weekend :: All the good things...

It was a jolly pottering catching up weekend. More painting and sorting, a walk to gather leaves for a Christmas wreath to add to those gleaned from the garden. Making chicken stock ready for the Christmas dinner. It's now in a little plastic tub buried away in the freezer. I can't believe how organised I am! We made a flying visit  to a Victorian Christmas Market and accepting an invitation for mulled wine and mince pies from our friendly neighbours. 

We celebrated good news, just quietly. Mostly in our heads with the beaming smiles that we couldn't keep off our faces. I don't usually get too personal here, but it WAS good news. Notification of a clear mammogram result came through the letterbox Saturday lunchtime. Still clear since the one I had three years ago. Following the previous five years  since the first shock discovery. I just wanted to share positive news. Almost eight years, and clear. To give hope to others out there, it's amazing what clever Doctors and modern medicine can do, as well as alternative therapies, and positivity, lots of good friends and family, and trying to eat healthily (well sometimes). Keep your chin up any one out there whose going through those tricky things. 

Now I breathe deeply and can't help saying to myself...THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU...and trying not to get annoyed about silly little unimportant things...Sometimes I need to remember LIFE IS GOOD...and not to take it for granted...to go and smell that honeysuckle blossom that amazingly is still blooming half way through December...


Homemade chicken stock 

Ingredients to make half a pint/half a litre:

• Chicken. I prefer to make stock with uncooked chicken. I think it's more flavourful. I was making a chicken casserole and jointed it into four pieces but reserved the backbone still with a little meat attached to make the stock for a Christmas dinner caramelised onion gravy. There will only be four of us for dinner this year so a pint is plenty as I'll add some wine and other ingredients. 
• One carrot chopped into chunky slices
• A small peeled potato also chopped. Don't add too much or it will cloud your stock.
• A small red onion with the outter leaves removed, roughly chopped
• A stick of celery, deveined and chopped
• Sea salt and black pepper
• One sliced clove of garlic
• Herbs, I used rosemary thyme and sage. I can't have Christmas dinner without sage and onion gravy like my granddad used to make. 

Method:

1. Simply place all the ingredients into a saucepan and cover with about a litre of water.
2. Season and bring to the boil. 
3. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cover tightly with a lid to conserve as much as the cooking liquor as possible. 
4. Cook for about half an our or so until the chicken is cooked and the vegetables are tender and the liquid has reduced by about half. Check every so often to make sure it's not reduced too much. If so just top up with a little hot water.
5. Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary.
6. Cool a little and then remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon. These can be used for bubble and squeak or add to soups, casseroles etc.
7. If not using straight away pour the stock into a clean container and allow to cool.I left it in the fridge overnight before freezing until it's required. 

I'm joining Karen for weekend...
that was a bit of mine, but how was yours?
dx

This week in my kitchen :: Autumn Comfort Food, Buddha Bowls to bring a smile to your soul...

last image via

As we slip towards the winter solstice my craving for carbohydrates seems to increase daily. I long for risotto, brown rice, mashed root vegetables or pasta. The porringer got taken down off the shelf to use and I check out the winter breakfast section of Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights for pancake recipes. Maybe this year it's the comfort needed to cope with the madness going on everywhere, images of refugee babies in crowded rowing boats, shootings, terror attacks, threats of war and there's nothing I can do to help. I'm trying to eat away the misery, or maybe pad it out... 

Curiously whilst I have this seasonal longing for typical cold weather food, simultaneously my head is in spring planting mode when it comes to the garden. We've only just decorated the Christmas tree even though we've had it since the 2nd. (An extreme reaction After last years eleventh hour dash when it looked like we were too late to find one.)  But it was the stolen hour (maybe two) sitting at the kitchen table, carefully spent collecting seeds from pods and seed cases that I'd stored in paper bags hanging up to dry; that proved to be the therapy. The calm that helped a little...

I found a gem of a book for  £1.99 in a charity shop. The Bedside book of the Garden by Dr D G Hessayan author of all those hundreds of 'The Expert' guides. It's beautiful and different. There isn't any expert advice in this one. He introduces us to the historical gardeners who've changed the landscape of gardens all over the world. Those I'd heard of like Lancelot Capability Brown and Gertrude Jekyll He tells their tale but also introduces us to those (I'd) never heard of. Paints pictures of interesting individuals and their plant collecting adventures...It's hard to put down...

Baking has gone out of the window recently since the Christmas cake and the odd savoury pie. We're not big dessert eaters but it's nice to know that at a moments notice I can put together something sweet, when that's what someone's tooth craves and a piece of fruit won't do. 

