Monday 10 September 2012

I love cooking

At a recent car boot sale I found a book called Ann Carr's Recipe Collection.  c. 1987 but it had my sort of recipes in and tbh, 1987 still seems like last year to me!

Then when in town today I couldn't' resist a copy of the BBC Good Food series "One Pots" from which I wanted to try just about every recipe, so it seemed good value at £3.70 - you get 100 recipes for that.  I keep my food magazines for years anyway, so feel it's a good investment.

I really enjoy cooking but I have to admit that since the girls have left home my horizons have been closing down on me as they are the ones who like "interesting" food (e.g. tasty!)  My menfolk like their food fairly plain and boring.  My husband's idea of fancy cooking is corned beef hash!  So now and again I get some inspiration to cheer myself up.

Talking of the kitchen, I got some paint for it today as I am sick of it being white.  It has always been one shade or another of yellow and it just didn't look right white - we painted it that colour to make it look lighter to anyone viewing.  Well, no-one is viewing and we have to live here, so s*d it!  I spent the afternoon painting the bay window walls in Buttermilk, and it looks like it should do and a deep Clotted cream colour rather than yellow.  I was also Very Good and I set to and cleaned the paintwork and windows (inside and out) and scrubbed the floor there too.

The sleepy late-summer feeling of early Autumn has now been replaced with winds and rain.  I look at my apple crop and hope it will get larger before the birds peck every single apple off the trees . . .  The apples are like this year's blackberries - where they are present, they are very small and hardly worth picking.  The elderberries are virtually non-existent (although one of the bushes in the yard has cheerfully begun to flower again) and several people have said there are no sloes, so I am glad I have some of each in the freezer from last year.

What is the wild harvest like in your neck of the woods?


7 comments:

  1. I had to laugh at your yellow kitchen BB - we have had our very large kitchen yellow for the last fifteen years - it has always been the same colour (we have just covered it with a new coat every now and again) but that colour has been called aconite, daffodil and sunflower in that time.
    Now I fancy a change and am trying to persuade the farmer to try pumpkin.

    As to the wild harvest, I picked some blackberries yesterday from our hedges but they are not the great juicy things one would expect from all the rain we have had. Huge crop of crab apples along our hedgerows and the farmer says there are lots of hazel nuts.

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  2. I like the sound of the Cookery books/magazines. I have BBC Good Food every month and find their recipes very good:) Trouble is I can't bear to part with the recipes and have folders full of them!

    I haven't seen many blackberries whilst out and about and very few in the garden. The apple crop locally looks poor too :( but the rowan trees in the garden are full of berries.

    With reference to your previous post and problems with photo storage. I ran out earlier this year and ended up paying a nominal amount each month (from memory about £1.99) which gives me vastly improved storage capacity on blogger. Although if I'm honest am not over happy at paying for it!

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  3. I have not had any problems with Blogger asking me for money for storage? And I would have thought I posted up a lot of pictures, so would have maybe expected it?

    Guess I shall just have to wait to be asked for money...!

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  4. Same here Compostwoman. I am waiting for THEM to catch up with me.......!

    The wild harvest is poor here BB. Small, woody brambles and precious few crab apples in the Forest. Hawthorns and rosehips are scanty too. The elderberries are eaten as soon as they appear. Our little "orchard" has very few apples and the plums are few and far between. There have been fewer insects to pollinate everything this year.

    In past centuries, a poor wild harvest like this would be the beginning of a winter famine in the countryside. Nothing to preserve now meant nothing to eat in the winter. Time to be thankful for tins, freezers and container ships bringing food from overseas.

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  5. It is very, very poor here BB. As we are in beyond extreme drought, most of our corn,(maize), and other grains are history(dried up) or toast.
    A lot of the wild things are dried up as well. Wild ramps we have around, and forget mushrooms. The wild Sandhills choke cherries and other wild plums and other wild fruits in our Sandhills region are not to be found. I went last week to find my Sandhills rancher's wife who make the best wild jellies and jams told me there was nothing in their private brambles, so no jelly or jam.
    I am hoping for a snowy, cold winter after two and a half months of nothing but over 100-110*F temps.
    Have a wonderful, productive week.
    Hugs

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  6. I have a pale yellow kitchen here in the little Kentucky house. I have used various shades of cream through-out in the 'for sale' houses and didn't mind that as those houses had a lot of wood tones and earthy-colored floor tiles. This small house seemed to call for more color--and there is no one to please this time round except us [no viewers and potential buyers!]
    Re cook books: I've never had them by the dozen, though have checked some out of the library at different times and copied the recipes which interested me. Now, if I'm wanting something different, I check recipes online.
    J. is very much a 'meat and potatoes' person who enjoys whatver veg is doing well in the garden as sides.
    As to gardens: Its been a disheartening season with too early spring warmth followed by hard frost, followed by a summer-long draught. We don't forage for wild berries and such here because of creepy-crawlies [think copperhead snakes and ever-present ticks.] The ancient pear tree has produced a good crop, so that will likely suffice as our canned [bottled] fruit for the coming winter. This winter may see us clearing the basement shelves of the fruits and vegs put up during the past two decent growing years.

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  7. Absolutely dreadful on the blackberry front. They're either shrivelled and green or black, tiny and inedible. Our autumn raspberries are beginning to go pink so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

    Our kitchen is a rather pale eau de nile colour called green oxide. I love it and it's everywhere else downstairs too!

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