Yummy ingredients, mouth-watering aromas.....

and a definite sense of achievement ~ despite an aching back 😊

I finally got this year's Christmas puddings made last week.  My recipe makes four puds but as I usually make a couple more for other folk as well, I have in the past just increased the ingredients accordingly ~ which can be very hard-going when it comes to the mixing stage 😳  This year, though, I was sensible (I know, right 😄) and made the usual four puddings on one day, and started again from scratch the next to make the extras 😉 

So without further ado I present to you, my lovelies, with a fanfare and a flourish, the.....

LARKIN CHRISTMAS PUDDING

340g/12oz sultanas

340g/12oz raisins

170g/6oz cherries, halved or quartered

227g/8oz finely chopped mixed candied peel

227g/8oz plain flour

1 level teaspoon ground ginger

1 level teaspoon mixed spice

1 level teaspoon nutmeg ~ freshly grated if possible

454g/1lb soft brown sugar

227g/8oz breadcrumbs

284g/10oz shredded suet ~ beef or vegetable, whichever you prefer

6 eggs, beaten

142ml/5fl oz stout, such as Guinness

142ml/5fl oz brandy

grated rind and juice of 1 orange

142ml/5fl oz milk (approximately)

Grease whatever size of pudding basins you would like your finished Christmas puddings to be.  This recipe will make enough to fill four, one pint, pudding basins each one of which will give about six servings.

Put all the dried fruit into a very large bowl, along with the stout, brandy, and the rind/juice of the orange.  Leave to one side.

Sift the flour and spices into another large bowl, then stir in the sugar, breadcrumbs, and suet.  Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

Now comes the hard work!  Flex those biceps and start adding the dry ingredients to the wet, three or four spoonful's at a time, stirring well after each addition.

When you get towards the end of the dry ingredients you will have to make a judgement call on how much milk to add.  I find that this varies from year-to-year, depending on how absorbent the dry ingredients happen to be and also if I've slopped in a tad more stout/brandy than I'd intended!  The mixture should be of a soft dropping consistency. 

waiting for their turn in the "sauna"!

Divide the mixture between your well greased pudding basins.  As I've told you before I used to faff about with a doubled-up sheet of greaseproof paper, pleated in the centre, to cover the puddings.  A few years ago I had a brainwave 😜 and used cake tin liners instead, and have continued to use them ever since as it's so much easier.  Depending on what I have to hand, I then hold said liner/greaseproof paper in place with either string or an elastic band.  You use whichever method suits you best 😊

I also used to either use a pudding basin net or make a string handle to lift the puddings in and out of the steamer.  Now I just don my trusty rubber washing up gloves to protect my hands as I find it easier.  Just make sure to really take care when removing the pudding as the basin will be very hot, and there will also be a lot of steam.

Bring the pan of water to the boil and place the pudding, in the steamer, on top; turn the water down to a low simmer.  Depending on the size of basin used, the puddings will take 5 to 7 hours to steam.  I steam my one pint puddings for 6 hours each, and the larger ones for the full 7.  To keep an eye on things, I set my timer for one hour at a time so that I remember to go and check on the water level in the saucepan.  Keep it topped up as necessary with boiling water from the kettle.

At the end of the steaming period, take the pudding from the steamer (remember to take care!) and discard the cake liner/greaseproof paper.  Cover with a clean tea-towel and leave on one side to cool. 

When the pudding is totally cold remove it from the basin, wrap in a double sheet of greaseproof paper or baking parchment, then wrap again tightly in cooking foil.

The puddings should be stored in a cool, dry, place, or they could even be frozen if you'd prefer.  We usually freeze what's left of the pudding we have on Christmas Day.  You'll have to remember to defrost them thoroughly before reheating.  With all the sugar and alcohol in them they should keep well in a cool, dry, place, though.  We have one at Christmas, obviously, but it's also our family tradition to have another at Easter.

