Saturday 28th May 2016 - Creme Patissiere ? maybe!

I'm just posting this so I don't lose the recipe - If the cake works I'll let you know....



Taken from http://www.treswell.plus.com/food/s/summer_fruit_tart.html

cheats pastry cream 

I first used this short cut when I had to fill 150 strawberry tartlets for a party. Purists will scream in horror — but why make life difficult for yourself? 

75ml double cream
200ml ready-made thick custard
Cointreau 

I'm experimenting with creme-patissiere-cooking-avoidance for a cake I'm thinking of baking. Looks ok in the picture.

Monday 16th May - Garlic Alert

Quick and Easy Garlic "Bread"

Make fairly thick toast
Cut a garlic clove in half across the middle
Rub the surface of the toast all over with the cut side of the garlic; be generous
Spread the toast with butter
Eat

You can make this into a tapas snack as follows;

before you start toasting the bread, skin, de-seed amd chop some very ripe tomatoes and put into a sieve to drain.

Make the "garlic bread" and spread it with the drained tomato, sprinkled with a litte salt and papper and torn fresh basil leaves.

Garlic Croutons

Pre-heat oven to about 165C (fan)
Cut thick slices of bread - it doesn't have to be too fresh.
Remove crusts and cut the slices into cubes.
Put the cubes into a bowl, sprinkle with salt, pepper, herbs, crushed garlic and virgin olive oil - about a desert spoon of oil per slice of bread.
Toss everything around so that all the cubes are coated.
Line a baking sheet or roasting tray with baking paper, spread the cubes out in a single layer, and bake for around 10 minutes. Set a timer - it is easy to let them burn.

Sunday 15th May 2016 - Biscuits

These are really very good. The recipe (and a batch of biscuits) was from a friend as a Christmas Present back in 2005.

It's in old money.

Melt together
3oz marg (I use butter)
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 table spoon milk

In another bowl, mix
3oz flour
1/2 teas bicarb (I cheat and just use self raising flour)
3oz poridge oats
3 oz sugar (soft brown is good)

Pour the melted ingredients into the dry ones, and mix together, forming a soft, squishy, slightly greasy dough.

Line two baking sheets with baking paper
Pinch off walnut-sized pieces of dough, roll into balls, flatten so that they are about 2 inches across, and place on baking sheets about 3 inches apart - they will spread. You should get around two dozen biscuits.

Bake at about 170C for around 20-25 minutes. They are very soft when you take them out of the oven, so let them cool for a minute or so before sliding them onto a cooling rack. The first lot, baked in the top oven, were paler, thinner, spread further and were slightly soft. I put less sugar in the second lot, because I was using up some flavoured oats which were already sweetened. I cooked them in the fan oven, and they were smaller and crunchy.

The picture is of the second batch - the first ones didn't last long enough to be photographed. And they've gone now. Time to make some more.

Sharp-eyed readers may notice that the beaker with my tea is the one that the sweet peas were growing in. I had my doubts as to its future usefulness after the sweet peas were finished with it, as it doesn't have a handle. However it works surprisingly well as a tea mug. If the beaker is cool enough to hold, then the tea is at drinking temperature. Time for another beakka.

Sunday 15th May - In and Out of the Garden

Not much of the "in" this weekend. Although it has been sunny, there has been a bitingly cold wind. Not even the lure of a Spitfire flying over the Bluebell Railway this afternoon could persuade us out of doors.

Last week, or maybe the week before - I am loosing track of time - we did great gardenings. I found the "grow your own" sweet pea gift set a few weeks ago and planted them, and to my amazement, they grew! I was delighted by them; the brave little seedlings pushing their way up into the light, reaching out. Every time I went into the kitchen I checked to see how they were getting on.

2nd May

4th May

Today

Yes, come to think of it, it was earlier this week that I planted them out. So far the

slugs haven't found them. Standing the pots on bricks seems to delay the slug attack.

And as these two planters are not on bricks, that's probably why half a petunia has been consumed. Just as soon as I post this, I shall go and find some bricks. It may be too late - I suspect the slugs lay some kind of secret trail once they have found their favourite food. Perhaps if I put them somewhere else in the garden I can hide them from the slugs.

Herbs are happening; chives about to flower, parsley looking hopeful, and one mint leaf in view.
The two tomato plants I got from church are outside now, and steadily working their way up the canes.

Back inside, the cyclamen that I bought back in November last year has decided to flower again! It has several buds under the leaves.

