My dear friend Tricia has just phoned up and asked for the recipe for my Blackberry and Apple Upsidedown Cake. With over 200 cookery books and dozens of magazines, my first reaction was to panic. With good reason - 'cos I haven't found it yet. So I will have to fall back on Margeurite Patten (who taught me to cook with her book "Perfect Cooking".) Here is a variation on her Pineapple Upsidedown Cake:
For the topping, take:
2 good sized cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced
4 oz blackberries
2 tablespoons of demerara sugar
Grease well your cake tin, and place blackberry and apple mixture on base and sprinkle with sugar.
For the sponge:
5 oz margarine or butter
5 oz sugar
2 eggs
6 oz S-R flour
few drops vanilla essence
3 tablespoons milk
Cream together the butter and sugar until soft and light. Whisk the eggs well and beat gradually into the butter mixture. Sieve the flour, and add the vanilla essence to the milk. Add flour and milk alternately into the creamed mixture. Pour over the fruit base in the tin and bake in the centre of a very moderate oven, Gas Mark 3-4, 325-350 deg. F. for about an hour. Serve hot or cold with cream (or be decadent - ice-cream!)
Sunday, 24 August 2008
Blackberrying
Today I have had my first proper picking of blackberries - about a pound and a half I reckon. I am just coming to the end of the 30 lbs or so I had in the freezer from last autumn, so they have lasted well. I don't know if this year is going to be so rewarding - the ones we have are relatively late and not terrifically prolific, so I will have to look further afield I think. I love the total relaxation of just wandering along, lost in thought, usually with the sun on my back, and butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. Today the sun was there one moment and gone the next, to be replaced by a stiff breeze, and the only butterfly I saw was a solitary cabbage white . . . As I pick, I think of other blackberry picking sessions, some from childhood when I used to go "down the back" with my mum to pick blackberries around the site of the old brickworks. I remember when I first moved to Dorset, blackberrying along a field hedgerow and my friend's brood mare, Mouse, getting in on the act and bagging all the biggest and juiciest!
There are no bees to be seen in my garden, though there are a few worshipping the wild flowers in our top field - Yarrow, Self-Heal, Betony, Common Centaury, Clovers and Meadow Vetchling.
I look forward to Autumn every year, when I can add wild fruits to my freezer and storecupboard. I make Jams, Jellies, Chutneys and Wines, and fruit liqueurs (Sloe Gin of course, is a must). I give a lot of my jam away, as I am the only one who eats it, but I can't NOT make it!
Friday, 22 August 2008
Brilliante award
I have just received this wonderful award from Kim, over at Oakmoon blogspot, who has a wonderful blog, warm, funny and inspiring. Go check her out. : http://oakmoon.blogspot.com/
Being gormless, I have managed to copy the award to the side panel, but for the life of me can't copy it to here. You will just have to do an eyes left . . .
This award is to be passed on to people whose blogs I enjoy and return to again and again.
It comes with rules and they are:
1. Kelli, at There is no place like home - http://kellishouse.blogspot.com/,
and I only wish I had a fraction of her creativity and tidyness. She has such a pretty home and home educates her family. I take my hat off to her (and wish I lived next door - she makes such SCRUMMY things!)
2. Snowgoosey, at http://snowgoosey.blogspot.com/,
whose blog reminds me of the Dorset I left behind, and who visits all my favourite places.
3. A fellow import to Wales, though she lives on the side of a mountain, and I don't! Visit Elizabeth's blog at http://welshhillsagain.blogspot.com/
4. Rowan, over at http://www.circleoftheyear.blogspot.com/
who visits some wonderful places, takes wonderful pictures, and who is drawn to the still room, as am I . . .
5. Greentwinsmummy aka GTM, over at A Life Full of Blessings, http://greentwinsmummyasimplelife.blogspot.com/
who is ever-inspiring and has two wonderfully-amusing little girls who are all enjoying country living to the full.
6. Niki, at http://nostalgiaatthestonehouse.blogspot.com/
where I lurk and look at the beautiful things she buys and makes, with deep envy!
7. Tracy at http://cupcakesathome.blogspot.com/
where I also lurk. Anyone who has Whippets (especially such lovely dogs as she has) is Top Notch in my book!
