AWOL

Well I disappeared for a while there. I got swept up in the frantic rush of late November and December, a busy time of year at work as well as at home. I did keep thinking of my little blog but somehow couldn't get it together enough to write anything.

But it's a new year and a fresh start, so, keeping in the spirit of January, I'm going to do one quick, whizzy rundown of what I've been up to for the last few weeks and then move on with 2012.
There was a shopping and sightseeing trip to beautiful New York City. A treat for me from City Boy after struggling through a rubbish year health-wise.

There was lots of knitting and making ahead of the 25th of course, much of which was wrapped up and handed over in far too much of a rush to photograph. One such present comes immediately to mind - a reverse appliqué quilted table runner for my mum. I'd spent hours on it, and was finally sewing on the binding on Christmas Eve when I noticed a few red marks on it. On further inspection there were red smears all over it. Panicking now, and fearing the worst, I was trying to work out when it would have come into contact with red ink when I noticed that one of my fingers was also covered in red ink. Of course, I'd stabbed myself with a pin, which I'd not really registered in the frantic rush to get it finished and bled profusely all over natural linen. An unscheduled wash was required, and it was only just dry in time to wrap on Christmas morning.

There were a host of knitted gifts as well, including this lovely little cowl made out of some DK silk and merino, sent off to warm the neck of one of my grandmothers. This was actually for a birthday, of which we had two to celebrate in December. Really, it's quite inconvenient of people to be having birthdays when I'm trying to prepare for Christmas!

 

There were many, many shopping trips, often on two wheels with a laden basket, wobbling through the park.

There was decorating and a trip to three different places to hunt down that elusive perfect tree.

I didn't get many decorations made this year despite my intentions and the beginning of a Christmas quilt. I had imagined a quilt that could be brought out for snuggling in front of the fire in Decembers to come, but it currently consists of two star blocks.

Lots of baking (and eating), including a wonderfully sticky, spicy gingerbread loaf that I made (and ate) over and over again.

And there were lots and lots of lovely presents - I was thoroughly spoilt this year, including a present that I'd been dropping lots of hints for...

Except for leaving the house for a New Year's Eve party, in the period between Christmas and New Year we could, furry housemates included, normally be found on the sofa in front of a film with the fire on, all wrapped up and keeping warm.

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

A Present to Myself

Last week I ordered a new stand mixer, which arrived at the weekend. As much as I would love one, it unfortunately wasn’t one of those well-known and very expensive stand mixers ending in ‘aid’.  I didn’t think City Boy would appreciate the irony of having a top-of-the-range stand mixer and subsequently only being able to afford to eat beans on toast for 3 months.

Meet Sir Mix-a-Lot:

I did a bit of research on mixers within my budget and this one has good reviews and was very reasonably priced on amazon – it’s the Breville SHM2 twin mixer. Judging on the limited use it’s had so far, I’m very pleased with mine. It mixes stuff, it stands, and that’s generally what I require of a stand mixer. In fact, it even detaches from the stand to become a hand mixer, which I feel is above and beyond the call of duty.

So far Sir Mix-a-Lot and I have churned out:

Brownies

Banana Pudding

And some blueberry muffins. I don’t have a picture of these because they sunk and weren’t very pretty. Although they tasted fine. I let the team down with this one – Sir Mix-a-Lot performed his part admirably.

I’m visiting my parents this weekend as it’s my dad’s birthday, so I’m going to take a cake if I can find time to make one. I would be more likely to have time if I stopped browsing baking blogs with the excuse that I’m looking for inspiration and attempted a few things on my to-do list instead. There are a whole lot of beautiful cakes out there to distract me.

And, just because I’ve reminded myself of this cake I baked a few weeks ago, and because I’m quite proud of it, here’s one I made earlier: