2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere

@dreamyd that is indeed lovely! 

Nonnadiluca

Cherry fudge, that's the one, but colour is the attractively named 'toad'.
Dreamyd, the hitchhiker looks good, might well have a go at that, thanks.

Laura_Elsewhere

Nothing to do with clothing at all But if you have some of your sugar ration going spare...

I've been meaning to try making some shrubs for months, if not years... it's a very old method of keeping summer flavours to add to drinks in the dark winter months, or in my case nowadays hoping for refreshing mint and lemon drinks in he hot weather! 

Equal weights of Thing* + sugar; macerated for 2-3 days, covered or lidded, and shaking or stirring often. Sieve the resulting syrup and add the same weight of cider vinegar as you did of sugar and Thing. If you use fruit for your Thing then you can apparently use that over ice-cream, or just eat it

Put the vinegar-syrup into sterilised bottles and keep in the fridge; use within a few weeks. Just add to fizzy water, tapwater, swig on its own, add to vodka or gin, etc., etc.

*fruit, herbs, spices; whatever you want to flavour your shrub with

I've done one jar of fresh mint, one of lemon with zest and one of lemon without zest. Most recipes combine flavours but I want to see how it works before I get fancy...

I'm surprised by how rapidly liquid is appearing from nowhere, even with the mint one which was literally just chopped leaves and stalks with sugar!

Nonnadiluca

Ooh Laura, they look good! I've never heard of shrubs before, in that context, and I'm pretty old!
Between the garden and the allotment we have four varieties of plums, several apples and pears, cherries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, figs and rhubarb, also a wide variety of herbs. My mission this year is to preserve as much as I can and I'm liking the look of these very much. 
Thanks for sharing x

Laura_Elsewhere

Oooh, @Nonnadiluca what a fabulous range of fruits! 

There's a Jane Grigson recipe, for a mediaeval drink (I'm only middling-old but my recipes are all much older!) called Hodgkin, which a family friend said was a bit like German fruit-liqueurs, but when I looked into it, the German ones are made all at once. This one though takes advantage of a succession of fruits.

Anyway, what you do is take a very large jar and start as soon as your first fruit is ready, and put a layer of fruit, covered with a layer of sugar (1/2oz of sugar for each oz of fruit) and add just enough brandy to cover it (or vodka or gin or...). As the summer goes on into autumn, as each fruit becomes available, you add a layer of it, add the sugar, cover with the alcohol. At the end you have a wonderful jar for midwinter-warming, filled with summer, and you strain off the liquid, and use the fruit for crumbles or whizz it in a blender and make ice-cream or just eat it or whatever else you like doing with boozy fruit. But the liquid is a glowing deep red, filled with the flavours of rhubarb and redcurrant and raspberry and plum and cherry and whatever else you can find!

Nonnadiluca

That sounds delicious, and so much more satisfying than buying a bottle at the supermarket.
Now that I no longer have the time waster of paid work I find that the time I take making food, preserves, sewing, knitting, mending etc is time well spent - now the process has become as much the point as the end result if that makes sense. 

Laura_Elsewhere

@Nonnadiluca it does make sense, yes! 
When I first moved to live with My Intended, we both assumed that I would need to get some paid work, even if only 3 days a week in a local supermarket... gradually, we realised that my cooking from scratch (even though I was a dreadful everyday cook when I arrived!) and buying only the food we needed, and much of it ingredients, was saving us far more than I could earn in unskilled employment (my own professional skills not having any scope round here). I had a vertical learning curve for some years but I'm starting to get the hang of it now. 
People kept saying it was "such a waste of your PhD" to be "just" a housewife, but I reckon being a real housewife, the cooking, cleaning, baking, budgeting, gardening, homemaking, mending, etc., etc., etc., is every bit as demanding AND fulfilling as the PhD ever was!

joedenise

@Laura_Elsewhere that Hodgkin is very much like Rumtopf that my friend in Germany used to make.  No idea if she still does as we lost touch some time ago.

I think being a "real housewife" is in fact much harder than most paid employment, definitely more than my paid employment used to be!

MrsCD

Have you read the description of a 'Proverbs 31 woman'  from the book of Proverbs in the Bible? She wasn't 'just' a housewife! There are lots of pins on Pinterest about it. I don't come close to her! 😊

thriftwizard

Oh my goodness, 87 posts to catch up on! This "just-a-housewife" may be gone for some time... I'll be in a corner of the village hall, frantically reading! When I'm not growing, cooking, making, mending, preserving, saving money & learning how to do it all better, etc. etc...