Being gormless, I have managed to copy the award to the side panel, but for the life of me can't copy it to here. You will just have to do an eyes left . . .
This award is to be passed on to people whose blogs I enjoy and return to again and again.
It comes with rules and they are:
- The winner can put the logo on his/her blog
- Link to the person you received your award from
- Nominate at least 7 other blogs for an award
- Put links to those blogs on yours
- Leave a message on the blogs of the people you have nominated.
1. Kelli, at There is no place like home - http://kellishouse.blogspot.com/,
and I only wish I had a fraction of her creativity and tidyness. She has such a pretty home and home educates her family. I take my hat off to her (and wish I lived next door - she makes such SCRUMMY things!)
2. Snowgoosey, at http://snowgoosey.blogspot.com/,
whose blog reminds me of the Dorset I left behind, and who visits all my favourite places.
3. A fellow import to Wales, though she lives on the side of a mountain, and I don't! Visit Elizabeth's blog at http://welshhillsagain.blogspot.com/
4. Rowan, over at http://www.circleoftheyear.blogspot.com/
who visits some wonderful places, takes wonderful pictures, and who is drawn to the still room, as am I . . .
5. Greentwinsmummy aka GTM, over at A Life Full of Blessings, http://greentwinsmummyasimplelife.blogspot.com/
who is ever-inspiring and has two wonderfully-amusing little girls who are all enjoying country living to the full.
6. Niki, at http://nostalgiaatthestonehouse.blogspot.com/
where I lurk and look at the beautiful things she buys and makes, with deep envy!
7. Tracy at http://cupcakesathome.blogspot.com/
where I also lurk. Anyone who has Whippets (especially such lovely dogs as she has) is Top Notch in my book!
The first Kola Cube for 40 years!
This is my dear forum friend Ann of the Forest, with one of the New Forest youngsters she saved last year after his mother had died. He was going to be shot, because he was still far too young to leave his mum, but Ann hand-raised him and he is a leggy yearling now and growing like a weed. I called in to visit after dropping my daughter off at her camp site for the Dig (and spending an hour trying to put her new-to-us tent up!)
Ann showed me some wonderful needlework her late mother-in-law had made - wonderful crocheted tablecloths and Hardanger work too, and she passed on to me an embroidery dictionary which had been her m-in-law's stitching bible, and two Hardanger embroidery books. I have decided I will give this a try in the long winter evenings. What lovely friends I have!
I stayed overnight with a friend from school days (we have been friends since Infant School), who lives on the edge of the New Forest. We decided to spent the morning in nearby Lyndhurst yesterday, before I started the long trek back home. The sun came out and we had a very leisurely stroll round, checking out a table top sale where I bought some cottage-design china - a little jug and cruet set from Wareham - and a vintage necklace for my middle daughter. We checked out the other Antiques shops too (always one of my favourite pastimes), and the stables in the High Street where there used to be a riding stables back in the 1960s. Now they have built a bar area across the old entrance to the stables, but we waltzed in and asked if we could look around and take photos. I think they thought we were a bit touched! Stirred up some memories of riding out of the big double doors onto the High Street, and holding up the traffic as we rode down the street towards Bolton's Bench.
Here is one of the antiques shops at Lyndhurst, where we had a leisurely wander - it was full of Winstanley Cats for some reason!
On the wall of the pub was a plaque to a former landlord . . .
We used to ride out through these doors onto the High Street. Now they've built an extension to the pub bar there . . .
There was a marvellous sweety shop selling all the sweets we remembered from our childhood (and more besides!) There were Sweet Peanuts; half a dozen types of bon-bons including strawberry ones, lemon ones, soft toffee; there were pineapple chunks, pineapple rock, aniseed balls, blackberries and raspberries, winter mixture, eucalyptus drops, cinnamon drops, and my favourite, Kola Cubes, which probably gave me more fillings than the rest of them put together. Of course, I couldn't resist, just for old time's sake, you understand. In a moment I shall have the first Kola Cube to pass my lips for 40 years . . .
We were let loose in HERE!
