you publicise your car's availability locally.
It's a cracking idea: a good way to keep car ownership down and to help car owners get the most out of their cars.
I signed up my Mini and within 2 days got a booking - sadly I had to turn it down as it happened to be the one weekend I was actually going away in it - I'm hoping I'll get another booking soon.
Clare F

Don’t get your knicker elastic in a twist, but…

I'm sorry guys and gals, but I'm ranting again!  I know, I know…when aren’t I?  But this time I'm really fired up.  We've just heard that John Lewis are no longer selling ribbon by the metre, but only by the full roll.  Having had a quick look at their website it seems to be that the average roll is 3 metres. 

3 metres?  Come on! when was the last time that you wanted 3 metres of ribbon?  The average person probably will buy ½ a metre at a time…so what happens to the rest?  Think of the wastage.  I thought John Lewis prided themselves on their green credentials, but I'm afraid there's nothing green about this move.  It's purely down to them boosting their bottom line over environmental issues!  We expected more from John Lewis.

Come on all you Make and Menders – join us and demand your half-metre of ribbon rights. We used to have fantastic fabrics and haberdashery shops in London, but they're rapidly disappearing.  Don’t let the big companies price us out of Making and Mending.

Tell us what you think!

Thanks to our Twitter friend giornalista1 (Andrea Dean) for this info! If you're looking for us we'll be tied to the lamp-post outside John Lewis with the finest ribbons!

Hilary

Memories of childhood

We've just run a competition with The Secret Seed Society who promote growing vegetables and cooking for young children. We asked you to tell us about your early memories of growing and cooking. Here are some of the responses.

Grandparents are often the people who get little ones started. Sarah told us

"My earliest childhood memories of gardening were of my school summer holidays spent in Lancashire with my green-fingered grandparents. They rented a beautiful allotment from a local farmer and grew every traditional vegetable going. I would help my Grandmother pick peas and would pop open the pods and eat the the jade green beads raw. I remember thinking that they were the best tasting peas in the whole world."

Elena also learnt from her grandparents:

"My first childhood memory of growing things was digging up potatos in my grandmother's garden, and eating peas from the pod. I'm now doing the same for my daughter!"

But sometimes Dads are involved too. I remember my late father getting me started with a packet of Clarkia seeds and my own little strip at the bottom of the garden. Seeing them grow and then enjoying all the flowers made me feel really proud and with a huge sense of achievement. 

Likewise Elizabeth:

"My earliest memory of growing veggies is of myself and my twin brother helping our dad on his allotment. I remember helping to dig up potatoes, dad would put the fork into the ground and turn it over and me and my brother would scrabble around hunting out the spuds in the earth. I remember he had a funny little skinny shed on his plot which looked like a sentry box you see outside Buckingham palace! It was crammed full of tools and plant pots, and we'd huddle inside when it rained. Happy days"

Mustard and cress is a popular first seed for tinies to try. Karen remembers:

"My best memory of growing seeds as a child was decorating egg shells with faces and growing cress in them. I remember being amazed at being able to see the growth in seedlings from day to day and it kept me interested and the best bit was being able to eat them too."

As for cooking, again grandparents and jam tarts are often the catalysts to a cookery passion. My Mum made them regularly and let me help by spooning in the jam and then making my own freeform shapes with the pastry off-cuts. Here's Heather:

"My earliest memory of cooking is with my nan. We didn't make anything amazing, just jam tarts, but it was still ever so much fun! She is the reason why I love cooking now."

The Secret Seed Society is a great way to encourage kids to get into cooking and gardening. They produce storybook and seed packs. Each pack costs £5.50 but Make it and Mend it members get a 10% discount - just enter Cook it as the discount code at the checkout. >> Buy here

Right now they're running a competition for grownups to win a dinner for two by coming up with some interesting celebrity seed characters - Tina Turnip and Parsley Bussell among them. >> You can enter here

>> For some tips on encouraging children to cook and develop a sense for flavours 

>> Find out more about Secret Seed Society

How much power do your home appliances use?

I just found this really interesting page from GE (General Electric). You can find out how much electricity your home appliances are guzzling and even check out the annual costs (in US dollars). If you are from the US it's even more useful as you can compare costs by state.
>> GE Home Appliance Energy Use

For us Europeans it's still very helpful from a comparative point of view. The annual cost of using a hairdryer is more than curling irons or a vacuum cleaner. As I expected the tumble dryer is way up there in terms of electricity consumption and annual running costs. What did surprise me though was how costly fridges and freezers are, behind only furnaces (boilers?), water heaters and the deadliest of all - air conditioners. Other high consumers are plasma TVs, ovens and dishwashers

By clicking the menu the little appliance visuals rearrange themselves so you can check wattage, gas use, cost per year and kilowatt yield. I was also very surprised at the cost differential by state - a staggering annual cost difference of almost $2500 if you used all the appliances and live in New York ($4134) rather than Washington state ($1720). Go have a play!
Related links:
>>  Blog Action Day - Hang your Washing out!

>> Save energy - starting in the kitchen