Tag: Winter

‘Hedgerow Syrup’ battles The Cold!

So why is ‘mum’ always the last woman standing? At last I admit defeat, finally felled  by the lurgy that has worked its wicked way through the family over the last 3 torrid weeks. In a grumpy, yet messy domestic drama ‘The Cold’!
First there was ‘Snotty Daddy’, stoic and insistent he was ‘fine’, until he crumbled and admitted he was feeling ‘rough’ managing to force himself to swallow a whole Paracetamol, something our hero only ever does when driven to desperate measures. He eventually won the battle after days of struggling through, and celebrated with a shave. Next came the teenage angst admirably delivered by Heroic H, who womanfully battled Biology and Physics tests, as well as choosing her Highers, making life changing decisions whilst wading through a loo roll mountain.
Kept sane by lots of TLC, no nagging, ‘because she was poorly’ and her best pal, ‘The Headphones’ and regularly dosed with mummy’s proven cold killer the ‘Hedgerow Syrup’.  A cheeky little oxymel concoction, developed using grandmothers WWII recipe for storing hedgerow goodness, during the austerity years and capturing all the vitamins in a tasty if a little odd, tea like drink. This ‘love it or hate it’ potion, has kept both my daughter’s fighting fight and is a sure-fire way to bring pep and comfort when feeling blue. So H imbibed and managed to expel her bugs with aplomb. 
Then disaster struck,  sunny, runny nosed glorious Little G, was at last captured by the germs, no matter how hard she tried to dance out of their way and insist all was well, the inevitable occurred. Late hot nights, chesty coughs and sleeplessness, did not deter her from cross-country racing, piles of home-work and re-plotting her bedroom! Lots of mummy’s ‘Hedgerow Syrup’, cuddles and a movie outing restored her to normality. A few days tickled by, all was well on the Dixon-Spain front. We ladies were packed and heading home for half term, with plans of jaunts out, maybe a night or two away and even a plan to get Daddy to join us for an outing, it all started off so beautifully, lovely friends Zoe and Martin and Mac their ‘very blond’ Retriever came to stay, great food (thank you Zoe) and even better company and our holiday began. Then WHAM, yesterday I finally, succumbed, felled by the dread cold, which had been clearly lurking hidden, in some dark place, plotting for a week and waiting to pounce. Well that’s me folks, feeling well sorry for myself, and boy can I just say it’s horrid! At least today I am vertical and can cope with the glare of a computer screen an opportunity to get working on this blog.  Hedgerow drink in hand, I can at last feel air through the snot and I am just about able to breathe with my lips closed.  Tomorrow, I know I will feel much better. For those of you that like a good forage, here is the recipe. 

(Mummy’s) Hedgerow Syrup

  • Ingredients
    500g (big bowl) of red fruit: Black currants/brambles/wild raspberry’s/strawberry etc: You dont need forage, you can simply buy what you like or forage in season and store:
  • 150 fluid oz Cider Vinegar
  • 500g sugar or 200g stevia (if low sugar option is preferred)
  • 1- 2 jars of Honey depending on thickness and taste
  • Water

Method
1. Place fruit in a bowl or Tupperware tub and cover with Cider Vinegar, cover and leave to steep for 2 days. This process allows the vinegar to absorb all the nutrients and goodness from the fruit. This process is called ‘Oxymel’
2. Add the whole mix to a thick bottomed pan, add the sugar, the honey and 2 x the container you used for the fruit, full of water. Gently simmer until all the sugar and honey is dissolved.
3. Continue to simmer gently for about 15 minutes, adding honey and or water to get a consistency you like. Try not to let the mixture boil.
4. When happy with consistency remove from the heat and set aside to cool
5. Prepare your glass storage bottles. I find empty whisky bottles ideal and I save any good glass containers.  For Syrup you want to store longer, use tinted glass bottles as tinted glass helps protect from light. Or store in a cool dark place.
6. Strain your Syrup mixture into the bottles, removing the bits of fruit*. Use a .small sieve or ideally muslin cloth, depending on how clear you like your mixture. Store in a cool dark place. Bottles can last for up to a year.

*Top tip, your fruit remains can be frozen and go an absolute treat when added to a fruit crumble or pie, adding zest.

 To Serve Your syrup is best diluted, add a few inches to a mug and poor on hot water. You can also serve cold with ice and spring/fizzy water.

