500 Miles

As you may have gathered from my imaginative title there has been a bit of travel recently; if only it had just been 500 miles. In reality we drove 1050 miles in total. We drove from our home, over the hills through snow and all the way down to where my OH's family live for a big get together for an important birthday. It was a really good day out and we had a fancy tea in a hotel with finger sandwiches, freshly baked scones with cream and jam, french fruit tarts and raspberry panna cotta. His family is huge, noisy, smiley and wonderful so the time flew by and it was a shame it had to end.
We drove home and it seemed much later than it was by the time we finally arrived home because it had been dark outside since the afternoon but even as we drove we could see even more snow gleaming outside. The feeling I get when we are driving home, the warmth and relaxation, was made even more magical by the snow because I am a total child around snow. I giggle and watch it falling for hours, calling over the munchkins to look too. We make snow men, snow angels, have snowball fights and write words in the snow before going inside, changing into warm pyjamas and watch the snow fall over our creations as we drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. It is possible that one day I may actually grow out of this but, honestly, I don't want to!
My bread baking has continued and the flour from Logie Steading made such lovely bread that I am hoping to get some more next time I go by there. My sourdough starter is still going strong despite my reservations that I would forget it or it would stop working for some obscure reason.
Preparations continue for Christmas and although it may seem like a really long build up it is worth it to see the look on the munchkins' faces. I have been making little decorations in the forms of knitted stockings in red and white which are filled with striped candy canes and given to the children we know, crocheted snowflakes in white which have been starched to hold their shape better and angels out of beads to hang on the tree and to give as little gifts to people. Parcels with gifts that need to be sent have been posted or delivered when we visited family. I am feeling nicely organised and am looking forward to sitting down with a hot chocolate and the mound of cards that need to be written. I used to make sure all of the cards were the same designs and would buy the same multipacks to make sure of this but now I have cards left over from previous years that lurk from one year to the next and I buy one or two packs of nice cards when I see them.
Well I suppose it is time to wrap this up as the stove will not light itself and my day looks to be quite busy with surgery as a teddy has lost his arm.

Hugs from Haggis Land

Jx

Out and About

This week has been full of social activities and I went to a local place, Logie Steading http://www.logie.co.uk/ , with some friends. It was more than a bit of a surprise to me and had some lovely shops. I found a good selection of different flours for all my sourdough bread baking needs and then went into another shop where some gin was sampled. Only a little. Honest. The art work in the gallery was stunning and there were so many beautiful pieces in there that I could have gone nuts. The cafe was very nice and the lunch was delicious which makes me a lady who lunches. Suffice to say that I will be going back. The visit reminded me that my liqueurs needed to be bottled so my cupboard now has four new bottles of liqueur; cherry, bramble, raspberry and wild berry (the leftover raspberry and bramble that wouldn't fit into the other bottles mixed together). There was a cheeky glass leftover for me and OH so we were more than happy. The colours of them are gem like and they look ready festive and ready for Christmas. At Logie I was chatting to the lady who runs the whisky shop and mentioned my liqueurs and she poured me a taste of the bramble liqueur that they sell and I was very happy with how they compare. I promptly started on a spiced ginger liqueur after I bottled the others because a bit of warmth is always welcome and why not?
Okay, I admit it, I cannot hide how excited I get about Christmas. It's everything really; the lights, the cooking smells, the drinks and the wonderful snuggly cuddles in front of films. The turkey has been ordered from the local butcher, some bottles have been put away and this week I have made my mincemeat for the mince pies. I am not a fan of the mincemeat you can buy in shops and much prefer to make my own and have a couple of favourite recipes. One huge snag with a few festive food items such as cake, mincemeat and pannetone; I do not like candied peel that you get in the shops although I have tolerated it until now. No, this year it seems something inside me snapped and I went a bit crafty loopy and decided to make my own. After a bit of web surfing I found this method http://wonderlandkitchen.com/2013/11/just-like-candy-diy-mixed-peel/ (sorry if it seems I am going link crazy but I have only just realised that if anyone is reading this then they may actually want to know what I am waffling on about.) and it worked much better than I expected and it tasted great. Not 'I can tolerate this' great more like 'oh, <bleep>, what have I done? I will end up making tons of this as it is so very yummy'. So, to clarify, it was nice and it meant I could then make my mincemeat which got mixed up in a very old casserole dish and left in the Rayburn overnight. It is now all potted up filling four 2lb jars and sitting at the back of tthe cupboard with other goodies I am squirrelling away from my OH and my darling little munchkins. JR has handled all of this kitchen work very well and has sat at my ankle hoping to be given a carrot top or two without noticing that I have not been chopping up carrots. Bless.
We took a trip to our local big town and I went to a cook shop to buy a tin for the pannetone; I am a woman on a mission. We had a brilliant day out and my face was wreathed in the sort of smile that only someone who has managed to buy a lot of things at a very good price, which is far less than their OH was dreading, can understand.
Although I am planning for Christmas it does not mean that Halloween or fireworks have passed me by entirely. At the munchkins' insistence JR has a little pair of bat wings for Halloween that he loves to wear and will whine if he cannot have them or if they are taken off, so he still wears them now when he is in the house and pottering around. It is a bit odd, even for me, and reminds of when my munchkins were much younger and used to dress up in tutus and superhero suits. Who am I kidding? They still do! In a few minutes I shall slip JR's little quilted wax jacket on him and take him out for a walk but before that I should tell you about the fireworks night we went to in our local town. It was brilliant, no pun intended, and the bonfire was huge then the fireworks went on for ages. We met up with some friends and watched the display before going home to snuggle up in front of the fire with a glass of wine. A perfect Saturday evening.

