So recently I've been watching a lot of television... ok, well maybe not any more than I usually do, but I'm unemployed, so it's a fair bit more than the average 26 year old female. But I do try to keep it educational (by which I mean I avoid anything involving a so called 'therapist' and people shouting at each other on a stage in front of a studio audience). But lately I've noticed a bit of a trend, craft is making a comeback! Now I wouldn't normally bother to write a post about something like this, but it's just got me so excited that I can't help it.
Kirstie Allsopp, my hero!
Obviously there's been shows like Kirstie's Handmade Britain and Kirstie's Homemade Home, which I LOVE by the way, and that's obviously a bit of a niche thing, because of course you're going to watch it if you like crafting, baking, or just Kirstie Allsopp, that's a given. But last season Kirstie kept insisting that crafting was making a comeback, and things like craft fairs, farm shows and county fairs were all seeing a boom in popularity. Now I don't spend my summers hopping around county fairs and farm shows, although they do look like fun and I'm hoping to get to one this summer, but I have noticed a small increase in the number of craft related stalls at the Lancaster market, so I was inclined to agree with her from the start. But lately, crafting has been popping up all over the place, even popular television series.
My husband and I, among others, love How I Met Your Mother, it's one of our favourite programmes and we anxiously await new episodes. And HIMYM has promoted crafts like painting and knitting for a long time via the character of Lilly, the artsy Kindergarten teacher with an eye for fashion and all things retro/crafty. I always thought it was nice that a sitcom would have a character promoting creativity and crafting for younger women, it always made me feel a little less like I was breaking some kind of feminist mould by saying 'actually I do enjoy spending time in my kitchen' even though I'm still perfectly capable of doing everything else. But really, until lately, Lilly was one of the few modern day characters under 30 crafting for the world to see without compromising her strength and ability.Others programmes with similar characters included the ever popular Gilmore Girls. Again, one of my favourites from years past, with the creative minded mother-daughter duo and their culinary friend Suki with her greengrocer husband and the hippie type next door neighbours. All a bit too perfect to be true really, but I suppose that was the premise of the show, and I loved it! But again, the crafting was a bit back burner, always there but no one ever made a big deal about it.
Enter my new favourite show and recent big hit, New Girl. Now, I loved this show from the moment the theme song started, which is funny since I didn't expect to, but I was out a girly programme after the sudden departure of Brothers and Sisters last year and took a stab in the dark. Anyway, from the short intro with a LOT of creative pizazz to the end of each episode crafting, baking or something hands on or home-made is almost always written in. I love the show for other reasons too, don't get me wrong, but I think it's awesome that someone thought to have a twenty something female with a job and ambition doing craft, and not just on her own, but with all her friends. Last weeks episode had Jess on a sofa with her two besties (one a model, the other a gynaecologist) and Nick's new girlfriend Julia (a lawyer) all having crochet time! Jess bakes on the show (cookies, cupcakes, the boys on the show are all getting fat) She often wears her Jam-boree t-shirt, implying that she did a Jam based fundraiser. Which is an awesome idea, we should all have Jam-borees instead of those silly magazine sale fundraisers or whatever it is kids are doing these days. She has a hat made of ribbons, if you can buy one of those somewhere, let me know, cause I don't even know how to begin making something like that. Anyway, definitely crafting is a big part of the show, which is super cool and makes me feel much more like I'm not the only female under 30 out there being creative and cool and yet totally not undermining all the work feminists have put in over the years.
Ms. Day's JAM-boree t-shirt.
Then last weekend I heard something I found rather profound while watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. Shocking because I really don't find much of what he says profound, even though he tries so hard to make it that way. But he said something along the lines of, we made a big mistake cutting Home-ec from schools when we decided it was sexist, instead of cutting home-ec we should have made it mandatory for everyone, girls and boys. Then we might all have a better appreciation of good food and know how to do at least some basic cooking for ourselves. And as my understanding of home-ec (although I never had the opportunity to take it myself) was that they taught not only basic cooking and baking skills but other useful things like how to sew on a button and balance a check-book and budget your shopping trip. Now I was lucky enough to have a fantastic mother who taught me how to do all those things and more, and I think not only a love of cooking gets passed down from generation to generation, as Tony often surmises, but also a love and appreciation of all things crafty and hand/home-made.
