Lazy Sunday....?

Every other Sunday we have friends over for games, followed by a shared meal. I usually prepare a couple of loaves of bread, a dessert of some kind, and (during the non-summer months) some soup. But on the in-between Sundays, of which today is one, I try to have a day when I don't do anything much. 

So I thought that, today, I would go to the St Helena's church service in the morning, and later I might finish the novel I'm reading. I knew I had to make some cashew milk at some point, but that takes a couple of minutes; the cashews have been soaking in the fridge since Friday. 

Now that it's cooler, I decided I would walk to St Helena's. Since Richard sets up the live-streaming, I've been going with him, which means leaving the house shortly after 8.30am. That's not early, for me, but I like to have some of our lunch prepared in advance, after having breakfast, and then take a shower. As it wasn't sunny this morning, the solar heating hadn't done much so I had to put the water heater on for twenty minutes. But I didn't have to rush since I had an extra half-hour, in which I par-boiled potatoes, took a previously-made couple of portions of a chicken dish out of the freezer, and had my shower. 

As I was about to leave the house, shortly after 9.00am, it started to rain. It wasn't particularly heavy, but I found my waterproof coat, and an umbrella, and actually very much enjoyed my walk in the rain. I'm thankful I arrived when I did, as it got rather heavier within the next hour. There are reports of extensive hail in some parts of Larnaka. I wouldn't like to have been caught in that. 

I like the peacefulness of an Anglican service, and am getting used to chairs being spread out to allow two metres between each person or couple. I still don't like having to wear a mask the whole time, but it's not so bad now the weather is cooler. Up to 22 congregation are allowed under the current regulations (3 square metres per person), as the building isn't all that big, and there has been an outside group up to now. But today the rain put some folk off coming to the service, which is just as well as nobody could sit outside, given the weather. 

A fuzzy photo, unfortunately. 

There was a bit of drama in the service when one of the clergy felt faint, but thankfully he was fine later on. 

When we got home, we saw that with the torrential rain the roof over our stairs had leaked, and there was a considerable amount of water on the floor in the living room. Just as well we don't have carpets. So I got out the mop, and got rid of most of the water. 

I did then read for half an hour, but at noon I had to give the cats their wet food, and put the oven on for roasting the potatoes.

At that point I remembered that I was running low on granola, so decided I might as well make some - it's not difficult, and it's quite convenient to toast the oats and walnuts at the same time as cooking the  potatoes, turning the oven down after twenty minutes or so to roast carrots, and re-heat the main dish, and to continue cooking the granola. Then after adding the dried fruit, I leave it in the oven (as it cools down) for the rest of the afternoon.

This is the recipe I used to use for granola, adapted from one given by a friend many years ago.  Nowadays I don't add buckwheat flour, or any grain other than the oats; instead I use chia seeds as well as the other kinds of seed. And I always add some dried cranberries. 

When I opened the fridge to get the carrots and broccoli, I saw a bag filled with tomatoes, which I'd bought at the local fruit stall for a couple of euros on Friday. My plan had been to make some more tomato ketchup, as we'd run out of that too. But I hadn't done it on Friday, nor on Saturday... I decided I might as well do it today. The tomatoes all looked good, but there's no guarantee that they'd last many more days. 

So I washed them and chopped them, and added onions and spices etc, and put them on to stew gently to soften, then continued preparing lunch. 

Just before we sat down to eat, my older son sent a Whatsapp message asking if I'd like to video chat, so I suggested an hour or so later.  We usually have a leisurely lunch on Sundays; it's the only day when I cook at lunch-time rather than in the evening, and Richard usually makes a chocolate mug cake to follow.  By the time we'd finished, and cleared up somewhat, and put the dishwasher on, it was almost two o'clock.  So I turned the computer on and sat down with my coffee, and attempted a video call; the quality wasn't good, so we decided to try again later.

But having sat down at the computer, I checked news sites, and played my Lexulous games that were waiting for me to make a move. I answered a few questions on a forum, and checked Facebook, and followed some links... and about an hour later had a very enjoyable (and much better quality) video chat with my son, daughter-in-law, and two wonderful grandchildren. 

