Mobile Photos

I've always enjoyed finding photos to take with the mobile phone which capture moments, completely ignoring any accepted rules on exposure/flash etc. Here's a moment capturing the late night revelry at a recent party in Kent:



It's my favourite background on the phone, but it would never work as a poster...

Catching up on the Ketchup

Having spent a couple of days thinking about which recipe I would use from the multitude that exist online, I decide to go for River Cottage's one, with a couple of tiny tweaks. Here's a shot of the toms, onions and pepper starting to reduce:



I then struggle to do the sieving bit. It's a pain, and so I get lazy and resort to a hand blender (besides, it's more fun, and I rarely get an excuse to use the thing). I worry slightly now if the skins might go hard whilst in storage... time will tell.

Anyway, I blend and bash the broken down mush through a metal sieve into a bowl and then pour back into the pan, adding woody bits and acid as required by the recipe. It's starting to look a bit more like ketchup now:



Simmer, simmer, simmer (warning, you might want your laboratory goggles to hand - hot acidic ketchup in the eye is not a pleasurable experience, and this panful of goo seems to enjoy its little attempts to impersonate an Icelandic geyser every now and then).

In the meantime, I proceed make an utter mess of the kitchen trying to sterilize just one ex-chutney-jar and one ex-ketchup-bottle (I went for the stick jars and lids in the oven at > 100C for 15 minutes approach in the end, although only after soaking them in boiling water first). I don't recommend following my guidance on this though, since sterilizing is a serious business. I personally don't plan on pushing the life of this batch beyond the 1 month mark...

After letting the sauce cool down in a bowl (and coercing it through the sieve one more time to get rid of the big spicy bits and bobs), I then manage to get sauce everywhere except the intended target when trying to teaspoon it into an ex-branded ketchup bottle, having failed my earlier funnel hunt in town.



In the end, I now have two containers of home-made ketchup (which tastes a little too much like mulled wine if I'm completely honest). I reckon that in two generations time, the Rothwell-Hughes Sauce Company will be a FTSE 100 star...

Flowery Nights

Flowers at night, there's a weird effect here caused I think by the flash, the flick of muscles and camera at shutter-open-time, and then the 10s where the camera feeds on the twilight. Either way, I like the colour and strange focus effect that comes. I tried for a good 30 minutes to get the jets circling over us tonight waiting for a place to land at Heathrow, but my lens and skills aren't up to that yet....

Time for Bed, another week is waiting...

Here's hoping for some more sun for these tall flowers!

Could it be a saucy summer?

So I have a load of tomatoes now, all of them grown from some Sutton's 100s and 1000s seeds. Given the number of times the basket has fallen off the windowsill, I'm amazed it's still happily living up to it's name, giving me more fruits than I can possibly eat. This leaves me with a new problem - what to do with them. I already started using them with some Tuna before, but now there's so many, I'm thinking I might make some ketchup. All I need is a recipe....

Powdery Mildew

Clearly, things have been going too well for me this year (after last year's tomato blight and courgette-mosaic disaster), and it's time for a new problem! This year, my sweet peas and lupins are both suffering from that rather bothersome fungal problem of Powdery Mildew. I wasn't sure what it was, although the words popped into my head as "something that can go wrong in your garden". Here's what it looks like:

From Drop Box

I don't think I'm going to bother doing anything about it at this stage in the game, although if I did, the RHS would surely come to the rescue.

Tuna Time!

I had some spare tomatoes this week that needed eating, and also managed to persuade my better half to drive us to Catch of the day, our nearest favourite fishmonger in the hope that they had some Tuna steaks. They did, and here's what we made:

From Drop Box

Well, that's only halfway through. The recipe is:

1. Tuna Steaks, cut to satisfy 1 per person, and a griddle pan to cook 'em.
2. Bag of shallots (about 5 per person)
3. Left over tomatoes (better with small, sweet ones)
4. Mushrooms (I like using Brown Beech Mushrooms)
5. 200ml left over white wine
6. 200ml creme fraiche
7. 2-3 cloves garlic (crushed)
8. sprigs of Basil
9. 1/2 teaspoon Paprika (smoked is nicer)
10. Enough fresh pasta to go around (linguine works best)
11. Salt/Pepper to taste

1. Start by filling your pan of water for the pasta and getting it on the way to boiling - this meal doesn't take long, and you don't want your tuna to go cold while you're waiting for the water to boil.
2. Next, slice the shallots into little rings, mix up with the crushed garlic, and shove it into your favourite saute pan with some oil.
3. Once the shallots are softened, add the mushrooms, tomatoes, paprika, and wine, and leave to bubble away for next couple of steps, about 8 minutes.
4. Get the griddle pan on the hob and shove the heat on full (I add a tiny bit of oil at this point too).
5. Now add the creme fraiche to the sauce and stir in, adding salt and pepper to taste.
6. Put the pasta in the boiling water, and place the tuna steaks on the griddle pan, start your timer. I like tuna done 2 minutes either side, keeping the middle a little pink, add 1 minute each side to eliminate the pinkness.
7. Finally, chop up the basil and stir into the sauce. Serve the pasta, tuna and sauce together on some warmed plates and for the best effect, have a glass of wine and enjoy!

Busy Busy Bees

Well, one good thing has come out of forgetting to give my friend the spare Lupins that I have (before they flowered, don't worry JR, they're still yours!) is the fact that there are more Bees in my garden all of a sudden. This one can't get enough of it:

Painted 'actually, photographed' Lady

Well, here's my first close up using the D60. Probably not very good, but I was proud at least :-)