How to make Sirup

And here is the recipe for the blackcurrant sirup I made on Monday. I found several totally different recipes on the internet and in the end I just improvised. So the numbers in this list are by no means definite, I guess the amount of sugar influences how long the sirup will keep but since I don't intend to store this for years it is not that important. Too much sugar, however, could turn the juice into jam instead of sirup.

I used 900 gr of blackcurrants, about 500 gr of sugar and the juice of two lemons.
First I cooked the currants in a large pot together with 200 ml of water until they were soft and mushy. Then I used the "Flotte Lotte", a useful gadget which presses the berries through a sieve in order to get the juice out, but if you don't have one you can pour the berries through a sieve lined with cloth. In the end I got about 700 ml of juice. I added the sugar, the lemon juice and 150 ml of water and cooked it for about 10 minutes without a lid.

The sirup tastes great if you dilute it with water (1 part of sirup to 4 parts of water) or you can eat it with icecream or pancakes. Have fun!

A Day in the Kitchen

Aren't these bottles nice?

Today I spent the entire day sorting out the kitchen cupboards and producing new stuff to put into them.The results are two bottles of blackcurrant sirup...

 ... two jars of garlic in oil...

... and seven jars of currant jam. I didn't take any pictures of them because there are already too many pictures of jam on this blog.

A Bag I Made

This is not the spectacular project I mentioned in one of my last posts, it is just something I made recently as a birthday present for my brother.

I think it's pretty good although I destroyed the first clasp by accidentally hitting it with a hammer...

Fun, fun, fun!

The summer holidays have arrived. I' ve just come back from my holiday in Manchester and it was so much fun. The weather was great (although the British people are suffering from the "atrocious heatwave" - actually, we had about 26 degrees Celsius...) and I spent four days exploring, going to museums (I especially loved the Police Museum), shopping and having lots of cake.
These are some pictures of the "Northern Quartier" of Manchester.

And here you see my dinner back in my hotel room. When I travel by myself I like to save money by eating stuff from the supermarket in th evenings... (Don't worry, I didn't eat all of it. Since my room had a fridge, I could keep something for the next day.)

Meanwhile in the real world...

Since I haven't posted anything in quite some time, just a brief summary of the things that kept me busy.

First there were many celebrations connected with school. My first class graduated from school and thus I had to attend the graduation ceremony and the Abiball, as well as having a private good bye-party with my students. All these events were great fun and I am so proud of my students!

I haven't shown any creative projects for a while and the reason is a project that has turned out much more ambitious than I thought it would be. It is a lot of work and does not look very spectacular at the same time, so I will only show pictures when it is finally finished.

I have also made some jam before the end of the strawberry season, and I started to sew some steampunk-inspired clothing.

So there are things to come, the summer holidays have started and I hope to show some pictures of my finished projects very soon.