October

October, bare fields and low slanting sun,

shiny conkers fresh out of their cases,

 and berries in the hedges.

A few years back I shared my method of making rose-hip syrup. It seems to be a good year for hips this year.

Also blackberries,

haws

and a bumper crop of sloes - good for sloe gin.

The ivy flowers buzzing with insects, an important source of nectar at the end of the season,

and here the leaves are starting to turn.

A perfect, quiet October day.

A day in my life

Wednesday 13th February

Today has been cold and grey with the temperature staying around freezing all day. My fingers hurt with the cold as I hung the washing on the line this morning but its worth it to dry the laundry outside all year round.

Although it has been cold there are signs that winter is moving on, some fresh Aquiliga leaves

and buds and flowers on the coloured primroses. As soon as the flowers appear the pigeons peck at them leaving just the flowers stalks and a few scraps of petals which seems a shame, they are very pretty if they are left alone.

Wednesday is a home day for me and this week eldest son had a day off as well. Our plan was to go shopping and then visit the snowdrops but the weather was against us and we came home after shopping. Last year the snowdrops at Welford Place were spectacular, I am hoping for nice weather to go again this year.

We arrived home early afternoon and the washing was dry. I just finished bringing it into the house when it started snowing and raining at the same time.

There was a slight white covering in the garden but I am pleased to say it didn't stay long.

During the rest of the afternoon I did housework, ironing and made the dinner.

I made a large bowl of vegetable chilli with onions, carrots, courgette, mushrooms, garlic, chilli, red lentils, kidney beans, vegetable stock and passata. We're not as greedy as this looks, this is for two days. Today we had chilli with brown basmati rice, salad and tortilla chips. Tomorrow the remaining chilli will be a filling for jacket potatoes, a nice easy meal when I come home from work.

This evening I have been knitting and chatting on the telephone with my parents and with youngest son. All is well. Now all I need to do is pack my lunch for work  tomorrow and enjoy a nice bath.

Goodnight.

lunch

I realise that blogging about what you ate for lunch is considered a bit boring, but I liked the colours of my lunches at work this week and took photographs to help me remember what I made.

I take lunch to work on Thursday and Friday so on Wednesday I base our evening meal around some sort of grain which will also form the base of my salad for the following days. This week the grain was black rice to which I added borlotti beans and pomegranate.

The dressing was tahini lemon dressing.
1 tsp tahini
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp olive oil
0.5 tsp maple syrup

I added a salad of mixed leaves and sprinkled pumpkin seeds on the top - simple, nutritious and full of flavour and colour.

Elderberry Cordial

Back in June I made elderflower cordial for the first time. It seemed to capture summer in a bottle.

Elderberry cordial which I have been making for years definitely tastes more of autumn and winter.

This is how I make it.

There are just three ingredients, elderberries, cloves and sugar.

I use about 20-30 clean dry elderberry heads.  Shake to remove any insects, earwigs seem to hide in mine.
Remove the berries from the stalks using a fork. I wear kitchen gloves for this bit as elderberry juice is a dye and will stain fingers purple! The stalks and any unripened berries can be toxic so it is important to use ripe fruit and to take time over this stage.

Place in a large saucepan and just cover with water.

Bring the mixture to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for thirty minutes. I use a wooden spoon to squash the berries against the side of the pan to release as much juice as possible.

Strain the juice through a jelly bag.

To each pint of juice add one pound of sugar (454g) and 10 cloves.  I obtained three quarters of a pint of juice so added 12 oz of sugar and eight cloves. Warm the mixture slowly, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Increase the heat and boil the mixture for ten minutes.

The mixture can be allowed to cool and then poured into sterilised bottles or if like me you don't want to spend any more money on fancy bottles you can use jam jars.

I made two jars of cordial from approximately 25 heads of elderberries.

Elderberries are said to have some health benefits, particularly to help the body recover from viral infections. I take a dessert spoonful twice a day if I have a cold or the syrup can be diluted with hot water to make a warming drink.

Elderflower cordial recipe

For Heather who asked about the recipe for elderflower cordial.

I followed this recipe in Red magazine.  I made half the quantity as it contains a lot of sugar and is very sweet - not a very healthy drink but a lovely summer treat.

Chutney

The green tomato chutney is now made and the jars are waiting in the cool of the garage for a couple of months for the flavours to mellow, though I'm already looking forward to eating some.

