A bookmark a week #4 sloe port

Another week, another kitchen whim.

Last year my wonderful mother foraged so many sloes that she bought me a load over so I could continue my fruit liqueur obsession (honestly, I have a cupboard just for them). I decided to make sloe gin and sloe brandy. The gin was great, the brandy's also great. Both do kind of have a medicinal hint to them, but that's ok, I could drink them when I had a cold and pretend it was healthy.

Soooo... the gin's all gone now and there's not much brandy left. 

So, so sad.

Anyhoo, I have a real problem with throwing anything edible away so when it came time to throw away the sloes I just couldn't do it. They'd been soaking in booze sugar for months, there MUST be something I can do with them! I know you can dip them in chocolate, but I don't have the patience for chocolate dipping and afterward I'd just have to eat all the chocolate. Bad plan.

Then I found this link.....

http://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/what-can-i-do-leftover-sloe-berries-sloe-gin-sloe-port-and-sloe-chocolate

Port! I can make another booze drink! 

Ben and I love port with cheese but we really only have it at Christmas. We decided to make one batch with the leftovers from the gin, if it's good we'll make another with the brandy and have a full-on comparison with a good Stilton. Mmmm.... Stilton....

It's so simple, get the sloes, the sugar and the wine (not a very nice bottle, but something perfectly drinkable), chuck them together in a jar (the only one I had is far too big but nevermind), shake and put in a cool dark place. 

t was not a tricky job

Once it was done, we left it in our cosy little cupboard with its liqueur friends and then we forgot about it for a while. 

I'm currently very excited about the kumquat brandy on the left

I know it says shake every day but I haven't needed to do that with any other fruit'nbooze concoction so I thought I wouldn't bother. 

Guess what? It worked!

So we strained it through muslin, retaining the sloes for the chocolate bark in the link. I'll make it if it means I get another use out of the sloes (3 uses, hoarding win), added the brandy and then, boom! Port.

In our fancy vintage glasses, too

After tasting, I can tell you that it's bloody lovely. Nice and fruity with a proper kick.

We'll be putting it away for Christmas as these things usually mature nicely in the bottle and trying it again then. In the meantime I'll use the sloes from the brandy to make another bottle so we can have the proper taste test. 

Verdict, I shall never again throw away booze-soaked fruit. I have some vodka-soaked gooseberries in the freezer..... maybe with white wine....?

Tell you what, if I do it and it isn't hideous I'll do another post on it.... if it is hideous, I won't tell you a damn thing about it.

Love and kisses,

H.

Ben's Projects - part the second

So week two (and already a day late) of my projects blog. Originally my project this week was going to getting our mess of a back garden sorted out - but the weather conspired against me so I had to change things around.

We've actually had quite a full week - with a new one day Con to attend on Saturday just gone (more about this elsewhere). This got me to thinking - Condamned isn't too far away now, June 13th - 15th in fact, and I still had no idea what I was going to run.

The Quiet Year and Microscope have been my go to Indie games for Cons for a little while now, and for something a bit crunchier and dicier I go with The One Ring. However I use a lot of books for The One Ring and don't really want to take them on a flight, and the other two games have been around for a while now. That's when it struck me - I could run Kingdom, and that would be my project for the week - properly reading through Kingdom so I'd be ready to run it for Condamned - and possibly other times as well.

Kingdom is an RPG by Ben Robbins - who was the man behind Microscope - as mentioned above a favourite game of mine. I backed the Kickstarter at the level where I got a physical copy of the finished game - as pictured. 

For those not familiar with it Microscope is a game that looks at the whole history of something - a planet, a kingdom, a ship or just about anything people can come up with. It has a start point and an end point and then explores what happens in-between. There will be a number of Eras, Events and Scenes making up the history you are exploring. The actual roleplaying comes into the scenes - you take on the role of someone involved in an event and explore the framed scene. These scenes tend to be quite short - and can only answer the question posed to frame the scene - anything else players want to find out about has to be explored in another scene.

Kingdom plays in a similar way to Microscope, exploring some of the events affecting one Kingdom (I'll come onto what constitutes a Kingdom in a minute). The Kingdom will have Crises and Crossroads - the players explore these and shape their Kingdoms progression. In some ways it can be likened to a series of linked scenes in Microscope - indeed the book includes rules for using the two systems together.

