Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Christmas puddings and Knitting

After our lovely holiday away in Scotland it been all go since we got back. The one thing I needed to do was getting the Christmas puddings made yes its that dreaded word Christmas. The shop is getting full of Christmas decorations and I'm running out of space to store it all, but we have to get Bonfire night the beginning of November out of the way first before anything can go into the shop. ( saying that I have left an angel out its so lovely).
I mixed most of the ingredients a few days before cooking so that the alcohol can soak into the fruit. Raisins, currents, sultanas,prunes, zest and juice of oranges and lemons, cherries, grated apple, walnuts and almonds, grated carrot, black treacle, demarara sugar, breadcrumbs,beef suet, ground almonds salt, nutmeg, mixed spice, fruit peal, stout and rum. after a few days this was mixed with the self raising flour and eggs.

I have made so much I had to mix it in the jam pan then left it in the crock mixing bowl, but had to put it back in the jam pan to mix in the flour.

As is our tradition each member of the house has a stir with a wish, but there is only Robert here Fallon is away on holiday. He will now say hes made them.

I usually steam them in a crock pot but I treated myself to these plastic containers with lids so I don't have to cover them with layers of tin foil to keep out the water.

Ready to cook




The cooked pudding
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I have also been busy Knitting. When I was at home in the summer getting over my operation I knitted my great niece Hannah a cardigan and when Robert saw it he said "I remember when you used to knit for me" so when I was well I went to the local wool shop who happened to be moving to a smaller shop and were having a sale. I got enough wool for the sweater below for an incredible £4.00 and its Arron. I'm not really very good and its years since I knitted anything this big only a few scarfs. It has a 16row patton, my friend who knits a lot said the patton would have shown up better in a plain wool as it doesn't really show on the flecked wool. I think it will be warm as when I was knitting it it made me warm.

Robert modeling the finished jumper

Posted by Bob :: 6:52 pm :: 1 Comments:

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