Baking

Maybe it's because it's Christmas time.  Maybe it's because it's cold and wet and I just needed some comfort food.  Whatever it is, I have found a renewed love of baking.  I have even gone as far as investing in some ceramic beans for blind baking - although after the first disaster with them, they have been relegated to the back of the "cake making" drawer in my kitchen.  Perhaps I should give them another go before I give up on them altogether?

I found a delicious sounding recipe for a Christmas quiche - spinach, feta cheese, strong cheese, cranberries and pine nuts - yum!   This sounded so good that it necessitated aforementioned trip to Lakeland to buy beans - like I need an excuse to go to Lakeland!   Probably my most favourite shop in Norwich - certainly the shop where I spend most of my time!   And also a trip up into the loft as I was sure I had seen some quiche/ flan dishes up there while I was having an enormous clear out to make way for the much-anticipated craft room.  Which, incidentally, was supposed to be up and running last Easter.  Hey ho.  Overall, I was very pleased with my first attempt at pastry making - it wasn't the prettiest pastry in the world, although it had a very unusual patchwork bottom - but at least it wasn't a soggy bottom, so at least I got that right.  I usually have ready rolled frozen pastry in the freezer, but am attempting an economy drive now - ready made stuff is pretty expensive, but I always have flour, eggs and butter in which would work out much cheaper.   It tasted delicious anyway, so I can see I will be making more of these - with my own pastry or ready rolled remains to be seen.

Because a lot of my friends and family are scattered around, I don't always see them very often during the year, so try to make the extra effort at Christmas, to deliver presents rather than post them.  So quite a lot of my baking has been distributed around East Anglia - as far as Essex - on my visits. 

I've made cranberry and almond biscuits - very nice, although I'm not sure I should have put the cranberries into the mixer as they all got cut up very finely - they might have been better going in whole?   It made the biscuits a very red colour, when perhaps I should have mixed them in afterwards once all the other ingredients were mixed.   Strictly speaking, I could probably have not used the mixer at all, but Tescos had run out of ground almonds for weeks now, so I bought flaked and then ground them myself in the mixer.  Once that job was done, it was really easy to throw everything else in on top of them.   I will mix another batch by hand to see if they're any better.  

I had a go at a traybake also - although there was no actual baking involved!   It wasn't fudge either.  It's quite difficult to describe.   These were made with melted white chocolate, microwaved marshmallows - which made a dreadful mess everywhere! - pistachio nuts and cranberries again.   (Pretty much everything I've made in the past few weeks has had an element of cranberries in it!)  These fudge/ traybake goodies were amazing - although very sweet.  You wouldn't need much of them.

I also made the Tunis cake - this is something I remember from childhood, but you can't buy them any more.  So for the past three or four years, I've made this for the family.  I don't eat fruit cake, so this ensures I get some cake too over the festive season!  It's a very dense cake of ground almonds and lemon which you cook for a long time at a very low heat.  Once baked and cooled down, you make an icing of dark chocolate and then stick some marzipan fruit on the top.  I managed to find some Amaretto soaked marzipan fruit for the cake last year, but couldn't find any this year, which was a bit disappointing.   Again, you don't need much of this as it's so dense and the chocolate is very rich. 

Another family tradition now is my Christmas muffins which I make on Christmas morning and which are still warm by the time I get to Mum and Dad's at lunchtime.   They are made with cranberries - quelle surprise! - and orange and nutmeg.   Just evokes all those lovely Christmassy smells.  

I actually forgot the topping this year, but I don't think anyone noticed!  They are supposed to have a topping of demerara sugar with a little cinnamon mixed in to make them a little crunchy and sweet. 

So, I'm having a little break from baking now - I've eaten far too much over the festive period - and am back on soup and toast for a while to compensate.   I'm sure it won't be long before I start again though - on my never-ending quest to become a proper domestic goddess! 

