Making hampers for Christmas

From the first year that I started making jams and chutneys I made hampers for friends and family for Christmas. Back then my preserves were bottled in a variety of reused jars and the labels were handwritten but they were still warmly received. This year I have made up 5 hampers for various purposes and I have to admit I think they look great!

I was leafing through a Freecycled copy of Olive magazine from December 2007 the other day and there was a small section on food gifts not to buy for Christmas. This included a wicker hamper of food. What?! But on further reading I understood what they meant. They said that by the time you take the basket etc. into account the food inside it is worth very little. So, all the more reason for making your own hamper. It's probably a bit late to sort out a hamper now if you haven't already been planning one but here is some of my advice should you like to try it next year.

Start first with the contents of the hamper. If this is going to be homemade jams and chutneys then you'll probably be busy making these in the summer and the autumn. If you are stuck for recipes then try getting yourself a copy of my preserves book. You may want to start saving jars from the beginning of the year so that you have plenty to hand. Alternatively, you can buy jars from ironmongers, John Lewis, supermarkets (seasonal), www.lakeland.co.uk or from small holders suppliers such as Ascott or bee keepers supplies such as Thornes. Once you have bottled your preserves, you will need to label them. You can buy blank labels with decorative borders from the same suppliers as the bottles. For a more professional look, I design and print bespoke labels for jams, chutneys or honey.

The next thing you need to source are the baskets for putting the preserves into. A useful alternative are jute gift bags which you can buy online from companies such as the natural bag company or islepac.co.uk. These are handy because you just need to pop the jars inside and the job is done.

You can source baskets from many different places. I often buy mine from ebay and my last lot my mum bought for me whilst she was in a French hypermarket. The only thing I would say is think about buying baskets in the summer and autumn because the closer you get to Christmas the higher the demand for them so the more expensive and harder to get they are. If you are thinking of posting your hamper then consider forgoing the basket altogether as it increases the weight of the parcel quite considerably without really adding value to the gift.

For the presentation of the hamper you will also need some sort of packing material which can be straw (bedding for small pets from pet supply shops/garden centres), or shredded paper. I have bought shredded paper from ebay before and you can get it from craft supply shops too. This year I have been using gold shred from Lakeland. You will also need to buy some cellophane - extra wide is useful if your hampers are large. This I buy from ebay or Hobbycraft.

To put it all together, put some shred into the bottom and sides of the basket. Place the food items inside, tilting them so that the labels can be read and so that they look attractive. Fill the basket so that it looks full but not crammed, adding more shred around the items as necessary to hold them in place. Next wrap the whole thing in cellophane. Wrap the cellophane completely around the basket, ensuring that the ends meet at the back of the basket rather than underneath it. Tape it in place then make cuts in the cellophane on either side of the handles. Push the flap of cellophane through the handle and gather the cellophane together as if wrapping a present and stick it in place.

Hampers can look so attractive at this point that you may not wish to wrap it further in wrapping paper. If you do decide to wrap it so that the contents are hidden then consider wrapping it in a new t-towel. This can look fantastic as well as adding the t-towel as an additional gift. Use a few pins to keep the ends tucked in neatly then hold in place with ribbon.

Job done - a fantastic looking gift that will be well received and for which you can feel proud!

A week to go - serious preparation for Christmas!

When was the last time you cleaned your fridge? I don't know for sure how long ago I cleaned mine... thorough, deep cleaned that is. It's been a few months I think. Stupid really that we allow ourselves to store food inside a "cupboard" that we clean so infrequently. I wouldn't dream of putting the plates down ready to dish up dinner on a messy work surface yet I put food onto a fridge shelf that I haven't wiped clean for a few days. With the last Christmas food shop planned for a few days time, I decided today would be a good day to tackle the fridge - whilst it was still relatively empty and so that I would have lots of space for my Christmas goodies.

