Here I am back at work this week.  It is hard going and I now travel around with a bottle of cough syrup in my bag.  I am a big fan of Simple Linctus as it seems to soothe any sort of cough enough to get you off to sleep at night.  Last winter, it was under £1 for a bottle.  This winter it costs £1.79.  That is a pretty hefty increase!!  It is still cheaper than all the big brands and it does the job for me so I am sticking with it.  Boots do their own brand but it is sugarfree and I really don't like the taste.  Lloyds do a sugar-full version as well as a sugarfree one for diabetics and this is one place where sugarfull gets my vote.  My pharmacist friend used to recommend pholcodeine linctus and that was absolutely brilliant - until they stopped making it...

I 've just made some marmalade so that I can give some of that to friends at Christmas as I haven't made any jam this year.  My husband was given some citrus fruit at work last week - limes, lemons and a grapefruit.  It was the Christingle service at church and as I didn't feel up to going (I'd have had to be there throughout the music rehearsal as well as the service as my husband was still playing so at church for at least 3 1/2 hours) my husband brought his back and one for me to make as well as a left over one for our grandson to make (which he didn't want to do in the end) so 3 extra oranges.  Before I went down with this bug, I'd bought some lemons when they were on offer at Lidl to make some Limoncello for my daughters' Christmas stockings and I'd set that steeping.  The Limoncello uses the peels but not the flesh from 10 lemons so I had that to add as well. I cooked the fruit and the peel on one day in the pressure cooker and the next day I boiled it up with the sugar in two batches.  I was making up the recipe a bit as I went along and decided that I would add a tin of Mamade to make sure it set.  I ended up with 19.5 lbs and a bit in a ramekin extra.  It is soooo tasty and I'm pleased that I was able to make good use of the fruit we were given as well as the left over lemon flesh.  I know that there will be enough left, after presents, to do us for quite a large part of 2013 so my husband is very happy.  And it cost just under 30p per lb. I'm pleased with the price but with all the fruit that I was given I'd expected the cost to be a bit lower.  It probably would have been if I'd not turned chicken and added the tin of Mamade from the cupboard.

My Christmas job tonight is to bottle the Limoncello.  I've been planning this since the spring when I found the recipe and have been saving any small bottles that I came across.  However, my husband has helpfully hidden the lids from most of the bottles and can't remember where he put them.....  I'm not just sure what thoughts were in his head when he moved them as he probably intended it as a helpful gesture.  But.....