The Good Life

  This year we had a bumper crop of apples and we made about 30 bottles of apple juice. A neighbour gave us an ancient grape press which we call “the scratter”. It does a good job of mashing the apples. It is quite huge and heavy to turn the wheel – the Long Suffering One’s job – so the apples need to be cut up a bit first – my job. It’s fine to leave the core and pips but I discard the brown and wormy bits, although around here they leave the whole lot in! The squashed apples are caught in a bucket beneath the scratter and are then put through a fruit press which extracts the juice. This was a gift from another neighbour who couldn’t be bothered with the amount of effort involved. Finally we strain the juice through muslin, siphon it into bottles and pasteurise it by heating the bottles to 77 degrees for 30 minutes. It takes us all afternoon to make 5 bottles but it tastes wonderful and although hard work, it’s strangely satisfying to do.

We have just spent a week visiting our family in England. It has been a daily whirl of travelling, playing with grandchildren, watching my grandson play football, long walks, huge family meals, pub meals and late nights and non-stop catching up. I have scarcely noticed my Parkinsons. It has made me realise even more the importance of keeping active. Usually I do a lot of physical exercise like bike riding, swimming and gym but otherwise I lead a very tranquil life – apart from apple juice making, that is! It’s good to do a different type of activity for a change. Now I am home again I have started to think about my next trips … maybe somewhere hot for Christmas … maybe even further afield. I have been inspired by the blog http://meandparkinsons.com which is always so positive and talks about all the things you actually can do with this wretched disease like dancing with the national ballet, singing in a choir and travelling to Australia.

Bottles of sunshine

Just the chestnuts and ceps to do and I will have bottled up summer 2014. I don’t know why but I get a tremendous feeling of well being when I look at my preserves store.

Actually everyone around here bottles their summer fruit and vegetable glut to consume throughout the year. I inherited my preserving jars when my 92 year old neighbour died about 5 years ago. She was the lady from whom we bought our house. Like generations of her family she had been born in the house although by the time we bought it from her she had long moved out into a smaller house in the same village. Our preserves are stored in the souillard – a sort of back kitchen which had no ceiling when we moved in because they used to hang the pig from a hook on the roof beam at one time. Now I feel as though my glass jars and bottles have come home.

Her niece offered us the preserving jars and we collected them in several trips with a wheel barrow. We were amazed to discover that many were full and some had labels dating back to 1972. The long-suffering one was quickly tasked with sitting outside to open the bottles and empty the contents into a bucket so that I could put the jars into the dishwasher. As he sat in the sunshine completing my bidding another neighbour, another old lady, enquired what he was going to do with the contents. He told her he had the compost heap in mind and she was horrified. He explained the contents of some were 40 years old and dangerous to eat but she picked up the bucket and said that was a waste and she would give it to the chickens. So that day the chickens dined on a mélange of figs in brandy, beans, carrots and mushrooms and who knows what else with seemingly no ill effect either to them or those who consumed their eggs.

Preparing the fruit and vegetables is actually very hard work particularly tasks like skinning tomatoes and stoning fruit like plums, and backs and thumbs ache in complaint, but all this is forgotten in the winter when we open a jar and remember the summer days. I can recommend it as a good dopamine substitute.

With apologies to http://thejellychronicles.net for any previous slight on domestic goddesses.