My whole houses needs a good tidy actually. With the hectic rush of the last couple of weeks things have really got cluttered. There are half-finished hampers on the kitchen side, part-done stockings on the living room carpet, toys that need to be put back in their boxes, magazines that need recycling, ironing that needs doing... Mother-in-law is coming in a few days and Santa a couple of days after that so we really need to tidy up and clear some space. But I hate tidying.

It seems to me that there are two main ways to tidy up. There is the proper, sorting out as you go and putting things in their proper place type tidying. And then there is the shove everything in a cupboard and make things look neat on the outside type of tidying. Both have their place but I much prefer the proper type of tidying as it is the only solution in the long term. In our house, I usually start with the proper tidying but then after a few days when I am pooped and fed-up I turn a blind eye to Steve finishing off the last of the tidying with the shoving it in a cupboard method.

Proper tidying up is deathly time consuming and usually results in an intermediate state that is messier than when you started. I also find that doing it solidly for days at a time makes me thoroughly miserable and grumpy. I have decided this time to tidy up in small bursts, interspersed with nice activities that I want to do. So this morning I started by making a batch of mince pies but whilst the pastry was chilling for half and hour I cleaned the oven. Then at lunch time I lazily flicked through food magazines, cutting out recipes I wanted to keep so that I could stick the remaining pages in the recycling. Then I cleared Friday's Christmas shopping off the work surface by wrapping it and putting the parcels into the incomplete stockings. And then I tackled the fridge.

The best way to go about this is to remove everything from the top shelf then remove the shelf from the fridge and clean it in soapy water. Then clean the sides of the fridge that surround that shelf, ideally with an antibacterial spray. I usually wipe the shelf and the fridge sides dry with kitchen towel too before putting the shelf back. Then, put the food back onto the shelf, throwing away anything that is out of date or otherwise spoiled. Personally I hate food waste but sometimes you just have to admit defeat and throw it away! Then continue down the fridge, a shelf at a time, until every shelf is clean, the whole inside of the fridge is cleaned and all the old food is in the bin. Next tackle the door, removing anything that can be detached to clean. Don't forget to wipe clean the inside of the door, the edges of the door and the bits in between the folds of the rubber seal. Finally, clean the outside of the fridge - this is a lot easier to do and maintain if you don't have lots of fridge magnets stuck all over it!

Now that your fridge is nice and clean and all your old food has gone you are far less likely to give yourself or your guests food poisoning over the Christmas period. However, it is important that when you stack your food with Christmas food you do so in a way that minimises the risk of contamination. Try to avoid pushing food to the back of the fridge as fridges work best when air can flow down the back - you know you have done something wrong if food starts to freeze. Always store food in sealed containers or wrapped in clingfilm, foil or bags. Keep cooked food away from raw food and place raw foods towards the bottom of the fridge so that if they drip they will not drip onto cooked foods. Don't forget to wipe the shelf space clean after removing raw food from the fridge. Never place warm food in the fridge as it will cause the fridge to heat up and cause condensation which can drip onto foods, causing contamination. You may like to check that your fridge is at the correct temperate too which is ideally 4 °C but certainly not over that.

With that done, stand back and admire your gleaming fridge! Then go and make a shopping list of all the things you thought about whilst you were doing it. It is rare thing to precisely know the entire contents of your fridge so make the most of it!

Tomorrow the cleaning and tidying will continue... although I expect I shall spare some time to go and play in the snow with my girls and maybe finishing putting those hampers together.

Priceless inheritance

Last week whilst making fudge, I found myself thinking about homemade honeycomb. Fudge... honeycomb... they somehow seem to go together. So I thought, maybe I should find a recipe and give it a go. Actually, I have at least one memory of making honeycomb before; with my grandma and she was definitely the one in charge on that occasion as I think I was probably about 12 at the time. But having dredged up that memory it struck me that rather than googling for a recipe I decided to pull my grandma's recipe book out of the cupboard and see if I could find that very same recipe.

