Ever since I read Claire’s recipe for nettle soup I’ve been meaning to give it a go, but, predictably, I discovered Claire’s blog in the winter, when nettles were rather thin on the ground. So thin, in fact, as to be non-existent, except in their very stringiest, inedible-looking form. However, the world has turned, and spring follows winter, and here we are, with absolutely heaps of the wretched things. Well, I say ‘wretched’; I must say, nettle soup has rather changed my opinion of the humble stinger, and now I’m eyeing up the crop up the lane with greedy eyes and reaching for a pair of stealthy gloves. For some reason known only to the gods, I forgot about Claire’s recipe, and found instead a Woman’s Hour version which looked worth a go; of course, midway through I suffered a fit of the ‘that looks too grim even for me’s, and ended up changing the ingredient list a fair bit, so here, for your edible edification, is the result (and I would have posted a picture, but we ate it all).

Nettle Soup
Get:
1 large potato
1 large onion
Slug of oil
About half a carrier bagful of nettles, picking only the young ones (we used the tips)
2 bayleaves
1 vegetable stock cube
1 litre of water
1 tsp of Marmite (yes, I know: love it or hate it, but it’s handy in such situations)
6 cloves garlic (might as well be hung for the proverbial, what?)
A rather grubby-looking carrot found at the back of the fridge
4 sticks of celery
About half a mug of cooked rice which was looking sorry for itself in an overlooked pan
About ¼ pint of milk (I used goats)

Then…
Fry up the onion in a spot of olive oil, adding the carrot, garlic, potato and celery when the onion’s softened up a bit. Poke it all about for a bit, then realise that washing nettles might be helpful. Approach bag, armed with gloves, and gingerly remove said stems before waving fairly hopelessly under tap while small daughter (optional) shows alarming interest in eating main ingredient raw. Hope this interest does not persist. Realise onions now perilously close to catching fire. Turn hob down and sling in nettles before adding water, stock, Marmite and rice. Boil the lot for about fifteen minutes, adding bayleaves when they catch your eye.

When you’re happy that the potato is done, bung in the milk and don’t boil it if you want to avoid, ahem, odd-looking particles floating about the place. Remember, though, that should this, by some bizarre twist of fate, turn out to be exactly what happens, you are going to blend the results to within an inch of their lives. So, er, blend. And eat. And marvel.

Next up: what goes with it. Which, given that it takes much longer to prepare, should really have come first, but hey – let’s not get picky, shall we?

Spelt Bread
Find…
5 cups strong white/spelt flour
1 cup oats
2-3 cups warm water
Dollop of sunflower oil
1 tbsp quick-acting yeast
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp honey

Then…
Get the yeast started off in with about a cup of warm water and the honey; I normally use a Pyrex measuring jug which I stick in the airing cupboard (which, now I come to look at it in the cold, hard light of day, is rather revoltingly covered in dough, courtesy of a yeast explosion which took place, er, some days ago) (why do I admit these things? ). (Of course, if you’re using one of those yeasts which you just sling in, then press on; I’ve got a tub of stuff I’m using up which isn’t quite that compliant.)

While that’s doing its thing (i.e. getting about an inch of foam on the top of its little self), pop the flour and oats in a large bowl; as soon as the yeast’s ready, sling in the warm water and the yeasty liquid, along with the oil and the salt, and mix it all up using a nice wooden spoon. Or a nasty one. I’m not particular. (As it happens, my current favourite is a smallish spoon with one edge burned to a flat line – doubles as a spatula thus. Normally, though, I pseudily prefer arbutus spatulas, which Quercus and I bought on Cortes Island, where, if the gods could only see their way to helping me work out how I’d earn a living in such a situation, I would happily move tomorrow.)

You should find yourself with a very stretchy, elastic sort of dough which wouldn’t be up to any of that kneading malarky. Leave it in the bowl, put a cloth over it, and stick it in the warm spot identified earlier to rise for about twenty minutes, after which knock it back to its original size with the aforementioned spoon and put it in a LARGE BREAD TIN. I cannot stress the LARGE sufficiently, I find – three attempts at this bread I have made, and all have exceeded even my expectations on that second rise, leading to the shameful state of the airing cupboard. (Which also looks like a dog’s dinner anyway, in the usual airing-cupboard-chaos manner, of course.)

Second rise should take about another twenty minutes, and then in it goes, at about 200°c for somewhere between forty minutes and an hour, et voila! Scoffage, of a crumpetty and highly addictive nature.

(This one is based on Sophie Dahl’s ‘Musician’s Bread‘, which I liked, but couldn’t get to stop sinking in the middle a little on cooking; I think the ratio of water to flour is simply a bit out in the original, hence the tinkering. If anyone has done Miss Dahl’s recipe and NOT had this happen, however, I would love to hear from you.)

So, I asked for nice things, and lo! nice things there were. Firstly, there was this extraordinarily nice parcel which winged its way to us from Claire at Whispering Acres. Look at all that loveliness. Approximately half a ton of felty goodness, complete with a very nice book indeed, together with some beautifully hand-dyed fleece and a rather very lovely hand-felted flower. Gosh, is all.

And then there were lots of lovely people coming out of the woodwork to tell me that I’m not a heinous arsehole, and that there are lots of lovely things cracking off in lots of lovely ways. (Yes, I am over-using the term ‘lovely’. No, I do not care. Yes, this shows an uncharacteristic lack of savagery. Blame it on the pastis.) Also, my very excellent chicken clock arrived this week – it has a pendulum foot which moves with the tickingness, and a chickeny face which could not fail to charm. Well, it charms me, anyway, and it serves as a reminder that, while we haven’t got hens just now, we are still Hen People, and, when the time is right and we have found the right set-up for keeping the laying ladies safe (and for giving them two areas of pasture, so we can rotate between seasons as Cheryl mentions here), we’ll have more hens, and we’ll reclaim our existing hens (who are living it up at Purple Towers for now).

