I have a very productive Crab Apple tree in my front garden. Most years I make things from the fruit. This year, I think I have finally worked out the optimal low effort to best result ratio system, taking account of my particular foibles as a cook (impatient, clumsy, prone to tweaking recipes). So I'm recording it here so I don't get tempted to ( Read more... )

What can you do with courgettes? In the culinary line I mean, other uses not requrired at this particular point, thank you very much.

I do:

• fried with coriander seeds
• fried with lemon and garlic
• cut into long thin strips which are charred under the grill and then choppped into shorter pieces and marinaded in balsamic vinegar (a particular favourite)
• ( Read more... )

(But I'm drunk and that makes me loquacious and communicative ( Read more... )

I'm not a big fan of New Year's Resolutions, for reasons that are discussed lucidly elsewhere. But I do find it valuable to periodically take stock of my life and think about it in a longer-term way than is common in daily life. I usually do this in the summer in a going-back-to-school kind of way, and often in the New Year. This year I don't seem ( Read more... )

Does anyone have a good recipe for chewy toffee? My ancestral recipe is delicious, can be made as treacle toffee for extra nom, and very easy, but it comes out so rock hard that the sharp corners (where you've wacked it into pieces with a toffee hammer) hurt the inside of your mouth. Also, if any lasts beyond 12 hours it starts softening into gloop ( Read more... )

LB is sleeping *much* better. 7pm until nearly 6am almost every night for the past 3 weeks. This is very, very good (especially for me, who doesn't usually get up with him at 6. Less good for D who does). Everyone getting more sleep has many good side effects, apart from the main not being chronically sleep deprived one. Many of these were (eagerly ( Read more... )

Shortbread base ( Read more... )

I had a week off work last week. The main purpose of the week was to have another go at nightweaning LB. I'd gone back to feeding him when he was ill and then D was too ill to go to him at night for ages and LB just screams the place down if I go to him but don't feed him, whereas he settles for D, and it all went very 4.30ish again. In the event, ( Read more... )

What I cooked today (with some scullery-maid type help. And some hindrance from LB who wanted to be in my arms whenever he could see me, still ill, poor mite):

( Food - the non-gory details (veggie) )

I have not been having much fun recently (nothing major, just a surfeit of illness, night-wakings, work and clearing up pee, and concomitant shortages of sleep, patience and ingenuity for toddler-wrangling). Today was particularly grim ( Read more... )