M&M: Nell

Dear reader,

in this movie from the year 1994, a young man provides a woman, living alone in the woods, with food, which he leaves for her in front of the cabin. But it isn't quite that easy. He hears wailing and as he carefully enters the cabin, he finds a woman, seemingly dead on the floor. Also there are flowers on the body and around. As if someone prepared the woman like this. Did the woman not live alone after all? The doctor of the town, Jerome “Jerry” Lovell (Liam Neeson) is called by the sheriff (Nick Searcy). They eventually find a young woman, by the name of Nell (Jodie Foster), who they find out is the unbeknownst daughter of the dead woman. Nell only speaks an unknown language of her own.

For Jerry Nell is fascinating. She grew up away from civilisation and yet she can seemingly live and organise her life completely inependantly. Paula Olsen (Natasha Richardson), a young psychologist student, sees more the scientific of it all. She would like Nell at the hospical for further investigation of her as well as her language. For the court however the most pressing question is whether Nell can live independantly or if she is depending on help and/or assistance.

Eventually it's decided that Nell can, for the time being, stay where she is and Jerry and Nell make themselves comfortable in the woods, too. At first they do it independently from each other, but by interacting and investigating Nell, they also get closer to each other.

It's getting obvious that Nell will not live undiscovered and isolated forever. So it's time to show Nell the civilisation, the town. An adventure for all people involved. Then the media notices Nell indeed and so a decision what to do next has to be made spontaneous and fast. Shortly after this radical experience for Nell, the second hearing at the court is set, which will decide how Nell is doing and how and where she'll live in the future.

“Nell” isn't one of the best movies. The end is, although certainly desirable, over all a “Hollywood ending” and as cheesy as it is simply illogical an ending. Seeing how Nell behaved up to the court hearing, but especially how she reacted at the town visit and then the shock experience when the media finds her, then I just can't describe her behaviour at the court hearing with anything else but “illogical”. The movie borrows cliches from the “wild, beautiful” life outside of town, to the rather “movie-type” of psychologist up to the Hollywood-happy-ending. Why then do I enjoy watching this movie anyway and write it up here now? For one thing because I still do find it enjoyable to spend some time with Nell in the woods and to appreciate the images of the beautiful landscape and surroundings. Also I like watching Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson and how they are so profoundly different at first and then get closer to one another. Some said that Jodie Foster's performance was too much acting and Nell seemed very forced. She seemed believable to me though, save the impossible court hearing at the end.

One reason why I didn't watch this movie over the last years, is the fact that Natasha Richardson, who by the way later in real life married Liam Neeson, had a skiing accident in March 2009. At first everything seemed ok, but in the end she died from inner head injuries on March, 18^th. This is the only film I've got with her and I think this is also the only with with her and her (although not yet at that time) husband.

The book to the movie is, like almost always with books, a bit deeper with the background information on the individual characters. It's a nice read, if you like the movie. For the great images however, I'd still recommend the movie rather than the book.

For those of you, who like generally calm film scores, this soundtrack by Mark Isham might be for you. I know I enjoy it at least. I don't listen to it much anymore, because I don't think of it often, but I appreciate it every time I do listen to it.

Until next blog,

sarah

The end: dandelion jelly part 2

Dear reader,

“this is the end, beautiful friend”, as Jim Morrison sang with The Doors back then. But the end of one thing is also the beginning of another: in our case the end of cooking and the beginning of really yummy sweet-hearty jelly.

With a bit of delay now the last step for the jelly. For the last step you take a strainer and fill the brew in a measuring cup. You only need about 750 ml of it and don't need the flowers anymore. I am lucky: with two guinea pigs as my flatmates, I just give the flowers to the guinea pigs to eat.

The recipe says to add 2 table spoons of lemon juice. So far what I've done is cutting the lemon in two halves and just squeezed one half with my hand holding the hand above the pot. I'm not that exact with amounts here. (Sorry again for ml measurements, keep to the American cup-based recipe from my previous post, if that's how you cook.)

2. Give 750 ml of the brew back into the pot, add the jelling sugar and a bit of lemon juice. Let it cook for 4 minutes, immediately fill it in the glasses. Put the lid on.

With American Youtube videos I saw that they had other lids than we have here. In America it's also common to disinfect the glasses and lids in a hot water bath. For me it's enough to have them washed clean.

Some want to fill the jam or jelly in hot washed glasses. Sometimes they want to turn the glasses upside down on the lid for a bit.

Do whatever you're used to, if you made jam or jelly respectively do whatever feels safe for you, if you're scared germs could get in the glasses. Personally I feel comfortable enough to just wash the glasses with dish detergent and water. I also don't turn my glasses upside down on the lid.

Generally they say that self-made jam or jelly is only edible for about a year. Don't panic, if you make it now in April and only eat it in May next year. It should be perfectly fine to eat then. As long as the jelly looks good and smells fine, it should be good to eat even more than a year after making it.

As you can see, the recipe is really simple. Almost the most time consuming thing is to pick the flowers. You really have to make sure, the peduncles are short enough. My jelly now got a bit bitter, because in my joy about dandelions, I had too much of the peduncle parts in it. (Maybe better to actually pick 200 flowers and pull the yellow petals out after all.) The jelly is not ruined or poisoned because of that. It just tastes a bit more like bitter orange jam. The bitter-tasting components are not dangerous. Those especially are great for tea if you have digesting problems. More on that in another post. I'll write more about other possibilities to use other parts of dandelions and other ways to use dandelion flowers, too. Also what you have to keep in mind when making dandelion tea. Dandelions are far more versatile than most of us suspect and healthy too!

