How To Make Homemade Elderflower Cordial

Summer is finally kicking in and I am seeing elder everywhere. It's only this year that I'm starting to realise how prolific it is in the wild. I see clouds of elderflowers gathering along almost every footpath and can't help but reach out and take in their sweet fragrance. This recipe for elderflower cordial is super easy and only needs a relatively small number of flower heads. But do remember, the fewer elderflowers that are left, the fewer there are to grow into elderberries. These are a really good food source for wildlife so please be mindful to only take what you need and not to leave the bushes bare.

How To Make Homemade Spiced Apple Vodka

Apples and cinnamon - what a match made in heaven. And whilst this liqueur needs some time to mature for the flavours to infuse as deeply as possible, there's no denying it's worth the wait. And it's so easy to make too!

In liqueur-making, apples can be combined with brandy, gin and even rum, but I love the sharpness that comes from a vodka blend. This recipe will make about a litre of the finished liqueur and stores well in a cool cupboard.

Christmas Gift Guide for Grown-ups

I love Christmas. I love it even more now I'm an adult and can enjoy the indulgent delights of booze-soaked Christmas puddings and warming sips of mulled wine. And there's the food too, of course: spiced, fruit cakes, citrus, sweet treats and deliciously steamy puddings covered in custard or a dollop of cool, whipped cream. That's why for this year's Christmas gift guide, I've chosen to feature the kind of food and drink I'd love to find in my own stocking on Christmas morning. The kid's Christmas lists can wait - this is all about us.

How To Make Homemade Turkish Delight

I absolutely love making yummy treats that I can gift to family to friends at Christmas. A few years ago I made fig, date and onion chutney which I gave away with a little bottle of my red berry liqueur, each wrapped with a twist of festive ribbon and tied with brown labels suitably marked 'Eat Me' and 'Drink Me'.

This is another of my favourites. There always seems something indulgent about Turkish delight. It's something I don't eat all that much throughout the rest of the year but come wintertime, I can't help but make up a batch.

What's more, it's so unbelievably easy! I mean, who has time for faffing when there's mulled wine to be drunk?

How To Make Home-Cooked Potato Peeling Crisps

This recipe for home-cooked potato peeling crisps from BBC Food popped up on my Facebook feed the other day and I knew immediately I had to give them a go. Okay, so they're probably not the healthiest snack in the world, but you need something to crunch on in between slurps of cool, crisp chardonnay, right?

The recipe appealed to me for a number of reasons: they're very simple to make, they require very few ingredients, and they are a great way to use up the peelings leftover from a mashed potato masterpiece.

I'm also hoping that the next time we have friends over for nibbles, it'll make me look like some sort of fantastic snack wizard. Fingers crossed.

How to Make Homemade Red Berry Rum

It's sad to think we're moving into Autumn and towards Winter but, to cheer you up when the nights start closing in and the kids have walked puddles of muddy slush all through your kitchen, here's a delightfully warming recipe I picked up from Good Housekeeping magazine back in 2011. The good news is that this only needs a month at most to mature and doesn't need any specialist equipment, so you can easily start it in the next month or so and it'll be ready for Christmas. Then all you have to do is pop on your slippers, curl up with Strictly and enjoy a tiny tot of this gloriously rosy liquid sipped from your favourite glass.

Despite having pasted this recipe into my recipe scrapbook six years ago (how is it that long ago?) this is actually only the second time I've made it. Though not due to any fault of it's own, that's for sure.

How To Make Homemade Red Gooseberry Wine

When my mother-in-law passed me the massive bag of red gooseberries, I had two choices: I could either make them into something to eat, or something to drink. Taking the vote to social media, the response was overwhelmingly in favour of the latter (no surprise there).

My next choice was whether to follow the recipe in my 'Drink Your Own Garden' book which happens to be as old as I am (no googling, please!) or to just ask my mum who, by all accounts, has been home-brewing just as long. 

Maybe it was giving birth to me that turned her onto it, who knows?

Anyway, again I chose the latter. Mainly because I find mum's method much simpler and also it requires less jiggery-pokery involving enzymes and other chemicals I've never heard of.