When my grandma had died 17 years ago I had inherited her recipe books. Back then I liked cooking just enough to appreciate these books and to take them into my care. I'm glad I did - they seem to have become more valuable to me with time as I have grown to appreciate them even more. Mostly, the recipe books are ancient published books, including 2 volumes of Delia recipe books from the early 1970s when "The Delia Effect" was slightly less impressive than it is these days. But amongst them is my grandma's handwritten recipe book. This she started as a school exercise book back in her cooking classes, aged about 14. The handwriting was neat and the layout followed strict instructions. The first page has been marked by a now long-dead teacher in red pencil and dated 15/10/1936.

Then, about half way through the book, the now adult version of my grandma continues adding recipes to her old school book but now in her loose, untidy handwriting with little attention to the layout. These are her own recipes for her own use, not to be approved and marked by a teacher. I just love to see her handwriting and the occasional comments such as "lovely" next to a recipe cutting from a magazine pasted onto a page.

And there on page 68 I find the recipe for honeycomb - that very one from my memory. As is so often the case, the recipe is somewhat on the vague side but clear enough for me so I decide to give it a go. It all seems very straight forward but my friends warn me that making honeycomb can be tricky and can result in failures. Nonetheless, with my newfound fudge expertise, I get on with it, following my grandma's written instructions (although wishing she were there to guide me through it as I go).

But then disaster... it turned brown and I took it off the heat but whilst I was fiddling around measuring bicarbonate of soda the caramel continued to cook and as I stirred in the bicarb I could see that it had burnt. Yuk! On cooling it tasted like burnt coffee beans! Ho hum... we learn from our mistakes so I tried again, this time removing it from the heat at an earlier stage, adding the bicarb in a rush and getting it out of the pan as quickly as I could. Aha! Second time lucky!

When it was cooled, we broke it into bits, melted some chocolate and dipped each piece into it. Later, when the chocolate had set we wrapped a few pieces individually in cellophane, doing the same with the pieces of fudge we had made. Then my daughters filled old coffee jars with our homemade sweets and we designs some labels on the computer. Job done, 4 beautiful Christmas gifts for 4 very lucky teachers.

I have to admit that I'm pleased with the result. The jars of sweets look fantastic and the sweets inside taste great too. I am also pleased that I managed to make honeycomb and that I had done so from my grandma's book. My eldest spotted the date in the recipe books and said "Wow, you should take that to the Antiques Roadshow!" I smile, looking at the tatty, heavily stained book and wonder what value an antiques expert would place on it. Well, to me, it is priceless!

Homegrown sweets

I'm busy next weekend at a couple of craft fayres so I decided this weekend I needed to make my annual batches of fudge, in preparation for providing my girls' teachers with Christmas presents before the end of term. Last year I finally cracked the technique and conquered fudge-making so this year I dug out the same 3 recipes I had before. As it happens, on the same page of my recipe clippings scrapbook there was a recipe for blackcurrant pastilles that I'd intended to make last year. I stared at it again and wondered why I hadn't done it last year... probably something to do with it requiring liquid pectin. I don't have any in my cupboard this year either... do you?

What I did have in my cupboard (maybe you don't) was a pack of gelatine and a pack of vege-gel. So I dug out my recipe for Turkish Delight and wondered whether I could adapt that recipe to make blackcurrant jellies instead. So I went to my freezer and pulled out a bag that happened to contain 310g of frozen blackcurrants. These I emptied into a pan with a little bit of water. I cooked these for about 10 minutes until they were breaking up then forced them through a sieve to squeeze out their juice.

Next I scattered a sachet of gelatine over a couple of tablespoons of water and set it aside whilst heated 135ml of water with 225g granulated sugar. Once the sugar was dissolved I added the gelatine and stirred until that was melted. Then I brought the mixture to the boil and stirred it on a simmer for about 15 minutes until it was thick. When I removed it from the heat I realised that I couldn't substitute the usual tablespoon of rose water (for Turkish Delight) with the juice from the blackcurrants without messing up the liquid content and probably stopping the whole thing from setting properly. So instead, I sprinkled a sachet of vege-gel over some of the blackcurrant juice before adding that and the rest of the blackcurrant juice to the gelatine mix. I brought the whole thing back to the boil briefly before pouring it into a plastic food box to cool. It didn't immediately set - like vege-gel does - so I was a bit nervous about the whole thing.

