A New Kitchen

We are about to embark on a major kitchen refit. It is something we have been thinking about for a few years but when push came to shove it felt like such an upheaval... it's a big kitchen, so it will be a big job. And of course there is the cost, on top of three years which has seen more than its fair share of unemployment in this house. Every time we decided it really had to be done, we changed our minds!

On the face of it and looking at these photos it would be easy to think that it is unecessary but one thing after another has broken or gone wrong so with the launch of my new business the time seemed right. We have an integrated fridge that stopped working ages ago, doors have fallen off cupboards and taken half the casing with them so are impossible to put back. Door knobs are missing or mismatched.

The cooker has been a nightmare since day one. The doors don't close properly despite several repairs so the heat escapes and melts the knobs which have been replaced dozens of times. And for the past year I've been down to one oven as the fan oven packed up again, having already had the element replaced once.

But it has served us well for over twenty years, seen four small boys grow up and learn to cook, provided thousands and thousands of meals, been the centre of parties and celebrations and so finally the time was right!

I've spent the past week or so emptying cupboards and sorting stuff out... so much stuff! In my "plastics" cupboard there were 17 lids without containers and two containers without lids... how does that even happen. (We won't mention how often I clear out my cupboards... okay?)

 

So in one final flourish I made a cake. I have an order for a chocolate and peanut butter birthday cake next month so thought I ought to have a trial run... just in case it was disgusting!

But it has been tasted and consumed and declared a success!

It was my intention to put the recipe up with this post but I've run out of time and there are still a couple more cupboards to empty. I really do not know where I'm going to put all this stuff for the next couple of weeks!

But I will share the recipe in my next post... so please pop back and see me soon.

And I will also come back and tell you how this lot is looking!

The fitter is saying a week to ten days... I'm not holding my breath!

Shades of Gold

My friend Celia keeps a small flock of Ryland sheep.

They are friendly, inquisitive creatures and will come up to the fence if you walk past their field, curious to see you. Celia uses them for both showing and breeding but in the past couple of years she has also had their fleece spun into yarn.

We were chatting about the different weight yarns produced and the possiblity of mixing it with other yarn from different breeds to get different colours and eventually got onto the subject of natural dyes. Now I am no expert by any means but I have had success using onion skins to dye yarn in the past.

I got our local farm shop to save me all their loose onion skins and then I dyed one of the balls of yarn. I did take photos of the process but to be honest, pots of murky looking liquid bubbling away on the stove are not that picturesque! (And not a great advert for my cooking skills!)

But to cut a long story short... this is the result and this is what I have knitted from them.... a pair of very warm and cosy chunky mitts. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a selfie of your own hand? Let's just say there were several out of focus shots of my thumb!

They really are the most wonderful shade of deep gold. And talking of gold (she says neatly segueing into a completely unrelated subject)... I also picked these fabulous quinces from an absolutely fully laden tree outside the gym that I go to very occasionally. Fortunately for me I decided to go for a swim on Monday!

Much as I enjoyed looking at a bowl full of them just like this, I thought I ought to make something with them. The first small batch I made up into a quince jam, using a recipe from the Honey & Co Baking Book. If you have ever cooked quince you will know that they are rock solid, even when ripe and the job of coring and peeling them was a bit of a faff even though the end result is a lovely dense pink jam. So after my Pilates class on Tuesday I picked some more and turned these into quince jelly, which doesn't require the removal of skin and core... but in the interests of recipe development I had a little play around and came up with a fragrant quince and orange jelly.

I had about 1.5 kg of quinces which I chopped up into small pieces... core, skin, the lot! I then added the juice of one lemon and the juice and rind of one large orange. This was all bubbled together with 1.5 L water until everything was soft and mushy. This was then let to drip through a jelly bag overnight.

I then measured the juice (which wasn't as much as I had hoped so maybe I should have used more water) and added 500g of granulated sugar for every 600 ml of juice. This was then heated slowly to dissolve the juice and then boiled rapidly until it reached setting point. This didn't take very long as the quinces are so full of pectin. I then skimmed off the scum that had formed on the surface, added a few tablespoons of orange liqueur and then potted it into sterilised jars. It made almost three full 1lb jars of wonderful rose gold jelly.

Which goes very nicely with my new golden mitts!

(Did you see what I did there!)

In between knitting and playing around with recipes, I'm still teaching machine embroidery and this week I've been getting ready to go back to Missenden Abbey for the weekend. Looking forward to seeing what my students have produced over the summer. (No pressure if you are reading)

Have a good weekend!