In my preserving year, bottling rhubarb is always the first task and making chutney is the last. Next year will be different as I think I will be giving up my allotment. It is a hard decision to make after having it for 14 years but I haven't been able to do much over the last few months and although I hope to be recovered soon I don't want to risk hurting myself again next year. I will miss the rhubarb, and the soft fruit most.

I have a smallish garden and won't be able to grow many vegetables but I do have an apple tree and can grow tomatoes in pots on the patio so even without the allotment I will be able to preserve some home-grown food, as chutney.

Plums and tomatoes

I haven't been able to do much gardening this summer but I still have something to harvest. At the moment it is plums and tomatoes.

Four years ago I planted a small plum tree "Marjorie's Seedling" in the front garden. I have picked a few plums each year but this year the tree was very productive and I harvested almost 10 pounds of fruit. These have a lovely flavour fresh or stewed. Plums are now thought to be a "superfood" so as well as tasting good they have health benefits too.

My tomatoes have suffered from blossom end rot this year and many of the fruits have been affected but some plants have yielded perfect fruits. I have nine plants in pots on the patio. They get only a few hours sun a day and so ripen fairly late in the summer but in the last week many have ripened. As well as enjoying them raw I have made a tomato "sauce" in the oven.

I mixed chopped tomatoes and shallots with olive oil and black pepper and then baked the mixture in a medium oven for about an hour. Cooking tomatoes increases the bioavailability of some of the nutrients so this simple pasta sauce tastes good and has health benefits

I have been getting a bit grumpy about not being able to garden this summer, I am still very stiff and unable to bend enough to reach the soil, but this harvest from the garden has made me feel a lot better

Curry recipe

I promised to write down my curry recipe after mentioning potato and chick pea curry in my last post.

Although I like to make an effort and follow recipes occasionally, most of my day to day cooking is very simply assembling the ingredients I have to hand to make something tasty.  I mention this because my "curry" is nothing like a traditional curry.

Potato, chickpea and spinach curry.

This is the quantity I made last weekend, would serve three to four.

• one onion, chopped
• curry paste
• potatoes (about two medium ones per person - more for teenagers!)
• one or two cans chickpeas 
• half jar of passata = 250 ml
• individual sachet of creamed coconut = 50g
• couple of handfuls of spinach roughly chopped 

First,  gently fry the chopped onion in olive oil for around five minutes until soft then stir in the curry paste and cook for a further couple of minutes. The amount of curry paste depends on how you like your curry, my husband is not that keen on spicy food so I use Korma curry paste which I think goes well with the coconut.

While the onions are cooking, cook the peeled chopped potatoes in salted water until beginning to soften.  Partly cooking the potatoes before adding them to the curry cuts down on the total cooking time.

Add the potatoes and the passata to the onions and simmer for about ten minutes.

Next add the sachet of coconut and continue cooking for five minutes until the coconut has melted. Stir well.  The sauce should now have thickened.

I add the spinach at the end and continue cooking for just a few minutes so its wilted rather than stewed to death!

That it.  We like to eat Nan bread with ours to make sure we can get at every last bit of sauce.

I adapt this basic recipe quite a bit.  This is the winter version.  I've made it with butternut squash in the autumn and with courgettes and peppers in the summer.  It is very economical, this time I bought everything except the spinach beet but it still worked out at only about £2.50 or just under 70p per person.  

Mussel soup

February is an in between sort of month.  January is the start of the year and feels as if it is a time to make changes and New Years resolutions and March is the start of spring with the countryside bursting into life.  February is in the middle, winter is passing but hasn't finished yet and spring hasn't really started, perhaps February should be marked out as a month just to enjoy as it is without making any great plans.

One good thing about February,along with all the winter months, is that it has an "r" in the month (two "r"s in fact) which means that we can eat mussels.

The reason behind the "r in the month" rule is mainly that mussels spawn in the warmer months of the year and avoiding eating them at this time helps to keep stocks replenished.  Also after spawning they have lower body weight and so there is less meat content per number of mussels.  There is also a link between warmer water temperatures and higher levels of bacterial contamination of mussels but if clean unbroken mussels are correctly prepared there is little danger to health.

With so much overfishing there are many species of fish that we should not be eating but mussels are plentiful and can be eaten with a clear conscience especially if they are rope grown, dredging the seabed is not good for wildlife.

