Berry tasty

We have been making the most of our newly-acquired japanese wineberry bushes lately, so pleased with them!

I'm picking berries every few days and this morning's crop (teamed with some blackberries from a few carefully saved brambles) made a fantastic accompaniment to an oat granola and honey breakfast. 

Delicious!

Breakfast!

Mmmm, this has to be my favourite breakfast - Jamie Oliver's simple breakfast pancakes with blueberries, bananas and honey. Delicious!

Fertile!!

How many seeds from ONE grapefruit?!

An early Christmas present!

My daughters came home from their nan's today with an early Christmas present for me and hubby. 

They had both seen busy baking and brought us a box of homemade mince pies! Scrumptious. :)

Deflating!

I've been feeling very bloaty in my stomach in the afternoons recently and I think it's to do with eating commercially-made bread. 

This article in the Telegraph newspaper discusses the situation, and makes sense to me! 

So I'm having a few days of reduced bread intake to help reduce the discomfort. Here's a tasty bread-free quick lunch I made yesterday in a few minutes - Summer Pasta Salad:

• Boil a handful of pasta bows for 10 minutes, drain and cool slightly by rinsing under cold water, then put in your serving bowl.
• Stir in a handful of washed, shredded spinach leaves and leave for a minute to soften slightly.
• Stir in a spoonful of sundried-tomato pesto and mix thoroughly. 
• Add a handful of chopped yellow sweet pepper, a slice of cooked diced ham, and a few quartered cherry tomatoes.
• Season and enjoy!

Mmmmmmmuffins!

I seem to be doing more baking these days. Is that good or bad?

The latest batch are these skinny chocolate & cranberry muffins - delicious.

They use yoghurt, milk, and oil instead of butter but taste wonderful.

The mixture made 12 but only 11 photographed - well I had to check they were ok..

Last time I used chopped dates instead of dried cranberries - equally gorgeous.

We also have our first indication of Spring - this sweet little narcissus (I think!) has grown in a pot on our kitchen windowsill.

Anniversary

Today is our wedding anniversary - 14 years!

I've made an Etsy treasury to celebrate of course.

Tonight we're having a meal at the Miner's Arms pub at Mithian - the food is apparently very good there.

Have a happy day everyone!

Mmmm - cupcakes!

I've just bought my first silicon bakeware after many months of wondering about it - cupcake cases of course!

We gave them a test today with the first batch of cakes - vanilla, coconut and chocolate chip cakes with all manner of toppings! I made the cakes and the girls had great fun decorating them.

The cases are great - no cake left in them when we peel them off. The cakes are scrummy too - had to get a quick shot of these before they disappear.

Traumas and celebrations

It's our 12th wedding anniversary today! DH and I have just come back from enjoying a delicious meal at our local Italian restaurant - Del Mar. I had the best smoked salmon tagliatelle that I've ever tasted. Gorgeous!

DH had an operation 3 days ago on his broken left wrist to plate it.

It all seems to be healing fine, but we had an emotional moment this morning when I found out that he'd written his anniversary card before the op in case he didn't wake up from it. Thank goodness he did!

Earlier today I finished my crochet shell bag.

It's a pattern I created a few years back, but I decided to re-make it as I wanted to get some better photos for the pattern.

You can buy it here in my Etsy shop.

This time I used 200g of Patons 100% Cotton DK yarn and I love the result.

Merry Christmas from the seaside!

Here are the ingredients gathered together to make a gorgeous cranberry and chestnut stuffing roll to go with the Christmas dinner tomorrow.

I was amazed to find them all in nearby little Perranporth - even fresh cranberries and fresh chestnuts!

Here's something else we found at Perranporth - a christmas tree with working lights on the rock!

I don't think it'll last long, and goodness knows how they got the lights to work out there, but it looked great when we saw it.

That rock is actually huge; when the tide is on its way out you can climb up to the top. Usually the Perran flag flies on a pole where the tree currently is.


And here's our own little christmas tree, as decorated by my DDs.

Merry Christmas to all!

Beetroot and bamboo

We have a very kind elderly neighbour with an allotment producing too much food for him and his wife to eat by themselves.

So we currently have this - a small bucketful of fresh raw beetroot, grown about 10 feet away from our garden boundary.

