So many shades of grey

And no, I haven't read the book (and goodness knows what Amazon is going to recommend for me now that I have looked at the link), but the unremitting greyness of the past couple of days is oppressing me as I sit in my north-facing office - even with the lights on.

But the jolly redness of the tomatoes seem to defy the leaden skies, and the taste hints at Mediterranean summers and terrace living - if you shut your eyes quite tight and sit close enough to the Aga to feel the warmth.

Frilly tomatoes

The polytunnel has protected these tomatoes from the blight, and kept them warm enough to ripen up - the pretty frilly ones are Costoluto Fiorentino, a variety which has been consistently successful for us, in spite of our distinctly non-Mediterranean climate.

The Head Chef has been slaving over a hot stove preserving them for winter - we make an all-purpose tomato sauce/soup which is quite easy to do. Just cut the tomatoes in half and spread one layer thick on a baking tray (no need to peel or deseed). Scatter liberally with basil leaves and thinly sliced onions and garlic; drizzle with copious amounts of olive oil and season well, before roasting in the oven for half an hour or so (medium heat/middle of the Aga). Leave them to cool when they come out, then blitz in a food processor or blender. Freeze in portion sizes suited to your family.

Nice green beans

This tomato blend will then do duty all winter in lasagne or vegetable bakes, as pizza topping, pasta sauce, thinned down as tomato soup - the list is endless, and with food prices predicted to rise quite dramatically (and pig feed already escalating) we are eagerly squirrelling away as much as possible.

Tasty but few and far between

It has been a mixed year - the cucumbers are succumbing to mildew after a very modest crop (Marketmore, which is usually quite prolific), and unlike most years we have certainly not been overrun with courgettes - although that could be this pale green variety (I forget the name) which has such an anaemic air that we will be going back to the mix of yellow and dark green stripes which was so much more aesthetically pleasing.

Pale and uninteresting

The good old runners are still running away, and if you look carefully you can still see that everything is coated in thistledown. I fear that next year our little cottage is going to disappear in a prickly green forest and we will be machete-ing our way out.

Machete at the ready

I hope that you have had a sunnier weekend than we have, and if you don't feel up to the famous one, this Shades of Grey was very entertaining, and as far as I can remember, quite decent . . .

Magic beans

A few days ago I was rummaging vainly amongst the bean rows and feeling quite ecstatic if I came away with half a dozen small runners languishing in the bottom of the basket. (My mind is boggling at the Lilliputian image conjured up in my head, but I have forsworn listening to the little voices.)

And now I find that the Head Chef has a multitude of green reasons for sitting at the kitchen table listening to the mellifluous voices on Radio 4 (midoff, dismissal, sunshine, leg bye, three slips waiting for an edge and one in the gully . . . or was it a bat on the off stump, and another by the pavilion ?). The maidens are sending me to sleep and I have quite lost my way . . .

I hope people like eating thistledown, remarks the Head Chef, and moves his hand into the picture, quite spoiling the effect.

Look closely and see those gossamer strands

With a field of thistles to the left of us, another in front of us, and a south-southwesterly breeze, our little patch of land is being drenched with gossamer fibres - the sky is full of thistledown. When I was young and innocent I thought that these were fairies floating on the summer air - now I know that the silken strands will metamorphose into spiky green witches next summer, wickedly invading every last corner of our cottage garden, and running riot in the field.

But for now the greenness of the beans is quite magical, and we can chop them and store them for the long winter ahead. If we eat thistledown, we can munch its witchy magic into nothing.

Peeping toms

And lo and behold! The blight hasn't ventured into the greenhouse, and the sunshine has - we have some tomatoes at last, all red and rotund and beaming from under the beans.

Precious

I seem to have lived this August afternoon with the sound of the cricket, and the chopping of the beans, and the filling of freezer bags so many times before, and remember beans from another garden, bagged by other hands, but the smell of the green growing things and the earth and the warm breeze on my face are forever the same.

And the imminent collapse of the English batting, or not - I seem to remember that this happens quite often too.

Have a crafty weekend

First of all she says thank you, thank you most kindly, and curtsies awkwardly. Quite, quite touched, I am sure, and positively overwhelmed by all the kind thoughts.

And now she will set you some homework for the weekend.

