Recipe: Mint Jelly

This week we have been very privileged in Sydney to host the Rotary International Convention! My parents are very involved in Rotary, with my dad having been District Governor a few years ago. As in my last post, my sister is also a Rotarian and very involved in fundraising for Rotary projects.

One of the feature events for the Convention was a series of Home Hosted Dinners. This was an opportunity for the Rotarians visiting Sydney from all over the world to have dinner with local Rotarians. My parents invited six couples to their home for dinner! It was great fun, but boy can Rotarians talk up a storm! 

Kiah and I did the catering for the dinner, and we had an interesting time researching ingredients and dishes that were authentically Australian, or had some kind of Australian twist. The menu that we came up with was:

Entree
Tasmanian Salmon Gravlax, cured in raspberries, citrus and vodka

Main Course
Slow roasted lamb, marinated in rosemary and garlic, served with roast potatoes, garden peas & beans, and mint jelly

Dessert
Lemon & Honey Anzac Tart, served with cream and a Tasmanian Leatherwood honey drizzle (recipe here)


One of the most commented-upon elements was the home made mint jelly! I read a few different recipes online, and came up with my own that combined the best of all of them :) Mint jelly is traditionally eaten with roast lamb in Australia and the UK, but my husband said he would be happy to just have this jelly with fruit or ice cream! It is a lovely balance of sweet and tangy, with loads of mint flavour.

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RECIPE: MINT JELLY

Serves 24

Photo courtesy of Kiah Westlund

Ingredients
800g caster sugar
3 cups picked mint leaves, roughly chopped
400ml white wine vinegar
200ml water
8 sheets gelatin, soaked in cold water for 5 minutes
Extra mint leaves, chopped finely

Method

1. In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, mint leaves, vinegar and water. Bring to the boil on high heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

2. Remove from the heat and cover, leave to infuse for 1 hour.

3. Squeeze all the water out of the gelatin leaves and whisk gelatin into the warm minty mix. 

4. Strain the mix and pour into a 20cm square baking dish or cake tin lined with cling wrap. Sprinkle the extra chopped mint leaves through, and place into the fridge to set for at least 4 hours.

5. To serve, tip the set jelly out onto a board and slice into cubes.


Enjoy!

Villigster Decken Part Two

Helllooo!

A couple of weeks I told you about the project "Villigster Decken"... The blanket is not yet finished but it will be soon (next week is Pentecost-Weekend after all).

Over the last weeks, parcels filled with little colourful patches arrived at work. I squealed with delight everytime my colleague handed me another parcel (she knew how much I love to open these parcels, so she didn't open them as she usually has to do with all the mail. Yay!).

Right now there are 128 patched in total. Pretty cool, ey?

I spent most of today sewing in tails and blocking the patches. I am a bit scared of the sewing them togehter process because a lot of the patches are slightly different in size but i have faith it will work out...

Then I will sew them together and add a border. The border will be white (I think - any better ideas?). I haven't yet decided about the kind of border but I am considering a wavey one. Also, I might add an extra row in the same colour to all the patches, but I am not sure that a) I will have the time and b) that it will work out for the knitted patches. The internet holds several ressoures on how to add a crochet border to knitted patches but I am not sure I can do it (just now). What do you think?

But now... Some impressions!

I will post a picture of the finishes blanket soon!

How much money will it raise - what do you think??

Take care

Anne

A beautiful Sunday and a yarn disaster

Hello all!

Summer is here! It's still called spring but since I have sunburn it must be summer already... :-) Let us hope the beautiful weather stays and it won't get cold again this summer (and let us hope I buy sunscreen soon).

Today started with voting. As most of your probably know, the elections for the European Parliament are going on until this evening. Some countries already voted and today it's Germanys turn. I hope a lot of people vote but I have a bad feeling. So many people don't get the significance of elections - makes me cry! I never missed an election in all my life and I will try never to do so. 

After the whole voting thing we took a walk and had coffee at a nearby farmer's café. So good! The bees and bumblebees certainly liked the weather (and flowers too). It was hard to get them onto a photo because they just jump from flower to flower in a split second! I reckon they were a bit high on pollen.

My capsicum is growing! I am so excited!! :-) I wonder if it will become a red or a green one...

 

Rest of the day was spent blissfully on the balcony with  fresh bread and eggplant dip (see this post for the recipes). Oh and yarn of course. Lots of yarn. I am working on a corner to corner blanket for a friend who will have a baby this fall. 

Disaster struck very close to the end of the blanket. Only two rows to finish and... no more yarn! Oh no! This is some yarn I ordered online some month ago and one can buy it in 500 gram packs only. Well, I don't need 500 grams! I need about 10 grams. Sigh! I contacted the seller to see if they could sell me one 100 gram ball. Fingers crossed. 

How did you spend your sunday?

Take care

Anne

Captain Poprocks visits the Great Ocean Road

Hello everyone! 

Captain Poprocks and I have just arrived home from a week's holiday in Apollo Bay, on Australia's Great Ocean Road. We travelled down together with my sister Kathryn and my mother Janelle to watch Kathryn run in the Great Ocean Road Ultra Half Marathon!

(You can read about Captain Poprocks' last adventure here)

We stayed in a lovely apartment in Marengo, which is the next village along the Road from Apollo Bay. It had a gorgeous view of Bass Strait, and we spent many lovely hours crocheting and drinking tea on the balcony.