The Year in Books - October

There was very little reading going on around here last month. My Year in Books choice for September was The One Hundred Year Old Man. It started off okay and was completely ridiculous but funny, once or twice in a laugh out loud way (embarassing when you are on the train) but it soon became so unbelievable and so tedious I struggled to keep going. It felt like a single not very good joke - this elderly man climbing out of a window on his 100th birthday and then getting into all sorts of escapades - that was being spun out over 387 pages... far too long and by the time I got to the end it had put me off picking up another book. I just didn't feel like reading anything. Silly ending too!

Then my friend Anne popped The Way We Wore - A Life in Clothes through the letterbox so I thought I might as well read that as anything else. It is an autobiography by Daphne Selfe the 87 year old supermodel who was one of the stars of Fabulous Fashionistas (I've suddenly spotted an age theme to my reading!). To be completely honest the writing wasn't that good and it was rather repetitive but it was interesting from a social history of dress point of view. And she did come acoss as a rather nice lady, if a little naive. At one point during early years she claims that they had to be frugal with their clothes as they were poor... and then almost in the next paragraph tells of sitting at the grand piano in the sitting room and how they could only afford one girl to help around the house!

Another reason for not reading so much this month has been the start of my new venture (Thank you for all the wonderful words of encouragement by the way)... which of course has required much research and reading of cookery books. This is my latest aquistion

Although I think that Patisserie Made Simple is a bit of a misnomer. Nothing simple about it!

When we passed through France on return from our holiday I took many photos of beautiful Patissiers and we sampled the gorgeous Laduree macarons which came in so many delightful colours and flavours

So it seemed like a good idea to perfect my own macaron skills especially as they are often seen decorating the tops of fancy cakes. I have made them before without too much trouble but the first batch I made following Ed Kimber's instructions in the book were useless being all soft and cracked... so they went in the bin. The second batch were marginally better and I managed to take the photo below before most of those went in the bin too! What they lacked in good looks, they made up for in taste but I came to the conclusion that mostly they are too much effort for what you get back in return... and I'm a girl who will happily while away an entire afternoon on fiddly twiddly baking. No more macarons for me... and then I saw these by Hazel from Procastibake and I've changed my mind. I know I will make these!

 Another thing I have been reading is a playscript, as at the end of this month our drama group is putting on 'Allo, 'Allo. I never manage to read many other books when I have lines to learn. I confess I had never seen the TV programme until we got involved with this play and I'm not sure what I feel about it. It is so ridiculous and totally non PC but there are several laugh out loud moments so I'm sure it will be fun. I'm playing the part of Michelle, the resistance leader... Listen very carefully, I shall say zis only once...

And so to my choice of book for October... which is Emma by Alexander McCall Smith. I was almost a week into the month with nothing new to read, despite having many books on shelves and on lists that I would like to read, when Stewart brought this back for me from a recent trip up to Dundee. It is a retelling Jane Austen's classic (which I confess I have never read) and a gentle, easy read in the style of all his previous books. Nothing earth shattering, but enjoyable enough!

Joining in with Laura at Circle of Pine Trees for The Year in Books

All Change!

Have you missed me? I have been noticably absent from my own blog and yours, not because I have been away anywhere wonderful and exotic, but because I have been very busy. Busier than usual... busy making changes... and cakes!

A couple of months ago I found myself doing a bit of soul searching and knew that I was ready for some change in my life. I took an on-line course with "Do What You Love for Life" which gave me the push to actually do just that... to do what I really love doing and that is baking.

I'm not completely giving up with textiles as I have teaching committments that run throughout next year and beyond, but as a rule I am not taking on any new classes. I will remain a member of Prism and with a bit of luck I'll have more time to stitch the things I want rather than endless teaching samples. Time for my own work.

But this week I have taken the plunge and launched my new baking busines "Apricot and Fig" supplying fresh baked cakes, desserts and savoury bakes. It is something I've thought about for many years but the fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of giving up on something I am already known for and successful at, has held me back. Taking the on line course was a huge factor in pushing me in this direction, wonderful for making me confront those fears and realise they existed only in my head. I would definitely recommend it. There are other reasons for me wanting to make changes too but this is not the time nor place.

So this week, not ony have I been sorting out paperwork, filling in forms for the local authority, getting things printed etc. I have also made a batch of gluten free macaroons, some millionaire's shortbread, several pots of damson jelly (my prize winning recipe!), a large gluten free chocolate cake, a 50th birthday cake, a banana cake,  a lemon tart (I'll own up... two lemon tarts because the first one leaked everywhere and collapsed) and twenty four mini savoury cheesecakes... And I also spent a day with the ladies of Tunbridge Wells Embroiderer's Guild teaching them how to make these books.

Didn't they do well!

There is little doubt that I will miss my days of teaching... we laughed, had fun and there was the satisfaction of seeing everyone go away with a finished item and new skills.