I so enjoyed watching the sweet peas growing, that I planted some mixed salad leaves just a few days ago. They have already started creeping through the earth. Amazing. Will I be able to bring myself to cut and eat the leaves once they are big enough?

Saturday 14th May - Early early mornings

The dawn chorus is just getting going at around 4 am. I tried to persuade myself that I was privileged to be awake at that to time hear it.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pasture_at_dawn-George_Inness-1891.jpg

Sleep was proving elusive. Now, I read this blog post recently

"You can tell a lot about a person by the music they listen to. Put your mp3 player, or whatever, on shuffle and list the first ten songs, and then tag 10 people. Rule: No skipping."

Their list of songs was meaningless to me. I hadn't heard of any of them.

And I'm not going to tag 10 people. But if you would like to have a go, you are welcome share the consequences in the comments. (That's two sentences in a row begun with conjunctions, heheheh)

Here's my list - and I'm very proud of having remembered it, as I didn't want to wake BB by switching on the light;

1. Samuel Goldburg and Schmuyle from "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Mussorgsky 
2.  Prelude and Fugue in C minor from "The Well-Tempered Clavier" by Bach, played on a harpsichord
3. The Lord's Prayer by Cladwell, sung by the choir of Tewsksbury Abbey, from their CD "Paternoster"
4. "Going Home", a traditional spiritual, sung by "Cantabile", a male vocal quartet, from the CD "Lullabies and Goodbyes"
5. Variation no 1 from "The Goldberg Variations" by JS Bach, played by Glen Gould on piano
6. "The Reel of Whirlie", tradidional Scottish tune, played by Lauren McColl, from her album "When Leaves Fall"
7. Paternoster, by Palestrina, sung by the choir of Tewsksbury Abbey from the same CD as The Lord's Prayer
8. "Wet and Windy", by Sarah Watts, from her Tutor Book "Red Hot Recorder". Surprisingly effective in spite of only using notes A and B.
9. Variation no 1 from "The Goldberg Variations" by JS Bach, played by Frederick Haas on harpsichord - well, that was a surprise!
10. "As Torrents in Summer" by Elgar, another surprise, "Cantabile" again, from their CD "Songs of Love and War 

At this point I switched the mp3 player off and mulled over the music I had been listening to - all very, very familiar except the two versions of the Lord's Prayer - I have listened to that CD quite a number of times but only a few of the tracks have made a lasting impression so far. 

I might try this again another night... but I am a little hesitant, because I remember how the first time ever that I borrowed my daughter's mp3 player for a long journey, I couldn't work out how to stop it from playing random bits of music. So a Debussy Etude was immediately followed by "I'm A Believer" from Shrek, and then maybe my ears would suddenly be filled with Mozart -  all a bit too sudden for me.  

Saturday 14th May - The Narrative of a Life

We had a tea party/reception to celebrate the life of my mother last Saturday. It was a good time, lots of friends and family getting together, some who had come to the funeral back in February, others who hadn't been able to come then.

Some of the "chat" was sharing memories, but a lot of the time was spent catching up with each other - which is just the sort of thing my mother would have enjoyed.

Although it was a cheerful and happy occasion, it was none-the-less emotionally tiring. As the weeks go by, I find that we are all putting together the separate pieces of the differing stories we have. My own relationship with my mother is characterised by the fact that it began forming when I was a baby, and that has coloured everything for the rest of my life. But my husband has only had an adult to adult relationship. Others knew her as a child, or as an older relative, or as a fun-loving member of the group of twenty-year-olds, all going to pubs and night clubs together back in the 1950s.

Assembling all these views and angles, encountering sudden surprises and insights, hearing "missing chapters" is fascinating stuff. In the end, we have to come to an acceptance of these differing narratives, melding them together to find the complex, creative, loving-and-giving person that she was, and has made us all to be in our turn.



http://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/albertine

 

Saturday 30th April - Grand Day Out

We went to Petworth - no reason in particular.

I needed to back some cheques, and we needed some fruit and veg, so going somewhere with the right kind of bank and a place to buy fruit and veg, seemed a good idea. Town was heaving so going somewhere else seemed a better choice.

And He wanted to go more than a couple of miles - it's alright for me, I go here there and everywhere, but He tends to be a bit more local during the week.

Banking the cheques took very little time, and it was too early for lunch, so we walked up hill, and past the church.

Now that's not the most attractive church I've ever seen. From a distance, the tower looks more like a water tower, and the building itself looks like an accretion of various extensions and add-ons built here and there over the years.



although from other angles it looks more conventional

 

This link will tell you EVERYTHING about the church. And it's where I copied the pictures from.

