L is for larder

 

My Mother’s pantry always looked wonderful at this time of the year.  She was a great jam-and-pickle maker and there would be regimented rows of jars on the pantry shelf.  Raspberries, apples and pears from the garden would have been bottled and each Kilner jar held the promise of a fruit pie or crumble.  She’d have made a start on Christmas preparations so there would be jars of homemade mincemeat.  

I sometimes feel I’d like to be like that but I don’t even have a pantry, never mind rows of Kilner jars making me feel like the cook at Downton Abbey!

What I do have is a freezer and a large cupboard.  I’ve been making gallons of soup as well as portions of stewed fruit to have with my porridge or yoghurt.  And I’m building up my supplies of tins in case we have power cuts and the freezer has to stay very firmly shut.

In retirement I have more time for cooking and my supplies of dried pulses and nuts are much larger – many a squirrel would envy me!

There is something very satisfying about putting food by for winter. It feels wonderfully old-fashioned and sensible.

My “larder” doesn’t have shelves that look beautiful on Instagram.  Rather it reflects my lifestyle choice that if the weather is horrid I do not want to have to go shopping. 

 

For the fruits of his creation, thanks be to God

 

  For the fruits of his creation,

thanks be to God.

For his gifts to every nation,

thanks be to God.

For the ploughing, sowing reaping,

silent growth while we are sleeping,

future needs in earth's safe keeping,

thanks be to God.

 

   In the just reward of labour

God's will is done.

In the help we give our neighbour

God's will is done.

In our world wide task of caring

for the hungry and despairing,

in the harvest we are sharing,

God's will is done.

 

 For the harvests of his Spirit,

thanks be to God.

For the good we all inherit,

thanks be to God.

For the wonders that astound us,

for the truths that still confound us,

most of all, that love has found us,

thanks be to God.

Tune: Ar Hyd y Nos (All through the night)

K is for Kettle and Knitting

There is something deeply comforting about putting the kettle on.  It’s the answer to so many of life’s problems, especially when autumn starts to take hold.   I’ve never been a more-tea-vicar as I don’t drink tea, but a hot drink often hits the spot.

As soon as friends arrive, they are offered a cuppa.  I offer tea (builders variety) green tea (preferred by Jack), coffee (my first choice), decaff coffee (that’s mostly for Annie-The-Home-Enhancer aka the cleaner), fruit tea (I don’t drink coffee after about 3pm) or even instant soup.  There’s something very basic to friendship about offering some sort of hot drink. 

If I’m bored, I’ll have a hot drink.  If I’m upset, I’ll have a hot drink.  If I’m cold, I’ll have a hot drink.  Even when I have my regular zooms with various friends most of us make a cuppa before settling down in front of the screen.

scarves

Then I settle down and take pleasure in drinking it.  And often I’ll pick up my knitting.  I’m getting quite a stack of scarves ready to go to The Salvation Army to be given to homeless people.  There’s even one there commissioned by Santa for a little girl of my acquaintance (I’m a supply elf for when the regulars have a panic on). There’s real pleasure in knitting: the cosy chair, the wool, the clickety-click of needles and the satisfying feeling that I am making something useful.

Retirement is rather good for both kettle and knitting. There is no need to rush. You can make a cup of tea, sit down, pick up the needles and spend a perfectly respectable morning doing very little.

Sometimes the knitting goes wrong.  (I am so "good" at knitting that I can make mistakes on a plain scarf.  But there's no rush.  I can put the kettle on.  A cuppa is the answer to everything.  

J is for journalling

 I know today is the anniversary of a very sad day for the USA so my condolences for all my readers there.  I remember exactly what I was doing when news of the attacks came - Jack's son and his brother were planting a hedge in my garden and I dragged the TV to the patio doors so they could watch the unfolding events in New York.  Unbelievable we thought, but it was all too true.  

On the day I decided to withdraw as covid advanced, I also started to keep a journal and I have kept it ever since.  My journal is a Word document which I find really useful as I can search it easily to find what happened when.  

So I decided to check what I did on this day in previous years.  In 2020 I was just starting to emerge from isolation but I became worried because I came into contact with a suspected covid case so I scuttled back home and seclusion.  Another year I went to a harvest meeting of the WI and reported that it was totally boring.  The year that it was a talk on self defence was much more interesting!  One year I went swimming and reported that I had swum fourteen lengths which I decided was a little too far as I was shattered for the rest of the day.  Last year I was beginning to make plans for my hibernaculum.