But I'm also very excited about my new venture... cake anyone?

Starting my own baking business also ticks another sixty by sixty box too!

Afternoon Tea

This is where I went for afternoon tea yesterday!

The Palm Court at the Ritz Hotel!

It was a present to my Mum from my brother and myself for her 80th birthday but it has taken us all year to find a time when the five of us were free at the same as the Ritz could fit us in. Mum will be 81 on Wednesday! But it was worth the wait.

I thought it might feel a bit snobby or pretentious but not at all... it was just beautiful! The room, the flowers, the music, the china and the silver... all just beautiful. And the service was wonderful as might be expected!

We all had a super time and decided it was a pretty perfect way to while away a Sunday afternoon. Very civilised.

The sandwiches, scones and pastries weren't bad either! In fact we were so full up when they came round with the cake trolley none of us could manage anything else.

I think Mum enjoyed herself!  Look at her misbehaving at the grand piano... can't take her anywhere!

Afterwards we had a stroll in the sunshine in Green Park up to Buckingham Palace before heading home. All in all a wonderful weekend. And for me "Afternoon Tea at the Ritz"means I've ticked off another of my sixty by sixty! Two down... fifty eight to go!

Village Life

I have lived in the same village for over twenty five years and the things I love most about village life are the whole village events that bring everyone out, helping or joining in. There is a wonderful sense of community and friendship. Today was our annual Harvest Fair and despite the threatening look of those clouds it was a warm and sunny afternoon that brought the crowds out to enjoy the fun.

There were old tractors and vintage cars, displays from police dog handlers and firefighters, tombolas and raffles, sideshows and stalls

There was a fabulous band, a barbeque and a beer tent as well as teas, cakes, ice creams or anything else you might fancy.

And the whole afternoon was rounded off with a traditional tug of war... and if you look very carefully you can see our MP leading the adults in dragging all those children across the mud!

And of course, there was the horticultural show in the village hall. Despite all your well wishes my pretty biscuits did not convince the judges and only came in third place... which would have been quite respectable had there been more than three entries in that class!

But I was not disappointed because I picked up firsts in the fruit cake, bread rolls, fruit scones, cheese scones, jam, chutney and needlework classes which meant I was the overall winner of the homecraft cup.

My old domestic science teacher would never believe it!

When we got home we celebrated with afternoon tea of prize winning scones with prize winning damson jelly...

And I'm now off for an early night because we've got another busy day with afternoon tea tomorrow that promises to be rather special... but I'll tell you all about that next time!

Five on Friday - From my kitchen

Five on Friday? More like Five every fortnight! I had all good intentions of a post last Friday, then before I knew it, it was the weekend... Six on Saturday anyone? But one thing led to another and a whole week passed. My teaching has started again this week so there has been sewing of samples and preparation done, my Italian classes have started again and I'm painfully aware of how much I have forgotten over the summer despite a holiday in Italy,  plus I'm in the thick of rehearsals for a play to take place next month... So as you can see lots going on, some of which I may tell you about in due course. But all the time I continue to bake and cook with a passion, no matter how busy I am. So today a taste of a few of the things to come out of my kitchen recently.

1. A fig and pear frangipane tart

Inspired by the frangipane tarts on the Great British Bake Off and by some good figs from the market, I made this tart, combining various recipes and tweaking here and there. It was good... But with only two of us here it meant dessert all week which was not so good. Well, it was but you get my drift!

2. Chocolate and salted caramel torte

Gill, who doesn't really enjoy cooking, often sends me recipes. And of course, I can't resist trying them. Do you think she has an ulterior motive as one of my chief testers?  This was meant to be one big torte but I made twelve little ones. Again, they were good, but to be fair, I did manage to give half of these away although it still meant several more days of dessert. At least we had finished the frangipane tart!

3. Biscotti

More apricot and fig biscotti, most of which were given away as gifts. There is a limit to how much cake or biscuits I can eat. Recipe here if you missed it.

4. An Ottolenghi inspired lunch

After our visit to Ottolenghi's in Spitlefields last week, I was inspired to get out my copy of Plenty and cook a broccoli and Gorgonzola pie plus various salads when my eldest came for lunch. See I can do savoury too! Fortunately it is the type of food that tastes just as good the next day... and the next... and even the next. Delicious though it all was, it was good to have macaroni cheese yesterday!

5. Bouquet cookies.

Yesterday, a piece of fiddly baking, recipe from The Pink Whisk... Cookies for the village show tomorrow. I decided to up my game for my entries for the home crafts section in the show. So if you will excuse me I'm off to perfect my Victoria sponge, bake a batch of six rolls and see if I can improve on my scones! I'll let you know how I get on!

Linking up with Amy for Five on Friday