I miss them so much! Still, Facetime allows us to keep in touch, and I usually read a couple of stories to the children. Only picture books - I have to hold them up to the webcam, and read with my head slightly twisted round, so I don't usually read more than two. Just seeing them in their house, talking to them about their week, leave me feeling refreshed, with what a friend, years ago, used to call warm fuzzy feelings. 

Then I continued browsing, and reading online for another hour. At that point I remembered that I needed to blend the tomatoes etc for the ketchup, add the remaining ingredients, and simmer a while longer to reduce it to the right thickness. I have an excellent stick blender which I was given ten years ago.  

The simmering doesn't take all that long, and I knew that if I went back to the computer I might lose track of time. So I emptied the dishwasher, and then remembered that I need to make the cashew milk.  Now that we've stopped drinking frappes, I only have to make this about once a week. I have a Lidl blender which works well, so long as I tighten it sufficiently:

While it's blending, I put a litre of coconut milk in a large jug.  There's always a lot of coconut cream stuck in the packet, so I add extra water and shake it up, and usually end up adding another half litre of water - which makes a good consistency to add to coffee.

I used to make my own coconut milk out of desiccated coconut, but it was quite a hassle, and sometimes very watery. So we now buy Koko brand coconut milk, which is reasonably inexpensive and readily available, and it has the added bonus of a few extra vitamins. 

After those were in the fridge, and I'd turned off the simmering ketchup, I sat down at my computer again to update the St Helena's website with this week's bulletin, and other information. And then realised it was time for another blog post...

Just before I finished, Richard made us a light supper. As he's doing some work this evening I shall now turn off the computer and might even finish the novel I have been reading. 

A glut of soft fruit

One of the things which, on balance, I like about Cyprus is that fruit and vegetables tend to be quite seasonal. Most of what we find at the fruitaria is locally grown; there are imported apples, bananas, and potatoes much of the year, but soft fruit such as peaches and plums, and the huge inexpensive watermelons only appear during the summer months.

Of course, this is how it always used to be all around the world. People used to use the months of plenty to preserve fruit for the leaner winter months. And while I've always made jam using fruit in season when it's good value, it's only in recent years that I've started lightly stewing and freezing soft fruit, which I use instead of cans.

Soft fruit starts appearing in May, but it usually seems to be about the 10th-12th June when there's so much that it's available remarkably inexpensively. I have enough Scottish in me to like a bargain. I thought I might make apricot jam yesterday, before the weather gets too hot even to think about jam-making, so on Friday, when we do our weekly shopping, we made sure that we went to the outside fruit stall around 9.00, before all the best buys had been taken.

Sure enough, there were tubs of apricots, each around 1.5kg according to the woman selling them, marked at two euros. I thought that wasn't bad value, then she told me that they were actually one euro each. I said we would have two, and she gave us a third tub for nothing.  Then I chose a 2kg tub of plums, also at a euro, and then spotted an entire small crate of peaches at the same price - weighing them later, I discovered that there were over 5kg of them, all perfectly ripe.

So we bought around 12kg soft fruit for four euros.

We did the rest of the shopping and then I had the task of trying to fit everything in the fridge. I didn't have time to process the fruit on Friday, and I knew from experience that even one night left out would mean that the fruit would start to go bad.  We have quite a big fridge for two people, but it was a tight squeeze:

On Friday night I stayed up too late, and then woke very early Saturday; I don't do well with only five hours sleep but knew I had to deal with the fruit. So I started with the apricot jam and made nearly eight jars, using 2kg of the apricots:

I counted the other jars I made earlier in the year, and the few left from last Autumn, and there are around twenty so that should be plenty to last until next March when I will make more strawberry jam.

Next thing was to stew the plums. I might have dried them - dehydrated plums are delicious! - but they were the kind that didn't easily give up their stones, so I cut them in half, stuck them in a pan with a little water, and stewed them for about half an hour. Four 450g tubs resulted, and I've labelled them as 'plums with stones'.

Since I couldn't dehydrate the plums, and didn't much like dried peaches when I tried with those a year or two back, my next task was to put another couple of kilograms, or so, of apricots in the dehydrator, which then ran all day:

I don't dry them completely, but freeze them in little pots. The total was about 400g. A large part of any soft fruit is water.

