Squirrel-coat

Not a squirrel-pelt, but my coat where I managed to squirrel away my foraging results!

Not pregnant; just chestnuts!

Bit like the TARDIS in there!

My haul; next time I'm going back to carrying a plastic bag in my pocket during the autumn!

I'm "spitting feathers" mad at myself!

What with various things [that have sucked all the will for life, and blogging, out of me] that I'm not going to go into right now, I seem to have lost touch with my environment somewhat.

I kept seeing one of the trees overhanging our garden coming into flower, and meant to find out what it was...

I knew it wasn't a lime tree, because I have been itching to make a lime flower liqueur, but his morning [just as the flowers are starting to go brown] I finally remembered to get out a "tree book" to look it up.

Yup, lime tree!

I'm so cross with myself right now - it is COVERED in what were absolutely beautiful flowers, and I could have made the lime flower liqueur that I've been plotting for several years; so mad with not-really-me-me.

I haven't been walking [dizziness has been a huge side effect of the pain-relieving medication (Trigeminal Neuralgia - trust me, you don't want to try it), along with crippling nausea, and staying home (unmoving) has seemed a small price to pay], so haven't been passed it to catch the scent - which may have alerted me.

I think it hasn't flowered the other years that we've been here; I certainly can't remember any seeds, and I can for the (boo, hiss) sycamore that also dangles over our little outdoor space.

Oh well, hopefully life will settle down soon, and I can get back to messing with my creations [I have collected a few more ideas along the way].

On the upside, if we treat them as a real "treat" [rather than the staple that I prefer], I am nearly self-sufficient in nasturtium flowers; I'm even letting one or two pods fatten and ripen for future "crops".

AND my tulbaghia ("society garlic") has a flower coming - ooh.

Sadly, no fruit liqueurs this year

The fruit has all been so tasteless this year (plums, damsons, mirabelles, & sloes) that I decided not to make any liqueurs; it is a massive amount of effort, and if the end result is going to be disappointing [which it has been other times I've used less-than-stellar fruit], and I have wanted to protect my shoulders from the pain that all the bending over causes.

Fingers crossed the liqueurs I made last Christmas/New Year don't fall into the wish-I-hadn't-bothered category...

[Not yet decanted because the problems with my wrist/shoulders and then the wrist surgery/problems with my shoulders have left me barely able to cope with essential gardening on our trips to the house, so "extras" have had to wait.  Maybe my lovely assistant will help when we're next there...?]

Elderflower liqueur

When we were last in France, the weather went very warm, and would have been perfect for making the elderflower liqueur I'd planned to make...

Except that we went to Paris for a wedding [which was lovely!], and then we had a load of plants that needed to planted more urgently.

 And then, of course, it started raining!  So I couldn't pick the flowers because they were wringing wet.

Finally, we had a warm, dry morning, and I picked about 34 heads of elderflowers, and took the flowers off as much of the stem as possible.  Filled a 1.5 litre jar and filled with alcohol.

I think I've probably left it too late, and the rain may have washed away to best of the flavour, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

I finished the year on a high note!

Seems a bit redundant, posting about 2012 ending when we're fast approaching the middle of 2013, but I'm trying to catch up, so here goes:

On 27 December, I spent over six hours cleaning and sterilising bottles, and started to decant the liqueurs that were already in bocaux...

Did I need the bocaux to empty the freezer of sloes and pig damsons?

Why do you ask?
;-)

December 29 I worked in a t-shirt till 6.30pm before lighting the fire.

And by 6.15pm on New Year's Eve, I'd decanted all the liqueurs in the cupboard [bar two jars that contain still-edible fruit - I'm keeping them in the liqueur till we finish the fruit (which is yummy with ice cream)], and emptied the freezer into another set of liqueurs-in-progress

I'm going to leave them as long as possible until decanting this set (and am hoping to buy some more bocaux so that I'm not constantly running short; we sometimes see them at dépôts-vente for €0.50 for the large ones and €0.30 for the small ones, so it's worth waiting till I find them [in England they tend to be about £6.99 each!] with the exchange rate giving us €1.18 to the £).

It's quite a nice feeling now: just waiting for the mirabelle, pig-damson and damson trees to work their magic!

Right, decision made!

OK, I've decided to put off posting about my liqueurs until the new year...

This gives me the chance to update my spreadsheet without feeling as pressured as I am right now [I know it's all self-inflicted stress, but I could still do without it], and (hopefully) I will remember to check those details that aren't clear from where I've written things in my book.

With luck, I will manage to sort out the decanted bottles in France, and have a better idea of what we've got; now the rest of the house [with the exception of the study/spare bedroom which has reverted to that dépôt-vente style storage are that we are so familiar with!] is pretty nearly where we want it.

Also, I may have made the last of the frozen fruit into more works-in-progress by then, too.

Either way, I'm choosing to make my life a bit easier, with the expectation that I will enjoy updating this blog more when I do get around to it, so this is it for this year - Merry Christmas, and a Happy 2013!

I've got into a complete pickle!

I've been through all my photos, looking for ones where I'm making or decanting the liqueurs, or we're tasting them...

And it's been so long since I've posted to this blog, I read over what I've already posted - it's a complete mess, isn't it?!?

I think I'm going to set up a spreadsheet with all my notes from my book [it's all in chronological order, so a liqueur appears several times (especially if we've adjusted sugar/taste) by the time it's been decanted; and on a different page if we've done a "tasting"], and going forward I'm going to post where we are with "historical" batches of liqueur [over time!], and then try to keep up with newly-made batches.

Fingers crossed I can get some sort of order, without too much duplication.  Either way, hopefully I'll post some updates in the not-too-distant future.

But I suspect it's going to take several days...

Keep your fingers crossed for me!