Little Makes

Some days a little bit of cooking or a little bit of crafting is all it takes to lift the mood.

I have had tomato ketchup on my shopping board all week and still forgot to buy some with the grocery shop, so today I decided to try and make some. It would be much cheaper to buy it I might add, but then I would miss out on the pleasure of cooking, the satisfaction of making instead of buying and the peace of mind that I know exactly what the ingredients are.

Good old JAMIE came to the rescue, but as per usual I didn't have all of the ingredients to hand, so here is Jamie's list and with my substitutes in brackets.

ingredients

• 1 large red onion, peeled and roughly chopped (1 brown onion)
• ½ a bulb of fennel, trimmed and roughly chopped (no sub, no fennel)
• 1 stick of celery, trimmed and roughly chopped
• olive oil
• a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped (1 tsp ground ginger powder)
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
• ½ a fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (1/2 tsp chilli flakes & 1 tsp mild chilli powder)
• a bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked, stalks chopped (2 tsp dried basil)
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds (1 tsp coriander powder)
• 2 cloves
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• sea salt (low salt)
• 500g amazing cherry or plum tomatoes, halved plus 500g tinned plum tomatoes, chopped (450g tin organic chopped tomatoes & 500g carton of passata)
or
• 1kg yellow, orange or green tomatoes, chopped
• 200ml red wine vinegar (200ml fruity white wine- leftovers from a couple of weeks ago)
• 70g soft brown sugar (2 tbs organic golden sugar)

 

 

And now you know why I don't post recipes all that often, because this is quite a habit of mine.

The ketchup turned out lovely anyway and his majesty (my ketchup loving 2 year old), gave it his seal of approval. Full instructions on Jamie's Page

 

 

Later, after dinner I managed a tiny bit of painting too.

 

 

The letters are made from wood and are to be used in Oscar's birthday ring (I will share more about that nearer the time). The 4 little peg people are going to be elemental elves (white - air, blue - water, red - fire, green - earth). The little mushrooms are for the nature table (they are tiny little door handles), and the coloured fellow in the right corner is Oscar's painted guy. All good fun.

Oh yes and since it was Candlemass, Oscar had his supper by candlelight. The candles we made the other day.

 

 

He told me 6 times he liked the candles, so sweet.

 

Valerie

xxx