The race was very exciting! Kathryn was participating in her very first half marathon, and it was an ULTRA half marathon! She has been training and fundraising with CanToo, and organised with her Rotary Club to dollar match donations to support End Polio Now to take advantage of the matching from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Altogether she raised $8,488.00, which is a pretty amazing total! Mum and I found a spot along the final stretch to watch all of the runners come in. When Kathryn came around the corner, she was even still smiling! 

                                   

We are so proud of Kathryn for running so far, and finishing her first half marathon in pretty close to the time she was aiming for! 

               


                       

She was pretty tired afterwards though...

Captain Poprocks got into some photos with the other CanToo runners who were participating in events over the weekend - even scoring a drink in this one!

After the race (and recovering from the race), we did some exploring of this beautiful part of the world.

There were amazing beaches...

... incredible rainforest...

... craggy coastlines ... 

... beautiful farmland ... 

... memorials to the building of the road (you can read about the history here) ...

... and even some yarn bombing! 

The Captain was a bit naughty once, when he scuttled onto a someone's land to get a better look at the river:

We also enjoyed some really good food - definitely know where to eat again if we go back next year!

On the way home, Captain Poprocks got to indulge in one of his favourite pastimes - puzzles and games.

Overall, we had a wonderful trip and I am definitely hoping Kathryn (and maybe some more friends?) will run the Great Ocean Road Marathon next year so we can go back! 

But Captain Poprocks? I think he just wants to hit the beach :) 

Recipe: Eggplant Dip

Hey all!

There is this little Turkish/Greek shop at our local shopping mall (even though mall sounds much larger then the place actually is). They sell amazing spreads, dips and so on. I am totally in love with their eggplant creme. They are rather expensive however and when you look at the list of ingredients there are lots of artificial food additives. The latter one drove me to find out how to make eggplant dip myself. I followed a recipe from Jamie Oliver first but it didn't turn out a bit like I wanted it to be. Still good but not right. So I decided to trust my instincts and came up with this:

Ingredients

2 Eggplants

1 Red capsicum

1-2 Garlic cloves (2 small ones or 1 large one)

150 Gramm of feta cheese

That's how it's done

Preheat your oven to at least 200 °C. Prick the eggplant with a knife (this way the eggplant doesn't explode). Put the eggplants and the capsicum on a baking sheet and roast until the capsicum is getting black spots. Take the capsicum out of the oven but leave the eggplants until they are really soft (the inside looks caramelised). Take the eggplants out of the oven. Don't let them cool too long (otherwise the feta won't melt).

Scoop out the insides

of the eggplants and capsicum and put them in a mixer. Add the garlic cloves and the feta cheese. Puree the lot until there are no pieces to be seen.

And... Done! Tadahh! Easy as that! You might add fresh pepper and salt but I found that it's not necessary.

The creme tastes fantastic with Artisan Bread. The recipe at be found at Simply So Good. Lucy from Attic24 translated the recipe for European use (that is grams instead of cups).

Take care,

Anne

Surprise Projects

Hello you lot!

My life is certainly lacking something now that I can't crochet. Or rather: crochet as much as I would like to. On a lighter note though: My elbow is getting better. My doctor wants me to have x-ray therapy but to tell the truth, I am not sure about that yet. I reckon I will get a 2nd opinion.

I have several projects in WIP-status right now but all of them will be gifts, so I can't tell you about them (yet). Here are some teasers though:

Project one: Hiding in a lil' box. Around 100 pieces done, 600 more to go!

 

Project 2: One is finished, second one is WIP... 

Some of you might guess the second project... Do you?

However while I can't show you my project in a piece yet, I can tell you about the fantastic yarn I decided to use for project No 2:

Drops Cotton Merino. It's a rather new yarn which only came out last year. As you might guess, it's a mix of cotton and merino (duh!) and it's soooo soft! It feels really nice on the skin and so I ordered another lot the other day (my elbow doesn't stop me from ordering yarn...) to make myself something nice with it.

Best thing about it: Drops Yarns has a supersale going on again. 35 % off a lot of yarns! Have a look at their homepage and find a seller near you! I usually order my yarn online from Lanade. They have good service and the delivery is really fast most of the time. I'd rather buy my yarn from a local store but there is none which sells Drops yarns around here.

*~*~*

Did you have a good weekend? I did indeed... Just some photos, no words needed:

Take care

Anne

Some love for Dortmund

Hello all!

The weather has been very rainy and stormy for the last couple of days. Yesterday we had so much hail that our balcony was covered in white little balls (and I had to save the spice pots. Not sure that all of them survived). Therefore it is nice to remember nicer weather days. In this case from earlier this week...

As you know, I live in Dortmund since last summer. Dortmund is famous for its soccer club (Borussia Dortmund - the yellow guys) and... well, not much else I guess. It has a reputation for being industrial and ugly. This when we moved here, I wasn't a happy camper. I thought there would be ugly buildings and little green. Boy, I was wrong! There are such great quarters in the town and there is soo much green! I can't believe it but I came to love Dortmund!

Earlier the week the boyfriend and I took a walk. The following pictures are taken just 2 km from our house... Doesn't look industrial and ugly, does it?

How was your week? 

Take care,

Anne