A little late summer warmth

I am adamant that it is still late summer and not yet autumn!  Trees are still very green, apples not yet sweetened, and butterflies are still having a feeding frenzy on our Verbena bonariensis.  Oodles of small tortoiseshells, and a single Painted Lady, who was a a bit camera shy. 

Squally Sunday

The forecasters predicted wild and windy weather today, but after breakfast the storm hadn't yet arrived so we struck out for a walk on our favourite hillside, kept moving at a clip as we could see the blanket of rain closing in on us, and the wind ruffled the trees.  Arrived home for a coffee as the first fat drops of rain came.
I'd planned a cook day with the threat of bad weather so got to work making lots of lovely tomato sauce for the freezer, and pear chutney.  We have 2 ancient pear trees, variety unknown, but both wonderful prolific, the pears aren't lookers - a bit lumpy, but their flavour is sweetly almondy, and their flesh is lusciously juicy.  Even though I can eat the most prodigious quantity of fruit, they defeat even me, so chutney is a good option.  I researched various recipes, then amended to make a version to our taste with toasted cumin and coriander seeds.  Here it is below;

Pear chutney - September 2013

2kg pears, when peeled and chopped

3 cooking apples

3 onions
400g raisins
Goodly amount of following spices toasted; cumin, coriander, mustard seed. Bashed.
Chilli flakes 1 tsp.

2 tsp salt

400g sugar (granulated)  (could be a bit less?)
300ml malt vinegar .

Put in pan, boil, stir intermittently, when soft, bottle in warm sterilised jars.

Store for 3 months – if possible to wait!

Raspberry Mivvy

Favourite dahlia which I grew from seed many years ago has been flowering for over a month.  I am giving away seeds to anyone who would like to grow them next year.  I sow dahlias early inside and don't plant them out till danger if frost is over - or if before I have to be ready on a daily basis to protect with fleece in case it gets chilly. 
If anyone is interested in growing some; send a self addressed envelope with stamp on to the address below and I will send some seeds.  It really is a very pretty plant reaching about 3-4' in height, its leaves are rich green and its flowers crimson, on dark reddish stalks which it puts out very freely.
F.A.O.  R. Barker
30 Lydbury North
Shropshire
SY7 8AU

Back in the saddle

All excitement here for our forthcoming trip to South Korea in autumn.  We are launching a collection of ceramics in Seoul.  Here is a quick peek at one of the ranges, its very quirky and English and very much about life in our village here in Shropshire.

Preparing for home

Last bits and bobs to tie up before we leave on Wednesday, whitewashing house is nearly complete, kitchen more sorted with shelving for our favourite pots and utensils, bedroom windows painted (a bother of a job when its hot as the paint is particularly oily and runs). Fiendishly hot at 39 degrees, but there is a delicious quietness that goes with it.  A warm wind soughing in the pine trees, desultory bird song, and an occasional cicada rasps.  Then as the sun goes down a shimmering vision appears, one’s beloved approaches, carrying a drinks tray – near perfection! 

Supermarkets please note...

Why do we tolerate paying 70p and up for a single pepper in England, when instead of importing wildly over priced and inferior peppers from Holland we could be buying amazingly intensely sweet ones from Hungary.  These are about 73p - but that is for a whole kilo.  Food lovers, read this and weep.

Necessities of life

No week is complete without a trip to the market.  The produce comes from and is sold by farmers who grow on a very small scale.  This lady's stall I visit each week for a kilo of the very best cucs.  I love her scales, which are hand held from the chain you can just see.

mother of invention



 Just trying to wrap up a few last jobs.  I'm lime washing the inside of the house, the traditional mud construction means our house is wonderfully well insulated, so when it's in the upper 30s the house remains refreshingly cool.  But it needs a little tlc to keep it ship shape.  The lime wash settles in the bucket quickly so needs whisking to keep in well dispersed so first I had to invent a whisk for the job.  I found that mulberry twigs were the best, firm but flexible.