I'm thrilled to have such a kind and generous neighbour, and if ever we have a glut of anything edible we will return the favour.

I have to admit that I've never taken to pickled beetroot and have never bought it fresh to cook with. So having absolutely no idea what to do with this bucket full of goodness, I scoured the Good Food website for ideas - and there were plenty.

I decided to try a couple out for a family BBQ last night to celebrate my in-laws buying their new house just a few minutes walk from ours.

This is one of the results - beetroot houmous - divine!

I would have shown you the beetroot slaw too, but that's all gone already. :-)

The other project simmering away is this - the frilled cardigan in Sirdar Bamboo.

All the main pieces are now finished, so I can seam those shoulders and start on the beautiful edging..

Of socks and parcels

You want socks? You got 'em! Announcing the gorgeous Hedera pair, finished just 3 hours ago.

Great pattern (Knitty), great yarn (Cherry Tree Hill merino), great socks. Now they have to go into hiding until the weather turns cooler - hopefully quite a while away.


And the parcel? Well it's my prize from Maggie's Crafting - plus a little extra.

I received the stitchmarkers I had chosen plus a sunny little card, an extra pair of lovely handmade stitch markers, and a bag of honey bear chewy sweets for my daughters!
Of course I had to try them first, just to check. Thanks so much Maggie!

I had a second parcel too - but that's another story..

Vegelicious

We didn’t get chance to enjoy the glorious weather this weekend as my youngest DD was quite poorly with a fever. I did carry her outside for a short while on Saturday though, to sit on a comfy sun lounger in the lovely warm sunshine and listen to the birds singing to her. It helped lift her spirits, and gave her something else to think about briefly – she even managed a little smile. :-)

Whilst she was having a little sleep, I got round to planting some garlic in my new garden. I’ve never grown it before, but we do eat a lot of it and it’s supposed to help keep pests away from the other plants. Each clove grows into a new bulb, so we should have plenty to keep us going.
I’m also going to try planting spring onions and my new favourite – fennel. As you can see, I have pretty much a blank canvas to start from!

I have some herbs (basil, sage, parsley and oregano) already enjoying their sunny position in the kitchen. The very helpful lady at our local garden centre phoned me at the weekend to let me know they now have some rosemary plants in stock, so I’ll be buying one of those soon to keep the garlic company.

We also got the juicer out at the weekend and made out own concoction including 1 jaffa orange, 1 Royal Gala apple, 1 large carrot, half a bulb of fennel, and a handful of red grapes. The result? Delicious!

All this is actually me trying to start to become fit and healthy. The last time I visited a gym was before my eldest DD was born, and now I'm driving myself to work, sitting in front of a computer all day, driving home, then sitting down knitting in my leisure time. Combine all that with the fact the I adore food, and you get the current situation where I want to lose 2 stone before I scare the holidaymakers on the beach.. ;-)

I've been checking out the details of the local fitness classes.. watch this space!

Oh yes - the Hedera sock is growing too..

Struck down

It seems I'm experiencing my first taste of the Cornish cold, and it's not very palatable.

Winge mode on. My entire body aches, my nose keeps exploding, my lungs feel like they're in a crusher, my throat has yellow spots on the inside, and my ears feel like they have knives in them. Tonight I ended up in bed at 6:30pm - not good.

So now I'm fighting back. I'm taking high-dose vitamin C at regular intervals, I have a hot lemon and honey drip, and I'm gargling with Tea Tree oil (3 drops in 25ml of cold water - do not swallow. Have you tried this? Why would anyone ever want to swallow it? Yeuch!) OK - winge mode off.

On the plus side, we spent Sunday on the beach with a picnic and the girls paddled in rock pools up to their waists. I've started knitting a Calorimetry with some lovely variegated stash wool - the wind is cold on our nearest vast open beach at Perranporth atm even on a sunny day. This should help to stop it giving me earache I reckon.

The girls have also been busy baking gingerbread cookies. They were supposed to be for Mother's Day but we couldn't wait. ;-)

They came out really well, and tasted delicious.

We've since made a tin full of granola bars which was a recipe I'd saved from a 6-year-old Good Food magazine. Very tasty!