A spice-saving solution...

So, we've got kitchen cupboards.  But they're on the full side.  One of them was, until today, rather crowded with spice jars, as we could only fit a few (14ish?) on our spice rack.
So I made a new one.
Simple enough, some stripwood, some dowel, and some little lathe-type things.
A bit of measuring, sawing, drilling and hammering later...

Ta-da.  Space for 30 (ish) spice jars.  And yes, we do use most of them!
The sides and shelves are the same wood, nailed together.  There are thin strips nailed to the back (two to each row) to stop stuff falling off the back, and the dowels you can just about make out in the rubbish photo are just pushed into holes in the side bits that were drilled using a drill-bit the same size as the dowel.
Pretty easy task.

Rhubarb!

You may recall the elderflower cordial.
Well, here's a quick recipe that includes the use of slightly too sweet cordial...

Rhubarb crumble.
Basically, you get a whole bunch of rhubarb.  You slice it up into chunks.  Then you cook it up in some of the elderflower cordial.  This makes the rhubarb taste (even if I say so myself) absolutely amazing.  It was genuinely completely delicious.  I suppose you could use shop-bought elderflower cordial if you haven't made your own!  Perfectly acceptable :)
I made up a crumble topping, which was basically along the following sort of quantities:
155g flour
80g butter
110g sugar (I use a mix of white and demerara or light brown sugar)
A generous amount of ground ginger. 
Buzz the butter and flour in a mixer thingy (or do it by hand) then add the ginger and sugar. 
Rhubarb goes in a dish, crumble mix on top.
Pop it in the oven 'til the crumble's a gorgeous golden colour and the rhubarb is bubbling up around the side. 
Eat.
Let me know how it goes!
(Sorry, not got pictures at the mo'.  May add some later)

A cordial attempt.

It seemed that for our entire Cornwall holiday last week, we were never more than about 20 paces from a display of elderflower - in the fields, hedgerows, gardens...  You name it, elderflower was there.  I determined to do something about it - make some elderflower cordial.  Not while on holiday (picking elderflower from the roadside can appartently result in fume-tainted cordial, quite apart from anything else!)

So when we returned, I decided to find some elderflower, harvest it and make it into cordial.  A bottle of elderflower cordial costs £3.15 at Tesco...

Finding the elderflower was harder than I thought - yes, it grows along every road in the land, but I wanted non-exhausted elderflower (so to speak).  Little Boy and I went on a long and largely fruitless (flowerless?!) search,but had a fun outing whilst on our hunt.

 We eventually found some by our cricket pitches.  With my completely inexpert eye, it looked about right.

 We took it home, dissolved a kilo of sugar in a bowl of about 1.5 litres of boiling water, cooled it down in a sink of cold water and rinsed the flowers in the sink, adding them to the cooled, sugary water (I trimmed them to minimise stalks).  We also added the zest of two lemons and sliced the lemons into the water.  (I did a second batch which was one lemon and one orange...)

 This was then clingwrapped and put in the fridge overnight.  We then strained it, first through some muslin. 

 Then, because I wasn't convinced the muslin was fine enough, through a tea towel. 

 This can then be diluted (either with fizzy water or with normal) and made into a lovely drink. 

 Hey presto, elderflower cordial.
We'll probably add some preservative if we want to keep it, or bottle it into the freezer... 
It's actually probably a bit too sweet, so I might ease up on the sugar next time :)