I`ve always worked full time (apart from a few months part time when we first moved to Gosport), so I promised my daughter that when we moved to Oz I would be a stay at home mum for a few months. In a frenzy of Earth mother mumsiness, I`ve planted tomatoes, capsicum  and herbs in pots outside, I walk the dog, do the housework, cut the grass and weed the the garden. This week however I had a brainstorm - I will make my own relish & pickles, how hard can it be??

First recipe - Red Onion Marmalade (lovely with sausages apparently), chop the onions,fry, add sugar, red wine and vinegar, sterilise some glass jars, plop it in - easy peasy . Except I didn`t have enough onions so amended the measurements and somehow ended up with red onion toffee, it stuck my jaw together when I tried it, then went solid in the jar and I couldn`t get it out - it ended up in the bin.

Second recipe - Red pepper relish (lovely with beefburgers apparently), hold the pepper over over the gas burner to blacken the skin (which I did - unfortunately I used a metal fork and have realised that metal conducts heat - it get`s hot and burns you). Well the peppers didn`t look very black but I followed the instructions and put the hot burnt peppers in to a plastic bag. Again I forgot that heat melts plastic and the warm burnt peppers melted the bag. I attempted to pull off the skin & plastic from the peppers (apparently chucking them in the plasic bag makes it easy to peel the skin - but the recipe didn`t mention anything about peeling the plastic off - so I think I did something slightly wrong there!)

Anyway the skin & plastic wouldn`t come off properly cos it wasn`t burnt enough or something, so I got bored  with that and just chopped it all up & chucked in the bowl.

So then I chop the onion and a chilli - did you know that onions make you cry and chillis burn you when you try to rub your eyes - I know that now for a fact.

Once I`d dried my face & hair from shoving my head under the cold tap (see above for reason) I added the garlic and ginger and boiled it all up. That was when I realised I still had to sterilise the jars and I`d used the big pan for the pepper mix - oh bugger!!

Oh well it all seems ok - I got hubby & child to try it first (I didn`t tell them about the bits of plastice - I don`t think they noticed) so I now have two small jars sitting on the kitchen worktop looking at me.

This experience has taught me a lesson -I`ll just go to Woolies and buy it next time (and chuck it in a jar & pretend I made it - so much easier) Nigella Lawson can kiss my ... domestic goddess pfffhah!!