Summer in Cyprus, continued

Not that I want to rub it in. I know that many of my friends and relatives elsewhere would love to see a bit more summer. And I'm not complaining, exactly... not yet, anyway.

We didn't turn on any air conditioning until June 16th. I was pleased to be able to leave it until the second half of the month, and we've tried to be more careful than usual, with rising electricity costs. But when it was more than 30C in my study, there was no point risking damage to my computer. At night, we've put on air conditioning in the bedroom for an hour or so most nights since mid-June, but (so far, anyway) have been fine with just a fan for the rest of the night. And we've used the dining room air conditioning a couple of times when the humidity was very high in the evenings. Since we run them at 28C and it was probably no more than that outside, the units won't have had to work at reducing the temperature. I hope the cost of dehumidifying isn't too high.

Tessie has taken to sleeping outside most nights. While the other two cats come and go via the cat flap which Richard installed in the spring of last year, Tessie, for some reason, will go out but not in. Even if she's in the house when we go to bed, I nearly always find her outside again in the morning. During the day, she likes to sleep on the neighbour's car-port roof:

Despite the increasing heat, I decided to try making our own coconut milk. Coconut seems to be one of the most popular 'health foods' these days, and it's something we both like very much. Richard already avoids dairy products and I had been making almond milk, but thought it might be fun to try something different. I used a fresh coconut the first time... it was very good:

.. but quite time-consuming and hard work. Not something I would wish to do during the summer. But it was very, very good indeed to add to frappés. And not bad in hot coffee, either. While I find almond milk a bit gritty and tasteless (though excellent to cook with) coconut milk added something very special to either hot or ice coffee.

So then I tried with desiccated coconut - 100g to a litre - and it was quick, easy, and hardly distinguishable from the real stuff. Since then, I've been making it every two or three days, and haven't bought any cows' milk for a couple of weeks.

Continuing the summer theme, we went to yet another birthday dinner for one of our young friends - this time it was Lukas, who turned ten:

After we ate, Richard let Lukas join him in a two-player version of 'Ticket to Ride' played on his phone. Doesn't seem to me like much fun, but Lukas very much enjoyed it, despite being pretty much creamed by Richard: 

Then we all played a game of Settlers of Catan. Lukas didn't do too well in that, either, but he's always a good sport and seemed to enjoy the game anyway. And staying up late!

A couple of days later I was up early enough to join my friend Sheila for half of her usual Salt Lake trail walk - we did 4km, and I was pleased that my previously broken toes didn't feel at all uncomfortable until the last kilometre or so.

I forgot to take any photos at all on the walk, but later in the day I went with our friends to the inter-church youth group summer fair. I didn't buy anything, but enjoyed seeing various friends, and watching Helen on what she termed the 'jumpy castle':

We didn't think they would manage more than about ten minutes jumping energetically on a hot day... but all the children wanted longer, and kept going for at least half an hour each. Even including Elisabeth: 

Then Lukas had his face painted as a pirate: 

I'm not quite sure where the time is going. But if summer rushes by, that's just fine by me. 

Ketchup-making experiment

It's quite a confession for someone who generally avoids pre-processed foods, and makes pretty much everything from scratch.. but I really like tomato ketchup. I have done pretty much all my life, right back to young childhood when it was known as 'red sauce' in our family, since (at the time) I didn't like tomatoes.

I don't, of course, use ketchup every day. I wouldn't dream of using it with, say, roast chicken or a slow-cooked casserole (although one or two of my favourite crockpot recipes have ketchup as an ingredient) but I think it goes very well with lunch-time snacks such as cheese-on-toast or scrambled eggs. And it's also a good complement to some of the dishes I make regularly for our evening meal: cauliflower cheese, omelettes, chicken pie. We like it on chili con carne, too. It was quite encouraging to learn, about five or six years ago, that tomato ketchup is an excellent source of lycopene, which is a necessary nutrient in fighting all kinds of diseases, but not so easy to get from other sources.

Having experimented with one or two of the ultra-cheap brands when we came to Cyprus, we decided that the nicest, and best value for money was the DF brand:


I wasn't too happy that one of the ingredients is 'modified starch' (which probably means 'genetically modified') but it's only a tiny amount, and the thought of making one's own ketchup seemed like a huge hassle. I make jam and chutneys, but have never got into the process of canning (requiring simmering after bottling).

So, with just two of us in the house we got through about one bottle of DF ketchup per month, on average. Occasionally we'd buy Heinz if it was on special offer, but on balance I think I preferred the DF.

Then, last time we were in Metro, about four weeks ago, Richard saw a large container of ketchup, sitting next to the regular-sized bottles. He compared prices, and asked me, puzzled, why we didn't buy the big container and decant it as necessary into the squeezy bottles.