Most of the rest went into another pan to be stewed; since I wanted to make a dessert the following day using stewed apricots, I only froze one tub and put the rest in the fridge overnight.

I did keep a few for eating during the week. I hope to buy more apricots next Friday so I can stew and freeze some more.

Finally the peaches.  Thankfully they were not 'cling' peaches, so it was easy to halve them and remove the stones, and then roughly slice them for stewing. I kept the best ones for eating, and stewed the rest; here are some of the resultant tubs ready for freezing:

Those Flora spread tubs make perfect containers for around 450g stewed fruit, making them a perfect substitute for the (less healthy) canned equivalent, for cakes and puddings and pies.

It took me most of the day, off and on, to do this, but none of it was particularly strenuous and it was most satisfactory to have so much fruit processed and stored for the future. I don't think I had to throw anything away.

Alas for my pride. I had made the decision not to make a batch of granola yesterday, while I was dealing with all the soft fruit. It would be more efficient, I thought, to use the oven which would be on for our Sunday lunch. So I put the oats in about fifteen minutes before our roast potatoes were ready, and turned the oven off while we ate, not wanting anything to scorch.

After lunch, I turned the oven on again, added the seeds, nuts and coconut (etc) to the oats, along with the oil and carob syrup, mixed it up, and put it back in the oven.

Then I saw the vast array of dirty dishes around the kitchen. It felt daunting. Richard and Tim had both had to go out to do other things, so I decided to sit down for ten minutes to check email and one or two other things on my computer.

BIG mistake.

With the warm temperatures, we have lots of windows open and ceiling fans going, so the scent of my over-cooking granola did not reach me in my study, where I remembered something else I needed to do...

.. it was an hour and a half later when I went through to the kitchen with a sigh, knowing I had to sort out the mess. My nose was instantly alerted to the granola, which I had completely forgotten about.

So much for being more efficient with the oven usage. I was particularly annoyed because there's an 'off' timer on my oven, which I could easily have set. It might have been slightly over-done, but it wouldn't have been completely un-rescuable.

It actually looked worse than it does in this picture:

Nothing was edible. If I'd needed charcoal I might have been able to use it.  As it was, I had to wait until it was cool enough to pour into a plastic bag and throw it away.

I hate throwing food away.

So I felt suitably humbled, and made another batch. 

Carob syrup in Cyprus

I've mentioned carob syrup more than once on this blog; each time, it seems, someone has asked me what it is, or what I use it for. I have to admit it's something we only learned about fairly recently, given that we've lived in Cyprus for fifteen years now, and this is a well-known product on this island.

We knew about carob powder, of course, used sometimes as a substitute for cocoa. It's more nutritious and doesn't contain caffeine.. but it doesn't taste so good, either. I've used it occasionally in baking, but am not a huge fan.

However, eating a meal with some friends a couple of years ago, we were offered a bottle of carob syrup as a topping for chocolate mousse. And it was very good.

I then started looking out for carob syrup in the shops.  Occasionally this brand - shown on the right - is on offer at Metro.

More often, however, I buy this variety in a larger bottle, at our favourite Achna froutaria.

What is carob syrup? 

Carob syrup is a totally natural sweetener extracted from the pods of carob trees which grow all over Cyprus. All right, so it's boiled and heavily processed, but still - it doesn't contain any chemical additives. Carob syrup is considered a health product: it contains a surprising number of vitamins, can aid digestion, stabilise blood sugar and cholesterol, and even act as a natural antibiotic.

How do we use carob syrup?

We don't personally use it as much as we could, because we don't eat many sweet or baked products at all. Richard uses it in coffee if he has it black, and usually has a teaspoonful of carob syrup in frappés in the summer, as he likes them sweetened and it's obviously better for him than sugar.

I also use carob syrup instead of honey (or mixed with half honey) in the granola I make for my breakfast. It's a thick, viscous liquid with consistency quite similar to clear honey, so it could theoretically be substituted for honey - or molasses/treacle - in most recipes, so long as it would be appropriate to have a mild chocolate-like flavour. I may well use it instead of golden syrup the next time I make gingerbread, now that Autumnal weather is slowly easing in.