Draught Excluder, Cheating and Funghi

Am very pleased to say that I have managed to sew ourselves a draught excluder for the front door - and thereby save anything from 7,99 to 48,00 Euros, as well as the diesel and time used for otherwise looking around town for one. I used a long piece of left-over dark red corduroy and sewed a long sausage. I then sewed another long sausage using a piece of old, white sheet, cut up an old garden chair cushion for the foam bits inside, which I stuffed into the white sausage, including any odd scraps of material left over. Sewed up the white sausage, stuffed it into the dark red one, (which can now be washed on its own) sewed velcro at the end, and hey presto!
What is particularly pleasing though, is that I didn't have to buy one of those revolting long fluorescent dachshund/frog/snake/reindeer draught excluders which are as cheap and less effective than they look.

I was so inspired by our friends' rows of canned vegetables, that I bought a couple of big jars of pickled gerkins (1,25 each for two huge jars) (I'll use the jars once the gerkins are gone, of course) and soaked off the lables. ...a. they look nicer that way and b., I can pretend I canned them myself. Couldn't wait for next summer. ;)))
Now they're sitting in the cellar next to the jars of Sauerkraut, which I cut up this morning.

I've had so many ceps that we can't eat them as quickly as they grow, so I'm drying a row of them on a thread stretched between a couple of beams on the kitchen ceiling. I'll put them in a glass jar once they're dry and they'll reconstitute beautifully in water when I need them.

Hannah found an absolutely massive Cauliflower Funghi a couple of years ago at the foot of a pine tree in the woods behind the garden. After we'd cut it up, washed all the bits out of it - pine needles etc, we dried it on threads in the same way. We then packed it into glass jars. I made a goulash a while back and after soaking the remaining funghi in water, used it up (as well as the water) in the stew. It was really good.