Matron has corrupted me, guv!

I don't even like gin. Let that be known to begin with, secondly if Matron's bad influence had not been at work on us, this would not have happened, I lay the guilt of a drunken gin-soaked Christmas entirely at her feet.

Andrew got stuck in the mud last week whilst on a visit for work. Luckily he wasn't alone and his colleagues in the other car were able to go and get a tow rope and eventually pull our wee car out of the quagmire. Being a resourceful man, Andrew spent the anguish of 20 or so mins waiting for them to come back from buying the rope by picking Sloes.

We made sloe gin, it smelt terrible but I am assured that 1, my nose and palate are 'weird' and don't recognise the joy that is gin and 2 it will get fruity away.

The recipe is pretty easy to remember, 'it's basically half and half again'. The amount of gin (around 1litre), then half that (around 450g) of pricked and washed Sloes, then half that (around 225g) of caster sugar. Just the 3 ingredients. Then you have to make sure you give it a darn good shaking every month for about 2 months. The thing is that we didn't have a big bottle so we had to use the gin one = 1 litre will not fit back in again once there are lots of sloes in there.

So we had some left over and the devil on my shoulder came up with an idea, Raspberries and Blackberries are berries and why can't we put them into gin too? An alternative, a fresh approach to fancying up cheap Tesco* own brand liquor. We did the process again, unfortunately we didn't have a clear glass bottle for this batch and it's such a pretty colour too, ah well, wait til Christmas.

Like the total eejit that I am I didn't/couldn't take any photos to go with this blog as my camera's battery was/is dead. But if you look at Matron's posts on the subject Monday 5th October and the update on Wednesday 7th October you'll get the picture (literally).

*could be evil; yet to be confirmed...