The most important concept in Kingdom in many ways is what actually constitutes a Kingdom - as this is the basis for all the play. Despite many readings I still struggle with this one somewhat myself - so here's how the book puts it. A 'Kingdom' is the game term for the community or organisation that the game will focus on e.g. a pirate ship or a nomadic tribe. Some kingdoms are small, others are larger. A kingdom should have at least 20-30 people but could have hundreds.

In normal game play, the players as a group (this is a GM-less game) come up with a Kingdom, however if you want a quicker start the games has a large number of pre-generated Kingdoms in it - and I think I may be leaning towards these for Con games. Some examples are: Battleship Orion (think Battlestar Galactica really especially as the Kingdom is the entire rag-tag fleet), Cactus Flats - a Wild West township, Dwarf Mountain - funnily enough a dwarven Kingdom, and so on.

Each player takes on a single character within the Kingdom - and will usually only have one main character per a game - although they may be called upon to take the parts of NPC's. Each character will also have a Role within the Kingdom, they'll be a Power, a Perspective or a Touchstone. Each of these interact differently with the Crossroads and Crises a kingdom will face, and the Role a character has may change during play - either by being challenged for the role by another player or through the character shifting through play.

A Power is able to decide which way the Kingdom will go at a Crossroad, a Perspective can foresee consequences of Crossroads and Crises whilst a Touchstone represents the feelings of the Kingdom - the average member of the Kingdom feels as they do.

I'm not going to go any further into the rules and how the game pans out at this point - not least because I'm still not sure of it myself. Basically each player in turn though gets to frame a scene, and at the end of the scene either the Crossroad comes closer to a decision, a Crisis comes closer to actually affecting the Kingdom or time progresses - and can lead to a fairly large chunk of time passing with nothing happening.

I've now read the rulebook a few times, and have to admit I'm still not one hundred percent on how to play the game - I think this is more down to my learning style than a problem with the book itself - I may have reached the stage where I actually need to play the game to learn it. Which probably means running the damn thing at Condamned - as I can't see myself getting a chance to play it before then - we're far too busy.

So this weeks project - did I read the book? Yes

Am I closer to running the game? Yes

Will I run it at Condamned? Probably (as long as people want to play it)

Do I feel ready to run it right now? No, I'll be reading it again before Condamned, that's for certain.

In the meantime Keep Gaming folks and have fun.

Ben

A bookmark a week #3 dyeing Easter eggs

Hi lovely people!

Last weekend was Easter and I bloody love me a good fertility festival (eggs, bunnies, come on the clues are all there!) so I decided to go full on hippy and dye some eggs naturally.

When I was but a wee lass we would always decorate eggs at Easter, taking them to a nearby hill to roll and crack them before eating them. I remember dyeing them with onion skins, I'm sure we also drew on them with pens but my memory isn't so great on the finer detail...

Anyhoo, one of the bookmarks on my phone (for over a year now) is the following....

http://www.thekitchn.com/vibrant-naturally-dyed-easter-eggs-112957

Don't they look wonderful? 

Now as luck would have it, we recently had some beetroot and a red cabbage delivered that I had no idea what to do with. Neither Ben or I are mad keen on beetroot and we had a red cabbage recently that I made a ton of sourkraut with so I had no need for more...

I've been eating this for days...

So I decided to give this a try. 

I'll preface this by saying I don't seem to be able to find white eggs these days. I'm sure if I went to a farm shop I could, but normal free range supermarket ones are always brown so less good for the dyeing.

I'll also use this opportunity to say I used Delia Smith's method to boil the eggs before dyeing, you can read it here,

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/english/hard-boiled-eggs.html

The thing about Delia is that she's reliable. A lot of her recipes may not be fancy, but they work. If you're ever unsure, turn to Delia. 

Anyhoo...

First I prepared the blue dye with the cabbage.

Blue seems unlikely from this doesn't it?

I have to start by expressing my frustration with American recipes that use  'cups' as a measure for vegetables. So annoying! It's massively inaccurate, it depends on the size of the chop, how you pack them down, even whether you measure them in a big jug or actual individual measuring cups. Now don't get me wrong, I own a couple of sets of measuring cups and I do use them... for liquid ingredients. To me, that makes sense, but solid ingredients? Nope. And don't even get me started on 'a cup of butter'! 

Sorry, had to take a break there while I stopped shaking with rage.

