Kicking the bucket...

I had wanted to give this the title the day my niece kicked the bucket but apparently it’s not funny – even though I cried laughing when it happened. My youngest sister and I share an aversion to death, probably a lot of people do but the aversion for us is particularly pronounced. Thus, if either of us has a string of missed calls then we instantly worry that someone has expired; we now have a scheme to help in this – if I should call my sister or she me and the calls should be missed more than twice we then send a ‘no-one dead’ text message. It helps.

            One day I answered a call from my youngest with the words, ‘has anyone died?’ but this led to a long discussion of what would the caller say if that was the reason for the call? Actually, because I don’t sleep a lot, I pictured the various conversations that could ensue and all were mildly amusing (in a kind of darkly humorous Tarantinoesque kind of way).

            Last week my middle sister left her phone at work and asked me to call the youngest as she knew she would be worrying. As soon as I answered the phone I said, ‘Don’t worry, Claire’s not dead.’ She didn’t like this opening – apparently it caused her to worry.

            Picture my delight then when I was allowed to look after my nieces for half an hour on Saturday whilst my sister ‘dashed’ to Tesco. (I’m not often allowed to look after them – the first time I did the elder niece bust her lip open; the second time I took them for a picnic but forgot coats, and it was on a high hill, in the cold.)

So, I was entertaining my nieces whilst cooking sponge and Rob came in from work, pig bucket in hand – which he placed on the step whilst he removed his boots. My elder niece came running over to see her Uncle and, yes, kicked the bucket. Delighted at this turn of events I grabbed my mobile and proceeded to text…

Oops, [niece’s name] has kicked the bucket. C x

To which came the reply…

You are really not funny tho I bet you are laughing so much that you are crying? X

            She was correct, I was laughing a lot. I still am.

Home-made cordial

I’ve noticed there are lots of English raspberries on offer at the supermarkets at the moment. Here’s an idea for using raspberries up, it’s great with sparkling water (pink lemonade) but it’s also good with still and with hot water – nearly as good as hot Vimto!

Source: Nearly all chefs put ideas for drinks and cordials in their books.

Ingredients:

2 lemons (sliced)

2 punnets raspberries

300g caster sugar

Here's what I do:

Put the lemons, raspberries and sugar in a pan with 300ml cold water (from the fridge is best as you want it to heat up slowly). Bring to the boil, pushing down on the fruit several times to extract all the juices and flavours. Once boiled turn off the heat and continue to press for a few minutes, then allow to cool. Sieve into a dish (use a large sieve to start) and keep pressing the fruits, forcing as much juice as possible through the mesh. Now using a fine sieve pass the liquid through again, do it gently this time to prevent pips going through. Put in a jug. It will keep for around a week in the fridge but I bet it’s finished before then.

 You can obviously mess around with this - I did a version with lemons (I used 6 lemons on that occasion) and ginger, that was lovely but I'd make it more fiery next time. Just have a taste as it's warming up and adjust as necessary.