Also rather pleasant was this evening’s dinner, which warrants a 52 Recipes entry, methinks. Thus:

Veggie Casserole with Herby Cheesy Dumplekins*
Wossinit?

For the casserole:
2 large onions
2 large carrots
2 parsnips
A fistful of garlic
About eight large mushrooms (or as many as are mouldering at the back of the fridge)
A slurp of olive oil
About a pint of veggie stock
A few bay leaves
About ¼ pint of white wine
A couple of tsp of cornflour

For the dumplekins:
4 oz self-raising flour
About 2 oz cheddar cheese
A fistful of fresh parsley
A knob of butter

Then…
Chop the parsnips up, coat them in a drop of oil and whack them in the oven to roast on a suitably incandescent temperature (I think I went for about 220°c, and that took about twenty minutes) until they’re roasted to destruction perfection (which = destruction minus approx. thirty seconds, in my experience).

Meanwhile, chop the carrots, onions, garlic and mushrooms up, and sling them in a pan. (I misguidedly used a rather large number, which meant that dinner looked a tad impoverished; note to self: smaller pan looks far more greedy-indulging). Fry that lot up with the slurp of olive oil for a few minutes, putting the mushrooms in last because of that thing they do where they appear to bring a pint of liquid (each!) to the party.

While that’s cooking, start on the dumplekins, so-called because they were far too small to be dumplings, but were clearly second cousins to that noble beast. So, pop the flour and parsley in a bowl, rub in the butter and then add the cheese. About four spoons of cold water should make a workable dough; divide that into about a dozen or so little lumps and form them into balls.

At this point, realise the parsnips have caught fire, or – no – wait – there can be smoke without fire, particularly if you last used the grillpan in about 1603. Rescue parsnips. Add the stock and the wine to the casserole pan, and cook until you’re no longer swooning from the alcohol fumes (oh, that’s just me?), before mixing up the cornflour with some cold water and slinging that in to thicken the sauce a bit. Boil it all up until you’re happy, and then throw the dumplings in, stick the lid on, and leave it to ferment on a low heat for about twenty minutes.

Finally, chuck in the parsnips, and scoff surprising quantities of this while attempting to balance the warring demands of wondering if you put in enough cheese, while knowing that to add more would be dangerously close to obscenity.

* This is loosely based on a recipe in Nadine Abensur’s Cranks Fast Food, a book which details, in my experience, food which isn’t really fast, but hey. The recipes are delicious, but often seem to call on stuff which I just haven’t got, and can’t even find in various supermarkets, so I end up going off on a tangent, which is why I say ‘based on’ in this case. However, the book’s well worth a look, and not least for such delights as the stuffed courgettes recipe. No, really.

Lordy-me, I’m having a blogging slump, it appears. It’s not that I’ve nothing to report, and more that I’m not finding time to do it. I honestly don’t know how so many delightful bloggers find time each day to sit down and post things which not only consist of more than the written equivalent of the twin fingers of derision, but are well-thought-out and eloquent, complete with pictures and illustrations. It’s depressing. Or, rather, it would be, if I didn’t enjoy reading such pourings-forth.

Anyway, recent activities have included the acquisition of a reclaimed pine table for our kitchen, which genuinely feels like a kitchen now, and which has really changed the way we’re living in our tiny house to an extent I hadn’t anticipated. It’s so nice to have space for the small girl to toddle about the place without having to think about table saws and screwdrivers as potential weapons in tiny hands. We’ve even got space for a rug where she can sit and explore some of her recent haul from her grandma; she is loving the extra space, and we are breathing out, collectively.

We’ve also made quite firm plans for what this summer will be. So far, it looks like Quercus will take parental leave from his job in order to spend a concerted block of time on the house – three weeks to finish the outside of the extension, which includes drainage, guttering, painting and various bits and bobs of things like fixing lime render where frost came too soon for us. It’s going to be another busy year, but I’m trying to stay upbeat about this; the loss of the chickens has hit me harder than I’d imagined possible, to be honest, and I am struggling to find the optimism which normally buoys me up on even the greyest of days. Partly, I think that’s why I’ve not been writing here very frequently; it’s not that I have sunk into the slough of despond, but I do feel that it’s very wearisome to read yet another depressing ‘oh shit’ post, and it’s probably only going to hack me off further to write such witterings. So, I’m holding my metaphorical tongue until such time as I have more cheery tidings to impart.

I’m also conscious of being rather very behind in the 52 Recipes in 2010 stakes. I started late – I think it was April – but still, I think I need to be cooking something new every single day from here to 2011 at this rate. I’m going to try to get two new things in this week as a bid to turn things around, mood-wise. I’m reasonably cheery, I suppose, and I just need to remember that, and develop it, all of which is hard when the small girl is teething molars, and waking quite frequently, so we’re knackered, as usual. (It’s all so boring, sleep deprivation, yet utterly overwhelming from time to time, I find.)

Current preoccupations:

Children, the number, timing, and nature thereof;

Cooking, and the need not to repeat oneself ad nauseum;

House work, as in cleaning and painting windows, drainage, fixing gardens et al;

The physical self, and why my body wants either chocolate or sleep ALL THE TIME.

Tell me nice things in my comments box, please. (Inspired by DW, whose “I need to hear nice things” post made me smile.)

