Special thanks to Mrs Ogg for driving us in comfort, through the narrow Devon lanes
lanes which are (understandably) currently chocked with agricultural machinery, whilst the farmers make hay and gather in crops whilst the sun shines, they’ve no time for leisurely lunches.
However Spud did blot his copy book, I was distracted briefly whilst making the sandwiches for lunch and when I returned all that was left was lettuce leaf on the kitchen floor, Tom’s order of ham salad with pesto mayo was no more. Naughty Spud. Just as well I had preselected my beach reading.
Sorry about that, and apologies to the rhyme, but these unfurling bracken fronds had a distinctly woolly look about them and I was struggling for a title, I’d started out with ‘fleecy ferns’ and then realised it was bracken I looking at..
Like the rest of the country we are eating up the contents of the fridge, I relish the left overs more than the original Christmas dinner, as it provides a series of ‘easy teas’ with minimum input from me, and that sounds very tasty; but somehow there never seems enough of the right food to hit the spot for teenagers. Despite tins of chocolates, boxes of biscuits littering the house and the remains of a large dead bird in the fridge, ‘I’m hungry; what’s to eat’ is still the cry reverberating through the house.
The image above is a ‘left over’ photo from our holiday in Wales. It’s of the strapping ‘all day breakfast’ at the world famous ‘Pete’s Eats’ in Llanberis. I had a slightly more modest toasted cheese and tuna sandwich and very tasty it was too.
I read the section entitled ‘Pete’s Bistro’ on the Pete’s Eats website, as a one time self-employed person, it chilled my spine. Brrrrrr
The trouble with being a domestic goddess once, is it comes with an expectation for more of the same.
This is my first attempt at cinnamon rolls (and not my last, I’m told) they were yummy, if I do say so myself. I made a brioche dough in the breadmaker, rolled out the dough into a rectangle smeared the dough with a mix of melted butter, cinnamon and demerara sugar, rolled it up like a Swiss roll, cut into slices, placed it in a Pyrex dish, left to rise for 30 mins, and bake.
Nom,nom,nom: gone.
My next mission is to coach Tom in their production, especially as he has put in a request for cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.
*Again, again! Was Tom’s toddler chant for all things fun or tasty.
Continuing with the fungi theme, I found this fairy-tale specimen in a forest in Wales.
We’ve been away for a weeks holiday and very nice it was too (that’s is the holiday was nice, the weather could have been kinder). I’d like to tell you I toiled for hours through the forest to find such a handsome specimen, but I’d be lying, I found it in the car-park whilst Joe and I were waiting,
for Mr Uphilldowndale and Tom to return from a mountain bike excursion on the Marin Trail in the Gwydyr Forest. It was growing from the trunk of a birch tree. I used to know someone who made birch sap wine, and from what I can remember (the memory is a little hazy) the brew was as potent as I suspect this toadstool is (I’ll not try to name the species, I’ll hope a fungi expert passes by the blog with the appropriate knowledge.)
Would you like to see how muddy Tom was on his return?
You can visualise the dirty washing that has returned home with us can’t you?