A couple of weeks ago I was cycling to work, I needed to be there early and everything was very frosty. As I came over the bridge I couldn't help but stop and take a few photos of the spiders webs encased in frost, I never did get to work that early in the end.

Hurrah!

Ok so this is very geeky but these are my cells that I have got to express green fluorescent protein! (The red is actin - the cytoskeleton- and the blue are the nuclei). The top one is of three oral keratinocytes, gum cells and the bottom one is a neuroblastoma cell, a brain cell!

Dawn

Its been like this every day this week - very beautiful!

We're Jammin'

and jellying.....
I have been busy preserving - I managed to get some medlars and quinces from the farmers market and made some jellies, and also used up the end of the free damsons and mini quinces making jam and quince cheese. The medlars are quite interesting - I'd never used them before but they were quite popular several hundred years ago! The interesting thing is that you have to let them 'blet' of rot before you can use them - so I left mine under several rather ripe bananas for a week or so to get them all soft and brown. Then I stewed them for about an hour until they were pulpy and strained the juice. Finally for evey 600ml I added 450g sugar and boiled up the jelly until it set on a plate. This didn't take long as they're packed full of pectin! The other jellies were just the same and the jam, with help from Fran, Katie and Kira soon coated nearly every surafce of my very sticky kitchen after an evening of stirring and testing! The quince cheese is curing in the airing cupboard so more on that later.




These are medlars before bletting