Now I'm not trying to plug my favourite shows, although I realise that I am a little, I'm trying to point out that craft really does seem to be making a comeback, and that's awesome! I hope that shows like New Girl and How Met Your Mother encourage women my age and younger to make a return to some of the things that we've lost in the fight for female equality. I totally respect and believe that women should be able to work and have the same opportunities as men, I'm by no means advocating a return to the pre-war position of women as idealistic housewives. I love having opportunities available to me and freedoms and all that. But at the same time, I love my kitchen and my garden and my crafting and I do think that we have lost something important in our fight as women to be recognised and respected. We wonder why children these days spend hours in front of the television instead of doing something more productive, but it's because no one has taught them how to bake cookies or plant a seed and care for it or sew a simple cross-stitch pattern. This seems to be changing, the Guides and the Scouts have all seem growth this past year, or so they said on the news a couple weeks ago. Things like cake clubs and domestic goddess weekends are becoming more popular. And judging from how busy my local market has become on weekends, people are more enthusiastic at least about buying handmade products if not making them themselves. So if you're not already crafting, baking, or gardening, then give it a go!
So it's March, and I have a garden... or rather a 'yard' as there's no grass or flower beds or pre-existing plants apart from some ivy on one wall and the occasional weed. We rent our lovely Victorian 2 up-2 down terrace, so creating a garden out of the sea of gravel and paving stones is limited to pots and tubs of various kinds. I made a bit of a weak attempt at producing something last spring, but I left it until the weather was warm, sunny and generally nice to be out in, spent the minimum amount of time, effort and money on the whole affair. Needless to say it turned out a bit sad and I'm a bit ashamed of myself given that I've grown up helping my mom in her garden and should know what I'm doing. Still, better to have something than nothing right?
Well this year I'm determined to make more of an effort and produce something to be proud of. I've invested more time and energy already in the last few weeks then I did all last spring and summer and I've definitely spent a bit more money, although not a ton thanks to B&M Bargains, Wilkinson's, and a bit of old fashioned ingenuity.
My back garden.
So the garden last year consisted of a few tubs and planters. Two large ones which where here when we moved in, which really is what started the whole mess off, empty planters sat in the garden just scream 'Fill me! Make me into something beautiful instead of some garden junk!' and really can't be ignored. I bought three bags of compost from my nearest garden centre, Bay View Garden Centre in Bolton-le-Sands and got Tom to man handle it outside for me. I filled up those two large pots and set to work with a large kitchen spoon and my bare hands.
I bought some bulbs, I can't really remember what they were, some Iris, something else tall and lupin like, some daffodils I think. I planted them and haven't heard from them since, except for one Iris which tried to bloom last summer and then gave up. Some of the green leaves came up, and haven't died back, they're still there, but no flowers. and some of the bulbs are just hanging around in the tubs not doing anything. I know this because I accidentally dug some of them up last week when I was prepping my pots for spring planting. I'm not exactly sure what the problem with my bulbs is, I think maybe it's because I planted them at the wrong time of year, but I've never really planted bulbs before and no one told me that you're meant to bury them in the autumn. I claim ignorance. Now I don't know what to do with them, so I'm just leaving them alone and hoping they sort themselves out eventually.
Some of my seeds trays freshly planted a couple weeks ago.
I bought some sweet peas from a lady at the market, which turned out to be an amazing investment, she gave me the third one free and they were the hardiest sweet peas I've ever encountered. They kept on growing and blooming right up until the heavy frost the end of December. I thought they might actually survive the winter, but January finally killed them off. I grew them up some bamboo cane wigwams, which turned out nicely and I may do that again this year. I bought some seed packets and planted Lobelia and Snapdragons straight into my pots, the Lobelia took over and the snapdragons never came up at all, not sure why this happened, but it did. We bought a lot of veg seeds too, tomatoes, chillies, runner beans, and cucumber. But apart from the beans everything else had been left too late and didn't produce anything worth eating, we ended up with a lot of spindly dying plants in small pots.
My new seedlings!
This year I've been a bit more organised, thanks in part to Alan Titchmarsh's gardening tip of the day. I now have a proper gardening trowel and fork, gloves and some better timing! I'm growing everything from seed (crosses fingers and hopes they all come up) mostly to save money, and also because I want to know that I can. The only exception to this is the Carnation that my husband bought me for Valentines Day, which now, after a month of being cooped up in it's pot indoors, has a happy home in one of my pots outside. If all goes well this year I should have Sweet peas and Morning Glory's on a bamboo pole trellis (which I made myself) to hide the bins. Marigolds, Lobelia, Petunias, Nasturtiums, and Impatiens in my new wall baskets from B&M. Miscellaneous Bulbs, Cornflowers, Carnations, Dahlias and Chrysanthemums as well as my leftover basket flowers in my planters and tubs. I've started all of these out in seed trays, some indoors a few weeks ago and a bunch more outside last weekend. The indoor seedlings are doing well, not hardy enough for transplanting yet, but growing quickly in my kitchen window and the outdoor ones are still too young to have sprouted.
