Weekend De-Brief

I've mislaid my camera charger. That's why there's only been dodgy iPhone photos on here for the last few weeks. I must find it before our impending trip to New York.


This weekend I refused to leave the house. I cleaned, I baked, I knit, I gardened, I was in bed by ten p.m. Oh, except for Friday. Friday evening I met City Boy in town after work. We cosied up in a pub with scrubbed pine tables, then ate tapas and drank too much sangria.


In the garden I sowed mizuna, pak choi and perpetual spinach under cloches. We'll see how they go - it's a little late but our garden's very sheltered so I thought I'd chance it. The kale that made it through the snail attack in September is doing well and will be featuring in a meal shortly. I stripped one chili plant of green chillies to freeze and brought the other in to ripen for red chillies to dry. Only two plants made it this year.


I have spent a few weeks feeling very uninspired in the kitchen, but now the weather's turned cooler I find myself cooking proper, hearty meals. This weekend I turned all the veggies hanging out at the bottom of the fridge and the last of the ripened tomatoes and basil from the garden into a golden, bubbling, cheesy lasagne. Served with homemade garlic focaccia which was sooooo good and so easy. Will be doing that again soon.


Not only do I want to cook, I want to eat. I want to make and scoff all the seasonal goodies that I'm craving now London has turned chilly. Hot blackberry crumbles with custard. Figs, quartered and eaten with strong, sharp cheese. Roasted butternut squash pureed to a rich, smooth soup. Roasted beetroot. Apples and brown sugar. I want to eat it all, and I'm supposed to be calorie counting for a few weeks.


On Sunday evening I made sweetcorn chowder flavoured with lemon thyme from the garden and baked seeded wholemeal bread to dunk in it. As suggested in my River Cottage bread book, I used a ladle of the sourdough starter I've been cultivating for a week. I couldn't tell much difference between these loaves and our usual recipe, but I'm excited to try to bake a proper sourdough loaf at some point.




I'm quite enamoured with my sourdough starter. I've fed it every day for a week and made City Boy smell it frequently. He may or may not have caught me talking to it the other day.


But my weekend wasn't entirely about food - honest. This was the scene on the coffee table this morning.




The beginnings of a little fair isle slouchy hat in tweedy English wool. Actually intended for a Christmas present, but I'll have to see whether I can bear to part with it. I'm currently captivated by the pattern slowly emerging - I seem to have a lot of patience for this sort of slow and intricate knitting at the moment, which isn't always the case.


Yes, it is something new on the needles. No, I haven't finished the orange cardi. But, in my defence, I did get a little closer to the end of it this weekend (I'm now 2 rows round the sleeve away), and I did finish up two other projects.


First, I give you Catkin, a sweet little cape.





I don't yet know if I'm a cape wearer. I hope so. I imagined myself skipping through Autumn leaves with my boots and my cape on. I'm not entirely sure where or when this cape-wearing skipping might occur.




It's knitted in Rowan Scottish Tweed 4ply, which I believe is now discontinued, picked it up in a sale at some point. Blue and grey. It's nice and springy and thick and tweedy for a warm cape, yet light enough that it doesn't drag downwards. The wooden toggles were ordered on eBay - for some reason I knew from the beginning that it would have toggles.



It was a really fun and easy knit - the slipped stitch pattern is great. So much so that I want to cast on another one immediately. Must finish the orange cardi...Must finish the orange cardi...

Visitors and Intruders

I may have given up on the sun but I'm still clinging to the summer in terms of the food we've been eating. We're picking tomatoes from the garden every day, and have a bounty of sweetcorn, salads and broadbeans from the farmer's market for this week.

This weeknd was all about the soft fruit. This pile of plums disappeared in two days.





I came across this recipe for Vanilla Honey Peach Butter and couldn't resist giving it a try.

It's pretty good, and 4 punnets of peaches gave me 7 medium sized jars so I've been sending every visitor, of which we've had a few this weekend, home with a jar.

We ate it on freshly baked blueberry and lemon scones with thick cream when my parents came to visit. This type of thing may have something to do with why I'm struggling to fit into last summer's dresses.



My parents were visiting so that my dad could help us solve a little problem we've been having recently. A big black cat has been coming in the cat flap to have a munch at the buffet laid out for our two. He's quite bold - last time I found him in the kitchen he took a long look at me, ate a few more mouthfuls of biscuits and sauntered out. You'd think that my two would be able to deal with the situation, seeing as it's two against one and everything, but apparently not. Mia Cat hides under the bed and stripey cat wanders the house dramtatically yowling for an hour after the intruder leaves.