Disaster averted - twice over

Lilo is now mended.  Gave up on the super glue method and instead heated a nail head on the gas and welded a teeny patch of lilo stuff over hole.  All very promising, and given that its 37 degrees and clear blue sky the lake is beckoning. 
Yesterday, I confess we were both feeling a bit lacking in joie de vivre department.  Now all is well, we are back on mid season form, and the problem was we had to survive a day without watermelon.  I can now grasp how it is to be deprived of one’s favourite addiction, and the pure bliss of indulging anew.  Phew, thank goodness for the pink stuff.

Went to Gabi and Vince’s neck of the woods, Siógárd on the edge of the Hungarian plain.  We visited their Táj Ház – or village house.  This is a preserved, traditional house, it reminds everyone how life once was.  Ours is not disimilar, mud walls, but it does have the benefit of running water and electric.

Disaster!

My lilo's got a puncture!  37 degrees yesterday so we headed off to the lake, the water was 29 degrees.  I haven't had a lilo since I was about 7, but when it is very hot on holiday bobbing about on the lake is so delicious I am happy to admit to this childish indulgence. 
Earlier we took a trip to Kakasd to see Imre Makovecz's rather spectacular church.  I think it actually refelects his Transylvanian background.
 

 

Pancake day

Palacsinta (Hungarian pancakes) for supper, but couldn’t remember the recipe.  So popped over to next door but one neighbour to ask her for the correct proportions.  Hungarian pancakes are wonderfully light thin affairs which they sometimes with a savoury stuffing (here I did paprika chicken in sour cream), rolled up and backed.  Here is a little montage of the note taking, making, then the eating.

Just going dark now and the crickets are starting their nightly seranade.

Getting hotter

Blog 2; warming up

My main concern has been our young fruit orchard which fell foul of the deer in spring, both the big “szarvas” who leave enormous foot prints and bite off the new leaves and the little “őz” (similar to roe deer) who take off damaging strips of bark.  Still in this climate trees grow up fast and strong and I think there is no terminal harm done. 

We have planted nectarines and almonds, peaches, apricots, and cherries.  Closer to the house we have plums and more peaches, which ripen at different times over the summer so you can generally have an on-going supply of sweet yet fresh favoured white peaches ready for the picking.  Then when you fancy something different there’s always watermelons.  There is even someone who comes round the villages with a van selling them.  How civilized is that!

Temperatures are good, upper 20s to mid 30s with clear blue skies.  Soon they say we are due for a heat wave, which generally coincides with jam making as the plums ripen.  Nothing quite like stirring boiling fruit and sugar when its nearly 40 in the shade outside!  Although the little old houses like ours and so well insulated that they always feel deliciously cool in the summer.

Settling in and winding down

I had great plans before we left that I would post regular, even weekly updates of progress on our little Hungarian house.  So far that has totally fallen by the wayside!  As a general rule we come out here and pitch into renovating jobs, but this year, probably because the large tasks are now getting done, it has been a case of nibbling at the little jobs,  interspersed with swimming at the lake in the village, shopping at the local market and chilling out.

No journey here is complete for me unless it means we camp en route in France, Germany, and Austria generally with a car full of saplings to plant out.  And we drive over in a little honda hatchback.  I love the challenge of packing it; tent, chairs, picnics, clothes, a goodly quantity of plant life which I fret over all the way when it gets hot.  This year we wanted to establish an espalier as a screen in the courtyard opposite the house, so I also packed the auger and grub axe for putting in the posts.  Here is it just finished.

Last minute projects

Just finished a little contribution to our village cook book.  All a bit last minute before we depart for our summer place in Hungary.  It was great fun to do these drawings, far less pressure than normal and much more thanks than you get from big store buyers!  But my ampersands gave me so much trouble.

Mid summer's day

Out for a swift hike this afternoon to clear the cobwebs and fried brain feeling at the end of a full on week.  Had to trail blaze a route along our normal path as the undergrowth had shot up and stood well over my head in places.  Not recommended for hay fever suffers as clouds of pollen released around us as we pushed through the rich mix of herbage.  Here and there hog weed's purple stems punctuated the softer grasses.

The Hunter-gather returns...

 

OK, so maybe I hadn't just bagged a woolly mammoth, but even more delectable, wild garlic or Medve Hagyma, bear onions in Hungarian.  In desperation, having forgotten to buy spinach I went out foraging for the last of this season's crop growing wild in the corner of a field in my village, fed by the brook.  