When you are ready to eat your Christmas puddings, they can either be gently steamed for about 1 1/2 hours or reheated in the microwave ~ I take the latter route as it's simpler when there's so much other cooking going on.  I really can't tell you how long to reheat the pudding in the microwave as it's very much a trial-and-error process depending on your own particular machine and the size of the pudding.  I usually start with full power for five minutes then, if necessary, in short bursts of a minute or so until the pudding is thoroughly hot all the way through.

Serve your pudding with whatever your family likes best: rum/brandy butter, cream, a white (brandy or rum, perhaps) sauce, custard, ice-cream, etc.  We like to have ours with either cream or a white sauce flavoured with brandy.  I make the sauce very simply, rather along the lines of packet-mix custard ~ just substitute cornflour in place of the custard powder and add brandy to taste!

You can tweak this recipe to your heart's content with the proportions and varieties of dried fruit, so long as the total amount remains about the same.  You could also have a little less fruit and add in some nuts.  You can use rum instead of brandy if you would prefer ~ I use brandy as I'm really not keen on rum.  Make the recipe your own by using the fruit (and nuts) that you and your family like to eat.

If you decide to give the recipe a whirl, I do hope you find it as yummy as we do 😊 

 

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)  

Little words of wisdom

 

A tad annoying.....

...but absolutely typical for me 😒  We had some dry and sunny days last week when I could have got out into the garden.  Unfortunately for yours truly, though, I somehow managed to hurt my neck.....just by sleeping, it seems 😏  I woke up last Monday with a bit of an ache in my right collarbone, which by the next day had transformed into a very painful neck!  A regime of Nurofen, paracetamol, Deep Heat, heating pads, plus trying not to move my neck and shoulders too much (easier said than done, as I'm sure you can imagine 😳) over the next few days meant that the pain gradually subsided.  It does feel very much better than before, thankfully, albeit still a little bit "twingy".  I've therefore erred on the side of caution for a change, and not ventured out to do any work in the garden just yet. 

I wasn't totally idle, though, as I managed to get the scrap blanket finished that I mentioned previously.  Granted, it's not the prettiest blanket in the world but by 'eck it's warm and cosy 😊  I used two strands of yarn, and it's mostly Stylecraft Special double knit.  There were also some odds and ends of other yarns, such as Scheepjes double knit and some Aran-weight which I think was Cascade.  I tried using the latter by itself but it didn't seem quite thick enough, so I added a strand of a very lightweight yarn that I had in the stash ~ possibly a laceweight ~ which seemed to create a similar thickness to the two strands of double knit.  I also had some boucle-type yarn, which I was able to use by itself.  I can't say that I enjoy crocheting with this type of yarn as it's not always easy to see where the hook needs to go!

I finished off with three rounds of half-trebles (US half double-crochet) to make a border ~ and to use up a little more of the yarn, of course 😄  

I ended up going from this.....

to this, so I'm pretty pleased to have whittled down the oddments so well.  I shall just keep these to one side and add other odds and ends as they come along until I've got enough to make another scrap blanket 😄

I also finally got round to putting all the bits and pieces into the bathroom basin cabinet.  I told you that I had bought a couple of narrow wooden crates from Etsy, and they now have all the cleaning materials neatly stored in them on the left-hand side of the cabinet.  That's more or less what was stored in our old cabinet, apart from what was in the very small drawer, along with a few things that were kept in the cupboard in our little utility area. 

 Everything else is now neatly stored in the right-hand side of the cabinet, along with the remaining "bathroom" stuff from the cupboard in the utility area.  The bits and pieces on the top shelf are easily accessible, but I've put the things on the lower shelf in a basket to make them easier to access.  The only bathroom things left in the utility cupboard are the towels, as there just isn't enough space in the cabinet for them.  It means, though, that I now have more space for all the spare laundry liquids, etc, that were being stored in the cupboard in the kitchen lobby area.  All in all, I'm pretty pleased with all the rearranging that I've managed to get done 😊

I'm now busy working on Special Project One which I will be able to share with you at a later date.....if you get my drift 😜  I was going to get cracking on the dolls house but have decided to leave it now until the New Year.  I do have some other little projects that I'd like to do, though, which I'll be able to share as I work on them.

The next job, now that my neck is feeling less painful, is not craft-related at all so watch this space for this year's Larkin Christmas Pudding 😍

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)  

Little words of wisdom

 

Use it up!

There comes a point in a yarn-hoarder's life, though, where she does have to actually use up some of the stash.....if only to allow the bed in the guest bedroom to be recognised as a place for sleeping rather than a convenient surface to "store" said stash 😱  I felt I shouldn't shock you too much, my lovelies, by showing you a photo of the yarn hoard.....not least because I also have plenty of the woolly stuff stored in the base of the guest bed, too 😁

So I've decided that the time has definitely arrived when I should make some lovely things with my precious yarn and show you the end results rather than the stash instead ~ and, of course, during the autumn and winter is the ideal time to get cracking on these projects, plus it's a tad less embarrassing 😉  And let's face it, with the weather as it is at the moment I'm certainly not getting out into the garden anytime soon 😏  The teensy wee pile in the photo above is just a smidgeon of the hoard, simply odds 'n' sods that are leftovers from other projects.  I thought I'd start with these whilst I mull over what to make with the other yarns that I have more balls of.

I decided to start with a simple storage basket, which I thought would be handy for the bits and pieces I have gathered for some hand-sewing projects that I'd like to have a go at.

I used three strands of yarn held together: one Aran-weight and the other two double-knit.  I can't remember what size hook I used ~ possibly a 7mm 😕  I must admit that it was a bit hard-going on my hands and if I'd been making a blanket, say, then I would probably have used a larger hook.  As it was a basket, though, I wanted it a bit firmer.

I think I should have made it a tad smaller, to be honest, as it is a bit floppy!  I also managed to add in an extra stitch or two on some of the rounds.  As it's just something simple that I made for myself to use up some yarn oddments, I decided not to bother to frog it and start over ~ not least because of the soreness of my hands LOL

The basket didn't use up very much of the oddments, so I'm currently making another version of the "ordinarily extraordinary blanket".  I'm using a 5mm hook, with the yarn doubled-up, so it's growing quite quickly.  I'm not sure if I will have enough of these oddments to finish the blanket, as it's a fairly large one for the sofa.  However, a few months back I made a start (not that I've progressed very far!) on one of the Special Projects that I mentioned at the beginning of the year, so I'm sure there will be yarn leftover once I've completed it to add to the oddments pile 😄 

And will the next problem.....

 

.....kindly step up to the podium, please 😒  I don't think that I've already told you about our bathroom woes but it dragged on for so long that I may have forgotten by now ~ you'll just have to excuse me as an "old woman" who repeats herself if I've mentioned it before😏

Waaay back in the mists of time you may recall that we had our downstairs bathroom completely gutted and everything replaced.  Fast forward a few years and we were noticing a fair bit of condensation in the room along with mould appearing, especially in the far corner beside the toilet.  Then we noticed that what we at first thought were cracks were appearing in the glaze of the basin.  When we ran our fingers over the "cracks" we realised that it was in fact crazing and we couldn't feel anything on the surface at all.  The crazing slowly but steadily got worse, which was a little disconcerting to be honest.

Then a few months back we found that the basin was leaking so we had to call on one of the local plumbing companies to sort it out for us.  Turned out that something had cracked and we were advised that it would probably be better to replace the basin, especially in view of the ever-increasing crazing in the glaze.  We were happy enough to do this and thought that a basin set into a vanity unit would be better than the arrangement we currently had, which was a small cabinet stood between the basin and toilet.  Whilst we had the plumber there, we took the opportunity to ask him about the condensation/mould issues we were experiencing.  He said that it was most likely because the bathroom was now very well insulated ~ which is a good thing, of course ~ but the water coming into the toilet cistern is extremely cold, hence the condensation building up on the latter and creating moisture to build up in areas where there wasn't any air flow.

We asked him if there was anything we could do to combat the condensation and he suggested that since we were already planning to change the basin, we could perhaps consider changing the toilet to a back-to-wall style set against a WC unit.  He also told us that insulated cisterns were available to fit inside such a unit.