Fortunately we're not the first cat owners to have unwanted visitors and a solution exists. This cat flap scans the microchip and only lets those cats that are programmed in through the flap. It has all sorts of other fancy functions that I don't know how to work, like locking everyone in after it gets dark.

To eliminate the possibilty that authorised cats will be followed through the cat flap by an unauthorised cat, it only unlocks for a specified period of time after scanning the cat, after which it locks again. Fine in theory, except my two appear to require longer than the maximum time period allowed to determine that the new door, which beeps and has flashing lights, is safe to go through.








Consequently much of my weekend has been spent going back and forth to the back door to let cats in. They're on their own today, so they have to either speed up their decision making process or spend the day in the rain. And according to stripey cat, getting wet is even worse than big scary intruders.

Location:London,United Kingdom

Weekend De-Brief

·    Friday night I went out for dinner, drinks and dancing with my best girlfriends. Always lots of fun to see them, but had maybe several  one too many glasses of wine. Arrived home about 2am and met City boy, who’d been out himself, on the sofa to watch the end of Comic Relief. At some point during proceedings I called him a very rude name (I think deservedly but he feels not) and flounced off to bed. City Boy took great delight in teasing me about this in the morning.

 

·    Saturday morning I baked blueberry muffins for breakfast, and then popped out shopping to find a new dress for the evening. I didn’t find a new dress, but I did come home with a skirt for spring in a pretty pattern.

·    In the afternoon I managed to squeeze in a bit of gardening. The shrubs currently all look like sticks, so I very carefully labelled them to keep track of what I had planted where.

3 labels have already been chewed off.

·    Saturday night City Boy and I trekked over to Old Street for a friend’s birthday. It was lots of fun, but I’m definitely getting a little too old to be out drinking and dancing two nights in a row without terrible consequences.

·    Sunday afternoon we went for a pub lunch with our neighbours. A bottle of prosecco was ordered, and then it was suddenly 5pm and we were still in the pub. The cumulative effects of all the alcohol consumed this weekend may or may not be the reason why I was tucked up in bed by 9.30pm last night.

·    We watched a film in front of the fire and cooked this delicious sweetcorn chowder with spiced butter for supper.

Weekend De-brief

Friday night I was feeling a bit achy and wanted to snuggle with a hot water bottle. However, I couldn’t find a cover for it. So while City Boy and I watched The Departed (very good), I knitted one.

 I made up a very simple pattern using bulky wool, with a ribbon threaded through yarnovers to take it off and on to wash and an opening at the top to allow easy refilling. I didn’t want anything fussy with the stripes already going on. I’m pretty pleased with it – I’m thinking about making a few more for little Christmas gifts. Perhaps with matching chunky socks.


Saturday morning I popped to the farmer’s market for a few bits and pieces. I now find myself with an enormous bag of pak choi. No idea what we’re going to be eating this week, but it will involve pak choi.


I also picked up a pot of little Tête à Têtes. So spring-like! I repotted them in this new-to-me vintage planter that I picked up for a few pounds on ebay recently. They make me very happy, it’s like a little piece of spring in my living room window. Although I have to sweep up compost daily after the cats have completed their morning routine of destruction.

 On Saturday afternoon City Boy went off to watch football and I stayed home to make a mess in the kitchen. I baked Rosemary and sea salt pretzels, which were so popular with City Boy that I didn’t even manage to take a photo. I’ll be making those again shortly.


I also managed to get into the back garden to tidy up a little in preparation for spring. It’s nice to see that a few of last year’s plants have survived both the snow and the cats. We moved into the Littlest House in June last year, so after a few weeks of unpacking and a flurry of repainting, when our attention finally tuned to the garden it was a little late in the season to get much done beyond tidying up. This year I intend to get started in time to get some herbs and tomatoes in the ground at least.


Saturday night we went out for dinner and cocktails in Soho with some friends we haven’t seen since before Christmas. Lovely company, mediocre food, fantastic martini.


Sunday was so lovely and spring-like that we went for a bike ride round Richmond Park. Lots of deer around, the birds were singing, the sun was out and the daffodils are starting to make an appearance. I would probably even say it was worth the pain I currently feel in my backside.


Back in time for homemade mushroom soup for lunch, a nap to recover and later an evening in front of trashy tv.

Weekend De-brief

I had a birthday last week, but little time to celebrate. To make up for it City Boy whisked me away at the weekend for a surprise spa break in Oxford. Beautiful city, beautiful country side and fantastic food. I arrived  back Sunday evening feeling thoroughly relaxed after a massage, facial, sauna, steam room and a few glasses of wine at lunch. Good move City Boy, I’ll keep you for a while longer.

Someone was also having fun in our absence.

That would be some lovely alpaca, set aside for something pretty.