After ranting about the unit of measurement I got down to it, and from a small cabbage I made enough dye for about 9 eggs, but I just dyed 4 as I didn't want to go over the top (too late you say?). A word of warning, the smell from the boiling cabbage didn't seem too strong, but an hour later I could still smell it in every room in the house. Ick.

Next I gave the beets a go. 

Yes, I dyed them in a beer mug. And what of it?

I had only 2 small-ish beets so I included the red stems and the peelings (well washed) in the pot, although I based the water measurement just on the volume (gah!) of shredded beets. 

I had to squeeze the beets out in a muslin to get enough liquid for even 1 cup of dye, but that's a pretty fun, if messy, job. I decided just to do 2 eggs this time, that's 6 so far...

I thought I'd try the turmeric too, who amongst us hasn't experienced its awesome staining power when messily making a curry? 

Mmmm... gloopy...

Well this was just yuck. The smell the turmeric gave off while cooking can only be described as pungent. I use turmeric a lot, but usually in conjunction with a lot of other things. It was not nice. Luckily it faded quickly... to be replaced by the lingering boiled cabbage aroma. 

Unfortunately, after the simmering it became this disgusting gloopy paste. Kitchen based tasks rarely gross me out, I've jointed a rabbit with no problems, but the texture of this was just so unpleasant. I tried to strain it but it wouldn't go through the sieve and the muslin wasn't fine enough to stop it glopping thickly through the fabric *retches*. So I decided I'd just thin it out a little with the vinegar as directed and leave it unsieved. Again I used 2 eggs. 

At that point I left the lot in the fridge to check on in a few hours. 

So, after 5 hours I checked on my eggs.

The turmeric were not amazing, despite the amount of staining on my hands and clothes (well, pyjamas).

I suspect a lot of that is due to the starting colour of the eggs. Disappointing, but they might get better with a bit longer in the dye.

The beets were a bit better.

Although it seemed like a good bit of the staining would rub off if I wasn't careful.

But the crowning glory was the cabbage.

Look how pretty! Some of it might rub off but I think it's still a wonderful result!

I decided to give them another 5 hours, but I thought I'd mix them up a bit for funsies.

I put 1 red egg back in the red dye, and the other in the yellow in the hopes of orange (my favouritest colour). Then 1 yellow egg back in the yellow dye, and the other in the blue as more blue can't hurt, 3 blues back in the blue and one in the red. We may get purple if we're very lucky...

So after 6 hours and a bottle of wine (at least) I remembered to check them again and I got this.

Not entirely successful, but you can see what I was going for.

So I left them to dry in the fridge in hopes that the next morning they would look less blurry to me.

So when I got up (after tea and bacon) I got them out of the fridge, rubbed a little olive oil on them and this was the end result.

My personal favourite is the purple and blue one. So pretty!

You'll notice that there's one less egg than before. This is entirely due to the fact that I got hella drunk on Easter Sunday (Ben and I were playing our Battlestar Galactica drinking game) and needed protein. So I ate one. And it was perfect thanks to Delia's foolproof method. 

Verdict; this is a bit fiddly and a total ball-ache but if you're a culinary geek and a sucker for twee seasonal crafts like me then you'll love it.

In proper Easter fashion Ben and I then went outside and rolled these down the slope that we laughingly call our lawn. Fun!

One end note, I should point out that while I bounced around the kitchen, merrily making all the mess in the world, Ben was just behind me cleaning and washing up all my mess. Metaphors for life...

Love and kisses!

H.

Ben's Projects - Part the First

So, I've been very lax about blogging, so picking up on H's bookmarks theme I've decided to do a weekly blog about a project - one per week.

This is partially tied in to me being without work after being made redundant at the end of March. No new job jumped out at me so I decided to start doing stuff around the house, and with my gaming, whilst I look for new work.

End result - each week I'll give myself a project and blog or vlog about it as I complete it. Sometimes it'll be to with gaming, sometimes DIY and sometimes gardening - or something totally different.

As a relatively easy (relatively) start - I decided to re-sort our CD collection. A few years back we decided to move our CDs into carry cases to ease up on storage space.

Step one: get all our CDs together:

They they all are - each pile represents a bunch of CDs, sorted by artist surname or band name.

Once these piles were done I realised I had 27 piles, despite only having artists starting with 23 letters of the alphabet. Oh and this one CD as well:

I discovered (using iTunes on the computer) that this is an album by pendulum.

