And What A Year It Was!

Thought Of The Day

If I could stand on a busy street corner, with a cup in my hand, and beg for all those people to give me all their wasted hours... This coming year will be different.

So much washing was done. Even the clothes off our backs were washed..So both me and hubby were left in the kitchen cooking in the nude. Very cute. Straight out of the pages from a nudist colony advert! The washing took almost 1 hour to fold. I enjoy folding the washing. Folding and stacking clothes in neat rows, in neat piles..patterns...famililar patterns. The mind likes familiar patterns and order. Folding the washing is a soothing task for me, for my mind. Same fold, same stack, new fold repeated over and over on vast amounts of clothing...new pile. Something so little, in such a busy unordered world. Information so easily processed, without a second thought. Zombishly folding the clothes, leaving more complex mental processing for outside the home. I guess thats why most people find working so challenging. I find work challenging for the most part, but I know for me, I need new stimulus often.

Talk about home cooked meals.. Some recipes will be posted shortly..one for loquat jam ( a recipe not for the impatient!). Hubby picked one bucket of loquats. I started to peel them, cut the tops and bottoms off them, pit and pith them. One by one, one by one....etc.. Hubby then helped by peeling them (thank the stars above!) 3 hours later...two seperate pots, one sweet, one medium sweet, boiling away for 4 hours. We managed to make 7 jars of jam. The jam saga which started at 2:15pm in the afternoon, finished at 12:30am! The jam is lovely though.

We did alot of entertaining this week. Jay and family came over Sat night for dinner. Made my pasta sauce and special Sooshie Hash Browns. We went over to their place after dinner so that they could put their young one to sleep. We brought over a chocolate Monopoly set. A shortened version of the game, the board was smaller and the pieces were made from chocolate. The aim of the game is to eat the opposition. However the chocolate was awful, so we figured we'd just save them for the next time we wanted to play. Jay spent the first seven turns in jail. Every time she got out, she rolled a number which put her back in. Then once we had all established our sites, with hotels, she was happy to stay in jail. By that stage we were all wanting to join her in jail too. Anyway, Jay's hubby and I amalgamated to one huge power (it was getting late and we wanted to finish them off quickly) and we won the game.

Sunday we went out for dinner for Hubby's Birthday. Vegitarian Lotus Palace in Box Hill. His parents, my parents and grandmother, sis and her hubby and hubby's bro and defacto stopped in too. It was a lovely dinner, very noisy :) !

I am on holidays till Jan 2nd. Enjoying my free (?) time, but finding it filled with errands and house duties. Is it blasphemous to say, I can't wait to get back to work? Ha! Okay..Just kidding.

I guess you all noticed that geocities has this little window pop up, when you load up any geocities page. Annoying but well...this is the home, house duties apply even in here. I have found that I need to hit reload more often, but sometimes that doesn't even work.

Happy New Year!

Birthday's: Johnrob....little Mr Kiwi...Happy Birthday papa bear.

RECIPE
Loquat Jam

What you will need:

6 cups loquats (or in my case 1 bucket)
1 sachet fruit pectin (in case it doesn't set without help)
3-5 cups sugar ( I used only 4 heaped cups in one bowl, and 3 heaped cups in the other)
cinnamon to taste (just a dash)
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 Wooden spoons for stiring
1 metal spoon with rest (to test if jam is at setting stage)
1 pot to boil and cook jam in
Jam jars washed with hot soapy water and thouroughly cleaned. Milton solution for sterilizing is a good idea.
LOTS OF PATIENCE :)

Method
Wash fruit well. Peel (if desired) and cut off both ends and remove seeds if desired (better to do this). Place fruit in a saucepan with a small amount of water. Cook slowly and stir occasionally until fruit soft. Stir occasionally throughout cooking to prevent sticking.
Add sugar and boil to a rolling boil for approx 2 minute, then turn down heat so that it cooks but is not boiling vigorously. This is long method.
Short method - Add the pectin (if required) to the fruit and stir well. Let the mixture come to a rolling boil stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. The jam will take alot less time if you add pectin, however I cooked it the very long way..about 5 hours cooking in total, before it got to setting stage.

For your effort the Jam will taste wonderful! Enjoy :)

Sooshie
wishing you the best for the New Year

[PREVIOUS] [TODAY'S] [NEXT] [ARCHIVE] [HOME]