Apple Juice Wine Spritzer

As the place that I have moved to is  experiencing Internet connectivity issues, my ability to blog will be similarly limited. Thankfully, I have my smartphone with me, so I am still able to publish some content.
I was recently present at a gathering of final year students prior to their leaving the UK for good. One of the drinks that we had was lychee juice served with white wine. It was very refreshing, the sweetness of the lychee balancing out the tartness of the wine.
Once I had settled down here I decided to try doing something similar with the Sainsbury's Basics range. Unfortunately the closest I can get to something as sweet as lychees was apple juice. The resulting drink was okay, though nothing like what I had that evening. Sainsbury's recently raised the price of their Basics wines to £3.39, which makes it very difficult to justify buying it even for cooking. If you cannot bear to use good wine as a drinks mixer though, Basics would be a viable alternative.

Vinegar as a Surface Cleaner

As we wind things down at our current location, to minimise the number of things we have to take over to the new flat, we are trying to give away, use or otherwise get rid of as many things as we can. I still had a bottle of Basics vinegar left from a long time ago, and since we have to clean the kitchen in preparation for handing the premises over to our landlord, I thought of using the rest of the vinegar to clean parts of the kitchen sink.

Vinegar is essentially ethanoic acid. As such, it can act as a gentle cleaning agent and disinfectant for most surfaces and would be suitable for light cleaning duties, if you do not mind the smell. As an acid, it should also be able to react with limescale and make it easier to remove.

The photos above show a part of the sink before and after I have cleaned it with Basics vinegar. As you can imagine, it's okay, though it isn't great. Given how cheap Sainsbury's Basics Vinegar is though, it might be worth knowing this, especially if you happen to need to clean something when you have run out of your usual surface cleaners and are unable to get to the shops.


[This post is dedicated to my flatmates who have recently gone back home for good. All the best for the future!]