8 Times I Missed Out On A Celebrity Autograph

David Beckham

I was walking back from my lunch hour, and had just turned the corner out of Carnaby Street when I happened to glance up at a man walking past me in the opposite direction. He wore a baseball cap and was surrounded by five or six men who looked like they worked out regularly. 

It was only after he'd passed me by that it struck me. Hang on, I thought. Was that who I thought it was? Surely not, could it be? Yes, yes it was. 

You might know him as 'Becks', 'DB7', 'Golden Balls', 'The Beckster', 'Becky From The Block'*, 'Lord Beckingham', or as I like to call him, simply 'our Dave'. It was, indeed, Mr David Beckham. 

8 Fashion Trends I'm Glad To See The Back Of

We've all had our 'off' days, the fashion world included. Here's a few gems that I'd be more than happy not to stumble across in Vogue ever again (Okay, you got me - so not Vogue, maybe Look or the fashion page in the Evening Standard...):

1. Harem pants

Just – nope. You know who they look good on? Aladdin. And his genie friend. Certainly not me, that’s for sure.

8 Alternative Ways to Spend Valentine's Day

It’s that time of year again: the minivan flower-sellers are out, Clinton’s shop-fronts glisten, red-glittered and teddy-beared, on the high street and you can’t buy your M&S lunch without having to skirt the mountain of champagne bottles in the walkway (how very middle-class, daaarling).

Oh yes, what a wonderfully lovey-dovey, cuddly-wuddly time of year, a chance to snuggle down with a glass of plonk in front of a roaring gas fire and Love Actually. An opportunity to spend some quality time with your partner/spouse/family member/dog/cat/Xbox/that-bloke-from-Take-That’s discarded fag butt you traded your Discman for, back in 1994.

What You Need to Know Before Buying a Diamond

Hoping for a Christmas or New Year marriage proposal? Does your other half need a not-so-subtle nudge in the right direction?

Will you be the one doing the knee-bending? Want to make sure you're savvy enough to put any swindlers off trying to sell you a Christmas cracker prize? 

Or maybe you just feel like treating yourself to a bit of diamond-based 'frosting'?

Luckily, there exists an internationally recognised system for grading diamonds, developed by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), which can help you distinguish between a rock that demands a 'yes' and bargain basement rubble.

Read on for my guide to the '4 Cs': carat, colour, clarity, and cut. 

This Part-timer is Revolting!

I do like to try and find the humour in whatever I write about. It does us good to laugh, doesn't it? But sometimes, just sometimes, I have to be serious, even if the subject topic itself is laughable.

I was recently made redundant after six years at the same company. It didn't take me long though, to crack on with trying to find a new job. I sent off a few applications and, a few days ago, had my first chat with a recruitment agent. 'Anthony' was very nice but I have to be honest - I came off the call feeling pretty miffed.

At my now previous company, I was incredibly lucky in that after having Little O I was able to return to work on a part-time basis, whilst still remaining at the same experience level. I am grateful for that.

However, now that I find myself on the market again, I realise what a pot of poop the part-time job market actually is.

I'm not going to blow my own trumpet here. This isn't the place for me to be dropping my CV. But I do have a bloody good degree, and since qualifying as a CIMA accountant five years ago, have accumulated some pretty impressive industry experience. Plus, according to Anthony, I'm a 'great communicator', which is reassuring in more ways than one.

So there must be jobs a-plenty, right? Hundreds of employers looking for someone with my skills and background?

On a full-time basis, yes. Part-time? Not so much.

Mummy's quick guide to keeping chickens

We first decided to keep chickens because, quite frankly, I was a bit bored. You might ask why I didn't get a dog or do some grown-up colouring or something. Well, my parents have kept them for nigh on thirty years so it wasn't completely doolally for me to decide to do it.

If you're thinking about keeping chickens, there are plenty of websites that give you in depth how-to advice on the A-Z of chickens. I'm just going to give you a few pointers that I've picked up in the six years we've kept ours, and over the lifetime my parents have kept theirs.

1. Decide what you want them for

Get pretty ones if you want pretty ones, but my family and I have tended to prefer the Warren Hybrids or Light Sussex for their excellent laying credentials.