The Haps.

Ok, so these are The Haps.

We've decided to give up on the house idea and live on a boat instead.

Sort of ;)

Oh seasoned readers of the blog, you know where I'm going with this. We like Boat House, and since Sven came up with The Plan, we are probably going to make moves towards making it ours. The Plan is an intriguing one as it involves planning to expand into another house in the near future. The Dinghy is not that house though. It just doesn't seem right, for some reason. We're all agreed on this, and we're also all agreed on our love for Boat House.

The logic is that we will get along with one communal room (and oodles of lovely external communal space) until a further house can be bought, and filled with more of our co-opulent brethren, plus one person who will have been residing at Boat House in the meantime.

I realise this sounds bonkers. We've been spending so long looking for somewhere that would fit, and whinging about how nothing does, and now we've gone and fallen in love with something which is unequivocally too small.

Cope.

This house is within budget, allowing lots of scope for eco-renovating it, fits almost all of our far-ranging criteria, and has a sexay garden which is much bigger than we could ever have dreamed of. How could we not?

We're hoping to have another viewing before next weekend (still some unanswered questions and unphotographed corners) and then move on to the whole offer/valuation/survey rigmarole.

Fun times ahoy!

- Hannah

Sven’s slightly but not entirely made up recipe for Apple Ketchup that Mattie and Finn helped with

(as yet untested because we only made in 2 hours ago)

Makes 10 mostly big jars of various shapes and sizes.
Takes some time

1.      Volunteer to do roofing at Crabapple a few times, making sure that you take enough cloth bags to bring back 3.5kg of miscellaneous apples. Get one co-op member to meet you at the station to help carry them up the hill. Mattie reckons that the mutual aid adds some sweetness to the ketchup.

This is too many, 'k?

2.      Chop the apples up into reasonably small chunks, removing the cores but leaving the skin in because you have to sieve it all anyway and peeling them seems like FAR too much effort. Get someone with eyes of steel to slice 800g of onions. If possible choose someone who’s in need of a good cry anyway, it’s a great excuse.  

3.      Pop the onions and the apples into a large preserving pan that someone had for Christmas last year (festive connection not mandatory for the recipe). Add 1.7 litres of cider vinegar and 300ml of malt vinegar that you saved from some pickled onions because it seemed a waster to chuck it. 

4.      Feel pleased with how things are going.

You should aim to be about this happy.

5.     Add 3 heaped teaspoons of ginger powder of questionable provenance, along with 2 heaped teaspoons of cumin, some oregano, 5 drops of Tabasco sauce (Steady!), 1 ground nutmeg, 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of black pepper and 50g sugar.

6.      Give it a good stir and then go read the Good Shopping Guide with Finn for a bit because it’s taking ages and he likes books. Alternate these two activities, taking care not to stir Finn or read to the ketchup by mistake.

7.      Eventually your house and everything in it will smell of vinegar and the ketchup itself will look very bog like and smell tasty. At this point, turn off the heat and put the mixture through a sieve, regretting not peeling the apples in the first place.

Acursed sieve clogging fiend

8.      Jar and leave to its own devices until one night you really want some ketchup and think you might as well give it a try. (Sven says ‘At least 2-3 months’.)

9.      Feel the love.

Mattie and the Golems

x