Elderflower Cordial Recipe

You will need:

A hot summers day.

20-30 Elderflower heads

1kg sugar

Zest of 1 orange and 3 lemons

The juice of the lemon and oranges.

1tsp citric acid

Do this:

Day 1

1. Shake the flowers free of insects. A few will probably remain, but don’t be too concerned.

2. Zest the fruits and then juice them. Put the juice in an airtight container in the fridge and leave until tomorrow.

3. Put the flowers into a large bowl along with the citrus zest

4. Boil 1.5 litres of water and then add it to the bowl

5. Cover the mixture and leave it overnight

Day 2

6. Pop some bottles into the oven at about 120^oC or something. They stay there until the near end.

7. Strain the infusion through a jelly bag, bit of muslin or I guess a sieve would work if you don’t have the former. (Scald the bag/ muslin/ sieve to (sort of) sterilise.)

8. Pour the liquid into a preserving pan or large saucepan.

9. Add the citrus juice, citric acid and sugar. You don’t actually need the citric acid. I don’t know what difference it makes scientifically, but it seems to create a lighter taste and texture. That was the only difference I could tell.

10. Dissolve the sugar by heating the mix up slowly. It took me about 10-15 minutes to dissolve it.

11. Bring to a simmer, which for me took about 10 mins, but I’m sure you can do it faster if you are short on time.

12. Simmer for about 1-2 minutes.

13. Pour the cordial into sterilised bottles using a (sterilised/ scalded) funnel. Seal the bottles with sterilised lids/ corks/ swing tops/ whatever.

This batch is lighter and more subtle than ones I’ve made before. I think I prefer the lightness. It carries a bright taste of summer.

Technically it will keep for about a year. But this is not a winter drink. It’s too light, too gentle, too hazy a drink for the heavy full flavours of winter. I think it’s better to drink it all before the end of autumn, otherwise you might find that you’ll have some old fermenting bottles by the next season that you never got round to drinking. If you want the elderflower taste over winter, I’d say make some elderflower wine. It’s heavier texture and fuller taste is more suited to cold weather than the light haze of a summery cordial.

Uses include:

1. Dilute with some water/ fizzy water/ lemonade.

2. Dilute with water and pour into ice-lolly moulds. Freeze them. On a hot summers day lick ‘em.

3. Use to boost flavour to the elderflower biscuit recipe I will post up in the future.

Dorset Art Weeks and project days

This weekend we have a couple of project days scheduled at Mr Kite’s place. We’re going to be making an earth oven for our new outdoor kitchen area. Gabriel is making a yurt, so we’ll be doing some steambending for the lattice. We’ll be doing a charcoal burn with the help of our friend Adam who has recently switched from a messy career as a charcoal maker to the cleaner thatching trade. Gabriel and Mr Kite found a solar water heater at the local dump and promptly purchased it for all of £7. Perhaps we might see if anyone knows anything about how to get the thing working. At the moment it’s got a split pipe and one glass tube is smashed.

Mary and I will be making some Elderflower wine and I’ll make sure everyone is fed and watered. On Friday Mary and I plan to pick some of our own at Ansty PYO. Gooseberries are our target, and they will be turned into Elderflower and Gooseberry jam.

Here are some pictures of a project day preparation session that took place a couple of weekends ago. The boys got excited about how fast the solar panel managed to heat water, despite the smashed tube and leaking pipe. The three of us pondered about convection, efficiency, optimum angles etc. It was like a physics lesson at school, except relevant and exciting.

The guys experimented with steam bending some wood for the yurt in their ‘bespoke’ steamer.

I went around some of the Dorset Art Weeks studios. They were, on the most part, very inspiring. Here is a photo of Guy Mallinson’s woods. It was weird going there, seeing the similarities and differences between these woods and the woods that I often go to. I might talk about it some other time and put more photos of the place up. I might not. Wait and see, I guess.

I enjoyed Charlie Baird's paintings on display in Shaftesbury along with Peter Ursem's printmaking work. This image above was my favourite by Baird. The original was amazing to see. I liked Peter Ursem's work. The book of River Stour prints were especially interesting because there were two pages ripped out of it during a previous exhibition. Someone tried to steal these pages. They folded one of the pages up neatly so the image itself remained unspoilt. The pages were found and then put back into the book. I felt the art was in the story behind the imperfection of what had been a perfect book. This story became the art, because the story is more interesting than the art.