We carried on past, without going in, as there is a notice over the door of a building called the Coach House which I've always wanted to read, but when I've been caught in a traffic jam, I've never been able to stop at exactly the right place. There's a picture of it here. I should have taken a picture myself, but the owner was standing outside and I was all shy.

Carrying on down the lane, we found ourselves in the old cemetery, surrounded by houses crammed up against the boundary wall. At the back of the cemetery, the ground sloped sharply away to - quintessential West Sussex Countryside. There was something about the way the valley was formed, and the pathways and woods and scattered houses and green fields and blue sky and peace and quiet that made you want to just walk away, out of the town, out of your life, into somewhere else.

  

Even the footpath sign nearby seemed to indicate that we should just go, anywhere. Left, right, or away over the hill.

But we turned back, spent rather too long in the bookshop, and had lunch in The Cocoa Lounge, which serves good coffee (and chocolate, obviously) and delicious savoury quiche. The next challenge is to work out how to recreate their pastry.

Home, via the garden centre, because our shopping list also included a lawnmower (the old one is properly busticated) and some bedding plants.

The cabbage pagodas - which were beyond a joke - have been replaced with lobelia and petunia plants.

And then there was evening, and night time, and another day.

Friday 29th April - Small Grey Hawk

There's a hawk, maybe two, that hunts along Stane Street, the Roman Road linking Five Oaks and Billingshurst.

A few years ago I was stuck in slow moving traffic one morning while travelling out to a school (that was back in the days when I used to go as far over as Rogate). A hawk suddenly stooped onto its prey on the fairly narrow verge right by my car - whoosh. That blew my concentration for another mile or so.

Today I was coming back when I saw a hawk hovering just over the hedge beside the road, a mere ten feet high. Left a bit, right a bit, up a bit, down a bit... I wish I could have stopped to watch....

A bit searching on Google makes me think it was probably a kestrel - although they have brown plumage on their backs, their undersides appear to be mainly grey.

Also
"when hunting, the common kestrel characteristically hovers about 10–20 m (33–66 ft) above the ground, searching for prey, either by flying into the wind or by soaring using ridge lift. Like most birds of prey, common kestrels have keen eyesight enabling them to spot small prey from a distance. Once prey is sighted, the bird makes a short, steep dive toward the target. It can often be found hunting along the sides of roads and motorways." 

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_kestrel

Although the hovering picture is blurry, it corresponds very well to what I saw as I drove past.

female: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_kestrel

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_kestrel

Thursday 27th April 2016 - Naming Flowers

It has been annoying me ever since they suddenly appeared in the verges along the little lanes between the villages - drifts of delicately pale pink flowers

(now "delicately" can't be an adverb, even though it ends in "ly". It is describing the adjective "pale", no hang on, "pale" is surely an adjective for "pink" which is an adjective for "flowers"? How on earth do they expect 11-year-olds, especially those with English as a second language to work this out? It's beyond me, but then I am too old to have learned more than the very basics of grammar at school. I think I'll ask a teacher on Tuesday. It's going to bother me - but only a bit)

pale pink flowers, as I was saying. Various names were floating through my ind, but none of them sounded quite right. "Loostrife", I think, is always preceded by "Purple", and I suspect it is that tall weed flower that appears in the garden in Summer. "Lady's Bedstraw"? Maybe. (Should that be "Lady's" or "Ladies'?).

Google Purple Loostrife:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/10645/i-Lythrum-salicaria-i/Details

Lady's Bedstraw:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/7596/i-Galium-verum-i/Details

So, neither of these. But round at some friends on Thursday evening, I mentioned the flowers, and they came up with "Cuckoo-flower" and "Lady-smock"

https://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/94085/Cardamine-pratensis/Details

Their picture has white flowers rather than pink, but other pictures are much closer. 

I haven't heard any cuckoos this year - we used to hear them all the time in the woods behind our house, but not any more. I'm told that there is one in the woods in Cuckfield - just as well. Cuckfield without cuckoos wouldn't be Cuckfield.

The other flower that was bothering me is a little white bell-shaped, star-shaped one, with a small yellowy-orange centre. My mother said they used to call them "piss-pots" when she was a child, because that's what they look like (the flowers, not the children).

I told this story to my friends. "Stitchwort", they said in unison.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/may/24/stitchworts-alys-fowler

Having read this article, I'm sending off for some seeds to put in the shady woodland area (as we like to call it) at the bottom of the garden, to add to the weed collection that already grows there.