Time to get crafting

This rather beautiful book, Christmas Crafting in No Time, by Clare Youngs, dropped through my door this week, courtesy of Cico Books, and in my incapacitated state I thought that I would only be able to look at the pictures and dream of next year.

But I was quite excited to find that there are quite a few projects in here to entertain me and Princess Bunchy over the coming weeks, even with a gammy hand.

Admittedly, I had to resist the urge to set to on some lovely sewing projects such as these little felt owls which would make sweet little presents, or folksy decorations for the Christmas tree (if you want to see some real life examples of the owl pattern in practice have a look at Andamento blog, where you will see some beautifully crafted versions in lots of different colours).

There is also a pattern to stitch some rather sweet owl fodder (not that one should call to mind nature red in tooth and claw when looking at such cuddly cuties).

Actually, I personally am going for the edible owl fodder - there is a recipe for sugar mice, which have been something of an obsession of mine since reading The Tale of the Kittie Poosies when I was a just a little scrap.

The Kittie Poosies have been a seminal influence on my life from the days when I marched my poor mother around every sweet shop in every place we visited in search of sugar mice, and Mama Pudditat's house has had a lasting influence on my decorative style - not to mention the feminist ideas encapsulated in this proleptic tale of a single mother becoming an entrepreneur in order to support her family with not a father Pudditat in sight. So we are definitely making sugar mice in order that I can surf towards Christmas on a wave of nostalgia.

I think Clare Youngs must have read the same books as I did, as she also includes a project related to the other deeply influential text with which I engaged most fully as a child - The Tale of the Gingerbread Man, and to this day the eerie howl of a fox at night, or even the glimpse of one running like the wind across the fields, engenders in me a visceral fear. My children always took the most eager and teasing pleasure in biting the heads and limbs off gingerbread men in front of me, as I felt the urge to run, run as fast as you can, for fear of being chased and eaten (I hope that there are no psychologists reading this - I can feel them nodding their heads in a most benignant manner). Luckily these little gingerbread people do not show a gender bias, there is not a fox in sight, and most important of all they are not edible.

 Perhaps it is better to bring light into my darkness by making some pretty teacup candles, which are definitely within reach of the one-handed, and now that all the decluttering upheavals have tossed up my decoupage scissors in the tide of objets swilling from cupboard to cupboard (No dear mamma, I have not seen them, and if I did use them I put them away in the wrong place where no one will find them for a year and a day) Princess Bunchy can cut me out some white tree decorations to go with my tasteful new white-painted house.

So in sum, I am jolly pleased with this book, and can recommend it as a something for everyone type of craft book, with projects ranging from easy to skilled, and lots of potential for family participation, and holiday activities.

And thank you again for all your lovely comments and emails - I am truly grateful to you all.  I am working my way through to reply to all the emails, but sadly I can't respond to the no-reply ones (this happens if you don't have your email in your Profile) as they come without a return address.

Have a very crafty weekend, don't let the preparations get you down, and if you are the Head Chef, I'd love a box of violet creams in my stocking, just click here.

Small things and shivers

There's nothing like a sunny day in November to lift the heart and after too many days of grey, grim, lowering skies, it seems particularly precious.

And the loveliness of the light impelled me to take out my camera to record a happy moment, a small, mundane moment to treasure for when the world turns grey again.

But what an unpredictable moment of bitter sweetness: Princess Bunchy is counting down to Christmas, and every time she tells me how many days to go,  I feel a small shiver of unpreparedness grip my heart.

It is supposed to be a time of soup and mittens, and grubby root vegetables roasting slowly in the Aga - so how come I was eating salad for lunch in November?

Tomatoes and lettuce growing in the garden - a moment of joy at the sweet summer taste, and a small involuntary shiver at the uncomfortable thought that the seasons have gone awry . . .

Still, I think there are reasons enough to be cheerful . . . and I have found some more over here.

Cherishing the roses and winter gardening

I must admit that I am not so much of a winter gardener - being a chilly mortal who sits inside at her desk swathed in cardis and shawls, with mitts on, and socks pulled up at the knees, you will understand that I find the nip in the air nips at my fingers and toes rather too much. In an ideal world I would retreat indoors in October, and venture out again in March as the green shoots are growing.

Reach out and touch the roses

But I did sneak out just before sunset today, as I felt I needed a small dose of fresh air, and to count my blessings in the face of some of life's difficulties.