When it was cool enough, I put it into the fridge and left it alone overnight. I was pleased to see the next day that it had set so I cut it into little cubes and rolled each one in granulated sugar to finish the sweets off. I fed one to each of my children and to Steve and they all were impressed by the strong blackcurrant flavour and I'm pleased to say that I had got the sweetness right too. What I wasn't sure about was what would happen if I left them out of the fridge - would they stay set or melt back into a pool of liquid. Not feeling too confident, I put them into a container in the fridge and left one out to see what would happen.

By tea time the lone jelly was still a jelly! I shall now leave it there and see if anything else horrible happens to it at room temperature. In the meantime, I think I may just purchase some liquid pectin - if it hasn't been removed from the supermarket shelves to make way for Christmas cake and mincemeat! And I think I may experiment with raspberry and orange flavours.

Walking with the seasons

As you know I'm always banging on about the joys of eating with the seasons. It struck me this week that is as equally important to get outside and notice the seasons too. Every day I cycle the school run. Being in Milton Keynes we're not exactly in a rural setting but there is plenty of manciple planting, rows of trees in every street and a park on the way - just enough to get a sense of the changing seasons. Back at the beginning of the school year we were cycling without coats in warm sunshine. Then we cycled in thin coats through falling leaves, over conkers and crab apples. Last week we cycled through frosty mornings with bright sunshine breaking through mist in thick coats, hats and gloves. Today I abandoned the bikes and we walked through snow in ski-suits and fluffy boots.

I like the way that my girls have learnt to appreciate what they see each morning. The bright yellows and reds of the autumn leaves, the almost spiritual nature of sunshine through mist. They comment on it with things such as "Mummy, did you notice how beautiful that looked this morning?" I haven't had to teach them to appreciate it, merely provide them with an opportunity to.

I once worked with a man who had recently moved from Nigeria. He was truly amazed by the beauty of the autumn changes and slightly unnerved by shortening of the days. When snow finally fell he wouldn't let his children outside in case they were hurt by the coldness of it. He did, of course, eventually relent under their pressure and got to experience the fun. He made me think again about the beauty and wonder of the changing seasons and not to take them for granted. Last night as I picked my handbag up I accidentally tipped it upsidedown and everything fell out, including an odd combination of "essentials" such as lip balm and factor 50 sunblock. Isn't it amazing that 3 months ago I was stood in the school field, dabbing sunblock onto my children as they ran around for sports day and today I am applying lip balm to protect their lips from freezing temperatures. The best thing is, by and large, we just accept it and cope with it, getting out the appropriate clothes and footwear and getting on with the day.

The only disappointing thing is that some people don't fully embrace it, instead retreating to their cars for the school run for every little excuse. It's raining, it's windy, it's frosty, it's snowing... yes, horray! It is, don't retreat into your expensive metal motorised umbrellas, stick on the appropriate coat and footwear and go out and see how beautiful it is!

How to sell preserves to the public

I didn't think I'd made that many jams and chutneys this year. That was, until I came to label them all! I spent the best part of last Saturday printing labels and sticking them onto my jars and then I had to do a few of the ones I'd missed on Tuesday evening.

It's funny really that the bulk of my business these days is printing personalised stickers for people because the only reason that happened is because I figured out how to print labels for my jars. Having got over the complexities of printing on circular labels for the lids, I found that there was a market for this sort of thing from people who didn't have the time, inclination or knowledge to figure out how to do it themselves. And from jam labels thing expanded to a all sorts of circular stickers for all sorts of purposes.