We love mussels and I usually cook them very simply in white wine or cider with shallots but this weekend while shopping in Waitrose I noticed that the February issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated has a recipe for Carrot and Mussel soup. I did think twice about trying this recipe as carrots and mussels are a combination that I would never have thought of, but its always a good idea to try something new and I followed the recipe to the letter - its brilliant.

I looked on the website to try to link to the recipe but the featured magazine is still January's, I'll check back in a couple of days and see if it is updated and I can find the recipe.

Until then a brief summary ....

The mussels are steamed in white wine and left until cool enough to handle.  Two thirds are removed from their shells and these together with the remaining ones in shell are put aside to add to the soup.

Finely sliced carrots and shallots are cooked in a covered pan with stock, unsalted butter and a teaspoon each of salt and sugar

The liquid from cooking the mussels is added to the carrot mixture together with more stock and creme fraiche and brought to the boil. The mussels are then added to heat through.

The finished soup looked lovely although mine doesn't look as good as the photo on the front of the magazine.  

It is a lovely creamy soup and the carrots make it quite sweet.  I still like my mussels cooked simply in cider with lots of crusty granary bread to soak up the juices but I will be cooking this recipe again.  

So, if you find yourself in Waitrose looking at the photo on the front of the magazine and wondering if mussels really do go with carrots, try it and see, somewhat surprisingly the combination works very well. A perfect supper for the "r" months.

Parsnip soup

In my last post I mentioned that I was looking for ideas for recipes using parsnips as mine have done really well this year.  Moonroot left a comment suggesting soup which is a brilliant idea as I often have soup for lunch in the winter.  After a quick google search I chose this recipe as a starting point.

I changed it a bit to use ingredients I already had and ended up simmering (in enough water to just cover)

• four parsnips
• two leeks
• two crushed cloves of garlic
• one teaspoon curry paste - korma
• half teaspoon vegetable bouillon powder
• about a tablespoons of olive oil

It took about 15 minutes to be soft enough to blend using my stick blender. I had to add more water as I blended to get a good consistency.

I have to say that the colour of the soup isn't the most appetising but the flavour is brilliant.  I have plenty left so lunch is sorted for a couple of days.  It also pleases me that it is very economical.  Since my leeks and parsnips were grown from saved seed they cost me virtually nothing so the cost must work out at less than 10p a mug.  The ingredients above made enough for four portions.

Thank you moonroot for the suggestion.

Chutney

I have never made chutney before but this year an excess of green tomatoes prompted me to have a go.

I put some music on and spend a pleasant time in the kitchen peeling and chopping, turning this

into this

which simmered down to this


and was then put into jars.

I used this recipe. The apples, tomatoes and onions (I used onions instead of shallots) were from the allotment and garden.

I tasted some from the odd half jar that you always seem to get left over when you preserve stuff and although it was quite nice it had quite a strong vinegar flavour. I know that chutneys are supposed to be left for a couple of months before eating so I'm hoping that the flavour will mellow a bit during storage.

Summer soup

Soup is something I don't make much when the weather is warm but watercress soup is an exception as it is quite a light summer soup. I often use American land cress which I have grown on the allotment instead of buying watercress. It is similar to watercress but has a stronger flavour being hotter and more peppery.

I sowed some land cress many years ago and let it go to seed and now I never need to sow it as there are always enough self sown plants around. Each year I make sure to leave a few clumps to go to seed so that I know I will have plants for the following year. In fact, it seems to grow better if left to seed by itself than when I have planted it!

The soup I make is very simple. I saute chopped onions in olive oil. When they are translucent but not browned I add garlic, cubed potatoes and chicken stock (or vegetable stock) and simmer until the potatoes are almost soft. The land cress (a couple of handfuls/litre) is added about five minutes before the end of cooking. Once the potatoes are soft and the land cress is wilted I use a blender to make a smooth soup. I like to have the cress chopped but still visible as green flecks in the finished soup.

We have been having salad for lunch most days recently and so this weekend soup was a welcome change.

Yoghurt making

Along with many people at the moment I am looking for ways minimise the effect of rising food prices on the household budget. We already grow some of our vegetables and fruit, keep the chickens for eggs, bake bread and eat more vegetarian meals than meat meals but still the food bills are rising. My latest project is making yoghurt.

I have made yoghurt before, putting a bowl of milk/yoghurt mixture wrapped in towels in the airing cupboard and have to say that the results were very variable. I decided to try again after reading this post about making yoghurt in a Thermos flask.

