Journal Tues 2nd September 2025

Morning all. Tomato soup did happen yesterday. It ended up being roasted with garlic oil, blended with chicken stock and creme fraiche at the end along with a handful of fresh basil. To soften the not inconsiderable blow of soup for lunch for the husband, we had half a lovely baguette left from the day before which I buttered and applied cheese to, then popped in the air fryer for 10.

We had storms on and off all day yesterday so it made for good comfort food. Dinner was a bit of a throw together of thinly sliced pork chops, lemon rice and garlic roasted aubergine. It didn’t particularly go together, but when you bought a massive aubergine and accidentally used all the tomatoes you were going to have with it for the soup, you do what you can. Was still tasty, just somewhat weird.

I picked the grapes yesterday. It was borderline terrifying. I had a hoodie on with the hood up, a can of hornet death spray in one hand and my secateurs in the other. Between every spray I had about 30 seconds to get under the leaves and cut a couple of bunches. The hubs office window is directly above and he heard me yell and swear on more than one occasion as I had to Forest Gump across the garden at some speed. They are awful and hideous and I hate them. In other news, despite the pre-spraying that I did a few days ago, had my first house spider today. It was daylight, I had shoes on, I could cope with it. It’s nighttime, in bed, seeing it out of the corner of my eye just before I go to sleep that I cannot. I hate that I hate them, but I do. One of the many fears and phobias inherited from my Mum. I also can’t swim with my head under water, even so much as I can’t go under the floating ropes that separate swimming lanes. Also the dentist, not so much inherited from Mum, but compounded by being taken on multiple occasions to the same absolute butcher as a child. I have since learned that you need a tonne more anaesthetic if you have red hair, which might explain a lot. Of course, he’d have actually had to give me anaesthetic for that theory to be tested. Enough of that, I’m due a check up and I can’t think about it.

Back to the grapes. What the hell do you do with several kilos of grapes btw. I’ve settled on grape jelly because what else is there. I spent hours picking off the good grapes from the bunches, discarding anything nibbled or unyielding. These went into my massive jam making pot thing, and they had a vigorous mashing with the potato masher. Then they had a 10 minute boil. Then they went through some scalded muslin into another big pot, which has yielded 1.3/4l of juice. I’m heading to the supermarket in a minute, so I’ll buy some jam sugar and try to figure out what ratio of sugar to add from the one recipe blog that doesn’t have 1000 pop up ads, and a life story about their grandma. I shall report back. It smells nice though, so that’s a good sign.

*evening update. I followed the instructions on the jam sugar in the end. It said for every kg of juice add a kg of the sugar. I had 1.3/4l and I thought a litre of water weighed a kg, so we went with that, how different could grape juice actually be. I lobbed it into my cauldron if you will, and boiled it to within an inch of its life for 5 minutes, skimmed off the manky top scum and did the wrinkle test on a cold saucer. Never mind wrinkle, this stuff could bounce. I think we’re there. 4 large jars made, and 3 little ramekins are in the fridge. I’ll add it to the cupboard with all the other jam we don’t eat. If we do ever have a nuclear incident and need to raid the stores, it’ll be the tooth decay that gets us before the radiation sickness.

TTFN,

V x

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