November food

And I wasn't disappointed. It might be November in heart and soul, but we are still lucky enough to have spinach and carrots and broccoli and lettuce (yes, amazingly, lettuce!) all growing outside, a second flush of marigolds, and two precious November roses. As you can see, it is not a tidy garden, but the theory is that leaving plant debris and greenery will provide cover and food for wildlife.

Spot the green tomatoes

But my fairweather attitude to gardening is not the attitude to take when trying to live off the land - after all, we still need our greens in the cold months, and it can't all be stored in the freezer. And after the hectic harvest of summer, we now need to take the time to do necessary maintenance, and work on the structure of our green and growing space when the pace of life has slowed down.

Recycling in the garden - a mouse hotel

And when I say we, of course you understand that I mean the Head Chef, always ready to do the heavy work when I stand indoors and supervise through the windows, for after all, someone needs to keep the home fires burning, and if I wear enough clothes outside to keep me warm, then my movement is so restricted that I really can't be of much use on the hefting and heaving front.

And in terms of out of season hefting and heaving, I have been quite entertained by a couple of books I have come across from Timber Press, which are full of ideas and projects for me to add to the list of the Head Chef's things to do.

Garden Eco-Chic by Matthew Levesque is all about 'reusing found objects to create decks, paths, containers, lanterns and more', which certainly fits in with the permaculture principles we use in designing our growing space.

Be aware that this book is not for the faint-hearted or girlie amongst us - this is a book for chaps and chapesses willing to wield drills and saws, and get down and dirty on the constructive front.

I particularly like the ideas for creating different surfaces for paths and paved areas from a variety of found and recycled materials.

Levesque uses all sorts of interesting and unusual materials such as metals and plastics to make fencing, dividers, and more decorative items such as this mobile of copper offcuts.

However, with the price of scrap metal hitting record levels, I am not sure that now it will be quite so easy to find discarded copper and aluminium, and going by the levels of metal theft in our area, such things would be best confined to the back garden, out of the reach of passing scrap hunters.

The second book is rather uninspiringly entitled Concrete Garden Projects by Malin Nilsson and Camilla Arvidsson. However, it is a much prettier book than the title would imply, and has clear instructions as to how to make various containers, water features, and other garden structures using concrete, all very beautifully styled.

I was uncertain about the environmental implications of using concrete, but have found an article here which seems to be a thorough discussion of the issues. As will all things, there are pros and cons, and one has to consider whether one's use of the material is necessary, and also what the alternatives would be.

Am I mistaken, or is that a rather luxuriant crop of ground elder?

I had seen concrete stepping stones before, and do like the look of them, as well as the rows of concrete pots - the instructions are step by step with pictures, and such projects seem to me very feasible on a domestic scale, and the miniature ponds and water containers could be a very valuable addition to a garden in terms of helping wildlife. However, I am not quite so convinced of the rationale of making concrete 'cakes' using cake tins and jelly moulds and then decorating them with flowers!

On balance, I think these books are definitely useful for practical, hands-on types - there are lots of ideas for achievable garden structures and decorations, and they would make a really good present for the outdoorsy people in your life.

I, though, am retreating inside, heaping up the blankets, and looking forward to winter evenings sitting by the fire, knitting. I will see you outside when the days start lengthening . . .

Making winter with Silverpebble and Mrs Thrifty Household

The clocks changed last night, it's going to be dark oh so early, and some cheery chappie on the radio announced this morning that winter had begun. My heart sinks at those dismal signs of the season of short days and long nights, of chill and damp, and leaden skies - but help is at hand in the persons of Emma from Silverpebble and her trusty friend, Mrs Thrifty Household. Together they have a cunning plan to avert the miseries of the grey days by Making Winter a happy time.

So I have heaved myself out of my incipient doldrums and tried to think of something nice about winter. And it being the time to hack into those poor pumpkins and give them scary faces, what came to mind were pumpkin soup, so cheery and warming, and another of my favourites, toasted pumpkin seeds.

Princess Bunchy has chopped away at Mr Pumpkin, and at my behest has given him a benignant face, and whilst she was doing the carving we gave her a bowl for the innards, in the spirit of waste not, want not, which prevails in our little cottage.

We took the seeds, cleared them of flesh, then spread them out on a baking tray. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt, then put into a hot oven for ten minutes or so - best to keep a close eye on them because the interval between crispy and burnt is a short one. They are done when they have browned and start crackling as the outer husk pops.

