Ginger Beer

I decided that I'd use Pip's recipe and have a go at making some ginger beer. After seeing her joy at her creation at the Peddlar's Picnic. How could I resist?

The end of my second week is coming, and it should be ready for bottling on Sunday afternoon. I still haven't quite pigured out where I'm going to mix 14 litres of ginger beer in my tiny kitchen, but that's half the fun! I'll let you know on Sunday night.

Also, my best friend asked me if I could dye a dress of hers. I of course said yes (very cockily I might add) but I actually have no idea how to. Any one have any tips?

-Jemma

This is... A favourite recipe that I'd like to share.

It's called Old Fashioned Raisin square among my family members. But I've seen various other similar recipes that are called some variation of raisin bar or raisin slice.

Anyway, moving right along.

Preheat your oven to 190 Celsius and grease and line your favourite slice pan, square or rectangle. It doesn't matter!

Ingredients:

1 cup of Raisins, Chopped
1 cup of water
125 grams of butter
3/4 cup of caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon of bi carb
1 teaspoon of all spice (or nutmeg or cinnamon or something similar)
1 3/4 cups of plain flour

Method:

Put the water and raisins into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Stir in the butter and allow to cool slightly. When it is cooled, beat in the egg. Make sure to do it quickly or your egg will cook a little.

Sift in all of your dry ingredients and mix thoroughly until it is nice and smooth. Pour evenly into a greased pan and cook for 40 minutes.

Take out of the oven and allow it to cool completely, if you take it out of the pan too soon it will fall apart. I like to dust it with icing sugar too.

My suggestions for serving is with an afternoon tea, it goes perfectly with a cuppa! Or for something slightly more decadent, put one of the bars in the microwave for about 30 seconds and then put a big scoop of vanilla ice cream over the top! Yummy!

I really hope that someone in blogland will give this a try and see how delicious it is!

- Jemma

My Chicken Soup

Soup, originally uploaded by jljorna.

This is a recipe that I got from many different places on the web etc, and pretty much made up from all of those in the end. I made it when my boyfriend was on deaths door with some terrible flu/tonsilitis thing, although he was pretty much better by the time I finally got around to making it :) It's super easy to make!

Ingredients

2 Onions
2 Really big Carrots
1/2 Bunch of Celerly
2 Marylands (or 4 drumsticks or 4 chicken thighs on the bone)
Bay leaf
Parsley
Chicken Stock ( I used 10 cups to cover everything and have a enough liguid for the broth)
Rice or 2 minute noodles



Dice the onions, carrots and celery finely (1cm pieces or less) and chuck them in a big pot, take the skin off the chicken and put this in the pot too.
Cover this all with the chicken stock, I make all the liquid chicken stock, but you can make it half and half or whatever combo you like. You might find it a bit salty with all that chicken stock, I think it's fine though. Throw in the bay leaf and bring it all to the boil. Once it's boiling, turn it down and leave it to simmer for minimum of an hour. Maximum of however long you want really.

Take the chicken bits out and rip all the meat off the bones. Cut it up as rough or fine as you'd like, then return it to the pot. Put in your noodles or rice and choped parsley, and bring to the boil again until the noodles or rice are cooked. Then it's done!

It's really good for freezing in individual portions for later too.

Hope you like it.

- Jemma