This was just a fraction of the stock. We even found Chewing Nuts. We'd forgotten all about Chewing Nuts - they were little blobs of toffee covered in chocolate. Divine . . . but I thought of my fillings being extracted by them and got the Kola Cubes instead . . .
Behind the High Street shops was this little Forest stable and barn, with living accommodation over.
We spent some while in the Visitor Centre too, which although aimed mainly at younger visitors to the Forest, also held another trip down memory lane for us, as there was a lovely old chap called George, who was sat in a little reconstruction of a parlour in an old cob cottage, with a tilly lamp in the corner, and an old valve radio, and a wonderful chair which had been made in memory of Brusher Mills, the New Forest snakecatcher. We chatted for ages and swopped memories of childhood. I could remember my mum telling me how all the New Forest gypsies would bring buckets of blackberries to sell at the jam factory in Romsey.
This was George, in his parlour, bless him. As one child solemnly declared on her visitor's sheet of questions, George was "living history" !
This was another New Forest character, Harry Burt, with his cider press, and his goose, and his tools - a turf cutter, a hay cutter (for when hay was stacked in ricks still), a scythe etc. They obviously thought so much of him, they had him stuffed and put on display!
These are the brands (used to mark the "wild" ponies of the Forest, who actually all belong to various Forest dwellers). There is a similar set on hides in a pub called The Green Dragon at Brooke.
This lady was the inspiration for Lewis Caroll's "Alice", and she is buried in the little church in the clump of trees near Bolton's Bench.
Upstairs was the most fabulous mixed-skill embroidery of the New Forest - a rival for the Bayeaux Tapestry. On it were all sorts of animals, birds, reptiles, forest people, and such a lot of work and skill and imagination had gone into it. We spent ages looking at that.
Here are some photos of the beautiful embroidery of the New Forest by local embroiderers. There is applique, stumpwork, tapestry - all sorts of skills were used to tell the tales of the New Forest.
Here is Alice again . . .
William Rufus being killed by an arrow (there is the Rufus Stone which commemorates this Medieval murder).
A White Hart stands alone (there are many pubs called the White Hart in the Forest), and below right is Brusher Mills, famous for catching snakes.
Ann showed me some wonderful needlework her late mother-in-law had made - wonderful crocheted tablecloths and Hardanger work too, and she passed on to me an embroidery dictionary which had been her m-in-law's stitching bible, and two Hardanger embroidery books. I have decided I will give this a try in the long winter evenings. What lovely friends I have!
I stayed overnight with a friend from school days (we have been friends since Infant School), who lives on the edge of the New Forest. We decided to spent the morning in nearby Lyndhurst yesterday, before I started the long trek back home. The sun came out and we had a very leisurely stroll round, checking out a table top sale where I bought some cottage-design china - a little jug and cruet set from Wareham - and a vintage necklace for my middle daughter. We checked out the other Antiques shops too (always one of my favourite pastimes), and the stables in the High Street where there used to be a riding stables back in the 1960s. Now they have built a bar area across the old entrance to the stables, but we waltzed in and asked if we could look around and take photos. I think they thought we were a bit touched! Stirred up some memories of riding out of the big double doors onto the High Street, and holding up the traffic as we rode down the street towards Bolton's Bench.
Here is one of the antiques shops at Lyndhurst, where we had a leisurely wander - it was full of Winstanley Cats for some reason!
On the wall of the pub was a plaque to a former landlord . . .
We used to ride out through these doors onto the High Street. Now they've built an extension to the pub bar there . . .There was a marvellous sweety shop selling all the sweets we remembered from our childhood (and more besides!) There were Sweet Peanuts; half a dozen types of bon-bons including strawberry ones, lemon ones, soft toffee; there were pineapple chunks, pineapple rock, aniseed balls, blackberries and raspberries, winter mixture, eucalyptus drops, cinnamon drops, and my favourite, Kola Cubes, which probably gave me more fillings than the rest of them put together. Of course, I couldn't resist, just for old time's sake, you understand. In a moment I shall have the first Kola Cube to pass my lips for 40 years . . .
We were let loose in HERE!
This was just a fraction of the stock. We even found Chewing Nuts. We'd forgotten all about Chewing Nuts - they were little blobs of toffee covered in chocolate. Divine . . . but I thought of my fillings being extracted by them and got the Kola Cubes instead . . .