I have just been given the papers to sign for my new allotment. These are exciting times.

Article in Living Woods Magazine: Basket Weaving

Ages ago I attended a basket weaving workshop in my local town. I wrote about it in my blog: here
I sent an article about the workshop off to the excellent Living Woods Magazine. Now, 6 months or so later, it appears in the latest issue. You can subscribe to the magazine by going here or call 01285 850481. They cost something like £3.50 an issue or something and you can only buy them via a subscription.

Here is a scan of my article if you are not interested in subscribing:


Click on the picture and you should get a larger version to read.

In other news: I have started to write fiction for a prompt group over at Deviantart. The prompts are really great, but sometimes I wonder if I should really do this kind of stuff. I am so busy with real writing work, and then I go and distract myself with stuff I can't really send off to get published anywhere. Part of the problem with places like deviantart is that all the readers there are pretty much (young) writers. Writers read with an editing cap on, so you rarely get feedback from a real reader, from someone who wants to enjoy a story and is not looking out solely for a misplaced comma or a typo here and there. But feedback in any form is good and I don't get enough of it, which makes improving harder.
To read one such story go here

The Klandestines is happening, slowly. Keep your specs peeled.

Cooking in the woods 2

Here are some photos I took of project week at the woods (older photos in my previous post). I took a lot less photos than I remember. That's probably a good thing.

The kitchen with the workshop beyond, the new workshop space beyond that and Ollie's yurt beyond that. The new workshop space was what most people were working on during the week. I didn't photograph the finished thing, but it looked totally awesome. The basic shape of it is in the next photo. Next time I go, I'll photograph it because it looks really good:


This is the new workshop space before the roof struts were raised or the canvas put over it. Now this roof is erected and there's a yurt canvas stretched over it :D


A silly artsy photo of some plates, plus a small amount of the cool new rack Ollie made for drying them:


Mary, the new cook of the woods, making a yummy bannana cake for Edward's 11th birthday:


This is the oven that Mary's cake was cooked in. Pizza's do well in this, as does pretty much anything:


Tae, born in a yurt in the woods. He's the coolest kid ever, so relaxed and healthy and he giggles all the time. His mum puts him in a bouncy thing in the kitchen and he kicks around in that babbling away. I love the hammoc he was in a few weeks ago as well; it looked super fun:


Kellykettle on fire:

Cooking in the Woods 1

“The more civilised, the more unconscious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories, and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the unconscious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the unconscious so that the compensation can set to work. ” Jung, ‘The Syzygy: Anima and Animus’

Or alternatively, become less civilised and live a simple, uncomplicated life.

I have been in the woods for a while. Photos will come, eventually. Until then here are some old ones of the same place:

The yurt and workshop about two years ago. When I eventually upload the new images you will notice some changes:

This was where my friend Gabriel lived 2 years ago. A short dreadlocked man named Ollie with a great sense of humour now lives here. Ali lived here last year:

Here is some of the interior of the yurt when messy Gabriel lived in it:

When I go to the woods I usually cook for the workers because I enjoy it a lot more than manual lifting and woodwork. Here is the hob and a meal prepared by the previous cook, Ali:

In the background you can see the oven, This is the general kitchen, and lovely Dani:

Mr Kite lived in the far cabin for a month last January. He says this was the best month of his whole life. The closer cabin now has a turf roof:

Yes, you can have a hot shower in the woods:

When I came back after this year's spring project week I felt so intune, so relaxed and creative. I had only spent three or so nights in the woods, and already my whole being had started to shift into something more complete and relaxed. I will write about my time in the woods properly when I am less tired and I have some current photographs to show you. There is a baby in the woods now. He was born in a yurt there. He is the cutest, most reslient and healthy baby I have ever met. I'll talk about him more later. I hope you get to meet him some day because this dude is going to be the coolest kid you ever knew.

Good Music: John Cage 4'33

Good Music; Philip Glass

The joy of repetition really is in you. Beautiful and haunting.