Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

I am abysmally clumsy.  I regularly burn, cut and bruise myself – in the kitchen, mind you, not at parkour or rock climbing.  A couple of years ago, I’d crept out of bed at 4am (couldn’t sleep) and was wandering around, looking for something to do.  Decisions made at that time of day are often flawed, but of course, at that time of day, you don’t actually remember that your reasoning is impaired.

I walked into the kitchen and was struck by a sudden urge to make pumpkin soup.  Minutes later, I was trying to cut the rind off a big Queensland Blue with my 10” chef’s knife.  I made a beautiful clean slice right through the fleshy part of my palm just under my pinkie – and was so groggy that it took the pain a good half a minute to kick in, during which time I just stared at my hand, amazed at how much I resembled a piece of steak.  It’s at moments like these that my husband Pete comes into his own.  After I’d been unable to stop the bleeding, I finally went into the bedroom – dripping – and asked him to drive me to the hospital (he was fast asleep – this was about 4.30am).  He got up grudgingly, blinked a couple of times, took a look at my hand, and declared it didn’t need stitching.  Thank goodness for the years he spent on his engineering degree, because they obviously qualified him to make the call in a medical emergency.  Anyway, the upshot of all this was a lot of blood, some carefully placed steri-strips and a lot of pain for a week or so.  (Pete is insistent that I mention that he was right, and I didn’t actually need stitching.  He doesn’t want anyone to think he was only saying that to get out of driving me to hospital at 5am in the morning…)

Whilst I’m fairly injury prone with sharp things, I seem to be much, much worse with hot things.  Once I pulled a tray of cookies out of the oven, straight into my knee, branding myself with a lovely crescent shaped scar (I no longer bake in shorts).  I’ve burnt myself with hot liquids, hot handles, hot trays and hot tools.  I gave myself a really bad burn once trying to rescue a cordless phone that I’d dropped into a pot of curry.

In an attempt to do something about the burns, I went on a quest to find really good oven gloves.  I tried silicone mitts, which are fine for some things (like pulling jam jars out of boiling water), but I desperately wanted moveable fingers.  I’d read about flameproof Kevlar gloves worn by racing car drivers, but they were both prohibitively expensive AND nearly impossible to find.  In the end, my cousin-in-law Brian suggested welding gloves.  The man is a genius, because these thick leather gloves are absolutely fantastic.  We found them at Gasweld for $6/pair and they have revolutionised my kitchen life. Because they’re long gloves, I no longer burn myself on the oven racks as I pull loaves of bread off their baking stones, or steam-burn my wrists when I lift the lid off a boiling pot of jam.  They’re heat resistant, but not heatproof, which means they’ll get quite warm after a little while (especially if they get wet), but for the day to day “dealing with hot things” in the kitchen, they’re absolutely perfect.  We’ve had dark blue ones for a year now, and I’m about to replace them with the gorgeous red ones in the photo.  Best $12 we’ve spend in ages!

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Another reason welding gloves are cool…read more….