Yes that’s two nights post in a row, mainly due to the wonders of Jon’s I-phone as he takes the pictures, eats the subject and then sends it to me without leaving the kitchen table. Hey Ho the wonders of technology!

Tonight’s delight was Courgette and Haloumi friters with a Guacamole Salad, both inspired by Alice Hart recipes, but adapted to whatever I have in the fridge.

Take 3 courgettes, grate, salt and squeeze out as much excess moisture as you can, add half a red chilli finely chopped (thanks Alan), a finely chopped red onion,1/3 pack of haloumi grated, 2 eggs and about 3-4 oz of rice flour. Fry spoonfuls in olive oil until nice and crispy brown, keep warm. Make a dressing of zest and juice of 1 lemon, good glug of olive oil, teaspoon of honey, 1/2 teaspoon of whole grain mustard, black pepper (do I have to say freshly ground?)  whisk together. Once fritters have cooked, slice and fry the remaining haloumi and then stack between the courgette fritters interspersing it with rocket and the dressing, drizzle stack with remaining dressing and enjoy.

The original recipe is made with carrot and is fab, but I’m now at the stage of playing with it, I have in mind making it with swede with an orange dressing and sweet potato with Feta cheese and a lime dressing. Blue cheese and leek seem quite tempting too…the variations seem infinite,

Toothache is still a pain however the homemade blackberry wine has dulled the ache a bit, who said medicine needs to taste foul to do you good?

Had a fab meal this weekend at the Modern Pantry in London in celebration of Duncan’s Birthday – many happy returns. For starters we had a salad of spiced red wine poached salsify, comice pear, Childwickbury (cheese), sumac toasted quinoa. For main course we had Lemon roast fennel & smoked ricotta inari (tofu)pockets deep fried, sauted summer Savoy cabbage & ceps, tomato & tonka bean puree. After that we I squeezed in a Chocolate liquorice delice, cocoa chilli wafer, candied pink grapefruit, whipped cream. Everything was unusual, unexpected and delicious, the wine flowed freely the service was friendly and discrete and the company was great – a lovely evening thank you very much. We were also very appreciative of Jon’s mum who came and took care of the children while we gadded about London for the day and held them at bay for the next day, until we recovered from getting in at 3 am.

The cheese was procured on our recent visit to the Hawes Dairy over half term. On a rainy and wind swept day we spent an interesting hour or so finding out how the cheese is made and the history of the dairy itself. Best of all was the tasting session in the shop after which we staggered out with over a kilo of  ”cracking cheese Grommit”! I will have another go at making cheese, I was watching very carefully and think I know what to do. Maybe a project for over Christmas?

Our trip over half term was intended as a celebration of 25 years of being together, I was angling for a fortnight in Italy without the kids (well deserved I thought) but settled for 2 nights in Morecambe in November! The intention was to eat, explore and walk in the Lake Districtand Yorkshire Dales, sadly the weather was rather against us so there was more eating and exploring between the showers than actual walking. We drank some amazing beer with Wensleydale toasties at a real old fashioned pub, ate some fantastic Thai food at MacThai’s (really rubbish name) in Morecambe and found the oldest sweet shop in Britain (maybe that explains the root canal!) which gave lot’s of free samples much to the enjoyment of the children. Along with a few afternoon Teas, some hearty soups and yummy pies my waist is suffering. Note to self – I must do something before Christmas – like stop eating.

I’ve had a really good cookbook out of the library a couple of times and as the local library is shut down for refurb until January I took it out for a longer stay. It’s called Saha – a chef’s journey through Lebanon and Syria, it’s full of amazing recipes, gorgeous pictures and interesting stories. I was also given Yotam’s Jerusalem so culinary speaking we’ve been holidaying in the Middle East quite alot, this is great as the children join in the making and eating of these feasts very enthusiastically.

If memory serves me correctly this little lot was, cheese borek, hummous with cummin, fattoush (a chopped salad with bread, radish, onion etc with a yoghurt dressing), manoushi bread with za’atar, a burghul and roasted veg dish and last but not least courgette fritters. the fattoush was a real hit with the boys fighting over who would finish it – yes that’s boys fighting for salad!!! I will include the recipe as Jo keeps asking.

Fattoush

2 toasted pittas torn into pieces

2 large tomatoes cut into chunks

about 10 radishes sliced

half a cucumber cut into chunks

couple of chopped spring onions

small handful of mint and parsley chopped

2 crushed cloves of garlic

juice of one large lemon

large dash of white wine vinegar

salt & pepper

an equal mix of yoghurt and milk sufficient to coat but not drown the salad.

MIX EVERYTHING TOGETHER ALLOW TO MINGLE FOR A BIT, TASTE AND ADJUST SEASONING, SPRINKLE WITH SUMAC AND SERVE YOURSELF BEFORE THE BOYS!

Tonight we had a root vegetable and chestnut crumble – the result of a foraging trip on Sunday – and very tasty it was too.

However, in my fabric stash I found a beautiful piece of green wool that my dear friend Tina gave me. Tina taught me to sew and had very high standards, I spent the first term of her lessons unpicking everything I made, but I knew I wasn’t too bad when after two years she asked me to help her finish a jacket for herself. Tina sadly died earlier this year and I never sit at my sewing machine without thinking of her and the skills she passed on to me, I love the fact I have a connection with her still.

Well the skirt turned out really nicely and has been much admired, I wore it to a job interview (my first in nearly 20 years) and got the job, maybe it boosted my confidence. 