I’ve been meaning to post lots of exciting things about lots of fascinating subjects, but, er, well, I’m brain-dead due to lack of sleep and a particularly un-scintillating copy-editing job which finishes today, so all I can come up with is the very lovely loaf recipe which I tried out yesterday, in need of a little something to distract from the aforementioned copy horrors. It’s a Cranks recipe, and I can honestly say that, other than the peanut butter and apple soup (which was never really going to work, was it, and if I’d read it in any other book, I wouldn’t even have paused for thought before damning it as the very worst sort of heresy), they are all fillers and no killers (see what I did there?).

So, here goes.

Spiced banana and apple loaf
Ingredients
1 apple, cored, peeled and grated
2 small bananas, mashed
Zest of a large lemon
2 oz sultanas (mixed dried fruit would work well, too)
1 lb of strong (bread) flour (I used a wholemeal spelt I just happened to have kicking about)
2 oz dark brown sugar (I probably used four, if we’re honest, because my hand slipped when sticking it in the bowl)
1 t(b)sp of mixed spice, cinnamon, nutmeg etc.
1 tsp quick-acting yeast
¼ of a pint of warm water

Then…
Pop about 4 oz of the flour in a bowl with the water and the yeast, and stick it somewhere warm to get nice and frothy. While that’s doing its thing, mash the bananas in with the grated apple and the lemon and the sultanas. When you’ve achieved a suitably frothy yeasty concoction, sling that in with the fruit, and add the other ingredients to form a dough-like consistency. Knead it for a bit, until it’s nicely formed, and then into an oiled (or silicone) bread tin with it, and off to a nice warm place to rise for about an hour. (Because I was using antiquated yeast and bread flour damp enough to have lumps, mine didn’t rise masses, but hey – let’s not judge.) Stick the oven on to about 200°c, and bake the blighter for about thirty minutes. As with ordinary bread, it’s done when it’s brown on top and sounds hollow when tapped in a peremptory manner on the base.
V. nice with a spot of butter on it, and works extremely well as toast. The funny thing is that, unlike many other banana-featuring recipes of my ken, this one hides its banananess extraordinarily well – you wouldn’t know they’d even been near it, never mind having moved in, wholesale.

Coming in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future:

- fat bells (and more dready loveliness) – a more successful experience, so thanks to all who commented on our first attempt;

- another ginormous-needles-make-fast-work knitted cardigan for the small girl, just, predictably, as the weather gets warmer;

- ponderings on when to sit and think about things, and the advantages and disadvantages thereof, and when to just get the fuck on with something and hope for the best.

In no particular order:

I hadn’t planned to go off on a cooking extravaganza, but this morning I found myself with some time where the kitchen wasn’t completely full of sawdust (the construction of a bench seat has started, which means cutting and chopping and planing and sanding, and that’s just to find the screwdriver), so I thought I’d have a bash at this Armenian soup recipe I came across in the very lovely and long-time favourite Cranks Recipe Book by David Canter. As ever, though, I ended up chucking quite a few things in which weren’t in the recipe because I hadn’t got quite what was called for… Nonetheless, the end result was very eatable, and went thusly:

Armenian soup
Ingredients
A mug of red lentils
About ten unsulphured apricots
A large diced potato
A large onion, peeled and diced
About ten cloves of garlic, badgered a bit with a knife
Pepper
Coriander (ground and leaf)
Marjoram
A good squeeze of lemon juice (manky half-lemon found in fridge sufficed)
Cumin
A large pinch of cayenne pepper
About two pints of vegetable stock

Then…
Sling the lot in a pan and boil reasonably briskly for about twenty minutes to make sure the lentils aren’t going to kill you, then turn the heat down and leave it to mellow until, well, you remember that pans are not supposed to glow in the dark. Blend it when you’re sure that to do so might not mean scalding liquids making contact with predictably bare arms, then scoff the lot with some nice bread and butter. And no, the apricots aren’t at all weird, even though you thought they would be. What? That’s just me?

I am doing things other than cooking, I hasten to add; in fact, joy of joys, I’m at home full-time for just over a week thanks to the miracle of bank holidays and timely annual leave, and during this time we’re hoping to Finish – Once And For All – The Kitchen. Lots of irritations to sort out finally, like skirting boards and seating and painting here and there, and we’re hoping to get the tiles sorted too, which will be nice as they are sick-makingly lovely multicoloured handmade numbers from a Mexican fair trade co-operative. It’ll be so nice to finish something.

In other news, I very much fear that the small girl is working steadily towards stopping daytime sleep. She stopped sleeping in the morning just before she was one (and then resumed it when I went back to work and it was Quercus on morning duty, albeit briefly), and while I felt that that was awfully little not to have more than one snooze, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about. Seems like the afternoons are going that way too; it’s getting harder for her to drop off, or so it seems, and this afternoon we ended up going out for a puddle-jumping walk in the pouring rain instead, before catching a late forty winks mid-afternoon. I dunno. It feels very much as if she’s changing her rhythm at the moment, and we have yet to work out quite where it’s headed, so there have been some unusually-timed snoozes, and some interesting walks, and some ‘now? really?’ moments, but, for the most part, it’s all good.

And you?