Behind the High Street shops was this little Forest stable and barn, with living accommodation over.We spent some while in the Visitor Centre too, which although aimed mainly at younger visitors to the Forest, also held another trip down memory lane for us, as there was a lovely old chap called George, who was sat in a little reconstruction of a parlour in an old cob cottage, with a tilly lamp in the corner, and an old valve radio, and a wonderful chair which had been made in memory of Brusher Mills, the New Forest snakecatcher. We chatted for ages and swopped memories of childhood. I could remember my mum telling me how all the New Forest gypsies would bring buckets of blackberries to sell at the jam factory in Romsey.
This was George, in his parlour, bless him. As one child solemnly declared on her visitor's sheet of questions, George was "living history" !
This was another New Forest character, Harry Burt, with his cider press, and his goose, and his tools - a turf cutter, a hay cutter (for when hay was stacked in ricks still), a scythe etc. They obviously thought so much of him, they had him stuffed and put on display!
These are the brands (used to mark the "wild" ponies of the Forest, who actually all belong to various Forest dwellers). There is a similar set on hides in a pub called The Green Dragon at Brooke.
This lady was the inspiration for Lewis Caroll's "Alice", and she is buried in the little church in the clump of trees near Bolton's Bench.Upstairs was the most fabulous mixed-skill embroidery of the New Forest - a rival for the Bayeaux Tapestry. On it were all sorts of animals, birds, reptiles, forest people, and such a lot of work and skill and imagination had gone into it. We spent ages looking at that.
Here are some photos of the beautiful embroidery of the New Forest by local embroiderers. There is applique, stumpwork, tapestry - all sorts of skills were used to tell the tales of the New Forest.
Here is Alice again . . .
William Rufus being killed by an arrow (there is the Rufus Stone which commemorates this Medieval murder).
A White Hart stands alone (there are many pubs called the White Hart in the Forest), and below right is Brusher Mills, famous for catching snakes.
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Avebury and Stonehenge
Today I go travelling. My eldest daughter has a month at the Stonehenge River Project, an archaeological dig that her University has been involved with for several years now. Research is always ongoing.
We will stop for lunch at Avebury, one of our favourite places, and hopefully the calm influence of the circle will help to heal her as she and her boyfriend will be parted for a month, and it will be very hard for them both, particularly as communication is so difficult.
I have heard that Itsy travelled really well (after loading like a seasoned show pony this end) and seems to be settling in well at her new home. It is a terrific relief for me.
Back tomorrow night.
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
The end of an era
Itsy-bits . . .
I have been careful not to mention our horses on here. I'm not very good with reality, and not very good with having to let go either - I seem to have been doing an awful lot of letting go in the past two years, what with our daughters going off to Universities in the North of England, mum dieing last year, and now it is the horses leaving me. My darling boy, Fahly, went in June. Maggie will be going up to Scotland at the end of the month. Today little Itsy is going.
She came to us as a Rescue - someone had bought half a dozen unhandled yearlings from the killing pen at the local horse sale. Being a filly, she wouldn't have gone for meat, but she almost certainly would have gone for breeding, and not had a very enjoyable life. We were given her when she was 18 mths old, and still unhandled. She arrived scrawny and wormy, with a big fat tummy, and looked just like a spider, hence her name (from Itsy Bitsy Spider). Anyway, she has never done a great deal, being happy to be a companion to Fahly and Maggie. She has been gently broken in, but not done much at all, though I've had her shod and led her around the lanes this summer, with my middle daughter riding her. Now she is going to a family in North Devon, and is going to be a much-loved family pony. A family friend down there will be riding her out and getting her used to her new life, and schooled on.
Good Luck Itsy.
I have been careful not to mention our horses on here. I'm not very good with reality, and not very good with having to let go either - I seem to have been doing an awful lot of letting go in the past two years, what with our daughters going off to Universities in the North of England, mum dieing last year, and now it is the horses leaving me. My darling boy, Fahly, went in June. Maggie will be going up to Scotland at the end of the month. Today little Itsy is going.
