Birthday

Last thursday I got one year older. This year was for many reasons the best birthday I can remember. I think this is a reflection of the wonderful people I have in my life and where I am with being me. I can honestly say I feel blessed.

I got the most amazing hoard of goodies which I am thinking I shall devote a whole post to.

I spent the morning as I do every thursday at the SPCA walking and hanging out with the dogs. Shared custard and fruit croissants and rocky road with the other volunteers, and had lots of cuddles with the puppies. Even took one home for the day.

That evening Ben planned a BBQ which I loved every minute of, being surrounded by the most genuine and beautiful big and little people. Yummy food, delicious lemon cake, sitting by the fire with the puppy cuddled on my lap and the ten year old next door neighbour along with her mum singing their hearts out. It really was perfect.

Elderflowers

The elderflower cordial tastes so amazing, sweet and summery and just like it should do. We have been drinking it with soda water. Trialled using brown sugar instead of white which made a beautiful amber coloured cordial but I think white sugar is the best.

This is the recipe, I wrote down a while ago. Most of the recipes I have come across are similar. Main difference was the soaking time of the flowers and whether to boil it or not. The following is what I did

Elderflower cordial

1500ml of water

1kg of sugar

50g of citric acid

2-3 thick slices of lemon

20 large heads of elderflowers

Boil the water, dissolve the sugar, add the lemon slices. Some say cool the water and add the elderflowers, I added the flowers when it was cool and then the next time added the flowers when it was still hot, seemed to make no difference.

I did'nt wash the elderflowers just shook them to get the spiders out. Leave the mix soaking for 48hours. I then added the citric acid and boiled the mixture pouring it into sterilised bottles.

Following the way I always cook I did a lot of estimating, some elderflower heads were little some big so I added them until I thought it looked a good amount, I also probably only put about 30g of citric acid. 50g seemed like a lot and it worked out fine.