And how I wish I had the courage and talent to make a lovely hand-written-and-illustrated journal like Kirsten of A Letter from Home!  Maybe I could try that in my hibernaculum.  

I is for Introspection

Autumn has arrived, and with it comes the annual invitation to become thoughtful.  There is something about autumn that encourages introspection. Perhaps it is the cooler evenings, or the golden light, or the fact that there are fewer opportunities to sit outside pretending I am gardening

As I said a few days ago, trees have the right idea. They simply let go of things without worrying about it.  But I am not a tree.

I find myself thinking about the year so far. What have I done? What have I enjoyed? What have I learned?

I’d planned quite a few days out but the excessive heat made them seem very unappealing.  I’ve learned not to over plan for this woman proposes, God disposes.  I have learned that what I have thought of as excessive heat is just a good reason to laze. 

And maybe the best thing I can do is to look at autumn herself.  Life doesn’t have to be about constantly growing, achieving and improving.  Sometimes the best thing to do is simply to slow down and enjoy being. 

H is for harvest

 

When I was a little girl I always went to my grandparents farm for a week in the summer holidays.  I liked it to be at the end of the holidays as at the end of August the barley harvest would start.

This year the barley and most of the wheat in this area was harvested before the end of July.  That was largely because this has been such a hot, dry year (and yields have not been good) but seed producers have bred grains which mature earlier than many older varieties.  Fields around here have not only been harvested: they have been ploughed and harrowed and I think seeds have been sown ready for next year.

But my garden brings its own harvest too.  Two or three times each week I have been cooking tomatoes and making my own puree.  It will be used as the basis for soups and sauces throughout the winter.  My precious butternut squash is still in the garden but soon it will come in.  This year I've grown French beans  and I think I have had a better yield than friends who have grown runner beans.  My leeks are OK but don't look overly wonderful.  Beetroot will soon be brought in and salad leaves have given me poor returns.

I decided against carrots and broad beans this year: carrots because they are so cheap in the shops and broad beans because I hate the black fly.

My freezer is packed to the gunwales: I feel truly blessed.  

G is for ginger

There are some things in life that I feel I ought to like.  Ginger is one of them.  

It is supposed to be wonderfully good for you. It is warming, soothing, invigorating.   It turns up in healthy recipes, herbal teas and many other worthy comestibles.

But I feel very ambivalent about it

I’m OK with garlic and ginger in a stir fry or even a little bit in my Christmas pud.  But ginger biscuits, ginger flapjack, ginger cake (or parkin) – no. 

And people are very enthusiastic about it.  “You’d really like my home-made ginger biscuits”  they say.  Not if the bikkies taste of ginger, thank you.

No, I don’t want it fresh.  Forget crystallised ginger.  No sprinkling on melon.

It is supposed to be so good for us but I have reached the age where I feel entitled to a few food preferences. I am quite happy to eat vegetables, fruit, porridge and all the other things that sensible adults are apparently supposed to enjoy. I will make an effort. I will try new things.

But ginger?  No thank you.  When I was a child the rule was that I had to eat a little of everything but one of the small freedoms of getting older is knowing that I don't have to like everything.

 

F is for Foraging

I hope no-one will say that I am mean but my favourite price for anything is NOTHING!  And one of the best ways of getting something for nothing is to go foraging.  

When I was a child, I loved finding field mushrooms on my grandparents’ farm.  It could be a slightly hazardous occupation as the creepy crawlies could have got there first, but there were always lots left for greedy little girls like me.

Apples grew freely in our garden but blackberries were foraged from hedgerows around the farm.  My favourite fruit pie is still blackberry and apple.  With cream.   There’s an abundance of blackberries in the rough patch of land next to my house and I’ve been having a few.  Apples are very plentiful here and my friends are very happy to let me have some. 

There was a sweet chestnut tree on the farm but hazelnuts had to be foraged.  They were so much more precious than the ones in the shops. 

There’s a good source of sloes in a local churchyard and I  pick them in the years I want to make sloe gin.  It’s a lovely warming drink on a February evening.  I don’t pick anything at the roadside or hedges around fields which have been sprayed as I feel there could be quite a bit of pollution on or in the fruit.

These days foraging is more difficult for me as the trundle truck can’t get me close to worthwhile natural larders but I’m so glad that I did it while I could.