Have fun cooking and enjoy eating the jelly!

Until next blog,

sarah

Dandelion alert... or dandelion jelly part 1

Dear reader,

finally it's time: the dandelions are blooming in the garden I share with my neighbours here. Time for me to get the dandelions. I never would have thought, that I'd be craving for dandelion. The jelly is really good thought and very easy to make. At least the recipe I use. By the way, my father usually doesn't like jelly, because jelly easily falls from the bread roll. He liked this jelly a lot though. I'll write you the jelly the way I make it. Other variations are also possible, of course. I'll write you those, too. First of all my recipe with comments. There really are just two steps, if you don't count picking the dandelions:

(The recipe I use is very American unfriendly, I suppose with g and l and not cups. Anna Hackman from Green Talk has a cups-based recipe similar to mine)

Ingredients:

150 g of dandelion flowers (or better 200 petals and only use the yellow part)

1 litre of water

2 table spoons of lemon juice

500 g jelling sugar (again sorry, American readers. I understand that most Americans use sugar and/or pectin. I never have. Follow Anna Hackman's recipe, see link below).

It's best to pick the flowers around noon, when they are in full bloom. Closed blooms don't have the full aroma like open ones. Therefore I'd also suggest to use the flowers right away or let them sit for no longer than one night. Drying flowers also close. Also you should ideally pick them in your own garden or at least as far away from exhaust gasses as possible, they also should be as pesticides free as possible, also don't pick them where lots of dogs are known to leave their marks and such. Kids and grandchildren are certainly easily animated to pick them and enjoy doing it.

The easiest way to pick the flowers is either to come from above, close your fingertips around the bottom of the flower and pull. Alternatively you could also get underneath the flower, palm facing upwards, with the peduncle between your index and middle finger just pull upwards. Both methods are easy to get the peduncle cut quite short from the flower most of the time. Check it still, if everything is as short as can be. Otherwise the jelly will be bitter, which would be atypical and means there have been to many peduncles and bitter-tasting compounds that go with them. Or pick 200 flowers and pull out the yellow petals. It's not that much more work and the bitter components are definitely not in the jelly then.

Once you have the flowers, this is the first step:

1. Put the flowers in a pot, add the water and let it boil. Once it boils, let it boil for about 5 minutes. Then put the lid on it and let it just sit for about 24 hours. 

That's it already for the first step.

Anna Hackman from Green Talk says that you can let the juice sit over night. Here is the recipe she uses.The American cups are certainly rather strange for German-speaking people. I'd suggest in any case to cook the flowers that very first time right away, which shouldn't be too hard. It's done fast.

Dandelion honey is a bit different, although similar. For that the most people actually cut the yellow petals and don't use any green parts at all. I found a German website suggesting to use the tops of fir needles as an alternative, too.

Another German website suggested adding pieces of apple or a glass of apple puree. A good advice from there was to add fruits with not too strong a taste of its own, because it will cover the rather soft taste of the dandelions.

A well known and often used German website for recipes has several variations of dandelion jelly. One suggested using 1 litre of (naturally cloudy) apple juice instead of 1 litre of water to boil the flowers in. Certainly a variation I'll test soon.

The recipe I used had 100 g of dandelion flowers and 50 g of daisies. But the latter are considerably smaller and almost don't grow in my garden, so I take 150 g of dandelions. I'm sure the recipe could also be used with other flowers just as well. For example the other day I watched similar recipe with rose petals.

I'd definitely suggest for you English reading readers of my blog to check out Anna Hackman's dandelion prep video.

Sustainable Mama does it the “American way”, watch her video for ideas how you can do it with cups and that. Sustainable Mama as well as the Stillman's Family sterilise their can's. I found that all American videos I watched have that. I don't do it. But we have other cans anyway. Just watch the videos I list here, you'll get ideas how to do it, I think.

The Stillman's Family also has a great video, she shows how to pull the petals out, so she's closer to dandelion honey.

2leelou Preserves has another rather extensive (15 minutes) video, but she's quite charming, I think and thorough in her explanations and really shows you step by step.

I hope the videos help you and compensate for the rather not so helpful not-cups recipe I have listed here on my blog.

So that's it for the first step. I'll post the final step tomorrow, when I will have done it with mine, too.

Until next blog,

sarah

More pain control

Dear reader,

probably because of my pollen allergy I had a headache the other day. It wasn't one with piercing pain like I sometimes have. I already described how I deal with that sort of pain in another post. But the other day I had the image of a room in my head where sand was on the ground. A larger area, but flat, not pain from for example a pyramid with its four (or five) peaks. You'd clean out a room with sand with a broom. So I imagined exactly that. Indeed it helped and my headache went away just like that.

I saw another method quite by accident while watching the mini-series “Wolf Hall”. A boy was at the blacksmith workshop of his father and cut himself. The father said, the boy should hold his hands like this, and the father showed him how. The palms of your hands facing towards you you cross your underarms. Then the boy should keep the arms like that and put them under water. The crossing the arms would confuse the mind. An interesting method, I find. I'll definitely use it some time.

Until next blog,

sarah