Look look look! I wrote an article for Seton Magazine, an American Catholic Homeschool Magazine, and it got published! And I’m getting paid for it! I am now a paid writer (or, as Mr Knightley puts it, “internationally acclaimed author”!). You can read all about it here:
http://www.setonmagazine.com/topics/general-homeschooling/5-great-reasons-start-homeschool-blog
In case you’re interested, Matilda has written a happy ending to my Crab Apple Fail story. Here it is:
You may have heard about Mum’s fail at making crab apple jelly. But what you don’t know is that we had another go, and it worked! Go us!
We did this challenge as part of Mathair Fiona’s Of Course I Can! Blog Hop.
This time we strained them in batches and it worked a lot better (and we didn’t bother with a pillow case either)
Now time for a fashion parade!
Here’s the one we gave to Uncle Greg to say thank you for taking us to the zoo with his girl friend who was visiting from Japan (it was dark when we took this photo).
And how does it taste?
I just wanted to show off.
A couple of weeks ago I went to a beautiful wedding. I got to spend the day feasting with friends and celebrating a very exciting event. I was aware that the happy couple would be living in a small apartment that was already fixed up with toasters and cutlery and wine glasses and towels and that the present they would most like would be money, but I couldn’t help feeling like it was a little impersonal. Cold hard cash. How could I turn it into soft, friendly currency?
The first idea I had was to buy them a tea-pot and make a cosy for it and put the money inside, but then I remembered that the wedding was going to have a bit of a Star Wars theme, as it was being held on May the forth (be with you). Also, they might never open the tea-pot. They might spend the rest of their days drinking only coffee and thinking bad thoughts about their tight-fisted friends…
So, after talking it over with a few friends, I came up with this:
I got the pattern from Lucy Ravenscar on Ravelry. I don’t usually buy patterns, but I bought this one as it was exactly what I wanted and there wasn’t anything as good for free online. It was worth the money – a clever pattern, beautifully written with plenty of pictures.
And here’s how I included the (warm and fuzzy) monetary element.
And here’s how he looks without his robe.
And here’s an aerial view (OK, now it’s getting ridiculous)
Having done such a great job on this one I decided I was a creative genius and went on to do a handmade card as well. I’ve received cards before that involve simple motifs sewn onto card with a basic machine stitch. I had an idea of doing something clever with lace. Cute and personal. Fresh, clean lines.
Sewing isn’t really my strong suit. I aspire to be a clever sewing lady, but I’m not there yet.
So I got up a design and I pinned everything in place and I tried to sew it and it got a bit wonky so I tried to fix it but it was definitely asymmetrical and you couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be, so I drew all over it and it was no longer chic or minimalist and it looked a bit of a strange mess, but I’d spent so much time and energy on it that I decided to go ahead with it anyway and in the end it looked like this:
Hmmm. I need to learn to quit while I’m ahead…
Oh, this was going to be such a beautiful post. A visual delight. Truly Pinterest-worthy. You would have been really impressed, I promise you.
It’s all Mathair Fiona’s fault.
You might remember Meghan from Mathair Fiona if you stretch your mind back to last August, when we had our Art-Along. One of Meghan’s art works was a photo of her canned produce (do you still say ‘canned’ when it’s in jars, or is there some other word? ‘Jarred’?). Pretty little rows of jars on a shelf. At the time I remember feeling wistfully about how nice it would be to make my own preserves, just like Anne of Green Gables. How very wholesome.
Well, a couple of months ago, Meghan put out a challenge: I’ll Give You Six Months, You Give Me Food in Jars.
This approximately describes my thought process:
A street near my house is lined with crab apple trees. Every year they put out a bounty of fruit. Every year, Chinese families gather to reap with buckets and baskets and long-sticks-with-hooks and still the little red gems are everywhere, carpeting the footpath in their rosy (and, later, brown and squishy) abundance. Every year, I promise myself that next year will be the year when I join in this suburban harvest and finally get around to making crab apple jelly.
Crab apple jelly. When I was little, my dad’s Aunty Lal, home cook extraordinaire, would somehow create these little jars of magic from an otherwise inedible fruit. It would taste delicious spread on her fresh-baked scones, but, more than that, it looked beautiful. Clear and rose-red. In my mind’s eye, I saw how my jars would twinkle on the pantry shelf like rubies. I saw myself giving the jars away as considerate little presents. I saw myself becoming one of those people organised enough to give considerate little presents. I saw this and I couldn’t unsee it. I had to make it happen.
Every day, the children and I would watch the progress of the little apples as they grew and turned yellow, then orangey, then gradually more red. I would tent my fingers and cackle “Soon, my little pretties, soon!”. And the children would giggle, under the mistaken impression that I was joking.