So that's a nice thrifty idea for a cheering winter snack, in the spirit of Mrs TH, who has a wonderful ability to conjure up goodies out of the orts and scraps of life. She sent me some of the most beautiful little lavender bags made out of vintage fabric - it was such a lovely package to receive in the post and I absolutely adore the willow pattern fabric.

If you go and visit Mrs Thrifty Household here, and Silverpebble here, you will find all sorts of Making Winter happiness - I am hoping that they can get me through January with a smile on my face.

I am also wondering if all the nice things in winter are edible - I have a horrible feeling that they are, and that is why when I emerge into spring I have a certain air of rotundity and all is straining at the seams.

Fantastic chocolate muffins

It's not just me blowing my own trumpet by telling you that these are fantastic chocolate muffins - I actually received a text from the Head Chef saying so, and that is a compliment indeed considering that his usual comment on anything I cook is that it could do with a little more salt . . .

So as a little bonne bouche for a weekday evening, and mindful of the fact that I have sadly neglected my adoring readers (cough) this week, here is my recipe for the most fantastic double chocolate muffins, baked in the Aga, but just as nice from whatever oven you choose.

Ingredients:

(For this recipe I use the metric measurements, so imperial are untested.)

Makes 1 dozen

150g (5 1/2oz) self-raising white flour
2 generous teaspoons (tsp) baking powder
50g (2oz) Green and Blacks cocoa powder
75g (3oz) golden caster sugar
100-125g (4oz) good quality chocolate chips (I use a mixture of dark and white chocolate)

75g (3 oz) unsalted butter, melted
2 free range eggs
200ml (7 fl oz) milk

Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa in a mixing bowl, then stir in the sugar and chocolate chips. Add some more chocolate chips if you feel the need.

Beat the eggs into the milk, then pour the melted butter into the egg and milk, and beat together.

Pour this liquid into the bowl of dry ingredients and mix together.

Divide between 12 muffin cases in a muffin pan.

In a 2 oven Aga, use the roasting oven with the shelf half way up and bake for 20 minutes turning half way. In a conventional oven, bake for 20 mins at 190C/400F (reduce by 10-20 deg for a fan oven).

Health warning:
These chocolate muffins are very delicious, and call to you from the cake tin when you are feeling a little low. If you don't have children in the house to gobble them up in a trice, your midriff is sure to suffer (don't ask me how I know). This effect can be counteracted by going to the gym, where 20 mins hard labour on the exercise bike will use up only 100 calories, but make you so hungry that you will need more muffins and a latte to revive yourself (this I definitely do know).

Absence note:
Pomona has been stitching away with the assistance of her dear Rose, and has several completed items of her very own manufacture as a result of such industry. Photos will surely follow if the sun shines, but hints are to be found here and here. (She is feeling very pleased with herself at this productivity - surely the Christmas season can hold no fear at this rate? This year there will be no emergency scarf knitting on Christmas Eve. Definitely.)

Pumpkins rock

Colour is a funny thing. I would tell you that I am quite consistent in my likes and dislikes, have always been drawn to mixtures of red and blue in the kitchen, and on the clothing front various shades of teal are in the ascendant. I absolutely do not like orange, I would firmly assert, and as to anything with a hint of neon, how could you even suggest it?

So how did I find myself knitting my a pair of socks, with heels and toes and rib in Electric Lime, and vibrant Opal Fruit stripes down the legs?

Why did I pick such colours to glow in my stash of tasteful stash of misty blues and greens with a hint of dusty mauve? What on earth was I thinking? Yet drawn I was to the bright lights of lime and pink and orange, and I really enjoyed having such manic colours on my needles.

And now I have just finished my Electric Rock socks, which speak to me of sunshine and pumpkins, and glow quite magnificently as I stand in my stockinged feet. I don't think that I have ever knitted quite such a joyous pair of socks, which peek out between blue jeans and black Converses in a rather anarchic way which makes me smile to look at them.

Almost to the instant that I posted them on my Ravelry page I received an appreciative comment about the colours, and I just wanted to say to you, why not take a risk with colour?

Choose something that is the complete antithesis of what you think you like and see what happens. You could end up dressed to match the pumpkins just like me.

Why does the yellow hose sneak its way into every garden photo I take?

And for those of you who want some socks just like mine, the yarn is the appropriately named Skein Queen Squash, a lovely yarn to knit with and very soft on the feet, in Electric Lime and Olive Snook, pattern from Ann Budd's wonderful sock book. Go on, be brave!

Natural pest control

Don't tell me that I don't keep my promises - a little venture into the realms of pest control is the order for the day, but for those of a nervous disposition I have respected your delicacy and have chosen a picture of Mrs Speckledy to start with and have saved the gory details for a little later.

Mrs Speckledy is trying to hide

The first thing to tell you about natural pest control is that Mrs Speckledy and Mother Blackrock do not like the caterpillars of the cabbage white butterfly - you can tell from their expressions and the way that Mrs Speckledy has gone to hide in amongst the raspberry canes in case the Head Chef tries to force one down her beak.

Mother Blackrock is just not interested

Mother Blackrock is more inclined to stand her ground and indicate her feelings by an expression of complete disgust at the sight of the nasty green creatures, before stalking off in a superior manner.

Rejected by hens and nowhere to hide

In fact, the most efficacious method of dealing with such creepy-crawlies is to send the Head Chef into the garden to pick them off by hand. We did try Enviromesh one year, but the combination of a windy site, and a certain racketiness about the installation meant that we watched the cabbage whites fluttering gaily about inside the enclosure all summer. Better to wait until the caterpillars are so large and virulent-looking that they are visible even to the middle-aged naked eye.

Nasty green slimy things

As to the small green caterpillars of the sort found in purple sprouting broccoli and calabrese, you need not bother with pest control if the consumers of the produce are ladies of a certain age whose near vision is not quite what it used to be. I had eaten copious quantities - a plateful, certainly - of broccoli, all the while thinking superfood, how nutritious, etc, before the younger members of the family, food inspectors all (in case someone has sneaked some chickpeas or lentils or other foreign or proscribed items into their supper) burst out in hysterical unison that the said superfood so eagerly consumed by their dear mother was teeming with small green caterpillars. So really, if you want to get rid of small green caterpillars, just feed them to a sensitive, long-sighted vegetarian.

Mrs Speckledy and Mrs Blackrock are, however, very partial to ants and the teeny tiny slugs to be found in the soil, so do make sure to get some of their ilk to rake over your earth come the winter - but remember to shut them out again in the spring because they do like scuffling up seeds and plants as well.

Soup in a basket

But all is not green and crawling in our little plot: we have delights both seasonal and unseasonal. On the latter front the Head Chef is still harvesting tomatoes to go with the salad leaves from the polytunnel. And we still have a few marigold flowers left to garnish a salad if the fancy takes you.

There are delicious juicy apples to be gathered - Gala, and Golden Delicious and Cox. Our B&B guests are still enjoying fresh apple juice for breakfast - one of the most popular things about the Head Chef's most excellent breakfasts.

There are quinces to be turned into paste and jelly, and generally admired for their beauty. Our trees tend to crop biennially which makes us appreciate them all the more in the copious years.

And walnuts cascading down from the enormous tree, which was pretty large when we arrived here, but certainly waxes fat on the, shall we say nitrogen-enriched, soil in the WET system.

We have been using the walnuts in a delicious recipe for stuffed peppers from Eat Well, Spend Less by Sarah Flower. (The Head Chef was quite sniffy about this book when I bought it on one of my late-night Amazon forays - you know, the 'we need to economize, let's buy things to help' idea; he prefers lots of big glossy pictures and let's not read a recipe, let's make it up as we go along.) And it's not often I say this about a cookery book, as they usually end up just sitting on the shelf, but it is definitely worth the grand sum of £6 or so which I spent on it. It is absolutely packed with really useful, everyday recipes and a complete antidote to the 'what on earth are we going to eat today' feeling, when your mind goes blank and inspiration seems a long way away. And unusually for this sort of thrifty cookbook, there are lots of interesting vegetarian recipes, rather than a token two or three old stalwarts that you have come across many a time before.

I actually prefer Sarah Flower's Eat Well, Spend Less to Gill Holcombe's How to feed your whole family a healthy balanced diet with very little money . . . I do have the latter, but I must admit that it only occasionally finds its way off the shelf as I find the recipes less inspiring, and there seem fewer of them, although plenty of people disagree with me on that one.

So plenty of handy hints there - how to feed extra protein to vegetarians and chickens, and how to feed a family on a budget, too. Thrift personified, that's me!