Rainy Sunday

I couldn't resist sharing some pictures of the scones I made today, as they looked particularly splendid (I have a posh new camera, which I was playing with).  I resisted eating the fruits of my labours, but Alastair said that they tasted splendid too.  According to my Mum - who is a champion baker - it's the sign of a good scone if you can pull it apart with your hands.  Apparently you must never cut a scone.  My scones tore apart like two feathers peeling apart.

It's taken me years to work out how to make them rise that much, and the answer is a bit of a cheat really.  As well as having the oven good and hot, I keep the dough very thick - at least 2cm.  I always use a Delia Smith recipe which says that it makes 12, but I only get 4!  If anyone knows how to make that recipe yield 12 scones that aren't as flat as pancakes, I salue you!

Weight Watchers: the Seventeenth Week

I inadvertently at 67 points (!) last Thursday on a day out in Ilkley, so I was very much hoping that I would still be 9st 10lbs when I weighed in on Thursday.  Imagine my delight, then, when I weighed in and was 9st 7lbs!  I was thrilled!  Particularly as it's been my goal for a while to be 9st 7lbs by January - getting there now gives me a bit of wiggle room before the Christmas indulgence kicks in. 

A Farm Shop-tastic Holiday!

I recently had a week's holiday from work, using up annual leave before the end of the year.  It was bliss...the time between the clocks going back and the Christmas holidays starting is a gruelling one, and it was so lovely to have a break.  By accident rather than by design, my holiday turned into a bit of a tour of the farm shop/cafes of three counties - Durham, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.  As everyone knows, I love food.  I love cooking it, I love eating it and I love blogging about it.  I've got a particularly soft spot for farm-shops - fresh local produce, small, often organic/ethically sound producers and fantastic food.  What's not to love?! 

The first farm shop/cafe I visited was the Cross Lanes Organic Farm Shop which is on the A66 near Barnard Castle.  It's a new venture, and is situated  a lovely new building with all sorts of eco-features, which you can read about on their web site.  It sells a range of produce which is all either organic, or local, or environmenally friendly (they have an Ecover re-filling section where you can fill your empty Ecover containers) or Fairtrade.  It also has a fantastic restaurant.

The restaurant is well-designed, light and airy and, most importantly, serves a fantastic cup of coffee.

It also has a varied and interesting menu (including lots of gluten-free options).  It was Sunday when we visited, so there was a range of Sunday roasts, a few specials and pizzas made in a wood-fired oven.  Alastair had pork with all the trimmings, and I had a very good warm falafel salad with houmous and mixed seeds, and a beautiful flatbread which was as light as a feather, crisp, drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with delicious salt crystals.  I was very impressed, and Alastair said his Sunday lunch was excellent.

The very best thing about it though, is that there are goats living on the roof!

The second farm shop/cafe - I visited was Newfield Dairy and Ice-cream Parlour, in Nottinghamshire.  The ice-cream is all home-made using milk and cream from the dairy - 0 food miles! - and they specialise in using seasonal local fruit, for example damsons from the local hedgerows for the Damsons and Cream flavour and local Bramley apples for the Apple and Cinder Toffee Ripple flavour.  There is also selection of sandwiches and light meals made from local produce where possible.  The cafe itself is bright and airy, and has a wall of windows so that you can look out over the Nottinghamshire countryside.  There's also a gorgeous wood-fired stove in front of which sits a huge and stately leather sofa, on which a lovely bright-coloured throw had been artistically tossed - I could imagine whiling away a Winter's afternoon with a hot chocolate there very easily!

The food was very good.  Mum and I had sandwiches which were made with what I think was home-made bread and a fresh, tasty salad.  My sandwich was beef, and the beef was perfect: tender, succulent and pink in the middle. 

Dad had a truly monumental sausage sandwich (he was more impressed than he looks).

It would have been rude not to sample the ice-cream, we felt, so after our savouries we indulged in something very sweet indeed!  I wanted the Chocolate Brownie Sundae (chocolate ice-cream, vanilla ice-cream, chunks of brownie, chocolate sauce and whipped cream) but I restrained myself (ahem...) and just had a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of chocolate.  The vanilla was silky smooth perfection, and the chocolate was so rich and buttery it tasted like cake batter (not a bad thing!).  Delicious with coffee.

While the first and second farm shops/cafes I visited were new ventures, the final one was very much an established behemoth - Chatsworth House Farm Shop.  We popped in for coffee and a snack and a quick look round the shop before a tour of the house decorated for Christmas.  The shop was amazing - an absolutely fantastic range of - I quote from the website - "quality produce fresh from the estate, tenant farms, Derbyshire suppliers and small food producers".  The website sets out their sourcing policy: "our philosophy is simple. We aim to source primarily from the estate, secondly from the estate's tenant farmers, thirdly from Derbyshire producers and then from other quality suppliers within the UK wherever possible".  Marvellous.

