I love the smell of vinegar in the afternoon
Grrr!!! I hate it when that happens! I’d just written a long and interesting entry, and somehow hit some random key that lost the lot.
Oh well, here’s the brief version:
While we were helping rarsberry shift yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice that the plum tree at their old place was fair groaning with fruit, so in a quiet moment lytteltonwitch and I grabbed a bag from the car and stripped all the branches we could reach.
The result, about 4 kg of plums:
And at home I knew I had some more fruit in the freezer, left over from Christmas (I don’t normally keep fruit in the freezer, but Dad had brought a big box up for us which we weren’t able to eat fast enough, so rather than let it rot, I threw half of it in the freezer, knowing I was sure to find a use for it where a bit of freezer burn wouldn’t matter):
The ice crystals actually look quite pretty sparkling away on the fruit.
And all that fruit could mean only one thing: chutney! (An added motivation is that one of our guest speakers at the convention is a bit of a fan of my chutney, so I’ve promised him a few jars in payment for his talk.)
Take 2 kg of plums (I’ll think of a use for the other 2 kg later) plus another kg of assorted frozen fruit, vast quantities of vinegar, onions, brown sugar and raisins, and a few random spices, and what do you get?
The realisation that maybe that stock pot that seemed so huge isn’t big enough after all.
However, it’s the biggest pot I own, so it just had to do. And of course, once the sugar dissolved into the vinegar the volume decreased a little, and it will go down even further once the fruit starts to break down. But in the mean time it’s on a very gentle simmer, and we’ve got all fingers and toes crossed here hoping it won’t boil over.
So now I’ve got two hours to try and find enough jars… Eeek!!!
And because moem asked, my keys:
A few comments are probably necessary. No, my name is not Joan. I inherited that keyring with a bunch of keys for various cupboards and things in my office. The really weird thing is that there’s never been a Joan working in my office as far back as anyone can remember (and some of the staff have been there a LONG time).
Actually, I’m not even sure why it’s still on there. All sorts of people gave me lovely keyrings while I was on my world tour, any one of which would be better than that one. I’ve just been too lazy to change it, I suppose.
I never wear my keys round my neck, despite the lanyard (which I got from a work thing, hence the cheesy “Connect. Share. Learn. Grow.” slogan). The main reason I’ve got it on there is because it makes it much easier to locate my keys in the depths of my bag (where they’re usually hiding under a load of books and release supplies).