Following on from yesterdays post, the very tasty set lunch for ten.
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.
May I say thank you farmers for what we eat.
The is much angst in the farming community here in the UK about the price of milk, the supermarkets and the global cream market have the farmers backed into the corner.
Here Mr Uphilldowndale debates the issues with a very fine cow.
The destination of this cow’s milk is less complicated than most, it will make very tasty cheese at Sharpham above the river Dart. They make wine too which is also very tasty (but not from milk obviously).
Spud the dog is in his element. Here he is on his Sunday morning walk.
Not a little girl in a pretty sundress in sight. The early morning mist burnt off for a stunning sunny day.
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.
The lanes are full of the foaming flowers of cow parsley
and hawthorn
As creamy and frothy as a bucket of fresh milk, but cast aside all romantic notions of fair skinned milk maids and check out the reality of dairy farming over at Lavenderjack
Baa baa bracken
Have you any wool?
Yes Sir, yes Sir three fronds full…
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..
The immature fronds are called fiddle heads, I can see why, it’s claimed they are edible, I imagine they are a bit chewy.
It is Derbyshire Open Arts 2012 this weekend, I may have to brave the bank holiday traffic.
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
Spud would like to wish his world wide fan base, a very Happy Christmas,
may it be cosy and relaxed.
Peace and goodwill to you all.
I can report Mr Uphilldowndale finished the decorating at 18:00 hrs yesterday evening. Dinner will be served.
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?
I know Spud stole the show posing with this field mushroom, but it is a thing of beauty and deserves a post in which to bask.
I know very little about edible fungi, I settle for admiring them as a thing of beauty.