I haven't decided on veg this year, we have some leftover runner bean seeds which I may have a go at again depending on how well the flowers do. Tom got some chilli seeds for Christmas, so maybe plant a few of those inside when the kitchen window is free again. I had thought about trying some strawberries and maybe currants this year for jam, but now we're planning a move to Sheffield in September, so I decided to wait another year on fruit.
Hopefully my garden this year will be something less cringe-worthy and maybe I'll even attract some bees and butterflies! Currently we just get a lot of spiders.... ick. Will try to do a monthly garden update, although not so long as this and full of photos.
Hi everyone! It's been a while, I've been so busy (which is unusual for little housewife me) and haven't had the spare time to write a post. My husband Tom is in the thick of PhD applications and I've been following him around to all his interviews and scoping out the new cities, one of which may be our new home in six months. It's all very exciting, I get itchy feet and like a change up now and again, and it's kept me very busy (or at least very out of the house) for the past couple weeks. But not too busy to get up to some other things! So probably a few posts in a row coming in the next couple of days since everything has slowed down to a normal pace again.
Biggest and best thing first! A couple weeks ago, Tom and I did our Saturday trip to the Lancaster farmer's market to pick up our veg. There is a great local greengrocers that set up shop in Market Square every Wednesday and Saturday and the veg is much higher quality and much much cheaper then the supermarkets, so we've started supporting our local farmers and small businesses and saving ourselves some cash. The best bit is that they occasionally supply stuff that you wouldn't normally be able to find at the supermarket, and on this particular trip they had an entire crate of Seville Oranges!
A few of my Seville Oranges
For those of you not in the know, Seville Oranges are a sour variety of orange, almost exclusively used to make Marmalade. You definitely wouldn't want to eat one of these things fresh out of the peel, believe me I tried, VERY sour! But for good, bitter, moreish marmalade there is absolutely nothing better. Imagine my surprise, first at seeing them at all, (they're seasonal and usually only found around December and even then I've never found them before) and then to discover that they were selling them 10 for 50p! I bought 20 and skipped home very excited about my purchase. Then I got home and realised that I didn't have any jars, so the oranges went straight into the fridge for a couple days while I waited for my jars to arrive from Jam Jar Shop.
My jamming bible.
The busy week began and even though my jars had arrived it was still a day or two before I had time to clean up my kitchen and make a batch of marmalade. I modified a recipe for Sweet Orange Marmalade from a book my sister gave me for Christmas by Linda Ziedrich, The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and other Sweet Preserves. Basically she's from the States and it's even harder to find sour varieties of oranges there then it is here in the UK, so she created a recipe including a significant amount of lemon juice to offset the sweetness of the oranges and make her marmalade bitter, I just omitted the lemon juice and used less sugar. I use less sugar than recipes call for as a rule generally, I find a lot of the jams are far too sweet and lose the fruity flavours, so I 'sweeten to taste', especially with fruits high in natural pectin, since I don't have to worry so much about them setting properly.
Anyway, the recipe was a good guideline for water and sugar content, although she does fail to suggest a cook time, so I spent the entire first batch testing for a set every five minutes for almost an hour, which is annoying. I will say that marmalade is by far the most labour intensive preserve I've tackled, it's a good hour and a half juicing, de-membraning and finely slicing the peels, I wished several times that I had a juicer, may need to invest in one if I tackle this on a larger scale. Then it's two hours of boiling the water, juice and peels with the sack of pits and pith, just enough time to get all the sticky juice and bits of membrane off my kitchen surfaces, have my afternoon cup of tea and watch the Alan Titchmarsh Show. Then in goes the sugar, and a lot of it, the recipe called for 9 cups, I cut it back to around 6 and liked the result, but I like my marmalade quite bitter.
My finished Seville Orange Marmalade.
The one thing I noticed (besides the flavour) about using Seville oranges as opposed to the sweet orange varieties we're used to seeing in the shops is how the peel turned out at the end. The Seville peels really softened up a great deal more than the sweet orange peels I've used in the past. I had some marmalade on my toast this morning and almost felt that the bitty bits weren't bitty enough. I'd cut the peels quite fine because my last batch of Sweet Orange Marmalade had been too bitty and the peels were really quite tough still. So I suppose I've produced a 'fine cut' marmalade, and I shall endeavour to do a 'medium to thick cut' batch with the remainder of my oranges.
Overall I think it came out quite well, I taste tested on my husband and he really doesn't like marmalade, so it was a bit encouraging when he told me straight away the he didn't really like it, but it tasted just like marmalade. I've sent a pot off to my in-laws and Tom's Grandma, who will probably be brutally honest in her opinion. And I've got a whole bunch of 7oz jars left over to sell on Etsy, BUY SOME HERE!