She came to us as a Rescue - someone had bought half a dozen unhandled yearlings from the killing pen at the local horse sale. Being a filly, she wouldn't have gone for meat, but she almost certainly would have gone for breeding, and not had a very enjoyable life. We were given her when she was 18 mths old, and still unhandled. She arrived scrawny and wormy, with a big fat tummy, and looked just like a spider, hence her name (from Itsy Bitsy Spider). Anyway, she has never done a great deal, being happy to be a companion to Fahly and Maggie. She has been gently broken in, but not done much at all, though I've had her shod and led her around the lanes this summer, with my middle daughter riding her. Now she is going to a family in North Devon, and is going to be a much-loved family pony. A family friend down there will be riding her out and getting her used to her new life, and schooled on.
Good Luck Itsy.
Sunday, 17 August 2008
Just another rainy Sunday.
OK - I give up - the font is playing silly b's so this is going to be different sizes - blame cut and paste . . .
Sunday is usually Car Boot Sale day in our house and today was no exception. We had planned to have a stall ourselves, but yesterday's weather was so grim that we never got the opportunity to load up the van. Instead, we had a very leisurely stroll around this morning, glad we hadn't packed up to sell as the weather forecast was wrong and rain came in much earlier than anticipated, and there weren't too many people buying.
We got our usual Free Range eggs from our usual stallholder, and are pondering – just a weensy bit – about getting a Gloucester Old Spot x weaner or two to raise for the freezer and for bacon, ham, sausages etc. . . They are £35 each – and Maggie’s big stable will soon be empty when she goes to her new home up in Scotland. It used to be two pigsties in years gone by, I understand, but I will have to persuade my husband first. I’m also angling for some hens again, but he’s being quite stubborn over those.
A couple of cookery books later, and the base of an old oil lamp in clear glass (only 50p, including a new wick) and my dear husband really couldn’t resist the temptation of a good slab of marble (£100 worth if you were buying it from anywhere else) so for another £5 that came home with us too. Heaven knows what he will do with THAT.
Cats are not fools, and especially like warm beds made up for them with old towels. This is where we found Banshee when we got home.
My crochet is coming along in leaps and bounds (10 rows already). I hope to do half a dozen more rows this evening.
Sunday is usually Car Boot Sale day in our house and today was no exception. We had planned to have a stall ourselves, but yesterday's weather was so grim that we never got the opportunity to load up the van. Instead, we had a very leisurely stroll around this morning, glad we hadn't packed up to sell as the weather forecast was wrong and rain came in much earlier than anticipated, and there weren't too many people buying.
My husband bought a little solid oak magazine rack that someone had made – functional rather than stylish – and is going to store his chisels in it in his workshop. On the same stall was a cracking Singer sewing machine – probably 2nd World War vintage but in lovely condition. One spin of the wheel and I was hooked as it just floated (they often “trundle” when they’ve had a lot of use). Anyway, £5 passed hands and it was mine, ostensibly for one of my daughters, but I have a feeling it may live with me instead and they can have one of my other hand sewing machines.
We got our usual Free Range eggs from our usual stallholder, and are pondering – just a weensy bit – about getting a Gloucester Old Spot x weaner or two to raise for the freezer and for bacon, ham, sausages etc. . . They are £35 each – and Maggie’s big stable will soon be empty when she goes to her new home up in Scotland. It used to be two pigsties in years gone by, I understand, but I will have to persuade my husband first. I’m also angling for some hens again, but he’s being quite stubborn over those. When we did the grocery shopping, I got tempted by the last copy on the shelf of a new novel by C J Sansom. He writes Tudor detective stories and is areal master of that period. I am currently reading his novel "Sovereign" at bedtime. It will be bread and scrape the rest of the week to make up for the indulgences.
A couple of cookery books later, and the base of an old oil lamp in clear glass (only 50p, including a new wick) and my dear husband really couldn’t resist the temptation of a good slab of marble (£100 worth if you were buying it from anywhere else) so for another £5 that came home with us too. Heaven knows what he will do with THAT. 
Cats are not fools, and especially like warm beds made up for them with old towels. This is where we found Banshee when we got home.
My crochet is coming along in leaps and bounds (10 rows already). I hope to do half a dozen more rows this evening.
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