Cordial Recipes

I'm ashamed to say there is a bottle of commercial orange cordial sitting in the pantry, it's been there for ages. Last time I tried some I didn't like the taste at all, having been spoilt with the flavour of homemade lemon cordial.

Finally got around to making Lemon cordial tonight and decided to give Orange a go too. The recipe is very simple 1:1:1 ratio of sugar, water and juice.

Sugar Syrup
Heat equal amounts of sugar and water - I used 2 cups of each- in a saucepan until the sugar is completely dissolved. Allow to cool

For Lemon Cordial I squeezed 5 Lemons - heated for about 20 - 30 seconds in microwave to get more juice. This gave me 400 ml of juice to which I added 400 ml of sugar syrup.

Strain juice through cheese cloth - I use 2 strainers , one finer than the other. The first catches the bulk of the fibre and the second the rest.

Pour into bottle and chill. Serve diluted to taste with cold water and ice for a refreshing drink. It will keep for 3 - 4 weeks in the fridge but I rather make small batches and drink it within 2 weeks. Can also be frozen for later use.

For Orange Cordial the recipe above is the same but it does matter on the flavour of the oranges used, tonight I added an extra 2 oranges to strengthen the flavour.


No wastage, use for the peels

Lemon Cleaneer

Lemon Peels
Vinegar

Into a jar put the lemon peels, jam as much as you can in. You can keep adding extra peels too. Top up the jar with vinegar, screw on lid. Then leave sit for a few weeks.

The end result is a highly lemon scented vinegar which is then diluted 50-50 with water and put in a spray bottle to be used as a general spray cleaner.

Can use orange, mandarin peels in the same way.

Hugh's Fish Fight.

Joined Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fish Fight Campaign tonight. Watched his Fish Fight show last night and the waste that he highlights is terrible. Trawlers having to throw back tonnes of fish because they are only allowed to catch one species. The rest no matter what conditon it is in is tossed back into the sea. This is happening in the North Sea, which you might think is half a world away but with imports, it affects us too. Is absolute madness.



WE'VE ADDED YOUR NAME TO THE PETITION

“Thank you

for signing up to the
Fish Fight campaign, your
support is appreciated.
Together we can make
a difference.”

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

762,974

Finally I can wash again, after a few abortive attempts at repairing the washing machine, my husband's friend took it home. His brother in law had given him an identical machine but he wasn't able to repair it even though it had the same problem. In the end he cannibalised and was able to repair ours, it was returned this afternoon. No more taking washing to Mum's place. Dad complained to me that they had their machine repaired the next day while apparently we hadn't bothered with ours. Not true, the first repair man refused to work on it, he said he didn't do Electrolux and then hours were spent on it here by my husband's friend who repairs machines in his spare time. We had to wait for those spare moments, it was finished last Friday but he wasn't able to get it back to us. In the end he took it to another friend's place when he was repairing something there and they brought it over today.

On Sunday we traveled down south for a couple of days for my Aunt's funeral. My parents in their car with an Uncle and Aunt, me in my husband's new car with my children. The trip there wasn't too bad, I didn't feel tired in the least, we drove to Gundagai for lunch and then onto Holbrook, the drive all up was over 5 hours.

Settled in the motel rooms, females in one room and males in another. Then went for a quick visit to another Auntie. I remembered how boring it used to be when visiting there as a kid, sitting around the house with the adults so seeing as Cass and Tom had been cooped up in the car all day I took them into town for a look around. We had thought about driving to Albury and taking Tom across the river into Wodonga, just so he could say he'd been out of the state but that meant another hour driving. Ended up at the submarine instead, had icecream and drinks, Tom climbed over the submarine while Cass read.

The sun was brilliant, we had driven through pouring rain on the trip and my husband said it was pouring at home.

The funeral was nice, as nice as one could be, the church was filled with family and friends. My Dad's surviving siblings were there, there's just 4 left now. Just a few cousins could make it, it was nice seeing cousins I haven't seen for years I only wish that it was under happier circumstances but that's how it is now.

The trip back on Tuesday wasn't so great, I hadn't been well and woke up during the night with a coughing fit. I drove behind my parents but felt the effects of tiredness, was watching for merging traffic one moment and off the road the next. I managed to keep on the shoulder, bringing the car to a stop with my son yelling. Realised I had a microsleep and was very lucky not to have driven into trees or other cars, it happened so quick. We had already had a rest stop but I had felt a little rushed out of it, my parents had wanted to drive longer but I had said no that I wanted to stop at the next service centre, we were only 7 kms from it when it happened. Very scary.

It was a relief to get home but I really would have liked to stay longer to show my kids around the countryside, maybe next time.