  The stems are both crunchy and sweet with a heat which becomes mild when wilted in a little butter.  Definitely worth the odd nettle sting.

Nearly June ?

Biting wind and hail storms as June approaches, just the odd sunny day.  Still, the cow parsley and campion are finally putting in an appearance in our hedgerows.  

Pining for blue

Please can we have some more like this.  I knew I'd regret my plea for rain. 

Culinary promises

Long ago, when I must have been feeling particularly indulgent I promised to make a proper pork pie, you know, the hand raised type, not made in a tin (that's cheating) - I don't even eat the things.  Anyway, when the hope of a fine bank holiday arrived and I got sick of finding the pig's trotter in the freezer I realised I had to keep my word.  I made a selection, the classic, with sage and thyme, one with prune added, one spiced with a very little cumin and coriander and one with fennel, garlic and a little chilli.
We found a lovely sunny hillside to spread the picnic and it was a great success.

Storm approaching

Travelling back over the hill to Bucknell after a family lunch in Ludlow, we pulled in to a field gate to watch the storm, a dark curtain drawing across the sky, the ploughed earth still in bright sunshine, the wind warm on my face. 

Hoping for rain...

I still can't quite believe I am actually thinking this, but having planted out a lovely orchard and sown a new lawn the very parched ground is a worry.  It does make me feel somewhat schizophrenic, as wonderful walks and no mud are a joy and the picnic season is almost upon us.

"Mum's out"

Or how much mess can I make in the kitchen on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Incidentally the phrase "mum's out" refers to the long lost days of young childhood when mum nipped out to the shops and I would play at cooking in the kitchen I roped my brother in to be look out to warn when she was coming back down the drive at which point I would try and minimise the chaos before beating a hasty retreat as she walked through the door. 

Now in adulthood the phrase has come to mean any cooking which reaches into the realms of the totally unknown, with the added excitment of potential and imminent disaster.

Today after work in the garden was rained off I decided to makeTaralli with fennel seeds.  The are little salty biscuits from Southern Italy, which first you boil then you bake! Great fun.

This is how...

Mix together 250g plain white flour, sml tsp salt, same of fennel seeds, 50ml white wine, 50ml olive oil, 50ml water.  Either knead by hand or in bread maker, adding a little more water if necessary to make a smooth, elastic but firm dough.  Then tear off little pieces about 10-12g each, roll into ropes 10cm long and twist and form a ring pinching the ends to secure.  Drop about 10 pieces at once into a pot of boiling water, as they rise to the surface fish them out with a slotted spoon and let them dry on  kitchen paper.  Then bake in a hot oven 210° C for 30 mins.  The are glossy and crispy, but chewy in the middle, excellent with a glass of white wine.

My mad moments, never one to conform...

I can't blame it on the Mistral, Föhn, or even Sirocco, but this winter weather in April is certainly playing havoc with my calm ordered thoughts.
Yesterday as the clocks changed it was such a relief to have an extra hour's sunlight, I realised that we could have easily have changed the hour a good month ago and had all that extra evening light.  The thought suddenly occurred to me that next year in our house we should change the clocks at the end of February, there is easily enough light in the early morning to make this possible and the benefits of longer daylight at that time of year would easily outweigh the inconvenience of trying to remember GMT for events and appointments with the rest of the population.  Similarly in October I am planning to postpone that horrid Sunday when the clocks "go back" and have a couple of extra weeks when it isn't dark at 4.30pm .
I know a farmer here in Shropshire who never changes his clocks as he says it upsets his dairy herd, if he tries to monkey about with their milking times.  Seems to work for him. 
So forgive me if I mis-time things occasionally, just remember I'm on Lydbury North Time, not Greenwich Mean Time.

End of March and today it reached a heady 5 degrees, enough to start the snowmelt.  Here, my brave lupins pretend it's spring.

Winter hanging on

Another snowfall, now we are nearing the end of March.  The bad weather has made the garden birds bolder on account of being so hungry.  We are seeing quite different ones feeding outside our office window where I put out seed.  Yesterday a Reed bunting visited many times and today a Yellow hammer is returning again and again.  It was a bit tricky to photograph though the window, but here he is with a beak full of seed.