I was sure there was a reason, but couldn't think what it was, so I shrugged, and we bought it.


When we got home, I wondered why the large container didn't need to be refrigerated (though it was a good thing as it would take up rather too much fridge space). I compared ingredients, and noticed that the large container of ketchup had an extra one, not present in the smaller bottles: sodium benzoate. It sounded dubiously chemical to me, but a quick Google search suggested that it was a harmless preservative. I wasn't keen on the idea, so Richard suggested I eat up the regular DF that we still had, and he would decant the large container into a Heinz bottle, and eat it himself.

That worked well until about ten days ago when I finished my ketchup. I looked at the large container. I guessed it was probably what they use in restaurants, and when I tasted it, rather gingerly, it seemed to be exactly the same as the ketchup in the small bottles. I tried a very small amount of it last week, and had no ill effects... so thought I might as well use it too, at least until we'd finished the large container.

This past week, I had a migraine type headache on Monday. It was gone by the evening, and I was fine on Tuesday. Then it was back on Wednesday, AND Thursday. It was a long time since I'd had a migraine... they are triggered any time I eat MSG (monosodium glutamate) which is found in a lot of pre-processed foods and junk food, and also (sadly) in Marmite and soy sauce. Giving those up wasn't easy, but turned out to be well worth it.

I thought back to what I'd eaten since last weekend.

On Sunday, Richard was out sailing and didn't come back for lunch. So I pulled a leftover cauliflower cheese from the freezer, and ate that for lunch. With a LARGE dollop (or two) of ketchup.

On Monday, we ate crockpot Stifado with roast veggies, so I didn't use any ketchup on that.

On Tuesday, we ate chili con carne with baked jacket potatoes and peas, and I went rather overboard on the ketchup.

On Wednesday evening, I cooked omelettes and potato wedges (with mushrooms and peas)... and slathered on the ketchup.

On Thursday evening, we were about to eat fish pie (the old-fashioned English sort, with a white sauce, and mushrooms, and mashed potato on the top) - with, if anyone's interested, roasted garlic tomatoes, broccoli, and glazed carrots. Fish pie isn't something I make very often as it seems rather bland to me, but Richard loves it.

To counteract the blandness, I was about to use, again, a rather large amount of ketchup... and suddenly paused. I don't know if it was gut instinct, or Introverted Intuition, or a whisper from God... I felt suddenly sure that the migraines had to be connected to the ketchup. So I squeezed the very last drops out of the small bottles that didn't contain the extra presevative.

After we'd eaten, I looked up sodium benzoate more thoroughly - I wish I'd done so before - and discovered in various blogs and discussions that, for people who are sensitive to MSG, sodium benzoate is another likely migraine trigger.

Great.

Since tomatoes are so cheap in Cyprus - about 60c/kg normally, in our local froutaria, and sometimes a special offer with around 3kg for one euro - I decided to think once more about home-made ketchup. I was pleased to discover various recipes which could be frozen rather than canned, but most of them used canned tomatoes and pre-processed tomato paste.

Then I found this recipe for ketchup using fresh tomatoes. It looked extremely good. Naturally, I decided to adapt it somewhat; the author of that blog said that it was quite spicy, so I decided I'd leave out the cayenne. I like spicy food very much, but not spicy ketchup. I don't have any mustard seeds, so decided that, rather than buying some specially, I'd leave them out too. I don't have any allspice, so thought I'd use mixed spice instead. And since I follow Delia Smith's dictum that one can't have too much garlic, I planned to use four garlic cloves rather than two.

So, yesterday afternoon I washed, de-stalked and roughly chopped about 1.4kg tomatoes, and stuck them in a pan with a large chopped onion and about six crushed garlic cloves.


I was a bit surprised that I didn't need to add any water, but the tomatoes made their own juice pretty quickly. I figured that I would probably blend with my hand blending tool, rather than the liquidizer, and that I wouldn't bother to strain it (not wanting to waste anything) so rather than peppercorns, I ground some black pepper over it for a few seconds. I used a pinch of powdered cloves, too, rather than whole ones.

And when I was about to add paprika, I noticed that there were little weevils in the jar. Ugh. I have no idea where these nasties come from, but more than once I've found them in a half-empty spice jar, usually one that is probably well beyond its use-by date anyway. I don't use paprika much, so probably bought it years ago. It went straight in the bin, and I glanced at my other spice jars, wondering if I had anything similar. I remembered that turmeric has been hailed recently as a wonder-spice, so added a teaspoonful of that instead. Turmeric and lycopene... my ketchup will be a health food!

I simmered it for about 40 minutes, stirring from time to time, then let it cool for twenty minutes or so, removed the cinnamon stick and bay leaf, and liquidised it with the hand blender, as I would for soup. It took three or four minutes - possibly I should have simmered it for longer - but the result was fairly fine and smooth, if not quite ketchup consistency.