Last night I came up with the following, thinking of both Karen‘s ‘Pimp My Menu‘, and the 52 Recipe thing I am having a go at:

I Just Can’t Call It A Medley
Ingredients
A slug of olive oil
An onion, chopped vaguely
About half a bulb of garlic (oh yes – we likes garlickyness, we does)
One large aubergine, diced roughly
One large courgette, ditto
A tin of tomatoes
A stockcube (Kallo, in our case)
A small glass of ginger wine
A large sprinkling of fresh thyme

Then…
Chuck the onions and garlic in a reasonably capacious frying pan with the oil, and fry them until they’re, well, fried. Add the aubergines and give them a few minutes’ head-start on the tomatoes, which go in next, together with the thyme and the stockcube. Poke that lot around for a few minutes, and then whack the ginger wine in. (I think a spoonful of honey and some ginger cordial would do this quite nicely, likewise sweet white wine and dried ginger, or preserved ginger plus sauce. I also think that mushrooms would be a rather nice addition.) Sizzle that lot up for a few minutes, then sling in the courgettes for about three minutes, depending on how crunchy you like ‘em (we basically eat them hot, but not cooked), before popping it into large bowls and scoffing the lot.

I need to develop a larger aubergine repertoire; normally, they’re stuffed with mushrooms and cheese, or part of Moussaka, but this was nice because it was quicker by far than either of these. Next up: aubergines parmesan, courtesy of Cranks.

In a rather half-arsed manner, I have been attempting to take part in Karen‘s ‘Pimp My Menu’ project. I say half-arsed, because so far my part-taking has consisted of thinking ‘oooh, what a good idea’, and making an ill-suited chocolate cake. (Though this is the bit where I throw dirty-yet-mildly-vindicated looks at Turquoise Lisa, who is no better than I am, with her packet curries and her biscuits.)

However.

Here beginneth a new phase. Karen’s idea was not just to try out new things, but also to revisit old favourites passed over in recent times because of laziness/habit/short-term memory loss, and in that spirit, I have been revisiting pizza. Ahh, pizza: champion of sofa-dwellers the world over. Also, I learn, pretty good for small people to poke at (the dough, that is).

Ours goes thusly:

Pizza

Wossinit?
Base:

10 oz self-raising flour (As an aside, does the US have this? All my American recipe books say things like ‘all-purpose flour and baking soda’ or something similar.)
A good slug of olive oil
A fistful of oregano
A fistful of garlic, either chopped and fresh, or dried and powdered
Enough milk (be it goat, cow or soya) to achieve a workable doughy texture (I think mine was about half a pint, from memory.)

Then…
Whack the lot in a bowl and mix it with your sticky little paws. (If they weren’t sticky when you began, they certainly will be very shortly.) Oil a nice greedy-looking tray (ours is about fourteen inches long, and, say, eight or ten wide), and pummel the resulting doughy concoction into submission; the thinner the base, the shorter the cooking time to avoid doughy hell, and the crunchier the results. It is shaming to confess that I now rather like the squareness that our tray results in, and even pass over our round (and specially designed) pizza tray thingy.

When you’ve reached a suitably flattened look, or, rather, when the base is suitably squashed but you live on, courtesy of a glass of red wine, turn your attention to the sauce (and lay off the other sauce, at least temporarily, if you are to avoid burning the aforementioned sticky fists on something warmer than you’d like).

Beg, borrow or steal…
Sauce:

A slug of olive oil
A chopped onion, of the large persuasion
A tube of tomato purée (or a tin of tomatoes, drained and probably de-seeded if you want to be all particular about it)
A stock cube or two
A good wodge of oregano, mixed dried herbs, garlic powder and whatever other herby things suggest themselves
A teaspoon of honey, to take the edge off the acidity
About a half-pint of water, to get the consistency right

Then…
Sling the onions in a pan and fry them for a wee while until they begin to capitulate, before chucking the rest of the stuff in. Stir at will, while prancing around the kitchen to the dulcet tones of Spiro‘s Lightbox (this last bit is optional, I hasten to add). Realise that one’s small girl is dancing too, and laughing at you while she’s doing it. Cook the sauce for about ten minutes or so, to make sure the onion’s not too crunchy.

Spead the sauce on the base, and then chuck on whatever you fancy, really; our favourites seem to be cheese (obviously), red onion slices, courgettes cut into large chunks, sweetcorn, more cheese, and pepperoni, with sunflower seeds sprinkled on the top for added crunch. (Sunflower seeds are my favourite addition to the top of most things; I love love love them on top of hovel pie, a lentil-based version of cottage pie which we ought to eat more often, and which might form the next part of this menu-pimping malarky, come to think of it.)

Although I feel content, generally, with the sort of things we eat, it’s always nice to come across new favourites, so I ask you, lovely readers, what am I missing out on that I should be eating EVERY SINGLE DAY? What can motivate me to lurch out of the rut that we normally inhabit, lovely though that rut might be? There’s nothing like a new recipe to look forward to…

A while back I made some passing reference to chocolate malt cake, and I may even have gone so far as to add that I’d post a recipe at some point. Foolish me. Those words sealed the fate of that recipe for at least a month, as I then promptly went away for a week or so, and had a general melt-down. Well, meltdown over, I now present said recipe, along with an apology for its being so long in coming. I know what chocolate and malt means, gentle reader, and I don’t mess with such power lightly.

Chocolate Malt Cake
Ingredients
Chocolate and malt. Ha. Had you there, didn’t I? But seriously…
2 mugs self-raising flour
2 large-ish eggs (in my case, three smallish blue ones, I think)
½ mug dark brown sugar
½ mug malt extract
¼ mug cocoa
¼ mug sunflower oil

Yes. I used mugs. Not cups. BECAUSE I AM GREEDY.

Then…
Sling the lot in a large bowl and beat the buggery out of it. Pour the resulting shiny happy mixtureness into an oiled loaf tin (or a smug-inducing silicone one which requires no such fiddling) and cook in YOUR NEW OVEN WHICH HEATS UP IN ONE NANOSECOND AND ISN’T COVERED IN A MYSTERIOUS FILM OF OIL for about forty-five minutes on 180°c.