Rain, snow, wind

Thus reads today's weather summary, and we are now nearly mid March.  Minus figures when the birds have gamely started their singing and even daisies have appeared in the grass.  We have all mentally left winter behind and are willing the weather to do the same. 
Still there are some benefits, I have finally managed to make loose covers for our sofas which I have been delaying for a considerable time, knowing it would tax my sewing capabilities.  But given I desperately wanted to keep our sofas and couldn't find any other option for just the right feel of linen and the perfect cut and fit - I was after something tailored, but soft, not fussy with piping or sloppy and too loose, I set to work on it myself.  Now they are all but complete and we can curl up on them in front of the woodburner and ignore the cold outside.

12 Feb Blini day

In the spirit of using up larder stocks for lent we've just had homemade blinis for supper.  OK, we might manage abstinence until breakfast tomorrow but no later, it was still good to participate in pancake day in some form. 
I watched the children in the ajoining school playground in their pancake race, but was shocked and dismayed to see that none of them tossed their pancakes in the race, it was just dashing around with a frying pan in one hand.  Isn't that missing the point?
Still cool and wintery, but with the promise of mild weather coming on Thusday.

Simple peasant food makes for some of the best eating.  Italians understand and love "cucina povera".    But one of my favourites comes from Hungary -  Töltött kápaszta, or Stuffed cabbage leaves.  It's a bit of a faff to make but comes together to make a warming delicious meal, much more than the sum of its parts.
Sweetheart cabbage leaves are the best but also works well with spring greens.
6 large deep green leaves of some favourite brassica.   Blanch these briefly in a steamer then refresh in cold water.

Meanwhile prepare the following;

200g roast pork chopped finely

1 cup cooked rice

1 small chopped onion

Paprika powder generous 1 dsp.

Tomato puree

Garlic

Fry onion and garlic gently, added chopped roast pork and all the other stuffing ingredients.  Spoon onto leaves and roll up neatly.  Fit carefully into an oven proof dish and pour over a cup of good stock (nothing bought please), so liquid comes about 1” up dish.  Bake for 40mins at about 180 degrees, loosely covered with foil to prevent drying out. 

Mix sour cream with horseradish and dill.  Pour over at table

I think I spoke too soon...

I was blissfully thinking we had our winter over and done with and it would return to mild and gentle weather, but it was not to be.  Now at 4pm there is a brief respite from the wind and snow, and the temperature struggling up to minus 3.

My desk overlooks where I feed the birds, which is fascinating and distracting.  Just now 9 Long tailed tits all landed in unison on a collection of fat-balls and pecked eagerly at the seed.

Darkness is falling now and tomorrow more snow is due.

After the snow melt

Actually it only lasted half a day, but when it was gone and some slightly weedy winter sunshine caught the distant hill sides it did look particularly lovely.   Our village church nestles in the valley and our house nearby beckons with a promise of tea by the woodburner after a brisk walk.

Winter transition

For 3 days we have been shrouded in freezing fog.  The daytime temperature hovers around minus 1, at night it falls a few degrees.  Any moisture in the trees has been caught and frozen, but interestingly the frost doesn't settle on the ground.
We have been trying to fathom what heralds the onset of winter.  This year we have missed the snowfalls so far.  But suddenly a week ago we had a sudden transition from mild autumn to dark winter.  Iron hard ground and looking out onto this is a pretty definite indicator.

November and still growing...

Shortly after last blog entry, here is the same field sprouted.  Very encouraging to see such jewel like green growth when everything else is apparently shutting down for the winter.

Season progressing

One of the things I love about our part of the world is being so connected with the seasons and how the year changes.  We have one favourite walk from our house which we do regularly, but is never the same.  Each time something is different; the temperature, the wind, the light, the ground underfoot, the stage the trees and plants are at, the birds and their songs - non of these remain the same, and each time we go on the walk something else catches our attention.  The other day we saw 2 tractors working together in a field, one was ploughing the other harrowing and drilling new seed.  Today we went to have a close look at their field, and here it is.  The texture of the soil was so beautifully velvety from a distance, then close up the furrows etched this wonderful pattern in the earth.

