Hannah Stothard

Grape Jam

Hannah — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:45:03 +0000

What do you do with 4+ kilos of home grown and slightly undersized grapes? Make jam of course!

Well that was the plan. It possibly wasnt the best idea we had ever had. A grape cake or dessert may have been a bit quicker. However the final product was well worth it. It turns out Grape jam is really delicious if you are prepared to put in the time. (1 weekend and 3 evenings it took us)

For every kilo of grapes you will need 500g of jam sugar (with pectin). We made our jam in 1 kilo batches because I read somewhere it makes setting easier.

The first step of making the jam is to remove the seeds. The best way of doing this is to peel the grapes and boil the skins and flesh in separate saucepans, adding 500ml of water to the skins. After a little while the flesh will seperate from the seeds and then you will be able to sieve them to remove them. Our type of grapes popped out of their skins with a little pinch. This was by far the most time consuming part.

Next mix the flesh and the skins (you may wish to blend the skins a little to make them smaller) back together and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and add the sugar. Once it has all disolved bring the mixture back to the boil.

The hardest part is getting the right thickness. Keep boiling the jam until it reaches the right consistency. This can be checked by placing a little of the mixture on a cold plate and placing it in the freezer for a minute. If its done it will gather up when you push your finger into it. Out of the 4 batches I only managed to get this right once. The other batches had to be reboiled the next day or became a little too thick!

And here is the final product. 24 jars of jam in total (15 jars below). I still to need to make some pretty labels but other wise we are really pleased with how they turned out.

Knitting Window Installation

Hannah — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:42:21 +0000

I was shopping in Oxford Street one evening last week when I spotted this…

Claire Nixon is the lovely lady knitting away in this live installation at Oasis. As it says in the first picture. “By the end of this week, Claire will have been lovingly hand knitting for 7 days and will have made a giant scarf over 5 metres in length!”

I think the window was a really nice idea. It looked great and certainly drew my attention to Oasis. Claire’s work is also fascinating, you can read more about her on her website and admire her chunky knitting.

HTML 5 – Page Structure

Hannah — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:57:31 +0000

Having built this site using HTML5. I thought it would be good to share a few of my learnings, resources and tips that I have picked up along the way.

As far as I can gather there is absolutely no reason why not to start using the HTML5 doctype. Its short and simple to write and completely backwards compatible. Well the doctype at least. Most of the new features are not, but some do degrade nicely, especially some of the new form elements. As long as you are aware what features have cross browser compatibility issues then you are good to go.

Page Structure
As you can see by viewing the source code of this site I have started implementing some of the new HTML5 tags. In particular:

– For containing header content. A good replacement for or whatever

you might have used to hold your logo or main page heading content. This tag can also be used for content headers or other heading sections on your page. Feel free to use this tag multiple times if needed.

– Used to wrap several heading tags (h1,h2,h3,h4 etc) if they should be read together. Such as a main title and its sub title.

– Exactly what it says. Used to wrap sections of your page. This will probably end up replacing alot of

tags.

– Most likely to be used in blogs or news sections. Wraps each piece of news or each publication.

You can also see an example of the tags in use by viewing the source of this page.

Semantics
The biggest benefit of the new HTML5 tags is achieving really semantic code. If written correctly your page should have a really logical structure. A good way to check if your code is well written is to use one of the following links:

http://code.google.com/p/h5o/
http://gsnedders.html5.org/outliner/

Cross browser compatibility
To ensure that our new tags are rendered correctly by all browsers, we need to add a small piece of css to set these elements to display as block level elements. This way we can style them in the same way we would the

tag.

article, aside, canvas, details, figcaption, figure, footer, header. hgroup, menu, nav, section, summary{display:block}

For IE we need to add some javascript. Setting the elements to display block is not enough. IE doesnt recognise the tags and therefore will completely ignore any styling on them. Using the below JS will fix this problem.

http://code.google.com/p/html5shiv

Resources
Some of my favourite HTML5 resources at the moment are:

http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/html5-whats-new/template/index.html#1
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/25-html5-features-tips-and-techniques-you-must-know/
http://spyrestudios.com/21-incredible-html5-experiments/

Renegade Craft Fair, London 2011

Hannah — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:56:59 +0000

This weekend I went to the Renegade Craft Fair on Brick Lane. It was their first ever London event and it was brilliant. Its one of the best craft fairs I have been to in a long time. Every single stool was full of really nice handmade things. All the crafts were modern and really reasonably priced. I had to hold back the temptation to spend lots of money.

Chalk signpost for the fair

Stools

There was a free felt making class courtsey of The Make Lounge. The Make Lounge do a variety of evening classes that I have always fancied doing. Hopefully one day I will get round to doing a real one It was my first attempt at felting and I quite enjoyed it although the little fox I made must have taken an hour in total. Felting involves jabbing a needle repeatedly into hair like material until it starts to matt together. You shape your creation by turning the matted felt and making some areas denser than others.

Cream Tea!

Hannah — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 21:47:13 +0000

Freshly baked scones for a summer cream tea!

I followed Delias recipe and added a few sultanas

Pear and Pecan Cake

Hannah — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 20:14:49 +0000

We were given some Pears last weekend, so we decided to try out this recipe:
http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2007/01/pear-and-pecan-crumble-cake-recipe.html

Its very addictive and makes enough for 10-12 people, so maybe make it to share:)

Chillies

Hannah — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 20:06:34 +0000

Despite the strange summer weather we have had this year. We have managed to grow lots and lots of chillies. We plan to freeze some and dry some for adding to spicy dishes throughout the year.

Pumpkins and Squashes

Hannah — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:53:36 +0000

I have to say our pumpkins were a little disappointing this year. After a head start under cloches they seemed to stop growing quite early on in the season. I am not sure if the mild summer is the cause but we had dead plants and ripe pumpkins ready to pick at the end of August. Our butternut squashes and summer squashes on the other hand have performed quite well.

Tomato Glut!

Hannah — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:41:18 +0000

We kind of went a little overboard with our tomatoes this year. We grew several hanging baskets, several grow bags and several tubs. Far too many for us to eat all in one go. Below is a recipe for making a tomato pasta sauce. We used all cherry tomatoes, both red and yellow so our sauce turned out a little orange rather than red. Its tasty all the same though.

Ingredients
As many tomatoes as you can fit in a tin. Chopped up into halves or quarters
A large onion, chopped
3 Cloves of garlic
Basil and Oregano

Instructions
Place all the ingredients in a roasting tin with a little olive oil and cook in the oven for about 30-40mins until soft.
Strain off any excess liquid and then blast them in a food processor.
Season if needed.

Grapes

Hannah — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 23:10:16 +0000

Our grapes are well on their way to ripening. We are hoping to protect them a bit better this year. Last year we lost the whole lot one morning to cheeky little birds.