As long as there's:

Something creamy: yoghurt, ice cream or frozen bananas (whizzed up they make a kind of dairy-free banana ice cream)
Something fruity: preferably berries
Sauces: maple syrup, homemade black current sauce, medjool dates stones removed and beaten  with a little hot water they make a fudgy sauce, espresso, or the seeds of a ripe passion fruit maybe a little drizzle of liqueur...or sometimes one or two together
Crunch:is good too but not crucial. This can be supplied by nuts, flaked or otherwise,a crunchy biscuit or oats or other cereal.   



Buddha bowl

Ingredients for two people: 

• One cup of Brown rice
• One ripe avocado
• Two small spring onions
• Eight radishes
• A piece of fresh ginger root, approximately an inch long
• Fresh flat leafed parsley
• Soy or Tamari sauce
• Apple cider vinegar, preferably raw with the mother
• Sesame seeds

Method:

1. Cook the brown rice as per the package. Basically with long grain brown rice you wash the rice, cover with boiling water. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and cook for about ten minutes until ready. Drain and then use as required. With short grain brown rice cook one cup of rice with one and a half of cold water. Cover and cook for ten minutes or so until all water has been absorbed.
2. Whilst the rice is cooking peel all of the vegetables and de-stalk and chop the parsley.
3. When the rice is ready place into a serving bowl and add soya sauce and cider vinegar to taste. Add all the vegetables a mix roughly. Top with the parsley and a good sprinkle of sesame seeds. 

This is just one version but the possibilities are endless. They are lovely with sautéed garlic greens of any kind and kimchi or Japanese pickled ginger any other vinegars sauces that you like. It's one to play around with.

You can link to the leek and mushroom risotto recipe over here. Ahmad who has never eaten risotto and I don't think  ever will, made this for me one day when I was really busy. He just asked how to do it, I explained, and hey presto he did. It was the best one I've ever tasted... ( I know, how lucky am I...)

I wonder what's been happening in your kitchen this week...

...care to tell...
dx

red in the morning sailors warning...

excuse any weird background noise just a radio playing somewhere...

December arrived with pink skies, rain, and twelve flood warnings in the county. It's comforting when you're tucked up in bed too late at night, listening to outdated radio shows, to hear the gentle drumming on the window panes and pull the quilt up tight and snuggle down even deeper. 

Between drizzly showers I've squeezed in time to plant the hundred bulbs ready for their spring appearance. Getting distracted meanwhile by forgotten treasures. Uncovering missed unblemished potatoes, almost unwittingly chopped in two by my wayward spade; crumbs of broken china, a skeletal poppy seed head that's a copy of a miniature parasol frame. I can't resist playing with it. Exploring it's fragile architecture. I want to wash it, to remove the sticky soil but am scared that it'll dissolve...

Inside and out, the house is almost finished, by others who'll soon hand it back to us. It's our turn now. We still sort and paint and open more boxes, play and move furniture like giant chess pieces then check mate, move them back to where they came from. Up-cycling, recycling, a miniature revolutionary (evolutionary?) Tour de France.

I'm reading again. Easy reads, the country girls by Edna O'brian, favourite garden and cookery books and knitted a Mistake Rib Scarf using a free Pearl Soho pattern. I love this subtle rib it has a raised knit stitch, alternated with two moss (seed) stitches. Basically you make a knit one, purl two rib but by just altering the first and last three stitches, magically the moss stitch section appears. This makes a lovely neat finish. I'll be making more for stocking fillers or winter birthdays. It goes well with the Erica Knight Mittens for Mum pattern (also free). 

And at last for someone who doesn't like too many projects on the go at once, I can see the logic of separate, simple travel projects. I made a simple garter stitch scarf to go with my much worn Annabel sweater. Forty stitches on 4mm straight needles. Already it's a favourite. 

Oh and I found the natural eye cream recipe it was over here all the time. I can't remember where it came from but have had this for a long time. I think that it may be from one of my Iranian sisters-in-law as they use gram flour over wheat for most of their Persian cooking. 

Natural Eye Cream for Wrinkles and Dark Eyes

Ingredients:

• One teaspoon of gram flour (chickpea/garbanzo bean flour)
• Half a teaspoon of tomato paste
• A squeeze of fresh orange juice. (Fresh not bottled as it can spoil your skin)
• A squeeze of lemon juice
• A pinch of turmeric 

Method:

1. Combine all the ingredients together in a small container
2. Put into the fridge for a few minutes before using as this will make a soothing, cooling balm for your eyes. 
3. Apply gently and carefully to your eyes making sure that you don't get any into them or on your clothing as turmeric is a natural dye. The best time to use this cream is when soaking in a nice warm bath, no risk of staining your best tea-shirt. It's nice to leave it on for a few minutes before carefully removing with cotton wool or a flannel. Not your best one..!

NB. I know that you are all sensible and this may sound patronising, but the mother in me can't write this recipe without reminding you not to use it if you happen to be allergic to any of the ingredients.