It’s been one of those bleurgh days that feel like nothing’s been done, although when you add it up, it’s not such a waste of space after all. Husb and I have been foraging for blackberries for the past couple of weeks, apparently it’s a bumper year, and we’ve made a fair bit of bramble jelly and blackberry cordial. We’ve been stockpiling the pulp in the freezer and got it out today to sieve the seeds out of it. Long and tedious, but there was nothing much else to do in this miserable weather. I added three quarters of a pound of sugar to each pound of pulp and cooked it up in a preserving pan, making 5 jars of blackberry butter. It’s excellent for filling a classic Victoria Sandwich and I like it dolloped on a warm croissant.
Fruit butters were popular with the Victorians and are a good way of using up pulp when you make jelly and cordial (that’s the British jelly, which is like jam without the bits). I always use the classic book on preserving by David and Rose Mabey, which gives interesting facts and history about the different preserves as well as excellent recipes. I bought it when I were a lass back in the 1970s and it’s falling to bits now, but I’ve never found a better one.
I hadn’t done any drawing throughout the day so I quickly sketched Husb this evening as he watched BBC4s ‘Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds, A Tale Of Three Cities’, an excellent mini series on the arts narrated by James Fox. This week it’s Paris in 1928. Fascinating. It was Vienna 1908 last week and New York 1951 next week. I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet and a free Markers app, sketching in white and greys on top of a dark ground, his face lit up from below by his laptop.
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Tags: art, blackberries, Bright Lights Brilliant Minds; A Tale Of Three Cities, David and Rose Mabey, digital drawing, drawing, food, foraging, fruit butters, Victoria Sandwich
