Catch up time

What has Elenderil been doing since 2016 I hear you cry?  Well when I say cry its probably more of a resigned whimper.

I have been toying with a new set of ancient rules - Arte del le Guerre which I haven't managed to get a game of so far but the rules have a bit more granularity than DBA3.0 so they look like they should give a good game.  Certainly the reviews from Madaxemen's site are very entertaining and make the game look interesting.  I also did some more work on my 2mm English Civil War rules, although I suppose I should really get used to calling them the British Civil Wars, or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms!  what do you think BCW or TWOTTKs?  I'm thinking BCW will be less wear and tear on the keyboard.

I have been doing a bit of painting and modelling mostly 6mm figures and terrain.  I now have a start on an Early Sassanid Persian army to match up against my Late Imperial Romans.  My Dark Age British forces have expanded so I have the nucleus of Welsh, Strathclyde, Dal Ratian and Pictish Armies and a decent size force for Saxons and Vikings.  I also rebased my Dacians to put more figures on each base. That said of late my painting output has dropped off a bit as work on the house has limited the space available to have my painting table setup.

Rebased Dacians

A start on Sassanid Persia's finest

I managed to get to a couple of war gaming shows including the Joy of Six at Sheffield and actually got some games in.  I'm currently inspired to try a solo BCW campaign after reading the 1642 and all that blog.  I'm thinking about campaign rules already.

Chilli Jam

I thought that I would share my chilli jam recipe. I have been growing chilli peppers on and off for about 10 years usually a variety called Apache which is a medium hot chilli (about 75,000 on the Scoville scale if you are interested) and as they provide a lot of fruit this lets me use up the ones that don't get used in cooking.  This is not an act of random kindness though as it ensures that I can find it myself in future.  I've lost the book with the recipe before and probably will again so if its on my blog I know where to look!

This chilli jam is great with cold meats, it makes a great alternative to apple sauce with roast pork.  I like it with sausages too.  The original recipe came from Allotment Garden.org in the Val's Preserves bit of the site.  I changed the recipe the first time I made it as I didn't have enough red peppers but I liked the result so I have stuck with the change.  Below is the original recipe my changes are shown further down the page.

Ingredients
8 Red Peppers.  De-seeded and roughly chopped.
5 Medium size Chilli.  Roughly chopped.
1 Finger sized piece of fresh Root Ginger.  Peeled and chopped.
8 Cloves of Fresh Garlic.  Skinned and chopped.
400gms canned Tomatoes. Chopped.
750gms Castor Sugar.
250ml Red Wine Vinegar

Method
1. Blitz the Peppers, Chilli, Ginger and Garlic in a food processor.
2. Place these in a heavy bottomed pan with with the can of tomatoes, sugar and Red Wine Vinegar and bring to the boil.
3. Skim off the scum that rises and simmer for 50 minutes.  Stir regularly (it mustn't stick as it will burn). 
4. Continue to simmer for 10 - 15 minutes stirring continuously.  Check if will set by dropping a little of the mixture onto a cold saucer.
5. Allow to cool slightly and bottle in sterile jars.

I swapped 3 Red Peppers for the same weight of fresh Tomatoes leaving the seeds in.  This has the bonus of making the resulting chilli jam look a lot like raspberry jam!  Not that I would ever take advantage of that fact.

The finished article

I use Apache chilli as I grow these.  One plant usually provides all the chilli's I need for cooking and making this jam.  Apache Chilli's are reasonably hot (75,000 on the Scoville scale about three times hotter than Jalapeño's).  This produces a jam with bite but not unpleasantly hot.

Make it between now and the end of November and it will be perfect as a gift for Christmas.

Enjoy.

I aren't dead........

........to quote Granny Weatherwax.

Sorry that it has been a while since I last posted!  Real life got in the way as it so often does.  The last you heard from me was that we had to move house.  Things became 'interesting' after that.  My mother in law was diagnosed with a terminal illness and she had little local support available from Mrs E's family.  Her brother had done a sterling job but was finding difficult to cope with the drain of work, family and caring all at the same time, so Mrs E took on the mantle.  That meant her moving from Northamptonshire to Yorkshire to become a full time live in carer.  As these things do her mother's condition worsened and in the end I too moved to Yorkshire while continuing to work in the Midlands.  Once the inevitable happened we then had the job of settling the estate and selling the family home and moving again.  We settled in North Lincolnshire and bought a house here as two of our children live near by.  I work from home a couple of days a week and stay in the Midlands for a couple of nights so I can be in the office.

Then just to prove real life can be just as difficult as soap opera life, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  It appears it's currently the fashionable one to have; me, Bill Turnbull, Stephen Fry all the cool kids have it!  I was told that if you have to get a cancer as a man this is the one to get as it is more likely to be treatable than most others.  Fortunately mine was caught early but as it showed signs of being aggressive surgery was decided as being the best option.  That took me out of the loop for most of the first half of 2018.  Tests, surgery, recovery and recuperation left me with little interest in sitting in front of a computer screen for more than the time I had to for work purposes.  Work on the house went on the back burner.  Since the surgery we have slowly caught up and for the first time in what seems like years (it is actually a couple of years since I posted anything!)  I'm feeling like I want to blog again.

I haven't been totally idle, Facebook interest groups kept me in touch with my hobbies and its easy to put a couple of lines on FB compared with a blog entry!  At August bank holiday I was able to take part in a battle re-enactment as a combatant for the first time this year.  Things are coming back to what passes for normal in my life.

There is a lot to catch up on, 6mm figure painting,  games of  my 2mm ECW rules, re-enacting,  comments on other blogs I like.  And I have one night a week most weeks when I'm in digs in Northamptonshire with a good Wi-Fi connection and not much to do.

Hello world, I'm back.