All clear?

Right. It’s official. I have decided that the best way to rediscover my mojo, currently missing in inaction, is to just pretend it’s here. It’s not quite the same, but levering oneself off the sofa isn’t pleasurable even when one has got more energy than the average sloth, so I figure I’ve got little or nothing to lose, except a few extra minutes of lounging, and that seems to be contributing to the problem rather than alleviating it. So, today, I have ordered an external hard-drive (yay!, largely because taking action in this, er, active manner means that I no longer have to think about such deeply boring things, and can now return to filling my head with more fascinating and useful information, such as, um, recipes for Swedish apple cakes, and, er, knitting patterns), bought a ridiculously reduced pair of shoes on t’inter (that’s reduced in price, I hasten to add; I have not suddenly developed a passion for foot bondage) to solve the stupid lack of shoeage that I have recently developed, sorted two lots of laundry (so much less horrid since we have done away with the laundry airer and replaced it with the cunning hangy-from-ceiling thing – I am almost enjoying laundry, which just might constitute the eighth wonder of the world), and made two batches of biscuits with the tiny daughter. That’s ‘with’ as in ‘she helped’, rather than ‘now available in new daughter flavour!’. It seems that the small girl may well have inherited my love of all things kitchen witchery: she spent an hour stirring the mixture, putting in individual pieces of mixed peel, and shaking in what can only be described as a veritable spronkle of cinnamon. End result: one very sticky daughter, one VERY sticky counter, and something like a metric ton of biscuits. Not bad, eh?

Tomorrow I shall make a bid for freedom by sticking the small girl in the velvet sling and going for a walk with her. At the moment, most of our walks involve her doing the walking, and one or other of her parents sort of idling along, although when she’s on top form, I reckon she’s managing about two miles an hour, which, on legs approximately a quarter the length of ours, is not bad going, by my reckoning. But… it’s not exactly strenuous for adult companions, shall we say, and, as previously mentioned, at this rate, I shall be hiring myself out for use as a traffic island. Unfortunately, I need exercise. Don’t get me wrong: mostly, I loathe the very thought of such a thing. But… in the quiet of my secret mind, I confess (to the entire inter) that I do love that feeling when you’ve walked five miles, and have another two or so to go, and you’re into your stride, and your legs feel as if they’re walking for themselves and you’re not really putting in any effort and you could go on forever.* And perhaps it’s the Sagittarian in me, but I often feel better for getting out, getting fresh air, a change of scene. So, that’s the plan tomorrow – go somewhere, preferably by the sea, and walk for at least forty minutes, at a good quick pace, while carrying about twenty-four pounds of baby. Good for the soul, and not so bad for the ol’ cardiac whatsit either, I hope.

On which note, I shall retire to my chaise-longue. It’s not good to rush one’s recover.

*Or until someone offers you a nice bun and a cup of tea. I’m only human, you know.

So, here we are in 2010 – how very nice it is to see you all, as it were. This evening, Quercus and I went out for a quick walk around the field behind the house – it has been very cold here in Devon, and the frost is thick enough on the ground that there are spikes of ice sticking out at outlandish angles from each blade of grass. We haven’t had snow, but the frost in the rising moonlight was crunchy underfoot, and the stars were bright overhead, and we are told that snow may even appear tomorrow or the day after.

Tomorrow is twelfth night, and this being one of the traditions that appears to have crept into our lives together, we will disband our Chrimbly tree, removing in the process the eighteen felted hearts and, er, one star that I managed to get stitched before giving up for this year; we went for the minimalist approach, using only the felty things, lights and some particularly attractive fircones as decorations. The good thing about losing the Christmas tree, which I am always sorry to see go, is that we will have serious floorspace available to us in the kitchen for the first time in aaaaages. Quercus has fitted oak worktops during the Christmas break, and we spent the days after New Year waxing them and polishing them with hard wax oil, a slightly confusing substance which behaves like neither wax nor oil, and which requires approximately half a decade to dry. Or go off. Or harden. Or whichever term implies best its ultimate, er, setting. Having worktops, together with cupboards underneath them, means the kitchen now resembles an Actual Proper Kitchen In Which Cooking Might Not Be Outlandish, particularly with a fitted oven! and a hob with wanky touch control thingies that neither of us really understands! to complement the cupboardage. Next up is a large oddly-spaced cupboard on the right-angled wall, but that’s sort of the next stage, so let us not get too ahead of ourselves, eh?

Largely, the festive whatsit was quiet and delightful this year. Notable exceptions to this rule went as follows:

- Quercus’s mother told him he needed a haircut as her opening greeting, literally as she walked through the back door (to which she goes automatically, and which she opens without knocking unless we, Lucia-like, thwart her Mapp-inspired progress by locking the door, something we delight in managing), which was particularly irritating as we had actually had a cut booked for him but the hairdresser had cancelled because she wasn’t very well. Also irritatingly, she told him his glasses need changing because they’re scratched; he’d been to the opticians the weekend previously and is awaiting new lenses as we speak.

- One of the presents she very kindly gave us was funds for a wooden hanging airer affair, the sort you suspend with cunning ropes and pulleys, shimmying it up somewhere nice and warm and OUT OF THE WAY whenever clothes have the temerity to need washing. We bought the blighter, and blow me if we didn’t fit it the very same day it arrived, largely in a bid to avoid our usual ‘oh yes – must do that sometime’ procedure, a well-rehearsed number which usually includes a six-month lead-time. So, there we were, congratulating ourselves on a job disgustingly well-done and with more promptness than is perhaps decent, when up pipes Quercus’s dear mother with ‘but of course the washing won’t actually DRY there, will it?’. No, because clearly the effect we were hoping for was not one of drying, but of an INDOOR WATERFALL, carefully crafted with prayers to the gods of wet laundry.

- Eclipsing any irritations offered by my delightful mother-in-law, however, was my experience of van versus elbow, which took place on Boxing Day. We (we being me, Quercus, his mum and the tiny daughter) went for a walk in glorious December sunshine. We followed the Highway Code, walking on the right side for the conditions and taking general note of any traffic around (which was not considerable, it being Boxing Day, and the lanes being tiny and icy) and wearing suitably bright clothing (in my case, because I am naturally colourful; in Quercus’s mother’s case, because other people’s retinas are there to be attacked). Unfortunately, this did not prevent a van driver hitting not one, not two, but three of us, though astonishingly, and hugely thankfully, the tiny daughter was completely unharmed. Quercus had a big bruise and two large grazes to show for it, and I had a partially dislocated elbow and a bruise the size of Calcutta which has yet to disappear. Stiffness, general aches and pains and the continued purpleitude are the ongoing whatsits at this point; for the other party, apparently either a mandatory driving improvement course and accompanying fine or prosecution is likely. We have litigiously engaged a personal injury lawyer.

The delightfulness still outstripped the moments of homicidal mania, however, particularly where the tiny daughter’s recent acquisition (a red rocking moose) was concerned. Other splendid moments were created by the rapid consumption of far too many mince pies (though I still find that the mince pie drawer remains reasonably empty,* in my case, begging the question as to whether or not one might find any more about the place…) and two entire trays of homemade Rocky Road (for which I blame Nigella Lawson, of whose work I had remained blissfully unaware prior to a moment of weakness in the few days before Christmas, and an unfortunate availability of her back catalogue on the Beeb‘s iPlayer dooberry).

Also, and I feel this warrants an entry of its own, really, I found myself the recipient of the very best present I could have wished for, but wouldn’t have, not wanting to tempt fate: the witchling’s sleep has improved. We haven’t done anything horrid, and we didn’t end up night-weaning, but for the last couple of weeks, things have been much better. Of course, now that I’ve written that down and made whichever part of the universe which had until now been looking the other way, busily destroying nations and whatnot, I expect the attention will snap back this way and sleep will once more become but a distant memory, but I just wanted to record for posterity that things have been particularly lovely for a little while. Long may it last.

And you?

* I tend to think my stomach has various drawers, departments and other organisational sectors; sometimes, for example, the savoury drawer can be stuffed to capacity, while the sweet drawer is happy to accept four servings of pudding, a bar of chocolate, and the promise of a ruptured something-or-other still to come. Is this just me? I think not.

A while back, I mentioned the chocolate ginger cake I made for Quercus’s birthday. Oh, the chocolateyness of it. Oh, the gingerification of it. Folks, it was, put simply, such stuff as dreams are made on. Anyway, in the absence of anything remotely interesting to say about anything else, I thought I’d offer it up here, on a virtual plate, for your cooking – and scarfing – enjoyment. Of course, anything ginger gets a get-out-of-accusations-of-piggery-free card, courtesy of it being the time of year when one catches all sorts of nasty cough-related bugs, and ginger being a most lovely way to attempt to ward such nasties off. Of course the second, it’s also a very good way to worm your way into your loved ones’ affections – providing cake is always a winner, no?

In other news, well, still coughing. Today I caved and started to take the antibiotics. I’ve been coughing for ten days; enough is enough, I suppose. It’s all very tedious. Never mind. There is tea; there is ginger; there is, then, hope.

Chocolate Ginger Loveliness

Get mits on:
200g dark chocolate;
200g brown sugar;
200g butter;
A tbsp self-raising wholemeal flour;
Three large eggs;
Four of those knobbly bits of ginger you get in a jar of preserved ginger, together with a good ol’ slurp of the liquid too.

Then…
Melt the chocolate with the butter in a manner which doesn’t involve the woodburner, a lot of spitting butter, and the too-late realisation that washing is within spitting range. Stick the ginger into a small bowl and – assuming you’ve got one – blitz the hell out of it with one of those natty little hand-held blitzy things which are probably officially meant only for blending soup. Warning: ginger really travels in this situation. Sling the resulting goop in with the sugar, then stick in in the melted chocolate and butter mixture, before beating in the eggs and the flour. Select a tin of your choice – ours was a slightly battered square number – about eight inches across, and stick it in t’oven for about, well, the timing is probably highly oven-specific, to be honest; our oven being the shite pile of crapness that it is, it took about forty minutes, but a decent version might manage to cook this to perfection in half that. The idea is that the top looks slightly cracked, but the inside remains a sticky gooey loveliness. You get the idea. Anyway. Retrieve from oven. Poke suspiciously with soon-to-be-burnt finger, and indulge in any loose bits (purely for research, you understand), before scoffing as much as you think you can remove without being detected in your gluttony.

So, where were we? Ah yes – I was having a whinge about teeth, wasn’t I? Yes, well. That. And sore throats, and sniffly noses, and nasty coughs. Oh, and dust. Lots of dust, as Quercus is working on building the kitchen – cue lots of head-scratching, noise-making, saw-using chaos creation, and, hopefully, before Christmas, a bespoke oak kitchen, complete with deeply smug-making Belfast sink and integrated oven/hob whatsit which looks as if a Physics PhD might come in handy for doing anything other than taking the packaging off.

