Happy Campers

My two wonderful daughters successfully (despite alot of heartache beforehand) carried out a 30 mile hike over 3 days with their school this week. The trouble with this was that this then obviously led to the camping bug for no.1 daughter! I said they could have a treat as my way of saying well done, Ellen chose to hit the shops and bought herself a dress, Molly on the other hand decided she wanted the whole family to camp out in the garden!!! ( why did I offer such an open ended treat- lesson learnt!)

Toby having also just returned from a camping trip with his dad and the beavers thought this was a fantastic idea, a chance to reconstruct the full English breakfast that was the highlight of his trip as well as the abseiling of course! We actually don't own a tent but this was no problem because their Uncle had loaned them a 4 man tent which according to him would easily fit 6 in. Why do little things like my brother being prone to exaggeration not dawn on me until the deed is done. The tent was in fact a 3 man and would have been hard pushed to fit much more than that in, but a promise is a promise so we proceed to squeeze into the tent. The girls thought the tent looked very cosy I thought a night light would have been good but the battery on Molly's sun jar was not charged, how lovely it might have looked if we had the new pink sun jar!! I haven't let on to the girls yet that we now have pink ones!! They both have the Bill Brown cotton sleeping bags in pink stripe which was met with a look of disbelief from the boys at their school whilst camping, even their teacher (whom is male!) was unsure they would be warm enough, but we proved them wrong, maybe next year girls we will add the sun jar and see what the boys think about that!!

I myself have definitely got my eye on the new Bill Brown sleeping bags that have just come in , they look like vintage eiderdowns but zip up into sleeping bags very, very stylish.

We had a yummy BBQ for dinner and then settled down to a board game in our new home. The problem arose when it came to bed time, what do we do with Shadow the dog?, If we left him out he would bark at anything that went past all night and he certainly was not going to fit in with us, so I attempted to put him in the house. After a loud barking session I conceded to go inside to settle him, after a few minutes I attempted to fool shadow into thinking I was going to bed and sneaked out to regain my place in the tent!! Oh dear everyone was fast asleep, spread eagle across the tent with not the tiniest of space for me to attempt to lie in, so there was nothing for it , I went back inside and had a lovely nights sleep in my bed!!!

As we sat outside our tent in the morning eating our full English breakfast cooked by Molly and Andy on the BBQ, it occurred to me we were not the only ones doing this because Glastonbury was about to start in full swing. Apparently we had a customer buy a shewee for that very event! Another vital piece of festival kit has to be the Eco friendly disposable picnic sets, they are fully biodegradable but can be washed up a few times before the need to dispose of them, the cup is even large enough to hold half a lager or a large coffee depending on how you are feeling at the time.

On Sunday we were invited to a village BBQ, in which we were asked to bring a pudding, so I whizzed over to the next village to pick up some strawberries and cream to make a pavlova, whilst in the shop we bumped into 6 other people from the village all of whom had popped in to pick up ingredients for their pudding, it was quite comical. Whilst there the strawberries were on offer so I decided now was as good a time as any to make some jam. Consequently I chose the hottest day of the year so far to commence my jam making. A friend had made some beautiful strawberry and rose petal jam last year and I really wanted to give it a try this year. The recipe comes from a Country Living magazine from a couple of years ago.

Strawberry and Rose petal Jam

Ingredients

6 unsprayed scented red or pink roses

1.25kg strawberries

800g jam sugar

juice of 1 lemon

2tbsp rose water

Place a saucer in the freezer. Wash and dry jam jars and place on a baking tray in a low oven to sterilise.

Remove the petals from the roses and cut off the bitter white base( I did this with scissors quite easily) rinse in cold water.

Hull and halve the strawberries and place in a preserving pan with the sugar to dissolve slowly, stirring frequently so the sugar does not burn.

Once dissolved, increase heat and bring the jam to the boil. Remove any froth that forms with a large spoon. Boil quite fast over medium heat for about 20 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Place a tsp of jam onto your chilled saucer and leave for 30 seconds. If it wrinkles when pushed with your finger, the jam is ready.If not,continue to cook ad test every 3-4 minutes.

Once jam has reached setting point add the lemon juice,rose water and petals and cook for a further 2-3 minutes.

Pour the jam into jars that have been sterilised and then set them aside to cool before labelling

I had a lovely morning making this recipe, I had saved some jars already but otherwise I could have used the storage jars that we sell at the shop, the lids come in two colours duck egg blue or cream . I have a large one at the moment that I keep my vanilla sugar in. I put the empty vanilla pod that I had used at the weekend to make a vanilla creme for my pavlova into the jar with some caster sugar and already I only have to lift off the lid and the aroma of vanilla is amazing.

As you can see from this photo I will now have plenty of jam to have with my toast and mug of tea drunk from my new ladybird party mug, which of course is pink and makes me smile every time I drink from it!!