Pineapple Cordial

 Afternoon Everyone!

Don't you hate wasted fruit!  I had a pineapple that was getting a bit over ripe so I decided to cut it up and put it in the food dehydrator.  The sweeter the pineapple the better it tastes dried.  I was about to throw away the skins when I remembered that my Mum used to make the best pineapple cordial. 

So here it is.  My mother's recipe for Pineapple Cordial:

Ingredients:
Pineapple Skins from 1 pineapple
Water
Sugar
½ teaspoon Citric Acid

Method:
Place the pineapple skins in a saucepan.  Cover with water.  Bring to the boil and let simmer for
1 ½ - 2 hours.  Make sure that the liquid doesn't boil down; keep topping it up with water.  The liquid should turn a lovely light brown colour.  Strain out the pineapple skins.  Measure the pineapple liquid.  For every cup of liquid you have add a cup of sugar.  Add ½ teaspoon of citric acid.  You may adjust the amount of citric acid to taste.  Stir over low heat until all the sugar has just dissolved.  Pour into a bottle and keep in the fridge.

To make the cordial: Add 1 part cordial to 4 parts water.

This drink is very refreshing on a hot summers day and is remarkably different from store bought cordial.

Wrapped Headphones

Afternoon Everyone!

Here is another great idea that I saw on Pinterest:  wrapping ipod headphones with embroidery floss so that they don’t tangle as much.  Click here for the original link.  The tangling doesn’t bother me though, it is how old and grey they are looking lately.  So I thought that this would be a good way to give them a bit of a revamp.

You will need: Embroidery Floss (I used 5 different colours)
Headphones

Cut the floss 5 times the length of the headphone cord that you want to wrap.  Cut the colour that you want to start with a bit longer.

Tie a granny knot using your starting colour.  This is the longer piece of floss. I used orange first.

Line up the rest of the colours with about 2cm overhang.  These can be cut off later.

Using the first colour (orange) wrap it around the headphone cord and the other colours and then back through itself to make a knot.

It takes a while to get into the rhythm of doing the knots.  Above is an example of how I held the floss to do the knots quickly and neatly.

Continue this for as long as you want that section of colour to be.  I did 15 knots per colour. Make sure that you do each knot the same way or it won’t sit right. 

Twist the knots so that they curve around the cord. 

Pick up the next colour.  Start knotting again.  Make sure you remember to twist the knots after each colour is finished.

Tie a knot off to finish.  Trim off the excess floss.  Glue the knot.  I used G-S Hypo Cement but you could also use finger nail polish to seal off the knot.

Trim the overhang from the start and glue the knot there as well.

Continue this technique for each section of the headphones.

You can use any colours that you want but if you use less than 5 colours your floss will need to be longer.

I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial.  Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think!

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