Learning to cook

Tim is vegetarian so I never cook meat, and have fallen into a real cooking rut, tending to rely on the same few recipes over and over again. One of my new year's resolutions was to try out more recipes and increase the variety of what we eat at home. Today I made the aubergine and french bean curry from River Cottage - Veg everyday. I had to make curry paste from scratch (using the final shallots from last year's allotment crop), which made me feel a bit domestic-goddessy and it was delicious! Definitely one to make again.

Sloe gin

Today I finally bottled the sloe gin that I've had infusing away on the worktop for the past three months. I've been holding out for the right bottles to put it in (rejecting the suggestion of the man in the farm shop that an old two litre plastic bottle would do the trick, like the sloe gin snob that I am) and finally found the perfect ones in Lakeland. I've used the recipe from the River Cottage Preserves handbook, and initial taste testing are pretty good. Apparently I need to leave it for 18 months before drinking though, and a recent article I read even suggested that 18 years would be the optimum length of time to allow it to reach its full taste potential. Chances of this actually happening in real life are slim to none. I'm not known for my patience! I still have a big bag of sloes in the freezer and am debating whether to pop these into some gin as well. There may well be a lot of gin-based presents from us next Christmas!

Missing the allotment

I realised when I was a few months pregnant with B, that I really wasn't going to be able to do our allotment justice over the next couple of years, so made the tough decision to give it up. I really agonised over the decision because I really loved it up there, loved growing our own food and even sort of loved the occasion slow-worm encounter! I was trying to be practical and sensible by handing it back, but I really do miss it so much! At this time of year, I would usually be so busy planning the plot (endless scruffy drawings in my notebook, trying to work out crop rotations and where I could legitimately sneak flowers in), starting seeds off and looking forward to spending time up there in the sunshine, and instead I'm just looking at my books and searching online for houses to move to with a big enough garden for a vegetable plot. It will happen, eventually...

Valentine's day

DVD? Check. Bottle of fizz? Check. Industrial quantities of Maltesers? Check.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Need for colour

It feels as though it has been miserable and grey outside for months. We didn't get the snow that the rest of the country enjoyed/suffered through, instead we have endless drizzle and overcast days. So I've had to up the colour quota indoors, otherwise I start to pine and become as gloomy as the skies outside.

Daydreaming

Nearly two years ago, my sister and her husband got married in Malaysia. We all travelled out there to celebrate with them and, as a lovely by-product, had one of the best holidays we've ever had. The hotel we stayed at in Langkawi served the most amazing breakfasts, a huge buffet of an amazing range of food (including a beef rendang which is still spoken of in hushed tones by my dad), fruit juices, champagne (I really should try to include champagne in my breakfast more often, it would perk me up no end! ) great coffee and finally an amazing range of teas. These teas became a bit of an obsession. As I am my mother's daughter, I swiped as many as possible each day and squirrelled them away in my suitcase to bring home, where they went on to last us for a good few months after returning. Everytime we had one, we could pretend we were in the sunshine enjoying a champagne breakfast. But then the sad day came that the tea ran out. Bad times. But thanks to the almighty power of the internet, I managed to track down the supplier's website and we were once again, restocked. It's pricey, but as a treat, so worth it. So on miserable grey days like this

I can make myself a cup of this

and close my eyes and pretend I'm here...

Treasure-hunting

As I walked into town this morning, the display in the window of one of the local charity shops caught my eye. In the centre was a set of vintage crockery with a pattern that I recognised. As a bit of background, my family are generally champion hoarders, bargain hunters and thrifters - especially my middle sister, who is the queen of this kind of treasure-hunting. We can't resist vintage loveliness and I realised that I recognised the pattern from my youngest sister's house. A couple of quick texts later and I was struggling home up the hill carrying six dinner plates, six bowls, six cups and saucers and a fruit bowl for my sister, all purchased for the princely sum of four pounds! I was on a bargain-induced high for the rest of the morning.