Stone Fireplace, Stone Staircase, Limestone Fireplaces

Autumn is here, the leaves are turning to a hundred shades of gold red and orange, and the mist lies in the valleys and at the woodside every morning. It’s one of the nicest times of year, and it means the frosts are about to start. Now apart from perhaps having to scrape your windscreen, and take it easy on slippy roads on the way to work, there’s not much to worry about. The great thing is it means you can go and pick those sloes from the blackthorn, for your sloe gin! It’s such a great winter ‘activity’ to sit in front of the fire roaring away in your stone fireplace, with your feet on the hearth and a good tumbler of sloe gin in your hand!

Of course is doesn’t have to be sloe gin; it could equally be sloe vodka, or even damson gin… they’re all equally tasty, and a perfect winter tipple.  The reason the sloes were traditionally left until after the first frost is because their skins are very tough, and the frost would tend to split them, and thus make the infusion into your chosen spirit that much easier.

Sometimes when there was little frost, each individual sloe was pricked with a fork (very laborious) or more simple, put them in the freezer just long enough to imitate a frost, but try not to let them freeze solid.

So, get your wellies on, load your stone fireplaces up with logs and go and the scour the hedgerows for those lovely berries… but watch the thorns!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 8:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.