look after your spine

Image courtesy of John McLean, Flickr Photostream

Make sure you are sitting comfortably at our next meeting on 16th March when Bow osteopath Darren Chandler. will talk to us about his work and tell us how to look after our backs.  Meeting at Chisenhale Art Gallery , 7.30 for 8pm start - map here.   Tea and coffee provided, but feel free to bring along a bottle if you wish and, of course, we are always happy to test your baking for you.

Our coffee morning will be on Friday 19th March at 10.30am 10.00am at the Skylight Cafe in Commercial Street (map here). The cafe is part of  the education and training offered homelessness charity Crisis to help homeless people find work.  If  you haven't been there yet, you'll find friendly staff and good food at sensible prices.  Nearest Tube station is Aldgate East.

Look forward to seeing you all then.

extra rations

Niki sharing scones with mock cream

I don't know about everyone else, but I have just about recovered from our coffee morning visit to the Ministry of Food exhibition at the Imperial War Museum on Friday. It's a great exhibition, beautifully set out and curated, with lots of information, including films and artefacts, interspersed with art and posters.  It was great to see everyone enjoying the exhibition and it was especially thrilling to see our pretty jams and pickles on display in the period kitchen.

Our visit ended with a very generous spread in the museum Kitchen Front Cafe, courtesy of the lovely people at the Imperial War Museum and the fabulous friendly Company of Cooks staff as a thank you for our participation in the  project.  We were totally spoilt with seven (!) different types of cake to test and ate the equivalent of about a week's rations in one sitting.  After a wee bit of debate (!) we finally agreed on top scores for the ginger cake (wartime recipe), and almond slice, followed closely by the beetroot and cocoa cake and rock cakes. The chocolate syrup sponge, also made to a wartime recipe, was another high scorer .  The jam tarts and scones with mock cream looked very pretty but were less popular with our expert tasters.

If you didn't manage to get along on Friday, you've got the rest of the year to visit.  Don't miss the jam.  Or the cakes.

the trouble with morsbags...

...isn't the cutting or pressing or sewing or unpicking your mistakes or drinking too much tea or eating too many cakes.  No.  It's that there's so many lovely fabrics that it's going to be really, really hard to give them away.

Thanks to Niki for hosting our morsbag session this afternoon and to everybody who worked so hard making them.  And to those who worked hard ooh-ing and ah-ing in the background too.

Look out for more morsbag making soon.

snippets

The vile weather did not put a dampener on our Life Drawing workshop this week. It was wonderful to watch everyone's pieces come together as we followed in Matisses' footsteps creating collage pictures of our model. Thanks to Kate Hardy for running yet another great session and thanks also to Amanda for being our model. Kate's sessions are always very relaxed and she has a brilliant way of bringing people's creativity out even when they are convinced they don't have any.

We also managed to collect some newspapers, pens, blankets and towels for the Celia Hammond Animal Trust in Canning Town. They are always in desperate need for these things as they get through many more than they can afford to purchase. CHAT is an animal hospital, animal shelter and vet clinic offering low priced veterinary care to those who cannot afford vet's fees but who do not necessarily fit into the low income bracket served by other charities. They also have hundreds of cats, kittens, dogs and puppies that need a home.

EEWI will continue to collect these items so please do bring whatever you have to the next meeting. That also goes for your old bras which we have begun collecting again for the charity Knickers4Africa.

We recognise that you may feel a little daft with a bag full of old bras, old newspapers and old blankets but its all in a good cause!

a string of beads

Lovely afternoon last Saturday serving cake, juice and tea to young pirates and their parents in the play event as part of the String of Beads project at the Arts Pavilion in Mile End Park. Fab ending to a great little exhibition bringing back play memories and making new ones for this generation.

Thanks for inviting us - we were delighted to be there!

come drawing

We'll be welcoming Kate Hardy on 16th February for another life drawing class. Our last session with Kate was brilliant and we are looking forward to seeing her again to brush up our skills. We'll be meeting as usual at 7.30pm for a prompt 8pm start at Chisenhale Art Gallery. Free to members, £3 entry for non-members. Tea and coffee will be provided though you are welcome to bring a bottle or share your baking too if you wish. All materials will be provided on the night, so no need to bring your pencil sharpeners.

We hit the road for our 19th February coffee morning for an exclusive visit to the new Ministry of Food exhibition where we will see our jam and pickle among the exhibits! Please make your own way to the Imperial War Museum to arrive by 9.30am (map here). This should be a great exhibition - for a quick taste, visit the IWM's Ministry of Food blog.

Looking forward to seeing you.

pickled

Yesterday we tackled pickles and chutneys, the final stage in our Ministry of Food project - pickled onions, pickled beetroot and red tomato chutney. There wasn't a dry eye in the house...

With five of us involved, there was a lot going on at once. Skinning tomatoes, chopping onions, boiling and slicing beetroot. I'd brined the raw onions a couple of days before, so they were washed to remove the salt. The vinegar was simmered with a mix of pickling spice and we were set. Onions and beetroot were packed separately into jars and covered with vinegar. Hey presto!

Making the chutney took a bit longer with the chopping of the onions, apples and tomatoes, then long simmering with sultanas, sugar and vinegar until it reached a nice jammy consistency. We soon learnt that it is not sensible to get too close to the vinegary fumes unless you are prepared to weep - the dreaded "chutney eye". ( I don't think the doyenne of the wartime kitchen, Marguerite Patten, mentioned this hazard in her book - maybe we just didn't read that bit!)

It really is most satisfying to see the fruits of your endeavours lined up neatly. Now it's just a question of waiting a few weeks until the goods are properly mature and ready to eat. Not that anyone at the Imperial War Museum will be eating it when the exhibition opens on the 12th February...

I'm getting used to the smell of vinegar permeating the house. As for us, it's not true that we were pickled. Just happy with our evening's work.