When I first started making labels for my jams and chutneys they were very basic and contained little more than "Hazel's Homegrown" and the name of the preserve in the jar (often hand written). This was fine for making sure I knew what I had in my food cupboard or for giving them away as Christmas presents to my family. But when it comes to selling to the public, not only does the attractiveness and professional look of a label help to sell the preserve, but it has to contain, by law, certain information. This is the case whether you are selling at a church coffee morning or a farmers market. Even so, the required information is not too arduous to sort out: the name of the preserve and the weight. It is also advisable to include a list of ingredients in descending order, allergens and a best before date. And that's it - as long as you are standing there next to your preserves when they are being sold, ready and willing to answer any questions the customer may have. This is called direct selling. If you pass on your stuff to a third party to sell then this is called indirect selling and the labeling information becomes a bit more complicated. If this is something that you need to know I suggest you see my trading standard information page and contact your local trading standard.

The other thing people seem not to realise is that if you are selling to the public - yes, even at that church coffee morning - then you need to be registered with environmental health. This isn't as terrifying or tricky as you might imagine and well worth sorting out if you want to go beyond giving your preserves away to friends and family. Have a look at my environmental health page for more information.

On Wednesday this week I went along to a Pre-Christmas shopping evening at my daughter's school to sell my preserves and recipe books. Earlier that morning I had finished labeling the last of my jars, then loaded them into 3 sturdy, stackable lidded plastic boxes. I couldn't possibly shift all of my stock in one go so I had to select 3 or 4 jars of each flavour. Along with these boxes I have a 4th box that I think of as my "shop box". This contains vinyl table clothes to cover the table when I get there, business cards for the enquiring public, paper carrier bags (pre-labelled with my shop details), miniature blackboard price tags, and a pen (I always need a pen!). Then there is a basket full of jute gift bags, my fantastic ex-Usborne Book display stand and finally my folding trundle trolley for transporting the stuff from my car to the table when I arrive at the venue. The very last thing to be loaded into my car is always my money box which I always keep stocked with a £25 float because that is one less thing to have to organise on the day.

I turned up half an hour before the event was supposed to start, unloaded my car, moved the car from the unloading position to a parking space, spread the table clothes onto the table and unpacked the preserves onto the table. Then I erected the book stand to display my recipe books and stickers. Finally, I made sure my price labels were somewhere nice and visible.

And then the customers arrive. Some of them glance briefly at my stall and move onto the next. Some say something like, "Oh, we have jam at home," and keep on walking. Others come up all excited and get even more excited when the see the lovely selection of jams on offer. "Oh," the say, "it's so hard to choose!". Then there are others who stop and chat and ask questions such as, "do you make all these yourself?" "Yes," I reply, "from the fruit and vegetables I grow." They look impressed. And so they should...

Let's review...

Firstly, I grow the fruit and vegetables, then I hand make them into jams and chutneys with all natural ingredients using skills that not everyone has. Then I make and print all my own labels and stick them on by hand. I have been to the bother of being checked by environmental health and trading standards. And I have got off my bum for the event, packed boxes, heaved them into the car, moved them from the car and sorted them out into an attractive display. And now all that is there for the customer to buy for a price that doesn't really do it justice.

So thank you to all those people who have stopped long enough to appreciate even a little of the work that has gone into it, or even just realised when they eat it that it tastes better than the stuff you buy from the supermarket. And pah! to anyone who sticks their nose in the air and whips pass my stall saying, "Oh we have jams at home." Well, so you might, but you won't have Hazel's Homegrown jam at home and that's something you're missing out on!

Handheld food

This weekend was one for celebrating with fireworks and bonfires what with Guy Faulkes night and Diwali. And these celebrations often require us to stand around outside in cold weather, celebrating with food that is both warming and simple to eat in the hand. This is not always easy to achieve.

We started our celebrations on Friday night when my parents came over with a couple of boxes of fireworks. This has become a bit of an annual tradition for us, with all of us, bar Steve, sitting in the relative comfort and safety of our conservatory whilst Steve sets off the fireworks close to the windows. As such, we don't get as cold as we otherwise might and the need for handheld convenience food is less. Nonetheless, there does seem to be the need for a certain sort of food on fireworks night. Personally I would have opted for some sort of tasty sausage in a finger roll with ketchup, mustard and onions but the girls had already had a fireworks night special hot lunch at school that day which consisted of a sausage in a bun with potato wedges.

