Bread (and Butter) Money!

We have a tiny shop here, it used to be part of the original farm, a separate room like a dormitory where the young men would sleep when they came visiting, and a few years ago it was turned into a little shop rightly called 'Die Winkeltjie', or The Little Shop! When we first arrived here, the shop was dark and a bit of a mess, tins of dog food stood side by side with tins of baked beans and condensed milk, and the fresh milk jostled for space with margarine and fishing bait in the 'fridge. Magazines, buckets and spades (for the holiday makers), bread, potato crisps, sweets and chocolates were haphazardly arranged on the shelves with tomatoes and apples, and the 'shopkeeper' had a television attached to the wall which blared out all day. Having said that, you could buy basically anything you needed, and it saved a trip to town for necessities like biltong or ice cream on a Saturday afternoon!

Die Winkeltjie.

It has recently been taken over by new owners and the difference is like night and day! They hauled everything out, removed the television, washed and painted the walls, had a sale of all the old bits and pieces that had been there for years, replaced the old shelves, and re-stocked the entire shop. Suddenly I noticed not only a fireplace and a chimney, but windows too! They now stock ready-made home-made meals, and serve coffee with home-made cakes and best of all, they have made a little wooden house tucked out of harm's way for the stray tabby that has made the shop her home! Our Dopey looks suspiciously like her, could there be a family thread there I wonder?

Anyway, last week I went in there to buy ice cream (what else?) and I noticed that among the usual stock were some home bottled pickles and jam. I plucked up the courage to mention that I made really tasty Bread and Butter Pickles (don't ask me why it is called that!), from cucumbers and onions, and I then took a sample in for them to taste. She liked them and asked me to make a batch to sell in the shop! So, on Tuesday Rob and I headed off to town and I stocked up on all the ingredients that I would need, and Wednesday was The Big Pickle Producing Day. I sliced the cucumbers, sobbed over the onions, measured out the vinegar and the spices and boiled it all up, filling the house with mouth-watering aroma!

Pickle waiting to happen!

There is something extremely satisfying about producing home-made goodies, and as I sterilised the bottles and then filled them, I thought about Eileen Baron, (remember I mentioned her in the Klondyke Cherry Farm post), doing this every day, thinking about new recipes before getting up in the morning and having the bottles on the shelves by lunchtime!

Good enough to eat!!

The little blue and white 'hats' completed the look and I delivered my first batch of pickles to sell!

I hope it's not the last batch, I could become as famous as Gordon Ramsay, but without the swearing! Well, maybe!