After a good look around the shop we moved onto the cafe.  Like the other two, it also had beautiful views, this time over the rolling Derbyshire countryside.  However, it had much much more...it had the best teacake I have ever tasted.  Ever!  Now, I wouldn't normally wax lyrical about a teacake, in fact I would very rarely choose to accompany my morning coffee (or indeed afternoon tea) with a teacake.  This was, however, no ordinary teacake.  It was magnificent.  Its consistency was a perfect mixture of feathery lightness and doughy moistness, and it was so delicately flavoured with cinnamon that it was more of a scent.  It would have been absolutely perfect with a few more sultanas in it, but the ones that were there were plump, juicy and sweet, so one mustn't complain.  All I can say is, go to Chatsworth House Farm shop, have a teacake and then buy a packet to take home.  Although you will be spoilt for the indifferent, cotton-woolly, unsubtle mixed-peel-flavoured nightmare that is a Warburtons teacake for ever.  I warn you now. 

My teacake epiphany was so profound that I didn't even take a photo.  I did, however, snap Mum and Dad enjoying their elevenses.  Or not, in Dad's case.  He was disappointed with his Bakewell Tart, which he said was dry and crumbly and tasted like it had been on the shelf for a good few days.  For a Derbyshire establishment this was a disgrace - we knocked off a star for that one.

All in all, I had a magnificent holiday, spending time with my husband and my parents, walking, eating, drinking and most importantly relaxing.  Wonderful!

Weight Watchers: the Sixteenth Week

As predicted, back to 9st 10lbs when I weighed in yesterday, due to the fact that I'd spent the previous week indulging in all manner of deliciousnesses.  And, I have to say, it was worth every ounce, especially afternoon tea at Chatsworth House...amazing!

That Was Summer 2012, That Was (Part 3)

I neglected my flower garden a bit this year.  I had great plans to grow loads of flowers from seed and have them in the border by late summer.  The weather was so disgusting, though, that I put that idea on the back burner a bit.  I was also saved from doing much in the way of garden design by wildly out-of-control buddleia, viburnum and weigela which took up so much space I didn't actually have any to fill.  I did lay some ground-work for next Summer though, and some old favourites came back to delight me, as they do every year.

This is how my flower border changed over the year. 

February...

...April...

...May...

...June...

...August...

...October...

Yes, the photo above was taken in October.  Although snow in October isn't typical, even in the North-East! 

Early this year, I took my courage - and my secateurs - in both hands and pruned my clematises and my climbing rose.  This was nerve-wracking, as pruning clematises is hard.  I got a book out of the library and studied it closely, and even though I wasn't at all sure I'd done it properly (and knew I hadn't in one case, as I killed my lovely Clematis Seboldei by cutting it below the first bud by mistake) three out of four clematises survived and two flowered.  Not bad for a beginner!

I was very worried I'd done my lovely climbing rose some permanent damage by pruning it to what seemed to be a terrifyingly small stump, but I am pleased to report that it grew back as large as ever, and with nine buds as opposed to the previous year's one!

This last photo was taken on an October morning - isn't the dew gorgeous?

Speaking of pruning, I was very happy when my philadelphus flowered this Summer.  I pruned it incorrectly about three years ago and it was the first time it had flowered since!  I was therefore a bit gutted when, after I'd pruned philadephus, viburnum and weigela after they'd finished flowering that Mum told me I'd done it wrong again...wonder when I'll next see philadelphus blossom?!

Here is philadelphus, enjoying the Summer sun with some other old favourites.

And finally...I grew sweet peas.  I didn't have a clue what colour they'd turn out to be, and they turned out to be lovely deep pinks, pale pinks, mauves, whites and a beautiful creamy-lilac colour with lilac striations.  They loved being in a vase indoors.

Weight Watchers: the Fifteenth Week

9st 8lbs!  And very pleased with myself.  Especially as the dark nights are causing me to seriously crave carbohydrates.  I'm attempting - so far successfully - to counter these cravings with delicious Autumnal soups and stews.  I made a particularly tasty Game Stew last week with a pack of mixed game from Tesco, a couple of onions, a few sticks of celery, a small swede, a rather large and splendid parsnip and two carrots.  Nothing else apart from olive oil to sweat the veg in, a sprinkling of flour, seasoning and a beef stock cube, and it was absolutely gorgeous - warming, filling, full of lovely robust flavours and only three Weight Watchers points per portion (okay, it was a Hunt-the-Game Stew).   

I have to call a halt to all this virtuousness though - I'm about to embark upon a week's holiday filled with many edible treats, so I'm expecting to be back into double figures when I next weigh in.  At least I can look forward to getting back on the stew for a week of weight loss thereafter!

Photo is from here.

Weight Watchers: the Fourteenth Week

No weight loss this week, which I was expecting as I'd been out for a meal the night before I weighed in (it was worth every single point and more!), but some interesting statistics.  When I started Weight Watchers, I was 10st 11lbs, my BMI was 25.9 and my Body Fat Percentage was 36%.  As of Friday, I was 9st 10lbs. my BMI was 22.9 and my body fat was 29.1%.  I'm most pleased with the reduction in my body fat percentage (and relieved that the majority of my weight loss has been fat, I would have been very traumatised indeed if I'd lost 10% of my body weight and kept the same body fat percentage!).  My goal health-wise is to get my body fat percentage down to 25% which is "excellent" for a lady of my age.  I think I'm going to have to start doing weights (boring, and I don't want to join a gym) or some other kind of resistance-based exercise to get there...any ideas?

Photo is from here.

I did start Pilates this week though, as I've been meaning to do for ages.  It was lovely - very good for stress relief and a brilliant break in the middle of the working day.  The muscles in my sides and in my stomach ached the next day too, so hopefully it will tone those areas up a bit.