Christmas 2013

This has been one of the nicest Christmases I can remember in a long time.  No stress.  No bickering.  No falling out.  Just lots of silliness and rubbing along together brilliantly.  My Christmas started two weeks ago when I decorated the tree with the help of my little friend.

I was thrilled with the way Andy's present had turned out - I had lots of random items - wine, port, crackers, cheese, chocolates, etc, and really didn't want to wrap each thing separately - so had a brainwave of finding a suitable container for it all - I found a fab wine merchant on the internet and bought a wine crate for everything.  It looks brilliant.   And I was so pleased with the way that Andy's cardi turned out - he did say that it would take him longer to get ready to go out now because of all the buttons to do up - eleven!

This year, we managed to actually have Christmas Day on 25 December - this doesn't always happen due to weird shifts at work and other family visits.  We had a planning meeting a few weeks ago to share the jobs out - Mum and Dad hosted us and cooked the meat.  Amanda and Shannon did spuds and parsnips.  Pam did the rest of the veg.  And I did tunis cake, Christmas muffins, fudge and crackers and dips.  Mine was definitely the easiest option as I could do everything in advance!

The deal in our family - and we've done this forever so know no different - is that no-one gets any presents until after dinner when everything is washed up and put away.   Andy likens it to a concentration camp, but, if you don't know any different, it's fine.   We had so many presents again this year - in fact, we even lost a crate's worth of presents and didn't even notice until halfway through proceedings!

A really lovely day - tonnes of lovely presents, lovely food, good company.  What more could anyone ask for?

On Boxing Day, there were only six of us as Rat and Pam spent the day with Pam's family but it was pretty much more of the same - food, laughing, chatting - the only thing missing was the presents, but we'd already had enough of those!

Another fab day.  But Dad's parting shot as we left was pleading with us not to visit for at least a week!

Foraging

The internet is a wonderful thing.  You can hear a snippet of something from friends, colleagues, the TV or radio, and you can immediately look it up and either store it away for future use, act on it immediately or disregard it completely.   And this is how I started on my foraging obsession.  It was either a TV chef or, more likely, Countryfile, that revealed what could be foraged and used in cooking.   Once you have that information, it's then really easy to look up recipes on line also, no need to head to the library or to the book shop.  It's all good.  

The other great thing about the internet is also being able to identify the plants or leaves that you're after - I would be much less confident looking for goodies if I haven't printed off a large picture of the item beforehand to pop into my pocket and refer to.   The other essential item needed for foraging is ..... poo bags!   I'm sure the residents of Norfolk are a little concerned about Finn's digestive system when they see us striding along, me with his lead in one hand and half a dozen poo bags in the other - full of goodies!  

So far this year, I've got quite a haul of goodies, although I've been a bit disappointed in others.  Blackberries for example.  We've had such a wonderful summer - lots of sun but very little rain, so, although the blackberries were colouring up nicely, they weren't getting any hydration to fatten them up.  Luckily though, I picked tonnes last year and still had some in my freezer for just such a famine.  I did, however, get way more sloes than I usually do, so I now have some of those in credit for next year's sloe gin.

Another fruit I've learned about this year is rowanberries.  I had no idea they were edible.  And this year we've had an enormous glut of them.   Apparently it's been a very good year for nuts and berries, according to the Met office and foragers.  Something to do with the very long winter and then the fab summer we've had.  I don't really understand the physics of it, I'm just glad I can make use of it!   So, I foraged a few pounds of rowanberries from the trees outside the Hewitt School in Norwich, and I foraged the cooking apples I needed from my freezer!  It's always good to have fruit in reserve - while searching through the freezer, I also found lots of rhubarb too, so I've still got rhubarb chutney on my list of things to make.  That will be for the new year I think.  Anyway, back to the rowanberries and apples - I made a few jars of jelly.  Rowanberry jelly is apparently very good with venison or lamb, or cold meats.  I'm hoping it will be a fruity alternative to cranberry jelly on Christmas and Boxing Day.  