I've been doing this for a few weeks now and the yoghurt is great. I was also pleased to find a new use for the oldest kitchen utensil I own, this wonderful old Thermos flask.



My mother gave me this flask a few years ago, I always remember it being at home when I was small and I think it was passed to us from one of my grandmothers. I have no idea how old it is but would guess at over 60 years. The stopper is cork (no plastic used in flasks back then) and I cover it in foil so I can wipe it clean. It maintains the heat really well, far better than my modern flask.

Basic yoghurt making instructions,

• I basically follow the instructions from the link above. The first step is to heat the milk to destroy the bacteria present in the milk. This step is important if using fresh milk and particularly so if like me you try to save money by using milk that is reduced in price at the end of its shelf life. (I have made yoghurt from longlife UHT milk and then this step can be left out as the milk will not contain any bacteria - just heat up to the temperature needed to add the yoghurt starter.)




• The milk is then left to cool, I don't use a thermometer but test it by touch, if I can keep my finger in it for a few seconds but it is almost uncomfortably hot seems to indicate the right temperature!




• I then mix in some commercial yoghurt. I usually use about a third of a small pot of Yeo Valley natural yoghurt - about 50 ml to a litre of milk. Make sure that the yogurt used is live yogurt.




• The milk mixture is then poured into the flask which I have first scalded with boiling water and then left for around six hours.




• We like thick yoghurt, so the next step is to strain it. I use a clean ironed tea towel (which would be virtually sterile) in a colander. It is worth watching this stage quite closely or it can over drain and become very thick, I find thirty minutes is about right.

• We mostly eat our yoghurt with fruit and so at this stage I transfer it to a pot (bit messy this stage) and add honey to taste. After mixing in the honey, the yoghurt is ready to go in the fridge to cool.

A perfect combination, thick Greek style yoghurt with honey and rhubarb from the allotment.

A litre of milk makes just under half a litre of thick yoghurt. The savings are not high if full price milk is used but it is slightly cheaper, the real savings only come if I can find a bargain at the supermarket but it tastes brilliant so its worth making anyway.

I have also made soft cheese by accident when I forgot I had left some yoghurt draining. After a couple of hours it was very thick so I mixed some chopped chives and black pepper into it and it tasted fine. I will do that again and experiment with adding different ingredients.

Simple Cooking

Its been a while since I last posted. I was away at the start of the week visiting my parents. Arriving home part way through the week completely threw my routine. It feels as if I have spent all my time just trying to catch up.

I was glad that we didn't have anything planned this weekend and I could spend time pottering in the house. It seemed the right sort of day for some slow cooking.

Using my slow cooker (crock pot) I cooked a small piece of gammon ham with some potatoes and a few cloves for eight hours, adding a tin of butter beans about half-way through. All day long it smelt lovely and then at dinner time all I had to do was cook some fresh vegetables and serve.

Adding the beans bulked it out a bit and I managed to save some of the meat for tomorrow. I've decided on a pie, ham in white sauce topped with flaky pastry. In this case, slowing down has actually saved me time - can't be bad!

Catching up

Its half term with us at the moment and as usual all is busy. I am in awe of bloggers who lead busy lives, are very creative making things, look after children, animals and gardens and still find time to blog frequently. Sometimes it seems to take all my time and energy just simply living leaving very little time to blog about living simply! - not that I'm complaining, I do like being busy.



We have just returned from a couple of days in Wales and as always it was really beautiful. It is our favourite place for a short break and with the wonderful weather we have had lately, it was just perfect.











Although we were not away for long it takes a while to get back into the routine. We had turned the heating off when we went away and with night time temperatures below zero the house felt very cold when we got back. My solution was to make a large quantity of warming soup. I used a recipe I spotted in the Times last Saturday for Spicy Carrot and Butternut Squash soup and can definitely recommend this as a very good soup for a cold day.

I also need to catch up with a couple of awards that I've been meaning to mention.

The first one was given to be by Learning to Step Lightly and the second by Barefoot in the Garden. Thank you to both. The rules for both state that the award should be passed on to 10 more blogs. Since that is an awful lot of links and I am feeling just a bit overwhelmed by everything I have to do at the moment I am going to cheat on this one and choose the blogs on my blogroll all of which I rate as excellent and in different ways all make my day!