The upshot of this conversation, my lovelies, was that we decided to bite the bullet and go ahead with the changes.  It took a couple of months before the new units had arrived and the plumbers could come out to make the changes, so in the meantime whilst we could still use the shower and toilet as normal, we had to wash our hands in the kitchen.

Finally the grand day arrived and the plumber arrived, along with our new units.  Things were going well and we also decided to have the whole of the wall behind the toilet and basin covered with a wet wall panel to match that in our shower.  To make life easier, the plumber also took down our bathroom cabinet which he later re-sited to sit centrally above the new basin.

Alas, when Peter took the toilet pan out of its packaging he discovered that the corner was cracked 😒  A new pan had to be ordered so we were now without a downstairs toilet for a couple of weeks.  I decided not to put stuff in the basin unit until the replacement toilet had been fitted, but I did give the wall cabinet a good clean and put everything back in it that usually lived in there. 

Ta-daaa!  Behold, our new bathroom fittings!  Don't get too excited, though, my lovelies...

because sadly for us, that wasn't the end of this latest tale of woe as there was a leak beneath the basin 😳  Luckily I hadn't yet got round to putting stuff in the cabinet so all that got wet was the glass shelf.  So Adrian had to make another call to the plumbers, who to give them their due came out quickly to rectify the problem.  We've given it a few days to double-check that all appears to be well, and I've now made a start on sorting out all the "bathroomy" things that are currently in the cupboard in the little utility area beside the bathroom.

The freestanding cabinet that we had previously had in the bathroom had a tiny drawer atop the cupboard space.  Everything that was in the cupboard part is now stored in the small section on the left of the basin unit.  I bought a couple of long, narrow, wooden storage crates from Woodeedoo on Etsy and have used them for holding the bits and pieces on this side of the cabinet.  This section is pretty narrow, so it's easier to pull a crate forward and take what I need rather than trying to scrabble around with everything loose, as it were.

I'm still sorting out the other stuff that I want to move into the large section of the cabinet, then I can rearrange the cupboard in the utility area.  The latter is really full at the moment, so having extra storage space is going to be really useful as I won't have to have everything so squished together 😄

Fingers crossed that we don't hit any more bumps in this particular road!

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)  

Have you been busy, Sharon?

image from Magnific.com

Well, to be perfectly honest I haven't really been busy at all 😏  The weather definitely hasn't been tempting me out of the house, although we did have a couple of nicer days when we managed to get a bit more work done in the garden.  

I mentioned previously that we were going to tackle this border and we have managed to get it sorted out.  Thankfully it wasn't nearly as "weedy" as the border on the other side of the path 😱  I'm just trying to completely ignore that side of the garden at the moment 😄  Anyhoo, we got out the few weeds that were lurking ~ mostly dandelions, so we know full well that we haven't managed to entirely dig out their bloody roots! ~ and Adrian hauled the old sleeper edging over to the stone chipped area near the dining room window so that they were out of the way.  I then raked out the soil to make it a tad more level, although we did also take out a wheelbarrow load.  

As with the new path along the side wall, the weather gods were feeling kind again so laying the weed membrane wasn't too traumatic 😄  At some point we will be laying new sleepers running across from the concrete path over to the new raised bed border, which will separate the stone chippings (to the left of the manhole cover) from what will eventually be a new lawn area.  Unless we're very lucky with how well we manage to get the rest of the garden sorted out, I can't see the lawn being laid for a good two or three years though.  Obviously we needed the membrane beneath where the stone chippings will be spread out, but decided to just continue it all the way down the border to try to keep the weeds at bay.

Even though the sleepers were in short lengths (between 1m and 1.3m) they are still really heavy and poor Adrian was knackered by the time he'd shifted them.  I put them on our local Facebook marketplace page as "free to collect" and had a lot more interest than I thought I would!  Hopefully a chap from just down the road from us is coming to collect them on Sunday ~ weather permitting of course, as we've got Storm Boelo due to hit over the weekend 😳

Little words of wisdom

 

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)