New paintings and regular art updates.
Not been out, not felt well
Achy bones, tummy pain
Been asleep, tired all day
All my foods been thrown away
I feel like s***, I want to cry
I’m fed up and not feeling spry
I’ve done my best but not been blest
With good health? No!
So I’m stressed!
My pear tree didn’t set any pears this year. I think it was in a sulk because my hubby passed away and I think I neglected it. He used to water the garden for hours but I can’t get the hose pipe round into the main garden.
Moving forward, I’ve been getting help trying to trim back the overgrowth. I still have tall trees but some of the lower branches have been cut to allow more light in. How will it progress? I’m hoping for a wildlife garden but with a few brighter plants to cheer it up, (and plenty of pears again)
Decided to paint a pumpkin today. Acrylic on canvas. It’s for a food festival that’s coming up, our art group is doing pictures of vegetables and fruit to illustrate the theme
This took about 2 hours to paint. It’s a little bigger than A4. It’s sort of a mixture of halloween and nature.
What food would you say is your specialty?
My trifle is based on my mother’s and her mother’s recipe.
It consists of a fruit and jelly bottom layer with a touch of sherry or port.
Middle layer? Blancmange (not custard). Either the same flavour as the jelly or something different like chocolate.
Top layer, a decent amount of whipped double cream, with possibly cherries, strawberries or raspberries on top or grated chocolate.
You can’t really go wrong with that X. Usually I make it at Christmas or for birthdays.
How do you pronounce Scone?
Is it sk-own, or scon?
Each is used in the UK
How do you serve it?
With Jam
With Cream
With Butter?
Or all three?
Etiquette matters!
Cream first
Jam first?
You can tell if someone
is from Cornwall or Devon.
I can never remember
which way they choose?
Just they do opposites
My way is butter, then jam
and cream on top. Yum
And with hot chocolate.
Although it should be tea to drink…
Dilemma time!
Tasty lunch, doubled portion (just flipped photos). It was very tasty with a fresh salad. I was taken out for lunch by my friends and I really enjoyed it. It’s been a while since I went out and socialised. I’ve been a bit up and down recently. This was at the Glebe pub in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent.
Tasty 1970s food before real foreign food was a thing. I particularly liked the chow mein vesta made (I don’t know if it’s still manufactured).
This is my faulty memory, I thought it came with prawn crackers but when I saw the photo I remembered they had a little packet of thin strips of noodles that you had to fry so they puffed up into little squiggles of crispy noodles. I’m guessing that the food was cooked In pans, certainly it was before microwaves, and it was unusual to have anything like this (except dehydrated mashed potato). I remember the jingle ” for mash, get smash!”
Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.
One day hubby turned up from his work at a pottery with a very large casserole pot. He’d bought it and wanted to cook for friends.
We decided to make a chicken casserole and invite a few friends over. I was working that evening so he said he would prepare it. I told him what to do, put the chicken in the casserole pot, add carrots, potatoes, onion and a clove of garlic.
I came home to hubby and our guests. He opened a bottle of wine and we decided to serve the food. Unfortunately the smell of very pungent garlic wafted from the pot. My hubby had put in a whole bulb of garlic in by mistake. We were only young and were not used to the strength of the garlic. The flavour was too strong for us. I think we ended up having fish and chips from the chips shop.
What are your favorite types of foods?
Our mother would take us out for meals occasionally when we were children. Sometimes it was Indian, but mostly Chinese. I like the flavours, the textures, the combination of ingredients. Duck with hoisin sauce, chicken chow mein, special fried rice, beef with spring onions and black bean sauce. All kinds of other things. I just like it, although I have read that the Chinese food in the UK is not authentic.
Mom got us to use chop sticks which added to the unique and special feeling it was to eat out. In those days the only other form of Chinese food was Vesta Chow mein which came in a box and you added hot water to it I think, and fried prawn crackers. But they were good memories.
With a cup of tea.
Just back from Llandudno in Wales where my sister bought me a Welsh fruit loaf for a treat. I just had a couple of slices with some butter and a cup of tea. Very nice. Apparently it’s lost favour with younger people but I’d urge you to try it.
Wikipedia says :
History:
Bara Brith derived its name from the Welsh language, bara meaning bread and brith translating as speckled. It was traditionally made in farmhouses by adding fruit, sugar and spices to the basic bread dough to make a sweet treat for special occasions. It has subsequently been used as a colloquialism—to “over spice the Bara Brith” means to do something to excess.
We got two loaves from a little tea and cake shop in Llandudno.
Mallaband-Brown