So I added the rest of the ingredients, reducing the salt to two teaspoons, and stirred them in:


It was rather orange, probably due to the turmeric, but smelled rather good. I brought it back to the boil and simmered for another twenty minutes or so, stirring frequently. Then I let it cool... and later on, put it in jars in the fridge.

I did taste it, and was astounded to find that it really did taste like commercial ketchup, with a more pronounced tomato flavour. I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly, but it was good!

Richard's out today, so for my lunch I made some cheese on toast as a vehicle for the new home-made ketchup. If I'm being ultra-critical, I think there's a tad too much cinnamon, and also slightly more of a clove flavour than I want. But only slightly. Next time I might try leaving out the mixed spice (which is, after all, basically allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove...). Or perhaps I'll just the mixed spice, leaving out the extra clove and cinnammon stick.

It's a bit runnier than I expected, but simmering for a bit longer would solve that one - not that it's really a problem. I liked the texture, despite it still having tomato seeds in it, since I didn't strain it. All in all, it feels like a most successful experiment. Perhaps we can now give up buying ketchup altogether...

Heavy boxes from Holland and Barrett

I mentioned, early in January, how I had discovered that I could order some items from the UK health food store Holland and Barrett for rather less than I pay for the same items at supermarkets or pharmacies in Cyprus. The order arrived within ten days, and I was delighted.

Early in February, I realised that I was running low on my favourite green tea and blackcurrant teabags. I haven't been able to get them in Cyprus for a while, so I went back to the Holland and Barrett website. This time I had a voucher from Quidco for 15% off the order - had I actually registered with the site (as I did a few days later), I'd have had a 'cashback' too.

Holland and Barrett were having special deals with several products reduced even more than usual, if I bought two of them. I decided to get four packets of the fruity tea - at a total of £5. I wanted some more oats, but the 1kg bags were not in stock; however they had 2kg bags, with the same offer - buy two, and get the second one half price. I browsed around, looking at the things I had tagged as 'favourites', and also following some links... and it wasn't long before my order came to about £45... then, when I applied the voucher, and they added postage, it came to just over £30. Very reasonable, it seemed to me.

I did wonder, in the days that followed, how I would get the order back from the Post Office. The email they sent implied that orders over 2kg (as this undoubtedly was!) would be sent by courier... however I didn't receive any notification, and nobody phoned. I didn't go to the PO Box last Monday, but on Friday was concerned that there might be a fair amount of mail awaiting us, so as it was a nice day, I walked down. It's a gentle stroll of about a mile. In the box were two slips saying that there were parcels waiting for me inside. I'd taken a large cloth bag with me, wondering if the order might have come, and thought how sensible that they'd divided the order into two. Or, perhaps, there would be something else awaiting me...

The postmistress brought out two parcels. They were a little bigger than I'd expected. 'Wait,' she said, as she handed them to me. 'There are more!'

She returned with THREE more parcels. One large, two medium, two small. I managed to fit three of them into my bag.

For the first time ever, I did contemplate phoning Richard at the office and asking if he could spare ten minutes to come and collect me (and the parcels). But they weren't that heavy, so I thought I would probably be all right. It was a little awkward, and by the time I was half-way home I was out of breath and quite warm, but I took a five-minute break on a bench in the nearby park, and made it home.

Then I piled the boxes on the sofa to take a photo:


I then weighed them individually. They were each around 2kg in weight, with a total of almost 9kg. So, not THAT heavy, really... but still, rather more than I would normally carry for a mile.

The two smallest boxes each contained a 750g jar of molasses:


I didn't need that much molasses. I use a teaspoonful at a time when I make bread, and a 340g jar (which I can buy in Cyprus) lasts me a couple of months, usually. But 750g from Holland and Barrett cost HALF of what a 340g jar costs here... and the second was, of course, at half price.

The medium boxes each contained one of the 2kg bags of oats:


I use that for granola, and sometimes for biscuits/cookies. It will take me a LONG time to get through 4kg, so I put the bags straight in the freezer.

And the large box contained:


Two bags of cough lozenges, two bags of sunflower seeds, two boxes of lemon/ginger tea, and four boxes of blackcurrant/green tea.

(Which sounds like something 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' might have eaten!)

It was only as I checked the packing labels that I realised that there's still more to come. Evidently the last box was delayed, since my order also included two bags of linseeds, some echinacea/goldenseal extract, and a copy of the latest 'Healthy' magazine.

Just as well, really. I don't see how I could possibly have carried a sixth box home as well.

I hope they didn't make too big a loss on my order. There's no way that the £6.95 postal charges would have covered over 9kg of parcels from the UK to Cyprus.