Who, me?

I don't know how he does it. Twenty four hours after being groomed, his coat is full of seeds and there's something suspiciously unpleasant-looking in his beard. And he's barely left that sofa...

Several people asked me yesterday about the red cabbage I was cooking; I use Nigella Lawson's Viennese red cabbage recipe, which if you don't have her book How to Eat  can be found on the web here. I do recommend that book, by the way - several of my favourite recipes come either from it or from Feast.

And I promise you that decent red cabbage can be frozen and defrosted without turning to goo - I've been doing it for years, and a friend told me this morning that having discovered that her husband can't tell the difference between home-made and shop-bought, she currently has a freezer full of the M&S stuff. On Christmas eve I'll move mine from freezer to fridge to thaw out, and on Christmas day I'll microwave it for a couple of minutes and then leave it in a serving dish in the warming oven till I'm ready for it.

I was also asked about the damson gin, which is made in the same way as sloe gin: essentially it's a 1:2:4 mixture of sugar, fruit and gin, and if you remember those proportions you can make up any quantity that suits you. This year I only managed to forage 500g of damsons from the hedgerows in the village, so having slit the skins I put them in a large jar with 250g of caster sugar and one litre of gin; then sealed the jar, shook it well and left it for three months in a cool, dark place. I shook the jar once a week for the first month, by which time all the sugar had dissolved; after that I gave it a shake whenever I happened to remember. By contrast we had a very good sloe year here and I have three litres of sloe gin steeping, which I'll also decant before Christmas.

After yesterday's rushing about I had a pretty quiet day today: I finished filtering and bottling the damson gin, and wrapped some Christmas presents. I also avoided standing on anything higher than a kerb! This morning was cloudy, but by the afternoon the sky had cleared and there seemed to be a promise of a sunset; I went out with the camera in hope, but in the event another cloud bank came in just in time to spoil it. I did get a few quite nice images, but nothing spectacular - and as it's a while since you've seen Arthur I thought I'd blip him today.

Tomorrow is the 100th Mono Monday, and Skeena has chose Celebrate as the theme - I'm looking forward to seeing lots of uplifting images! If you don't usually play but would like to join in this week, the tag that will put your image with the other entries is mm100.