I was very worried about Tigger while I was away. She needs people. She needs to hear voices and music and TV, and she follows the sounds around. I bought her a quacking duck from Hawkins Bazaar and treated her to her new toy after I picked her up this morning.She was not amused at all.
She howled horribly all the way home.She showed no fondness for her clockwork duckling, no little frisson of excitement at all. I might as well have thrown a lump of old bread at her.
She is keeping very close to me and is watchful of my moves as you can see. She has tried my lap, my laptop, my bed, my sofa seat and of course the table.
Luckily, I have a large table and there is room for her at the other end and on the chairs under the table. I gave up on the two velvet cushions in the snug, which had built up a thick veneer of cat fur and I could not get it off. I threw them away and bought two new ones!!!
I picked up a bag of plums from my sister's tree yesterday. I have made some into bases for plum-crumbles but the pot of stuff is still a bit runny. I know that I have three options.
* Cook it more so that the liquid is reduced, this could turn it into jam.
* Add cornflour, or preferably, arrowroot which is translucent.
* Turn it into jam, sponge fillings etc.
I will not throw it away. I will make it into something, somehow. Any advice would be great because there is another bag of plums and they are still firm but ripening up. They will probably become Plum Butter and the recipe will follow. You don't need a recipe for the above. It is just pitted plums, fried in butter and then add vanilla essence, star anise, cinnamon sticks, red wine, syrup and sugar. My result is still very runny so I will do some dodgy stuff tomorrow. I think I will try arrowroot. I think it thickens but stays translucent, whereas cornflour makes it all go cloudy.
Any other advice on thickening up the plum stuff so that the sponge/crumble/cobbler topping won't sink into it!!!
Cheers Gillian
3 comments:
Poor Tigger missing his mum so much. He looks like he has grown a bit too since his last photo! Very cute boy that he is. Hope all goes well with the plums, and yes I still miss your lemon butter.
Poor Tigger, and poor you, even tho cats can be so arrogant/independent they can make one feel guilty for not being constantly at their beck and call. We leave our boy cat at home, he makes a real fuss of who ever comes in to save him from isolation but gives us the cold shoulder when we get back,to punish us, for a couple of days. Of course a reliable neighbour and a cat flap is needed to do this.
I remember that car-ride to the vet/next house/holiday accomodation yowl so well. Animals know all about making their humans feel guilty!
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