Notes: This is an old-fashioned recipe, designed to get the goodness from fruit in season and preserve into the winter months. The Cider Vinegar is both a preservative, capturing the goodness of the fruit and retaining those qualities during the heat process. Vinegar has many medicinal properties, working directly on the ears, nose and throat. As an actor, I have many times recourse to cider vinegar to cure hoarseness or to give me a welcome pep, if feeling run down. Honey has antibacterial properties and again acts as a preserving agent.
Red berries are all good for your heart and packed with antioxidants like lycopene and anthocyanins.
 My recipe is adapted to our taste, experiment to get it right for you. You should get a smooth sweet sour mix, with the vinegar gently underpinning the syrup. Play about with the ingredients and enjoy. Our girls grew up on this ‘Hedgerow Syrup’ and as wee ones, used to come foraging with mummy around the grounds of the castle, picking what ever fruit we could find and what didn’t get eaten or made into puddings, was made into our comforting winter tonic.  Drink and enjoy. I do hope you like this

January Months at the Castle

The winter months in 21st Century Scotland can be surprisingly harsh. As the temperatures plummet we often lose our water. The house is on a private supply so the pipes freeze with the ground, and waiting for the thaw can often be a test of endurance, 8 weeks was the longest in the Winter of 2011, never to be forgotten. Long grubby days etched in our minds. Out of sheer desperation, we were forced to take up family membership of a Spa in Inveraray. So that winter, the girls learnt to swim, my skin never felt so soft and my car devalued rapidly with the 60 mile a day round trips.

Electricity is equally tenuous. In our decade here at Dunans Castle, we have spent weeks living by candle light and boiling water harvested with a pick axe from the burn.  We now have a small generator that can power a couple of computers and keep the basic day to day functions going, but some of our early experiences were a challenge.  I have many memories of huddling around the wood burning stove in our red shed, a tumble of children, dogs and he and me, bickering about who would brave the freezing cold air out-with our human duvet cocoon to grab a snack or a glass of ‘milky’, of the benumbed nights when I would wake in the wee hours for a baby feed, or a pee and lie in horror as my body registered the toe shriveling cold.

Another general challenge was day to day shopping.  One guest, husband of a friend, upon being forced by his wife to leave the comfort of his city existence for a long weekend in rural Scotland, asked me, somewhat hesitantly if I had a ‘thing’ about toilet roll. Startled, I replied no! Although I had not previously considered the matter, I had rather assumed my relationship with said domestic sundry, was normal. After a considered pause, he nodded thoughtfully and remarked it was just that he had never stayed in a house where there was so much, toilet roll in evidence, in bulk in fact!

He was quite right. In the downstairs loo, sits a huge old Jardinière that once belonged to my great grandmother, Lilly Lynn, a formidable matriarch, headmistress of a rural school, painter, tailor and all round ‘can do’ lady, the sort of Gal, who upon spotting the first ever ‘fitted kitchen’ in a ladies periodical, set about to build herself her very own version, which was so well built it outlived her inimitable spirit.

Said pottery inheritance was indeed full of toilet roll and sits to this day, usefully, in state, in the downstairs loo, full of loo roll!  In the guest shower room was a similar arrangement and again in the upstairs loo. So yes, on reflection, our guest did make a good point, we were well provided for on the toilet roll front, however, as I put to him, this was more about forward planning than an odd bottom fetish on my part!

Consider, says I, its 9pm on Sunday evening and you pop to the loo to discover no loo roll – eek, no late night garage, no minimart up the road, not even a 24/7 supermarket within an hours drive, bum! Quite literally, nothing open until Monday morning and even then a 1 and a half hour round trip!  Life at Dunans is all about forward and behind planning!

Running a household and ensuring everyone including our sundry animals are looked after takes a level of military planning, especially when the children were small, I now have a brain that shops in bulk, I can whip off a basic bi monthly shop in a snap, however when in Glasgow confronted with a ‘metro express mini-market’ option, small items, individually wrapped, in pack of 1 or 2 or in the case of cucumbers, a half, (what is that about)? I am often at a complete loss.

What I do love about living at Dunans are the local businesses that have become a welcome part of our lives, providing food and goods and taking the day to day pressure off. As of yet no-one runs a loo roll delivery company, however we get Robert from Fynest Fish, once a week, Bob, from 3K who delivers pet sundries once a month and a whole heap of local delivery companies who keep us ticking along, without constant recourse to the great gods, like Tesco and sundry other world dominating purveyors of food.

I also am proud that our rural life means we are really, really in contact with our food sources and seasons. My youngest daughter will happily pluck a pheasant and both kids know what the meat and fish they eat actually looks like from the beast it once was. Admittedly we are not well set to grow our own, despite my feeble attempts, rain, deer, rain and more rain, oft kills what we do grow, but we do buy locally grown when we can and we also have some great local, ethically sourced meat/dairy suppliers, so its win, win all the way.

Our Local suppliers – Support local: Buy Local: Create Sustainable Community living: Real Food

http://www.lismoregrassfedbeefandlamb.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Fynestfish/about/?ref=page_internal
http://www.goruralscotland.com/auchentullich
http://www.winstonchurchillvenison.com/foods-from-argyll/
http://dalmally.cylex-uk.co.uk/company/3k-supplies-17110739.html