Instead, I went for the 2nd best option of a burger in a bun, using quarter pounder Aberdeen Angus Waitrose beefburgers. These I grilled then when they were ready, I toasted the sesame seed buns and assembled the base with the burger, smeared on some Dijon mustard, added a spodge of ketchup and a slice of cheese and put them back under the grill for a minute to melt the cheese before adding the top half of the bun. In the meantime, I made some chips and fried some onions and mushrooms together and served the whole lot together with a dollop of homemade red coleslaw.

Red coleslaw

1/4 red cabbage

1 raw beetroot

A small red onion

Salt & pepper

3 tablespoons mayonnaise

Finely chop the red cabbage. Grate in the beetroot then finely chop the onion and add that too. Season to taste then dollop in the mayonnaise and stir until well combined. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

The meal was well received and for afters I handed out homemade apple puffs. These I made as a modification on my Eccles cake recipe - just the same technique but with a cooked apple & cinnamon filling. The great thing about these is you get a lovely consistent mouthful of apple and pastry with every bite... and you can eat them in your hand with no need for custard or cream.

Apple puffs

2 apples

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 block of ready-made puff pastry

Egg

Demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 220°C, gas 8 and grease a baking tray. Peel and core the apples and cut into pieces. Place the apples and cinnamon in a pan with just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan then cook gently for 10-20 minutes until the apples are fluffy. Set aside to cool. On a floured surface roll out the pastry. Use a large biscuit cutter (about 10cm in diameter) to cut out circles in the pastry. Place a heaped teaspoon of apple filling into the centre of each pastry circle then bundle to pastry up over the filling. Turn the pastry bundle over and flatten with a oval to make a thick biscuit of pastry with the fruity filling just showing through. Slash the biscuit 3 times with a sharp knife then brush with beaten egg and scatter with Demerara sugar. Gather up the pastry trimmings and repeat until all the pastry is used up. Place the pastries on the baking tray and cook for about 20 minutes until golden brown. Alternatively, place the pastries on a tray and freeze raw. Can be cooked from frozen for about 25 minutes.

After dinner Steve braved the rain and went into the garden to light fireworks whilst the rest of us watched from indoors. Soon, however, it became clear that we would have to abandon the event as the fireworks were proving difficult to light and Steve was feeling cold and wet. So, despite having two boxes of fireworks left, my parents went home and we got the girls to bed.

I do feel that with a burger bun there is the need for only a few chips to go with it because the whole thing is quite filling. Otherwise I think I might have been tempted to serve it with jacket potatoes - another fireworks night classic. Recently I discovered that Charlotte potatoes make the best jacket potatoes ever. This was a surprise as I had always thought of Charlottes as waxy potatoes, perfect for boiling and using in salads. But, inevitably when you grow your own potatoes you never quite manage to dig them all up at the right time and we ended up growing some whopping Charlottes. They looked like baking potatoes so... I baked them! And you know what, they produced the most amazing crispy skin I have ever experienced on a jacket potato. So delicious were they that my fussy eldest daughter even ate the skin and whats more declared it her new favourite way to cook potatoes and nagged and nagged her father to go out and dig some more up. This he did so we had jacket potatoes for our second fireworks night on Saturday.

Whatever variety of potato you manage to get hold of the best way to bake one is to preheat the oven to 200°C. Wash and dry the potatoes then drizzle over some sunflower oil and add a sprinkle of salt then rub it in with your hands. Microwave the potatoes for about 5 minutes then place them in the oven for at least an hour. Remove them from the oven then slice open and serve with your favourite topping.

Nicely full of hot potato it was time to light the remaining fireworks. What a contrast in the weather - a cold, clear and calm night. Steve had taken the precaution of finding the weed wand in the shed - a long handled device that shoots flames out the bottom. This proved a most excellent firework lighting tool. Within minutes the fireworks were over so we wriggled into our thick coats and went outside to light 5 paper Chinese sky lanterns. As each one went up we made a wish and watched them until they were out of sight. Beautiful. Let's hope our wishes come true!