Fifty-Two Tasks - AND - In which Ginger becomes Running Girl

ello kiddy-winks!

As I write this I have my First Ever pickle on the go: the pickling/preserving being my Task for this week. I'm making a Bread and Butter Pickle from my Nanny's* recipe that my Mum had copied out for me years and years ago and that I found shoved down the back of a drawer. My Nanny made the best pickles and preserves and jams, I kid you not. She passed away when I was fourteen and it's such a shame that I only exhibited an interest in the Womanly Arts when I moved out of home because I could have learnt so much from her! As it is, she taught me how to knit - a skill that I am so so so happy that I have. Also, I like it that she passed that down to me.

Anyways, here is the recipe for you:

Bread and Butter Pickle (Ginger's Nanny's Recipe)

4kg medium sized cucumbers
6 medium onions
2 green peppers
3 cloves of garlic
3 tbsps plain salt
1 litre water (cold)
5 cups sugar
5 cups cider vinegar
2 tbsp mustard seeds
1 1/2 tsps turmeric

Don't peel cucumbers, just slice them finely, and place with finely sliced onions and peppers and garlic cloves in muslin. (NOTE: I didn't actually do this, I just put them in a ceramic bowl). Make a brine with salt and water and soak all vegetables in it in a basin for 3 hours. Drain them well and put in a preserving pan with the remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling, stirring gently to dissolve sugar. Remove garlic. Pour into warmed, dried jars and vacuum seal immediately.

I halved the recipe because I didn't have heaps of cucumbers, also I was a bit freaked out as to how it was going to turn out and I didn't want to overcommit with the ingredients.

 

 

I'd fallen behind a bit last week with my Tasks, so squeezed an extra one in this Saturday: I cleared out the books on my bedside table. I'd initially wanted to sit down and read the lot of them from where I'd left them off,  but after some long discussions with Katherine and with the Boy, I realised it just wasn't going to happen. There is a bunch of books that I still want to read, so I have taken out the incriminating bookmark and placed them back on my bookshelf for another day. I resigned myself to the fact that some of the other books (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Gift) are Never Going to Be Finished, so I have put them in a pile of stuff to take to Arty Bees and sell (or, more likely, swap). I FEEL FREE! We're in between books for Book Club at the moment so I'm sitting down to read one of the books that had been glaring at me, partially read, for over a year: First Catch Your Weka. It's a history of New Zealand through cook books and it's pretty awesome. I wonder why I left off reading it the first time around?

If you follow me on Twitter you already know this but... I have taken up running! When I say running, I mean, that I'm in the early days of this Couch to 5k programme and am running/walking to get my fitness up. I have new shoes and they have really cool bright orange/pink bits on them! The shoe manufacturer calls this colour mango which makes me giggle quite a lot while I am running. Also also, I made myself a little armband to wear my iPod in so I can listen to I, Claudius while I run. I AM the Literary Runner, pounding the streets of Wellington. When I told Mum she informed me that running causes cellulite because all the jiggling makes the fat cells squish into one another. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, PEOPLE.

 

 

*When I say "Nanny" I mean "Nana" or "Grandma". Not like, as in, I had a Mary Poppins type to look after me when I was little.