Because of the very good summer we had, Mum and I managed to grow tonnes of tomatoes.  Towards the end of September, when it was evident that it really wasn't sunny enough to ripen up the remaining tomatoes on the vines, Mum gave me a load of her green tomatoes to make tomato chutney.  And I had a few to throw into the mix too, but I was just a few short to make up the weights, so I must admit I did resort to buying a few red ones to make up the numbers.  

I always feel very virtuous when I've been making up batches of jams, jellies or chutneys and the house smells wonderful - especially with the cloves I threw into the chutney.  The vinegar smell does tend to hang around a bit though - so I always try and make chutney on a day when I can throw open all the doors and windows to get some fresh air in.   Really rewarding and potential Christmas presents too - what's not to love?!

Ninnies - December 2013

I haven't managed to type up blog posts for most of the Knitters with Attitude meetings this year because, apart from making very little sense, the group members' collective sense of humour is particularly filthy and would cause offence to the most liberal minded of readers.   And in fact, this post will have to be heavily edited to pass censorship laws! 

This meeting was held at Mo's and we had a fab time as usual - lovely food, wine, sherry, laughter, friends - and the added bonus of Christmas presents!  Michele proposed a motion a few meetings back that we have a Secret Santa for the group, where we all had to make something.  Imagine!  We had to make and, more importantly, FINISH something!  

So, we had eight very different projects and we should all be congratulated on our inventiveness, I think.   We had a wool covered bottle vase; a scarf and lacy gloves; a beautiful tissue box cover; a gorgeous little tea light holder; a fabulously intricate crochet table centre; crochet slippers; knitted slipper socks and a cock in a pot!   There's always SOMEONE who has to lower the tone!   Actually, this turned out to be the star turn and I think we've all put in our orders for one in the new year.

We had the usual madness and mayhem after food - I'm not even sure that we have any e-numbers with our food, we just always seem to have a massive sugar rush?   Some of us ended up in the loft, some of us went and camped out in Mo's laundrette and, at one point, ALL of us were contemplating having a barn dance in Mo's enormous bathroom!  

And, as for the conversation ..... well, topics included genital warts; beef stew; desk cocks; knitted phalluses that fit inside each other like Russian dolls; Priscilla Queen of the Desert; and that Elle will never look like a dancer, or, indeed, a man!   See, I told you it made no sense!

Our next meeting should fall on New Year's Day, so I suggested we skip a January meeting.   After much sulking and flouncing, we are meeting a week later instead, on 8 January.  That's me told!  

Craft fairs

We haven't done any craft fairs for a couple of years now - I can't even remember why not, because actually I've really enjoyed the three we have done this year!  

The first that we did was back in November in Wymondham and we used it almost as a dress rehearsal for the two upcoming fairs in Norwich.  And we did surprisingly well!   We had some lovely supporters turn up too - Carol, Rachel and Shirley and some of Amanda's work colleagues also.   The fair itself wasn't very well organised as the stalls were all spread out too much and there wasn't much "soul".   However, it was a great practice run and we learnt quite a lot.

The second fair - the Norwich Makers' Emporium - was lovely - a pretty little church hall where we were all more squished in and so we could chat with the other stall holders and I've now got HUNDREDS of ideas of new things I want to do!   We spent most of our takings at the cake stall opposite which wasn't quite the plan either!  

By the time of the last fair - the Norwich Makers' Market - we were dab hands at organising and dressing our stall and it looked fab.   Even if I do say so myself!   We didn't speak so much to the other stall holders - despite being squished in a lot with them! - because we were too busy selling.  Goodness me, we did well!   Again, we had some lovely supporters come and see us - Elle, Jonathan and another couple of Amanda's colleagues.   And it was a really lovely atmosphere - lots of Christmas music and the stalls were definitely more festive at this fair. 

I really hope that Amanda and Shannon want to do some more fairs next year - I certainly don't want to leave it a couple of years to the next one!