This week we have been pottering about with Los Que Saben and their delightful mother, who we don’t see half enough of, given that she continues (rather selfishly, in my view) to live in Ireland for some dubious, half-arsed reason having to do with, oh, I don’t know, schools, and children’s fathers, and such clearly unimportant things like that. Honestly. And in that time, we went to the sea, and we ambled around gardens, and we talked about the important things in life (mortgages, children, houses, why the Twilight film sucked so badly), and we caught up on some much-needed tea-drinking, and I enjoyed being with the tiny daughter, despite her having a horrid cough which meant far more wailing than is normally encountered, and I appreciated yet again the delights of having a brown velvet sling in which to potter her about the place. (It is just so strokey, and so brown, and so velvetty.)

And of course all of this provided ample excuses for the tiny daughter to wear her new hat, which she takes off so quickly when in the house that catching a decent picture has proved near-impossible. I like it so much, though, that I am probably going to make another, and quite possibly one in my size; the yarn, ‘Silk Garden’ from Noro, is just so delectable. I have it in mind to knit another hat, a cardigan, some wristwarmers and a hat of grown-up size before Chrimbly; the sane part of me realises this may not happen, but the magpie-like idiot who takes over whenever pretty wool is in sight will not be denied.

Other things of note hereabouts this week: parsnip soup with coconut and coriander is the stuff of life, as was the chocolate ginger cake which I made for Quercus’s birthday on the twenty-third. In fact, that cake was so luscious as to warrant an appearance recipe-wise shortly; fortunately, only small quantities of it could be consumed in one sitting, so it lasted more than the thirty seconds I thought it would take to eat all of it when I first gobbled the tiny oddments stuck to the bottom of the tin post-cooking. I drool just thinking about it.

So that’s life here, only with more sniffing, moaning and hacking than the above might suggest. And you?

(I thought I’d already explained: the cakes in the pictures are Unintentional All Hallows’ Cakes, so named because they were intended to be a birthday nibble for L-Q-S during her visit, but the fates (and three children under ten) conspired against this, and they got overlooked in the general bedlam of the week. So, Quercus, the witchling and I are quietly chomping our way through them, and sending virtual crumbs to L-Q-S.)

I jest, of course. Teeth, in the context of a tiny mouth capable of surprising volume when desired, have never been a particular friend to me, and just lately they have been more than normally hostile. The tiny daughter is teething. Well, to be honest, I don’t think there is ever really a time when I can say that that isn’t the state of affairs; teeth – they loomed on to the horizon when she was about three months old, and mostly, they’ve stayed around since then. Which is a good thing, obviously. I mean, we don’t want them falling out, now, do we? Not when they’ve only just arrived.

Ahem.

Rambling.

Anyway, the point is that the tiny daughter has now got her first big back tooth (top left), and is currently working on its right-side counterpart. This means that sleep is at a bit of a premium in our household; last night I was up four times with her, and as a result I am a bit of a zombie today. This also goes some way to explaining why, despite clearly being hungry, she’s been rejecting lots of otherwise tantalising offers of food – sausages went the way of all things (i.e. down Wixon’s neck), as did sardines on toast and various versions of stews and casseroles. Stewed apple, however, is enjoying a renewed popularity, as are sweet potato and apple, butternut squash, carrot, apple and prune, and apple, sweet potato and blueberry. (Yes – I read the combinations of various posh baby foods in the supermarket, and then I go home and rip them off. And you know what? I am entirely unashamed. Mostly, the tiny daughter eats what we eat (the notable exceptions being the acres of chocolate that I consume in times of tiredness, and the odd pint of rosehip wine which has been known to cross my lips [and yes, I do drink occasionally now - literally not a drop of booze passed my lips while I was pregnant, and it stayed that way until the tiny daughter was about, oooh, nine or ten months, at which point I was getting long enough gaps in her feeds that I felt it was time to fall off the wagon in grand, ginger-wine-flavoured style], but she does like stewed fruit, so stewed fruit is what she gets as afters, normally.)

Anyway, this is largely to say that thank you for the recent comments which I have rudely ignored (except I haven’t, but, oh, you get the idea), and thank you to Mel for the lovely award thingy which I have also consigned to the depths of oblivion (except… etc.), and I will attempt to fill this space with something more interesting than ‘yaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn’ as soon as time and teeth permit. Still to come: cakeage, quince cheese, cob porn pictures and why? oh why? did we decide to build our own kitchen?

In between colouring myself nearly entirely yellow courtesy of the yellow ochre which we’re using to colour the limewash (remind me to tell you about – wait for it: annual – and singular – scientific  term usage coming up – exothermic reactions sometime, by the way), I have also been revisiting the list of things I wanted to achieve in October. So far, so good, frankly! Here we are, midway through the month which marks properly the arrival of autumn, and today is the first time we’ve lit the stove this autumn. It’s been quite cold, but we are embracing once more the put-another-jumper-on approach, largely because, having run the stove for three years on free wood we’d collected from various people who didn’t want their spare trees and whatnot, we now find ourselves with a rather depleted woodpile. Of course, by most standards, it’s still a Pile Of Shame, but we can tell already that there isn’t enough wood there to get us through the entire winter unless we get back to scavenging on a reasonably regular footing. The thing with all this building work is that it knocks a lot of the things we have to do regularly to the back of the queue. Living in a house like this is not really a sit-back-and-do-nowt existence; the house needs a lot of work, and just to keep things from getting too damp in the changing months between true summer and genuine autumn, bearing in mind that the stove being our only source of heating – and an almightily ample one, at that - we have wood to source, and chop, and store. This means trolling around with the trailer and the chainsaw, and generally going where angels fear to tread in terms of where sane people would drive cars…  (Gratuitous fireplace picture, largely because I managed to hang those lanterns up today, having had the idea festering away at the back of the ol’ noggin for some weeks now; we used the lanterns, plus about fifteen of their friends and family, as table decorations for our wedding bash, nearly four years ago. Each time I light them, I hear a vague strain of chaotic folk music, and I smell the acrid smoke of outdoor fireworks, and I taste the sweetness of icing made by our cake-making helper, and I remember the brightness of Quercus’s smile as we danced in circles with a huge throng of our friends and family.)