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx

Turning times

So this month has been a busy one, the children have been on holiday so things have been busy and the fields around me have changed noticeably. The trees have turned from green to bright yellow and the silver birches drape their pretty yellow leaves over everything. All of our wine has been bottled and the ale we made has been going down well. The spiced Christmas ale will be made next week so it will be ready in time and on our walks we have gathered pinecones for Christmas crafts and they have dried out on the Rayburn.

A week ago a kind of madness set in and I bought a huge pumpkin to cook down and make into bread. The experiment, while foolhardy, went well and resulted in 8 loaves of bread. The taste was far better than anything I expected considering I made up the recipe as I went along. My most beautiful loaf so far came out of this bake; a boule, proofed in a banneton and slashed to perfection. I froze most of the loaves ready for stews and soups and we have already enjoyed one of them. My addiction to baking hasn't helped the electricity bill at all so I will be trying to cook it in the Rayburn soon. Every day she is lit and the cat curls up next to it while JR lurks by my ankle. I have some bad news; it looks as though Fat Pigeon has met his end as I have not seen him in over three weeks. Admittedly the happy cat and the pile of feathers only added to my suspicions so it does look as though the cat got him but hopefully he just went elsewhere for a few weeks in an attempt to scare other people as they open their curtains in the morning.

I have been thinking about getting a camera in order to take some pictures of the world around me in this beautiful place but let's just say I am not gifted in this area so for every good picture I take there are several fuzzy ones that get deleted. It's that time of year when most of my baking is spiced with warm flavours and fruit tea loaves are served alongside gingerbread men. Halloween crafts were minimal as we were out in the woods on the night but we still carved some little squashes, one each, and used some LED tealights (a first for me) and they worked brilliantly. Gone is the odd vegetable caramel smell of singed pumpkin and no risk of a repeat of the disaster year for me when the lid shrunk with the heat of the candle then fell inside the pumpkin.

October brought a new drink discovery for me and I can definitely recommend Cairn o'Mohr which is made in Perthshire. So far we have tried the Autumn Oak Leaf, the Elderberry and the Bramble and all of them are delicious so if you fancy trying some here is the link: http://www.cairnomohr.com/

Hugs from Haggis Land x