  

Last bit of summer

I admit the blog has been a bit quiet of late - but not for want of trying.  I've been gathering lots of material but somehow have been a bit distracted to put it all together. Here though are a couple of shots from our great weekend in Cornwall in September.

    We stayed with Sarah and Graham and family (plus menagerie) and went out for a blast of ozone on Graham's zapcat (here we are heading for the sea).  This is a link here to their luxurious camp overlooking St Michael's Mount.

I also learnt that wetsuits zip up the back.  They were kind enough not to laugh too loud when I first got it wrong.

October 2012

Moments of sunshine in a woody clearing.  But not many mushrooms.  Too cold at night (in my opinion) for our favourite ceps.  Managed to find a few (albeit slightly gnawed ones), just enough to add to some crushed potatoes with tonight's pork - wonderfully intense their flavour.   

May bank holiday, walking over the hill, blustery breezes and bright sky. A linnet clung to the upper most branches of a wych elm and sang for all he was worth (then flew away when I tried to take a photo). I was intending to call it a day with my blog. Recently I have been a bit distracted and haven't managed to do regular blogs. But my dearly beloved says I should keep going.

Died and gone to heaven...

One of those delicious spring mornings, the moment you open the door the smell of new plants and sun on warm earth greets you. Making the most of the promising day we walked our new patch, up the hill behind the our new house and on a lovely lane along the ridge of the hill. We heard larks so high in the sky we couldn't see them, saw newly arrived chiff-chaffs and yellow hammers, and spotted my first sweet violet of the year. The haze came and went, the sun already high enough to feel warm.

Now I have a dilemma, we are nearly through packing up the last of our life at Walcot, so what do I call the new blog? Something to work on...

Feeling better now!

Large green guinea pig with house attached














We've just bought a little house, finally after trying for years. The idea was to do it when we moved to Shropshire, well it has taken a little longer than expected - 8 years! We are so pleased that we can stay in this area which we have come to know and love. We have made some very good friends since moving here who we would hate to part from, not to mention our favourite butcher.
But as the old saying goes "death, divorce and moving house" the 3 big ones for stress, fortunately we're just dealing with the last one.
Mum is here to lunch tomorrow, poor lamb, we'll bore her silly with house photos. As a small compensation I've made Conran's dark chocolate mousse for pud.

Just Teeze Me - Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington

The past couple of years I've been trying to work on stress management with greater or lesser degree of success. Then recently listening to The Great Summit Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington I thought this particular track was a good antidote those brain fevers and tummy churnings.

Dark days of November

Looking over last year's weather records I realised by the end of Nov. 2010 we had already had snow lying for a month and temperatures at night hovering around minus 11 (centigrade). All pretty unusual for our temperate, small island. This year how different it is, mild and it has to be said, very grey. Here however is a much treasured sight. I call it John's rose. A number of years ago I took a cutting from my (would be) father-in-law's climber, and it has produced a sturdy, healthy specimen here in our garden, which even in dark November is producing exquisite, intensely scented flowers. Yesterday I cut a few for the table when John came to have lunch with us. There was a poignant moment as we looked at it and remembered former times.

Pickle jar label

At the top of the meadow against the brick garden wall, stands an old pear tree. The chickens like to bask in the sun around its base. The tree now only produces small fruit, but they are sweet and perfect when lightly pickled. We like these with a little cheese or sometimes smoked ham.
Prepared at the beginning of November 2011 they should be eaten between December &Easter 2012.

Golden fruits - saved for the dark winter days

On an intensely sunny autumn day last weekend, I gathered some small Rocha pears to pickle. Now in dank November the sunshine seems captured in the jar of fruit.

Not a thing of beauty, but still...

These are not small rats but a small gardening discovery. This year I grew cylindrical beetroots, these are the very last - sort of the runt of the litter. The joy of them was that despite the record dry conditions for this part of England, they produced a very fine specimen, always sweet, not too earthy tasting and even at the very end of the season they never got to that woody, starchy stage that can happen with the beet.