Birthdays

and all that jazz

It’s my birthday tomorrow. I couldn’t really care much less as I have no desire to note my increase in age, check the rings on my swollen knuckle to see how many zips round the sun I have accomplished. Accomplished? Not really much of an accomplishment unless I could boast of having fallen down a crevasse in the Andes, broken a leg and still managed to crawl back to civilisation to write a book about my adventure and how I saw the light (at the end of the tunnel obviously) and how it put everything in perspective and that’s why I now live in Wales and love otters.

Most people who live to this sort of age (65 if you must know) just get there, many trying to make it easier by going to the gym occasionally or getting in some forest bathing, many just hoping they have good genes and don’t break any bones along the way. For those that don’t there is generally a sad story and a big loss. So I don’t feel proud to be here, just grateful, while still being grumpy. You may think I am a sour puss for thinking like this. The derivation of this expression is pretty obvious, although the addition of a ‘y’ to puss takes it in another direction altogether which I choose not to explore. Wiki says : From sour (“bad-tempered”) +‎ puss (“slang for mouth”). I accept that. Vinegarish even.

However, I am not like this all the time, nor especially often about birthdays. I expect I am being hormonal (side note - everyone is hormonal, all the time, actually). But anyway, it got me thinking about sour and what a useful thing sour foods are in our diets and how we need it to feed our good bacteria and gut health, the gut being our second brain and therefore in need of some tlc just like the main brain rattling around our skulls (hence forest bathing).

Vinegar (from Old French vyn egre 'sour wine') is an odorous aqueous solution of diluted acetic acid and trace compounds that may include flavourings or naturally occurring organic compounds. Vinegar typically contains from 4% to 18% acetic acid by volume. God bless wikipedia (and nuts to ai).

I have a book called 1001 practical uses for vinegar, which is frankly too many and I am fairly certain that not every claim could be verified, but I can definitely say I use it for cleaning things, windows and the like, as well as dressings. Note - do not use balsamic vinegar to clean your windows or white spirit vinegar for vinaigrette.

Vinegar is a two part fermentation process - so part one is wine, cider or beer, all delicious and lovely, but then maybe you leave the lid off, or the wine wasn’t that lovely and you just allow it to go off, ferment again and hey presto, vinegar. Nowadays it’s all done very systematically and in controlled environments. Accidental vinegar isn’t really very good for anything other than cleaning your oven.

I have to think if you used every one of the cleaning tips in this book your house would smell very vinegary but there are some good ones. Oddly enough almost all the same claims are made for bicarbonate of soda, cleans, freshens etc. If you mix bicarb and vinegar you get a great fizzing chemical reaction which you can then use as paste to clean ovens, fridges, chopping boards and all sorts. Basically pretty much anything you use one of the endless cleaning sprays for (why are they different for different rooms? answer me that) you can use a diluted basic vinegar (not your organic white wine precious stuff) solution. For windows 45ml vinegar to 550 ml water with a ½ tsp washing up liquid. Spray on, clean with a damp cloth and dry with scrunched up newspaper. Yes, I have done it, and yes it does work, and leaves no marks.

A more general, anti bac cleaning solution from this book is equal thirds basic vinegar, rubbing alcohol and water, with a few drops of dish soap. Haven’t tried that one as I don’t generally have that kind of alcohol lying around and I really don’t think Bourbon would work.

Veering off from vinegar entirely to just bicarb, here’s a top tip for cleaning silver (jewellery, cutlery, urns). Line a ceramic, plastic or glass bowl with slightly scrunched silver foil, add 2-3 tablespoons of bicarb and add the pieces of silver you want cleaned. Pour over just boiled water to cover the silver and leave for a good half hour. Empty the bowl and see the tarnish moved from the silver to the foil. Wash the silver in hot soapy water and dry with a soft cloth. Hey presto - sparkly silver bits and bobs!

Back to vinegar. Having vinegar before a meal can lower your glucose spike by up to 30%, apparently. This is a claim I can’t verify as am not a scientist and I can’t remember now why this is important, but it is, apparently. Anyway, we took to having salad before the main event at supper, with lots of vinegar dressing and it does make a difference - you feel less bloated and tired after. It could also just be that by filling up on salad I don’t eat so much pasta.

It doesn’t matter how simple or complicated your ingredients are, organic leaves or supermarket iceberg - you can make any salad sing with the right dressing. Here’s two very simple ones - the first is one my Dad used to make, only he would add a teaspoon of sugar because that was in the 60s.

Classic Vinaigrette*

(*soon to make an appearance in the Ein Cegin Cookbook or Llyfr Coginio which will be gracing the shelves of Rookery Books just as soon as we get those doors open!)

Makes about enough for a salad for 4-6

• 30ml white or red wine vinegar

• 90ml really good olive oil

• 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard

• 1 shallot, finely chopped (optional)

• pinch each of salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Put all the ingredients in a jar with a well fitting lid and shake well.

Honey Mustard Dressing

Makes about enough for a salad for 4-6

• 20-40ml good cider vinegar (with the mother, we all need a vinegar mother in our lives)

• 90ml deliciously good olive oil

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1 tsp honey

• 1 tsp dijon mustard

• pinch each of salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put all the ingredients in a jar with a well fitting lid and shake well.

Top tips:

Don’t dress leafy salads until just before serving, and once the dressing is in mix well with salad servers so every leaf is covered.

Both these dressing will keep well for a few days in the fridge so make more than you need so you always have some on stand by.

Add fresh herbs at the last minute and mix in well - dill, basil, mint, coriander - all the soft leafy ones work really well.

If you happen to have a jar of sauerkraut in your fridge (and if not why not?) add some to your salads - delicious and extra good for the gut. Likewise kimchi but be prepared for it to dominate the flavour.

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I have shaken off my vinegary mood. I would like to thank recent sign ups and encouraging messages and especially new paid subscribers - you make my day, all of you.

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If you want some good vinegar recipes, and indeed all sorts of fermented food ideas look at my lovely friend Caroline Gilmartin’s book Fermented Foods - it’s brilliant, or Mark Diacono’s book, Sour.