The gingerbread house was constructed this afternoon, the children were quite excited by  this as a couple of years ago I had baked all the gingerbread for one but retired to bed for the afternoon and a friend Ian stepped into the breach. Much fun was had trying to get the thing to stick together and hold in place as it dried, it’s much trickier than it looks, and the stuff seems to distort in the oven no matter how carefully and cut it out and transfer it to tray and cooling rack. Let’s just say I’m glad it’s not my Christmas accommodation, but it was fun, especially eating all the sweets.

This years Christmas cake has gone “au natural” as the icing is always too sickly so instead it’s just marzipan flashed under the grill to give some colour. If you don’t really like shop bought marzipan I really would recommend having a go at making your own, it bears very little resemblance to the yellow putty flavored with almond essence masquerading as marzipan. I also made some lovely almond macaroons with the egg whites left over from the marzipan which I drizzled with dark chocolate which have elicited groans of pleasure (not just from me) but if only I could find rice paper they would be perfect.

We had a visit to the Chinese Supermarket on Wednesday, I think I could spend at least a day in here, reading all the labels, trying to work out what everything was and just admiring the beautiful packaging. It’s amazing just how different our cuisines are, some of the things I just couldn’t work out what they could possibly be used for but I did come away with a basket full and we had a tasty stir fry of pak choi with tofu that evening.

Really enjoying being able to open the jars and bottles of things I’ve made over the year and squirreled away for Christmas, the last jar of Strawberry Jam was broached this morning along with the first jar of Sloe Gin Jelly, both brought cheer to a dull December, a little taste of summer and memories of walking back from Loe Bar Beach and collecting pounds of Sloes!

It’s more than just food.

The testament to these handmade offerings is that the school secretary still has in her office a salt-dough star given by GB when he was in reception (5 years ago) and our next door neighbour has a pile of -now curling- butterflies Mip made four years ago. That’s why it’s important to do these things, it shows we care and people really appreciate that. Giving isn’t about money.

We all had a trip of some kind on the water, the “Scone Master” demonstrating that he’s not bad with a Topper either, he was the only true “Sailor” we saw today. We rambled and enjoyed the country side and wildlife – excellent sighting of two Buzzard directly over the picnic table, and a Lapwing by the shore – and managed to collect sloes for another batch of gin.

All in all, a good day.

The pear cider got a decant too and it’s clearing really nicely, I wonder what that will taste like? It’s a bit of an experiment.

Talking of experiments, I brought home a bag of ripe Persimmons and decided to turn them into jam. I couldn’t find a recipe so I used one for Peach Jam and to make it a bit special I flavoured it with sweet bay and cinnamon, the “smallest one” has made some beautiful hand made labels for the jars with pretty coloured spirals on them. Maybe they’ll make nice Christmas presents?

Being brought up in the country, as children we knew at an early age where milk came from, how a lamb was born and that vegetables and fruit grew in the garden. At home and at my grandparents I could see a wide range of things growing, that if we were lucky, we would get to eat in some form or other.

Having said that, we were not very rural, or indeed very “Good Life”, just dabbling really, but looking back it was part of discovering where food came from and it was good to know that we were eating something we had grown ourselves.

Move on thirty years and I am surprised occasionally at what my children say about the origins of certain things. Seasons have merged into one with pretty obscure fruits being imported by supermarkets nearly all year round and we have an abundance of choice( if not quality), so its easy to see why the garden of yesterday is the shop of today.

So to stop the odd strange comment about how thing’s grow or squeamishness of certain garden practices, this year we had a go at growing a few things in the garden. We had a success with tomato ( pot and beds ) which were much liked, so we did these, I fancied Garlic and Runner Beans, we also tried again at Carrots and another favourite of mine Rocket.

We had great success with the Garlic, with two bulbs growing into over 40 small to medium bulbs ( perhaps a little to closely planted together ), the Runner Beans again were a huge winner, but as no one other than me and my youngest liking them, we enjoyed a few raw each evening on my return from work. Some she liked eating, some she liked to dissect to find the shiny and very pink beans.

The tomato were okay, not a huge crop, but enough to stop us needing to buy many and the ones we had were wonderful roasted, so sweet. Just a little explosive when cut or chewed!

Rocket I guess is an adult taste possibly, maybe a little peppery for the children, but fresh from the garden with some sweet tomatoes and balsamic vinegar they were great and every mouthful took me back to Italy!

Carrots were not so good, with only a very few actually making it out of the seedling stage, and those that did were very small. Tasty, just too few of them.

We scrumped ( with permission ) the apples and plumbs from the trees that reach over our hedge and went out a few times to pick blackberries. As children we did this lots in September time, and in some Northern European countries, children are still given the day off school to collect berries to store up for use through the Winter, and had some great apple and blackberry crumbles, wonderful plum tarts and a whole lot of fun, well at least until someone discovered the maggots (extra goodness ? ).

So what else did we get out of the experience, it was great seeing the runner beans grow larger by the day, especially when they got bigger than us. The garlic has saved a few pounds certainly and should see us through till spring and the tomato and beans became the garden sweet shop when Mum wasn’t around to tell us off.

Do we eat more vegetables? Not really, the salad adverse members of the family although vaguely interested, still think lettuce is a garnish and something to leave to one side, but even they gained some thing from it and a little knowledge about where foods come from was gained.

So next year we shall be doing it again, hopefully with some more help from the smaller of us. Garlic, beans, tomato at the very least and hopefully over winter the gardening seed websites and the “Grow Your Own Vegetables” book by Joy Larkcom will also prompt some more ideas.

I quite fancy having a go at Sloe Gin, so its off out soon I think…