Dried apricot jam and elderberry cordial

It's been hot and humid here this past week. Most days, Hanno and I both took advantage of the cooler temperatures before 8am and did a few bits and pieces in the garden and front verandah.  Hanno is continuing with general tidying up as well as lawn mowing on the ride-on, and I've been cleaning and organising the bush house, planting up the first of the polystyrene boxes and sowing seeds. It's hot work but it needs to be done so we work until we get hot and then go inside, put the air-conditioner on and have a cold drink.  And there we stay, working on inside jobs, until about 4ish when the temperature starts to slowly descend.

 Hanno making up a cold elderberry cordial. 

You might be able to see the grasshopper Gracie is looking at. She was locked in on it and when it hopped away, she lost it!

We have plenty to do inside and I'm ever grateful we can work in a cool house.  We set the aircon to 26 with the fan on two bars.  That cools the area we're working in, without using too much electricity. Our bills during the year average out to something we can afford and our power bills tell us that we two people with frequent visitors, use the same power as one person.  And we don't feel deprived, we both use whatever appliances we need to use but we always turn off lights and equipment when we're not using them. It's easy for us because we're in the habit of living like this and when we only have to pay $70 - $100 or so each bill when people we know are paying multi-hundreds, it confirms that we should keep doing what we're doing. Just between you and me, it's a very easy habit to develop.

I always strain the berries using cheesecloth.  It's the only thing that removes all the tiny bits of twig that are sometimes left in the mix.

My inside work over the past week has been focused on the blogging and writing courses I'm starting soon as well as processing fruit for drinks and jam. We harvested quite a few elderberries before the trees were pruned and, along with a bag of elderberries I'd frozen a few months ago, I made cordial for Kerry's family and us.  And I have two litres of the processed juice in the freezer for later in the year.  I'll probably make that into cold and flu tonic and another batch of cordial.

The other preserving task was making dried apricot jam. It's too hot here for local apricot and when we get fresh apricots here in summer, they're usually quite expensive, hence the dried apricots.  I used my one available Ball jar and the rest were recycled.  I use recycled jars almost every day. A good collection of jars of every size is one of the best assets a home can have.

Soak the apricots overnight and make the jam the following day.

I used the recipe from the fabulous Food in Jars site and I'm happy to say the taste of this jam is complex and intensely apricot. I didn't use the vanilla in my batch because I wanted just the taste of the fruit, and that's what it delivered.  We now have another five jars of jam in the stockpile cupboard and added to the strawberry jam Hanno made back in spring, we won't be making or buying jam until the end of the year.

Today's loaf just out of the oven.

Today I've got five minute bread in the oven that I started last night, it should be ready soon. The only other food prep I'll do today is to make our lunch of leftover roast chicken and potato salad and a green salad.  It's an easy food day.  My next major inside job is to clean up the room I'm in now. It's my "work room" which is where I have my computer, sewing machine, fabric and wool stash.  It shouldn't take long to do. It just needs a good vacuum and tidy up which I'll probably get to tomorrow.

So that's me, what are you doing?