Burbank variation in walnuts, 1914 (Wikimedia Commons)

Ingredience:

• 200g Walnuts
• 150ml Honey
• 100ml Cognac
• Water

Recipe:

1. 200 g walnut, in halves or coarsely chopped or a mix of both.
2. Place the walnuts in a bowl, pour hot water over them and leave for 5 min. Drain.
3. Heat 150 g honey +50 ml of water in a pot.
4. Add the walnuts and simmer at low heat for 5 min.
5. Add 100 ml of cognac and reheat.
6. Pour in sterilized glasses and leave to cool. Store in fridge.

Serve cold with cheese. Tastes wonderfully with a good brie and fresh baguette or with a blue cheese.

Hope you will enjoy this as much as I do.

Greetings from Birthe

Lavandula spica, from Medical botany by William Woodville from Wikimedia Commons

Lavender Jelly
While the previous elderflower jelly could have jellied a bit more this lavender stuff I tried out can hardly be called a jelly at all. This seems to be a cycle for me every time I try cooking a new thing. First time it turns out fine because I follow the recipe to the letter. Second time I try to variate the recipe, it turns out OK. Third time I decide that I am a professional by now, I can make up my own recipe. I can’t and as with this lavender jelly it’s a disaster. Luckily, I then decide to go back to the original recipe with a couple of workable adjustments and then it turns out fine again.
Just for the record I have now saved this lavender jelly by putting it all back in the pot, adding some more pectin mixed with sugar, and given it a good boil until it reached setting point. I have also just learnt a easy way to see if it has reached setting point. I read it on the back of the pectin pack. Fish out a teaspoon of the jelly while it is still boiling and put it on a plate. Blow on it and if in a couple of seconds you get ripples in the jelly it has reached setting point.

Blackberry illustration from WIkimedia Commons

Blackberry Jelly
My first fruit jelly. This being my fourth attempt to make jelly it of course turned out a success. I went back to the measurements from Nigella Lawsons Chilly Jam recipe. 600ml liquid with a 1kg of jam sugar.
I had been out in the garden to pick the berries. Unfortunately the birds had been at them and some where starting to rot. However, I got enough for this portion. I boiled them with 800ml water and two apples chopped up roughly. After sieving I ended up with about 650ml juice. I melted the jam sugar in the juice and then allowed it to boil for about 10 min till it had reached setting point.

Have a look at the project on Ravelry!

The pattern for the Birka 22 is published by Carolyn Priest-Dorman, 1993.

Birka 22 can also be found in in Geijer, Agnes. 1938. Birka III, Die Textilfunde aus den gräbern.

Threading diagram

The pattern is shown here as 20 cards wide. You can add 8, 16 and 24 cards by copying the x-marked pattern again and again.

The pattern is turned like this:

• 2x all forward
• 2x 1-2, 5-8, 13-16, 19-20 forward and 3-4, 9-12, 17-18 backwards
• 2x 1-6. 11-14. 19-20 forwards and 7-10, 15-18 backwards
• 2x 1-4, 7-8, 11-12, 15-16. 19-20 forwards and 5-6, 9-10, 13-14, 17-18 backwards

Guntram also has an easy pattern for the Birka 22!

The knot work pattern on the right is from Guntrams fantastic tablet weaving program.

The piece in the left is a double face pattern, thought to be on the woolen Mammen piece from Danish Viking Age.

I have tried to figure the pattern out for a while and finally I succeeded.
It is in the book: Iversen, Mette. 1991. Mammen, Grav, Kunst og Samfund i Vikingetid.

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 50 g margarine
• 250 ml sugar
• 150 ml flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 500 ml milk
• 250 ml dessicated coconut
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla sugar

Impossible Pie, photo by Salihan Crafts

1. Cut the margarine in small pieces
2. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk it
3. Pour into a buttered pie dish
4. Bake at 180 ? for 50 min
5. Serve with Crème fraiche

Rosemary Jelly

African Rosemary

1. Pick some rosemary (I used 8 generous size stalks for 7 jars or jelly.
2. Peel the rosemary leaves of the stalks (Save the top 4 cm of the stalks for later).
3. Boil the rosemary leaves with 3 apples roughly chopped (pits and all) an enough water to cover the apples generously.
4. Strain the liquid (you should get between 800ml and 1L liquid).
5. Put the liquid back into a jam pan or similar (I actually use my wok as I don’t have a jam pan).
6. Add enough sugar and gelling agent to make the amount of liquid you have jelly-like. I actually added 1kg of Jam Sugar (sugar with pectin added) and then found that I needed to add about half a sachet of pectin  more because I didn’t want it sweeter but I needed it to be more jelly-like.
7. Heat this up so that the sugar melts into the liquid and then leave it at a rollicking boil for about 10min.
8. Leave of heat to cool down for about 15min and fill into sterilised jars.

Making apple jelly in 1912. Photo from Rural School Leaflet

This I decided to go while also making this years elderflower cordial. To be honest you can pretty much follow the above instructions but with 8-10 elderflower heads and also 3 apples.

I thought that the apples would mean that the whole thing would jellify easier. But I don’t think this really works. At least not for me.

While trying to find a recipe that would work for me I came across this page with more exact measurements for those who need this!

Seeing as everyone in my family love Lego my idea was to sew 24 bags that we can reuse year after year.

1. Cut out 24 rectangles in your favorite fabric (they don’t all have to be the same colour) at a size of between 12-16 inch x 5-7 inch (they don’t have to be the same size either). Either cut them with a zig-zag scissors or zig-zag them on your sewing machine all the way around.

2. Fold the short edges and sew them in to make a nice edge. Then fold the pieces on the middle inside out and sew down the sides.

3. When you are finished sewing them – turn them inside out – fill them with lego or anything else you want to put on your advent calendar – tie some ribbon or jute string around the top and put them on your advent calendar / string.