Conservation, history, green living and local self-sufficiency are the priorities for these volunteers.

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Friday Oct 23, 2009

Baked Apple Meringues With Orange-Soaked Raisins

Phew! Well, after a few weeks of being entertained by members of the general public and waxing lyrical over depressed peacocks, I can confirm the latter part of October is turning out to be party central down at Heeley City Farm, with events and talks planned left, right and upside-down. This can only mean one thing: preparation, which roughly translates as: everyone running around like ninnys.

I’d barely had time for my weekly whinge about the weather, before I was sent scooting down to the South Yorkshire Energy Centre, where they were midway through Energy Savings Week and also midway through a mini-crisis.

I was pointed in the direction of a formidable stack of promotional literature and industrial-sized envelopes, all emblazoned with the addresses of local schools. The following Saturday was ‘Family Fuel Busters Fun Day,’ where people could drop in and make such delightfully random things as pedal-powered smoothies, recycled jewellery and draft excluders that look like dragons.

After swiftly bundling up the promotional material, I then had the UK’s postal system to contend with. Were the big, brown envelopes classed as letters, large letters, or packages? And what weight category did they fit into? (Besides the obvious, ‘darn heavy.’) Thankfully, Heeley City Farm had weighing scales and a strange, cardboard construction. I had to play post-lady and pretend to mail the envelopes through this odd creation, in order to discern whether they could slip “freely” through your average letterbox. After much um-ing and ah-ing, myself and three other members of staff decided that we didn’t have the foggiest (although we all agreed the packets were “really heavy” and were probably going to cost “a lot” to post.) So, it being the kind of icy-bright winter’s day that I have a particular fondness for, I offered to nip up to the post office and have the packets weighed, measured and pretend-posted-through-a-fake-cardboard-letterbox by the Professionals.

Of course, as soon as word got out that I was heading to the post office, I found myself battling against an avalanche of letters that everyone else on the farm needed posting. So, I procured myself a plastic bag, filled it with the tonne-and-a-half of said letters and set off for the post office. After groaning, huffing, and eye-rolling my way down a queue of near-apocalyptic proportions, I was rewarded in the best possible fashion when the lady at the counter enquired whether I wanted a receipt. “Oh, yes,” I said, grinning (probably a little inappropriately, given the I’m-just-here-to-post-a-few-letters situation) at being able to sound like I had an Important Job “then I can put it on my expenses.” The lady at the counter looked decidedly unimpressed, and I vowed to start wearing more Professional clothes to my volunteering, just in case such an occasion arose again (or at least to replace the neon pink laces in my trainers, with conservative black ones - that’d fool those pesky postal workers, for sure!)

Upon hopping back to the South Yorkshire Energy Centre, it became clear that mailing out all those leaflets had left the reception room downstairs noticeably depleted of informative literature. A quick root around in the filing cabinet, and I located all the master copies, nipped down to the main office and churned out leaflets giving useful tips on how to cut down your energy consumption, whether in the kitchen, travelling to work, or fiddling around with the thermostat at home. Of course, with energy saving and recycling being the themes of the day, I am happy to report all the photocopies were on recycled paper, and some of the leaflets were even printed out half the size, so we could fit two on one page! Environmentally-savvy indeed (although, after cutting the 110th leaflet in half, even my fiercely-held save-the-trees ethos began to shake a little!)

And then, something truly terrible happened. It was approaching home time and I was becoming rather fixated on the thought of mushroom lasagne for tea, so I began chatting to one of the Energy Centre workers to make the time-until-lasagne go quicker. Apparently, she ran healthy eating workshops and was due to begin another cycle in a few weeks’ time. Each session was two hours long; the first hour was for preparation and cooking, and the second was when the group came together and ate their healthy, home-cooked meal as a whole. Since I was photocopying pretty much everything in the Energy Centre except the desks and the biro pens, I inquired whether she needed anything photocopying for her course, while I was on a photocopying roll. She did. Tragically, half an hour before lasagne-time, what she wanted photocopying were recipes.

Pudding recipes.

The recipes came complete with pictures of said puddings, and with scrummy titles, such as Baked Apple Meringues With Orange-Soaked Raisins; Wholemeal Apple And Blackberry Crumble; Baked Pears With Maple Nut Sauce; and Rhubarb Coffee Cake.

After twenty minutes of keeping my eyes firmly averted from pictures of Cherry Almond Scones and Banana-Spice Cookies, and a quick session of folding flat-pack ‘Heeley City Farm Events’ sheets into handy, take-away leaflets, it was time to head home. But not before nipping into the farm café and grabbing a slice of chocolate cake before I left, which possibly wasn’t the lesson I should have taken from photocopying all those ‘healthy, low-fat dessert’ recipes, but I’m going to attempt to make Baked Apple Meringues With Orange-Soaked Raisins at home this weekend. Just to balance out that chocolate cake, you understand…..

Posted by Jessica ( 6:50 PM )
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