New paintings and regular art updates.
Two years ago we were having regular hedgehog visitors to our garden, but this year we haven’t seen any. We live next to a busy road and I worry about them. There was also an area of wasteland next to our garden that had brambles growing on it. That was cleared by a builder who removed all the vegetation from it, our garden is quite wild but there was old bits of wood to hide under. I think we will start leaving food out for them to forage again.
It’s September, obviously time
For Christmas mince pies!
The Winter Solstice
Is three months away!
How many sweet desserts
Will be eaten before the season?
We are in mists and mellow fruitfulness
Autumn just begun, not winter yet…
Not Angels and jingle bells!
Eat by date?
Best before 7th October!
Will be spoiled by Christmas!
Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
I guess the worst thing I ever did was to burn a cake! I took the risk of making it up as I went along, but I didn’t think of the oven temperature. I set it at has mark 7 and cooked it for an hour. More than slightly crispy even after I cut the outside layer off.
That’s why it’s good to follow a recipe. You can learn from your mistakes. But once you have the basic idea THEN you can add your own twist. But remember not to over spice things. Especially if you know nothing about chilli and the varying types that you can get. I also didn’t know about deseeding them and not to touch your eyes if you have chilli on your hands!
One meal I wasn’t responsible for was a chicken casserole. I left my hubby detailed instructions and friends came round to enjoy the meal (not). I didn’t realise that he would translate my clove of garlic into a BULB of garlic. Not a pleasant meal!
What are your favorite types of foods?
I am not allowed much of this delectable delicacy. But it has to be my favourite. I usually say trifle but that’s like a squidgy layered cake. I like individual cakes, chocolate éclairs, apple turnovers, Eccles cakes.
I could list more. I can make a good Victoria sponge, but I would use sweetener instead of sugar to try and make it healthier. I sometimes make marbled cake, that’s where you make the cake batter up then add cocoa or chocolate to half of it. You then gently stir the two halves together so that the colours mingle but don’t mix. When it’s cooked you can see a pattern of marbling in it.
To be honest I didn’t know I knew so much about cake, but it’s not an obsession. I just enjoy it as a treat.
Some years the pears set, the tree is well watered and we get many pears off our tree. But it’s looking sad as the wind blew it over at an angle a few years ago. We had to support it on blocks of wood.
As the branches are horizontal that usually encourages fruiting. But both the pear and cherry trees flowered but we’re caught by late frosts and then strong winds that blew the blossom off. The cherry only managed half it’s crop and now the pear is even worse. A few pears had a fungal infection and had to be thrown away, you can’t compost them as it encourages the fungus to spread. So we only have a few pears to show this year. Here are three. The little one is going squishy so it’s getting thrown out.
Pears are funny, they stay unripe for ages. Then seem to ripen overnight. We will just eat these, as there is not enough for a chutney.
Tea, what’s in the fridge? Vegetable quiche, tomatoes, gherkin, silver skin pickled onion, yellow pepper, light mayonnaise and….. Left over black cherries. Finger painting using the Sketchbook app on my phone.
Weird thing! The gin my hubby bought me has infusions of cardamon, turmeric and dried mandarin… I just wanted a normal London dry gin. It had ice in it with tonic water, but that melted in the heat.
He also bought golden milk ice cream which also has Tumeric in it. Why? What is the point? I would not eat it, I told him I did not want any. CURRY flavoured ice-cream, I love curry, but not as a dessert.
Flavours are personal, if you’ve ever tried something it’s good to give it a try but not turmeric. No.
I just wanted to make something for tea and I had a small pork pie to use up. I decided to put a small salad together.
We had a couple of very ripe plums in the fruit bowl so I chopped them up. To this I added a large tomato and some cucumber also chopped.
I have new jars of silvers skin pickled onions and baby gherkins. I really struggle to get the lids off. I saw online a way of releasing them. You tap the side edge of the lid with a wooden spoon. Tap and turn the jar until you hear air suck into the jar with a pop! It actually works, just don’t bash to hard!
So I added sliced gherkin and little pickled onions. Then I drizzled light mayonnaise over the top.
It was nice to eat a slightly sweet salad with natural fruit instead of sweetened pickled onions which I really don’t like.
A Marghereta pizza for tea was a bit boring, so I got some leftovers out of the fridge…
1 large sliced mushroom
1/8 of a large onion
A couple of pieces of garlic sausage
2 slices of ham
A 1/4 of a red chilli (deseeded)
A few green olives sliced up
Some leftover hard cheese
Chop it up, add it to the top.
Cook on gas mark 7 for 15 minutes instead of 11 which was the time for the normal pizza so that everything was piping hot.
Added gherkins which were left in a jar to add a bit of sour taste (umami?) to the meal.
I just looked out of the window as a squirrel came flying past! I just saw the fluffy tail as it jumped from the fence onto one of the hanging basket brackets, then up onto the kitchen roof.
Why is it visiting us? WALNUTS! We have a walnut tree that we planted 25 years ago and it GREW. It must be 60 to 80 feet high. For years now we know when autumn is getting here when the squirrels arrive. Then they go on the a rampage and bury the walnuts. So sooner or later we have baby walnut saplings springing up all over the place. I don’t begrudge the squirrels, we have said we want a wildlife garden, and it is.
Mallaband-Brown