Going to the sales
I went to the sales this afternoon. To buy night clothes. These have become day clothes for me over the past six months. I needed pyjamas and a bed jacket – or as they are now known, a cardigown. I’d been haunting TK Maxx waiting for the prices to drop beneath the red sale sticker stage and today found a gorgeous Janet Reger teddy bear coloured bed jacket and a pair of Lady Selina pyjamas for just £7.00 each. Happiness. “Wow.” Said the lady at the cash desk. “These are great buys. If you are patient you can get some real bargains...
read moreCalves liver with a delicate Puy lentil sauce recipe
Years ago Danny and I had an unforgettable meal in a Soho restaurant. As far as I remember we were the only customers that evening but the restaurant was designed so that we sat in our own little section – the atmosphere was intimate and the food delicious. The star dish of the evening was calves liver with a sauce of puy lentils. The combination was astonishingly good. Melt in the mouth liver combined with the texture of the lentils was a perfect partnership. I’ve tried to recreate the lentil sauce many times since that memorable meal...
read moreGeo Watkins Traditional Brown Sauce. Treats for under £1.50
I’m a big fan of Geo Watkins’ sauces. I use the anchovy sauce and the mushroom ketchup a lot. A few weeks ago I spotted there was a new (probably just to me) sauce on the supermarket shelves – Traditional Brown Sauce. So I popped it in my basket to put in Danny’s Christmas stocking. Could this be the perfect relish for his famous weekend brunches? I’m not a brown sauce sort of girl. I grew up in a house where brown sauce didn’t make an appearance. When eventually tasted it – in a greasy spoon café with sticky plastic...
read moreThe Bloggies, biodynamic gardening and the latest Cottage Smallholder Competition
I spent a happy hour in bed this morning – nominating all my favourite blogs for the Bloggies 2010. This is the most prestigious annual blogging award in the world and it’s now in its tenth year. You need to nominate three blogs in each category that you choose so I made a list of the relevant URLs and pasted them in. Lots of fun and a good positive start to the day! Then the postman finally delivered my prize for the next Cottage Smallholder competition. As you know I’m using biodynamic techniques in the garden this year, and The...
read moreI’ve ordered my seeds
Finally I’ve completed ordering my seeds. Mostly from The Real Seed Company and Lunar Organics – who stock biodynamic organic seeds from Stormy Hall Biodynmic Farm. The vegetables varieties that I couldn’t find on these two sites I’ve ordered from my favourite traditional seed supplier Thompson and Morgan. If you do go down the Thompson and Morgan route it’s worth remembering that they give a 10% discount code for your next order with confirmation of your order. So it’s worth buying a small amount and then using the discount...
read moreAnd the winner is….
Our competition naming the late arrivals at the Chef’s and Gardener’s Ball closed at midnight last night. I’ve really enjoyed reading the entries for this competition. The Min Pins got quite concerned as I sat in bed roaring with laughter. They scrambled out from under the duvet curious to see what was going on. Laughter has drifted across from The Rat Room too. There were some great entries but the winner just has to be Brightsprite – not just the quantity of entries but the quality. In particular I cried tears of laughter...
read moreMemories of snow
As long as I don’t have to drive in it, I love the snow. I still get excited when I see the first flakes falling. Snow conjures up so many memories, like the time ‘a bigger boy’ put a snow ball down my neck. I can still feel the dreadful chill as it slowly slid down beneath my vest and lodged in my waistband. Longing to rip off my snow suit and remove the chilly block but not wanting to look foolish I let it thaw against my skin. At boarding school as a teenager when we got up at dawn to make a huge snowball. We blocked the drive so...
read moreSlow Cooker Chef: Warming Winter Mushroom Soup Recipe
Everyone always says that good soup needs a really great stock. Sometimes I simmer bones for stock in the slow cooker and years ago Fred Fitzpatrick used to give me beef bones which I roasted and then bubbled gently for hours to get a good dark tasty stock. But recently I’ve gone back to using stock cubes out of laziness. This week I decided to experiment with leftovers. We had two meals from the game casserole and were left with a ladle of gravy (about 6 tablespoons) with a few bits of meat and veg. Danny had picked up a large box of...
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