Sunshine toast...and then an adventure...

The one below is the estate agents photo...before the garden got so wild... we like it wild...

 photo's sneaked through the windows...that needed washing...

Lovely hundred year old heavy wooden doors...

open fire place

sash windows

glimpse of aga cooker 

and wood burning stove

It's been very busy round here. I've been working at one end of the kitchen table. 'H' who was home for a long weekend, at the other. Hammering the keyboard on her laptop, ten to the dozen. Something about the influences of Gothic literature. 'A'  on half term holiday taking a well earned break, was reading on the sofa. While thunder and lightening and winds howled, rained poured down, and the sun shined intermittently. I just love it...all that energy when creative stuff is going on.

...And then an adventure.

I'm so excited, and not just about trick or treating. The wind of change is in the air, blowing whispers in our direction. We want to move away from the city; even though it's a lovely one. Why pay a premium to live near a town when our hearts are in the wilds? 

So I've been doing the sums and looking at houses on-line. If we move over by a county, or maybe even two counties, we can have twice the house, for a third of the price of ours. 

Then I fell in love with a little red brick house...an online relationship. A Victorian Manse with a sweet covered porch with wisteria creeping up it. You know the kind of house you drew when you were five or six. The symmetrical ones with the door in the middle, flanked by a window at each side, and equally symmetrical chimneys at each corner of the roof. Bigger than ours, more bedrooms, an aga cooker in the kitchen and large walk-in pantry (for my imagined preserves and A's winemaking) with shower/mudroom to wash off the dog's paws after his daily walks (dog, also in my imagination.) All surrounded by a walled garden at the front and one at the back with a green house and stable-cum workshop, and views over open countryside, both front, and back.

I visualised the minister who first live there with his daughters. Victorian versions of the Bronte sisters. I pictured our furniture inside (and it looked perfect). Records playing loudly on the vintage 70's record player (we've yet to get)...Music in every room. The workroom that would be mine, the study that would be A's. How on rainy winter evenings we would light the wood burner and curl up with books or projects...After walking the dog of course, and cooking up tasty suppers from vegetables grown in the garden. That it would be big enough for major parties, with lots of people and plenty of room for them all to stay. So I bookmarked the house along with a few others. 

We actually got to see it yesterday, in the flesh. The best bit was that 'A' loved it as well. It needed a lick of paint and a bit of gardening...and of course the windows cleaning. But then I saw the sign..."UNDER OFFER." Someone else loves it too. 

Oh well. There was the matter of the chapel next door, also under offer, with the gravestones in the garden.There'll be another one somewhere else...hopefully without the grave stones. We'll just keep on looking. 

And cooking? Nothing new, lots of homemade vegetable patties and salads and roast dinners except when H made us sunshine toast for breakfast.

Sunshine toast
Ingredients for each toast:

• One piece of bread, brown or white, just choose your favourite kind of bread.
• Butter or non-dairy alternative
• One free range egg
• Seasoning

Method:

1. Butter the bread on both sides.
2. Cut a hole in the centre using a small pastry/biscuit butter or upturned glass. Remove the small circle of buttered bread.
3. Warm a frying pan on the hob and place the bread plus the circle of bread into the pan and cook on one side.
4. Whilst the bread is browning break the egg into a small dish or cup.
5. Turn all the pieces of bread over and pour the egg into the hole and season.
6. Cook until the egg has set and cooked as you like it either runny or welldone.
7. Serve the sunshine toast with the little circle of toast.

scrummy...