We are also embarking on a little time-filler; you know, just the sort of thing to knock off in an afternoon when you’ve nothing else to do. Ahem. Yes. So. We’re building a barn. You know, as you do. And we’re attempting to make it from free timber. That whole project I described blithely as a woodshed.  So far, it’s not going too badly: we’ve got planning permission for it, Quercus having drawn up scale plans and whatnot, and we’ve specified a wooden frame with shingles (wooden tiles, effectively) on the outside, so the most important thing is that hopefully it’ll look like a giant fircone when it’s done. Um. Did I just type that out loud? I was trying to keep at least a thin veneer of serious adult concern over this one. We’ve been collecting pallets as a start – the idea is that Quercus will process them with one or other of the frankly disturbing quantity of giant saws he has accumulated during the extension build, leaving us with planks ready to be cut to shingle-like length, and off-cuts which, provided the wood is untreated, will feed the stove for a while. The only slight shadow on this particular horizon is that we worked out the other day that we probably need to find not one hundred, but probably three hundred pallets in order to get this barn off the ground. Current total? About thirty. (Maybe I should start Pallet Watch 2009, in a desperate bid to keep us motivated.)

I have finished the hat I was knitting for the tiny daughter (it matches the legwarmers I made her for Christmas last year; I can’t stop squeaking when I see her in them together, which those of you who know me personally will know is a distinctly unlikely reaction to one whose favourite word is probably ‘gruntfuttock’). (Picture of said hat to follow as soon as I work out how to distract the tiny daughter long enough to allow both the presence of said hat on the head, and the camera to be within [my] [exclusive] grabbing distance.) I’ve also gained another excuse to take the tiny daughter out for a walk around the lanes – someone might see her hat! and find it as charming as I do! Tiny legs sticking out of brown velvet sling on my back, tiny head whipping around as she peers over my shoulder, both swaddled in knitted confections. Happiness is not hard to come by with such things around the place. Mostly, we’re walking a couple of miles more afternoons than not, helped by the knowledge that when I’m really tired (did I mention the molar-cutting which has been going on at night chez nous? No? Well, that’ll be lack of sleep!) the best thing is normally to Go Out And DO SOMETHING, rather than sit here, flatly, attempting to remember which way is up.

Also, we have now got three coats of limewash on the outside of the house; the render is now protected from frost, and we’ll be happy if we go through the winter without adding any more washes. The colour is just divine – the sort of yellow which speaks – no, sings of golden sunshine, of warm autumn afternoons, and of the glorious and unexpected burst of colour to be found at the very tops of our seven-foot Jerusalem artichokes.

Next up, rosehip jam. We’ve just made our first batch of quince cheese, and it is every bit as lovely as the sample we were given by our friends the other week; I am freezing it in silicone moulds and then storing small whole cheeses for later in the year. Provided I can stop myself raiding the freezer in the quiet anonymity of the night.

So, that’s what’s going on around here. And you?

1. Has anyone out there got any experience of quinces? We find ourselves with a goodly quantity of them, courtesy of some lovely people across t’other side of the village from us (the same folks who have previously donated crab apples, grapes, rosehips, blackberries and mulberries), and having just sampled the quince cheese made by said chaps, I am tempted to make some myself, but am also pondering the concept of quince wine.

2. Am I ever going to get over my adoration of baby legs in stripy tights?

3. How much jam or jelly is too much? This weekend, I appear to have concocted six pounds of crab apple jelly, and about four of bramble, apple and rose. Should I start on a ‘for sale’ sign now, bearing in mind that I still have about three pounds of rosehips waiting to be made into jam, I wonder?

4. Are our chickens in league against us? Having spent the entire summer in intensive relay broody races wherein the Buff Sussex chooks tagged each other, apparently as they left the laying box, for broodiness, one of our Black Rocks is now broody to the extent that she appears to be putting the others off even approaching the empty box. We’ve booted her out for a few days running, and she’s persisting. Egg-count today? Nil. Grumpiness as a result? Plenty. Six hens and no eggs = not fair, particularly as it’s not even daylight-related yet, I don’t think. They are moulting, though, so I am trying not to hold it against them too much.

5. What do you do when your iBook is approaching meltdown in terms of hard-drive space, and you can’t upgrade your hard-drive because there isn’t room, physically? I am contemplating backing up important stuff like pictures and whatnot, and then just wiping the whole thing and starting again. I have about 2Gb of space left out of a forty gig hard-drive; not ideal.

6. Anyone ever installed their own hot-air ducting heating system? We are thinking of doing this; have stove – will burn, sort of thing. Apparently it’s more popular as a concept in North America than here in the UK; the basic concept seems good in that it would let us move excess heat from the sitting room, where the stove lives, to the extension, along the building in a direction which heat doesn’t really move naturally, or at least not to the extent it would with a small fan attached.

7. Ever noticed how ‘tidying’ the remnants of a jam-making session into one’s stomach makes for furry-feeling teeth in next-to-no time at all? Oh. That’s just me, then, is it?