That sorted I put it in the right pile and the laid all the piles out alphabetically in order to start sorting each pile individually and putting them into the cases.

Here the piles are laid out alphabetically:

The next part took a good two hours - not overly helped by me missing piles or parts of piles and then having to take a load of CDs out of the case to sort it out.

Eventually I got there, with a few hiccups and a couple of CDs ending up in what is technically the wrong place. In discussion H and I decided that this is probably something I should only do once a year - which is something of a relief. Here are the two carriers with our complete CD collection. 

So that's it until next time - I just need to work out what my next project will be.

I wore the clothes out!

Hi internet!

Today Ben and I went up Glastonbury Tor  and I was brave enough to wear one of my new short dresses. I didn't only wear leggings, I wore bright blue leggings, and I loved them. I felt kind of self conscious but I loved it and I'm proud of myself for wearing the outfit.

Dress George at asda, leggings Marisota, sandals asda again, sunglasses primark, catbag from a stall at a festival, hair models own

'twas a little windy up there!

Not bad huh?

Love and kisses,

H.

A bookmark a week #2 sourdough hot cross buns

 Hello again!

I've got a current project where I select a bookmark on my phone and do something with it (as opposed to leave it there and do nothing). I talked about it last week here,

A bookmark a week #1

So I had to do a new one this week and as it's nearly Easter I chose.... sourdough hot cross buns! Here's the link I'm using

http://laurenbakes.co.uk/2013/03/spiced-stout-sourdough-hot-cross-buns/

Don't they look amazing?

Ben and I discovered sourdough last year  when I read about how easy it was in this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0747598401/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?qid=1397568889&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX110_SY165

Basically you need flour and water. That's it! We have our very own starter that we pretentiously named Marjorie and we feed her with spelt flour and we love her very much.

She may not be a looker but by criminy she makes excellent bread.

We often make a loaf and eat it while making inappropriately orgasmic noises, so I thought we should try a variation.

I love hot cross buns. 

I should qualify that. I love my mum's homemade hot cross buns. 

The shop bought ones, even fancy ones from marks and spencer, always seem a bit light and tea-cakey rather than crusty and bready. I also dislike eating them when it isn't Easter. I may eat one or two beforehand to check a batch or a couple afterwards to get them eaten, but that isn't normally an issue...

The joy of hot cross buns is to eat them at home, toasted and smothered in good quality butter accompanied by a big mug of tea. Mmmmm.....   butter....

Er... where was I? 

Right, baking. 

Given the above, I have pretty high standards for hot cross buns and I'd never mastered them to my satisfaction. I was super excited to try the sourdough ones and, it turns out, I was delighted with the results. Of course I had to amend the recipe a little, it's a running joke in our house that I never do any recipe exactly as it says, I always have to tweak it a wee bit. The only 3 changes here were to use Mackesons milk stout rather than Guinness as I find it has a sweeter flavour for cooking, sultanas rather than raisins and substituting some of the mixed peel for crystallised ginger because it's delicious.

Having only made a very simple sourdough loaf from the book above, I wasn't too confident with the whole stretching and folding technique in the recipe, but I'm pretty happy with how this went.

 Not bad eh?

Then the laborious step of portioning out the buns. Weighing each one was new to me, I normally just guess (are we seeing why I'm maybe not the most consistent baker?) and I can't deny, these are much more even than any rolls or buns I've made before.

I couldn't get them all on one tray so I had to cook them in 2 batches but the proving times in sourdough are long and flexible so that was fine.

Once proved I had to pipe on the crosses. I only recently discovered I could pipe at all. I thought it was me, but it turns out having a crappy piping set and bag is why I couldn't before...

It turned out ok. Messy, but ok.

After baking they looked like this and are bloody delicious. 

I only sampled one, just to test the batch!

So now they're in the freezer, we have delicious hot cross buns for Easter and I've copied the recipe into my beautiful book. 

That's another bookmark deleted, I wonder what will be next...

Love and kisses

H.

A bookmark a week #1 Map of Tasmania - Update

Evening all,

I did dun it! I learnt the song and now I can play it at all suitable family gatherings. Well, my family's gatherings, maybe not others'.

Turns out it's 2 chords and 1 of those is open strings so I'll admit it wasn't too much of a challenge...

The recording isn't exactly professional standard, but it's proof and, dammit, that's good enough.

http://alonetone.com/helbenmusic/tracks

Love and kisses,

H.