I got a little panicky when we went on holidays for a week just when the fruit was getting ripe. What if we missed the boat? What if we came back to find empty branches and rotten fruit? I had already signed up to the “Of Course I Can!” challenge, what would I do?
I want to be her
Relief came the following Thursday when I arrived home to see the dinky little trees still as fruitful as ever. We were going away again after Easter (this was Holy Thursday, you see – yes, I know, it’s taken me a while to get this post up…) so we only had a little window to go apple-picking in. At least, that’s what I thought. As it turns out, we needn’t have worried. These trees stay in fruit for a long time. As I write this, almost a month later, the trees are still laden with little red apples and don’t look like they’re going to stop any time soon.
We didn’t go the following day because, as Christopher Robin announced solemnly, “It would be too much fun to do it on Good Friday”. Also, it was bucketing down rain. It was seem that Holy Saturday was to be our Harvest Day.
Thus, it transpired that on Holy Saturday, whilst Mr Knightley was at the garden supplies store doing Manly Things, the children and I rugged up in raincoats and gumboots and grabbed fruit-bearing vessels of all sizes and marched up the hill to collect our bounty.
And, oh, we had so much fun! There are times (often closely connected the state of the living room floor, the state of the school-notices-pile or the state of my hormones) when I doubt myself as a mother, when I worry that I’m not doing the right thing by my children, when I feel like a failure. This was not one of those times. I felt so satisfied and smug.
The children were beside themselves with glee and so engaged in the task. Christopher Robin and Matilda had clambered up a tree and were sitting in the branches making a verbal list of all the people they would give jars to. They had draped plastic bags over twigs to collect their pickings. Harry sat on a lower branch. There were no crab apples within his reach so we got up a system. Harry would badger me to pass him a ‘cwabappoo’. I would reach up into the branches, pluck off a small bunch and pass them to him. Harry would then toss the crab apples towards the bucket at the foot of the tree, invariably missing his mark. Annie, tottering around under the tree would gather these fallen treasures and deliver them to the bucket. Harry would badger me again. As far as systems go, it was not, perhaps, the most efficient method, but it kept them entertained.
When we got back home, the kids got to work washing the crab apples and choosing the ‘premium’ ones. Meanwhile, I had another look at all of the internet tutorials for crab apple jelly. In the end I picked this one and got to work.
As I stirred the simmering apples, I started to daydream about how I would dress up all the pretty jars. Would I use fabric or little crocheted caps on the lids? Ribbon or vintage lace? I’d seen a cute way to decorate jam jar covers with paper on Pinterest, but of course, that wouldn’t work when it came to sterilising the lids. The labels would need to be attractive too. Hand-written on pretty paper. The hand writing was important. It would convey a certain nonchalance: “sure, I make this sort of thing all the time! No need for printed labels – I haven’t given this a second thought!” Mmmmmm…
After a while, it was time for much mush mashing. Everybody took a turn and everybody got bored and everybody’s arms started to ache. When we were sufficiently Over It, I decided it was time to strain the mix. I poured the sludgy goop into a damp pillowcase and waited for Father Time to work his magic.
Two hours later and the sludge hadn’t budged. There was no steady trickle, no drip-drip-drip. I poked and I prodded, but to no avail. I decided to leave it overnight.
Here is a picture of the juice I collected the following morning:
Just so we’re clear on scale: this is a 2-cup capacity jug, not one of those 2-litre ones.
I glumly put this jug of my gleanings in the fridge and went away to Warrnambool for a few days.
When I came back, it was with renewed determination. So what if I only made enough jam for everyone to get one taste? We had worked hard and we needed something to show for our efforts!
I needed to do some tricky arithmetic to work out how much sugar to add. The measurements provided were for each cupful of juice. I didn’t have enough juice to make up one cup.
I was no longer thinking about pretty jars and lovely gifts. As I stirred, I thought moodily about the fact that crab-apple jelly probably wasn’t even FODMAP-friendly, much like most of the things you might spread it on. The recipe said to simmer and stir for at least fifteen minutes, but after ten I had a feeling it was ready. I let it go for a couple more minutes just to be sure and then poured it into my one, lonely, sterilised jar.
After it had cooled, I gathered the children around the precious jar. I wielded the butter knife with a solemnity that befitted the occasion. As the knife struck the surface of the jam, it made a strange sound. The jam was solid. It would seem i had overcooked the mix. Several day’s effort had yielded one dirty pillowcase and 50 millilitres of solid jam.
Anyone for crab apple toffee?
PS. I decided the ending of this post is just too tragic. We did give it another go, with more successful results. Matilda is going to write all about it soon on her blog.
Laptop on the Ironing Board 