Valentine Hearts

No-Face and Chicken gave the girls some chocolate valentine hearts.

The girls were extremely excited about this.

Daisy asked if i'd taken chicken to the shops to buy them, i told her i hadn't bought the hearts or taken Chicken to buy the hearts (which was true, Marc bought the hearts from John Thorners)
Daisy then said "perhaps Chicken went on his own" with a little smile on her face.

During this time, Iris had simply wripped off her wrapper and was busy stuffing her chocolate into her mouth, when it comes to chocolate Iris doesn't hesitate.

As you can see in the below photograph, No Face now has eyes, so he should technically now be called i-Face, but he's not.
And yes they could both do with a wash.

Oh and note Chicken's new feet, that Daisy choose a short while ago.

Elderflower sugar water

Hmmm... our elderflower cordial is not so great, it is more of a sugery water.

In Mrs Beeton her recipe is similar but she says to take the flowers out after a day and leave for a month covered.

So we are now leaving for a month to see if it improves.

Some you win and some you loose.

Mangey Touts

Apparently (so Marc tells me, cos I didn't go down the garden yesterday) we have two flowers on our Mange Tout's.
Hooray, we might get some vegetables this summer afterall.

Mum tells me if you leave them on the plant they will fatten and turn into peas, I didn't know that.

I will photograph the flowers shortly.

Elderflower Cordial has been made

Further to my last Elderflower post, about deciding not to make it, we then decided to give it a go with the remaining elderflowers on the trees which wasn't many.

Aunty Emma was over so she helped pick some flower heads.

We failed in our quest for Citric Acid, so in the end we resorted to using just Lemons and made just one batch of cordial using 20 heads.

I wonder how it will taste?

I did take a photo of the flowers in the bucket, but i haven't downloaded them yet.

Elderflower Cordial

We are going to attempt to make Elderflower Cordial.
Daisy and Iris have already picked lots and lots of flowers for us and they are all laid out on a sheet on the grass.


Ingredients
20 elderflower heads
1 sliced lemon
2 tsp of citric acid (ask at your chemist)
1.5 kg (3.5 lbs) of sugar
1.2 ltr (2.5 pints) boiling water

Method
Boil a kettle for the water.
Fill a bowl or small bucket with all the other ingredients.
Pour the water over the other ingredients and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Skin the surface of the water to get rid of the scum that can arise. Cover with a cloth (mine has a pillow case over it).
Stir twice a day for five days.
Strain though a fine sieve though a fine sieve or through muslin cloth and decant into sterile screw topped bottles. Refrigerate.
As with other cordials dilute with 5 parts water to serve . Experiment with it and add it to some of your favourite spirits. It is really nice as a gin mixer.


Trouble is we have no Citric Acid, but i am reliably informed by lots of anonymous people on the internet that 1 tsp / 5 gms of citric acid is equivalent to the juice of one lemon.


which was taken from this website.
www.selfsufficientish.com