Cooking Up A Storm

As the weather makes spending time in the garden a lot less fun, I turn to my other happy place, the kitchen. 

There's something about Autumn that has me stocking my shelves and filling my freezer  - maybe it's the animal urge to stockpile against the dark and hungry winter. I'm basically a squirrel with a vast store of nuts. Or perhaps a very fat bear planning to hibernate, but a bear with access to a freezer.

Yesterday was one of those intensive cooking days. Unfortunately, I stood for longer than my knees can tolerate so today I'm stuck on the sofa writing about food rather than making it. Still, Mark's here so I've a reasonable chance of a cuppa being brought to me, and I still have some of the Lindor chocolates I bought myself as a reward for going to my various medical screening appointments three weeks ago.

I made some fishcakes first of all - I poached salmon fillets, microwaved two baked potatoes and scooped the flesh out, finely chopped some fresh dill and a spoonful of capers, mixed it all with an egg yolk and shaped it all into patties. The whisked egg white is also in the fridge, to dip the patties in before coating them in panko breadcrumbs and frying them for dinner tonight. Depending how cold I'm feeling they will either go with a nice crispy salad or I'll do french beans from the freezer (thank you, veg garden!) with some of the spiced tomato sauce Mark made yesterday for patatas bravas.

Next up was roasting things for the next three meals - on one tray, slices of aubergine for melanzane parmigiana, and on the other slices and chunks of a butternut squash. If I have to have the oven on for around 40 minutes, I want to make sure I'm using it fully. Electricity is too expensive to waste on a partially empty oven.

For the melanzane parmigiana, I do a modified version of this recipe.  Having some black beans added to the standard parmigiana means it's more filling and more nutritious. My Very Excellent Mate Alison will roll her eyes, because of course I use Bold Beans, and yes, they are ubiquitous. I don't care, I still think they are the best food product to hit the shelves in forever, and I'm delighted to see they are so successful. "I knew them before they were famous" and all that. (That's entirely down to my Very Excellent Mate Kirsty, who shared her freebies from a Bold Bean insider and made me a bean evangelist before shops were stocking them.)

The butternut chunks went into a new-to-me vegetarian lasagne recipe. There was half a jar of butter beans in the fridge, so that went into the butternut and sage layers. I took mascarpone out of the bechamel layer and instead added ricotta to the spinach layer. So it's squash and beans, spinach and ricotta, pasta, bechamel with parmesan (or pecorino, I forget which I had in the fridge). 

The slices of butternut squash will go into this lovely squash, leek and bean gratin from the Riverford Organics website. I made it a couple of weeks ago and it was a big hit with Mark, Zach and I. And yes, I know, there's more Bold Beans in it. 

Another recipe I really rate is Matar Paneer by Manali. I've used a number of her recipes over the last 6 or 7 years and they are excellent. It is honestly the nicest Matar Paneer I've had other than from a restaurant, and better than quite a few of those! I prefer my paneer fried, and I use tinned tomatoes rather than fresh because the fresh tomatoes are tasteless except in summer. I tend to make a double batch because it freezes just fine. I freeze curry in individual portions so I can have a veggie curry while Mark and/or Zach has a chicken one and we can have the same side dishes.

Speaking of side dishes, I went overboard and spent nearly 6 hours making the House Daal from the Dishoom cookbook earlier this month. That's an awful lot of simmering and stirring. A damned fine daal, though. We are lucky enough to live in a very multicultural city, so getting urad daal (black lentils) isn't the challenge it can be in some areas.

And black lentils reminds me of another (mostly) successful recipe I tried this year  - Black Chickpeas with Baharat from Ottolenghi's website.  It's very similar in structure to his Confit Tandoori Chickpeas, which has been an absolute favourite of mine for ages, but with a more Middle Eastern/North African style of flavours. Basically, bung the chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, a gargantuan amount of olive oil and the appropriate spices into a lidded casserole and stick it in the oven for 75 minutes on low. I've done it as a solo meal for me (with chicken alongside for Mark) and as part of a mezze celebration when my much missed Very Excellent Mate Emma came back to Leeds from Edinburgh briefly, alongside other middle eastern dishes, and it worked very well both ways.

 I said a partial success, because I've served to to Penny, Emma, Rajni, Gillian and Zach who all thought it was delicious - and several of them made it themselves. But Mark didn't like it because of the amount of cloves in the the seven-spice mix that makes up baharat.  Also, I grated the orange zest rather than adding strips of it, because a number of comments mentioned the strip of peel being rather bitter. And yes, it's a Bold Bean tie-in, and I'm starting to see Alison's point. (Still don't care, I love them). 

Incidentally,  the recipe works very well with regular chickpeas. The black ones have a nice nutty taste but  regular ones are also just fine. I vacillate between using jarred chickpeas (easy but expensive), cooking dried ones in the pressure cooker (very cheap and good but time consuming) and just bunging a tin in (mostly cheap but not as good.) If I can be faffed doing it, simmering a tin of chickpeas  - or any other bean - on the hob with a pinch of bicarb for 10 minutes really improves them. But some days, who cares? It's all good anyway.

Oh dear. While I've been typing Mark's fallen asleep in the chair, so I'm on my own to get a hot drink after all. Drat.

Souper Trooper

We're well into the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' (thank you, A-Level English Lit curriculum for lodging Keats in my brain forever) and I can no longer pretend it's still summer. On the whole I am not a fan of  autumn and winter because the garden is dormant, it gets dark too soon and it's soggy much of the time.

 However, there are some positives about the cold and dark even a solar-powered soul like myself can appreciate. One is that it's time to get the beautiful Welsh woollen blanket on the bed once again. The other is that it's soup season. 

It's a very good blanket 

I love soup. I really, really love it. Not just 'quite like' but actually think about and look forward to it. It's a wonderful, comforting thing. It can be healthy or indulgent, quick or take ages, smooth to soothe a sore throat or hearty and veering towards stew. I don't care, I love all of them.

One of my favourites has been sustaining me since I was breastfeeding my second baby (who is now 24) and never had time to get a proper meal. I actually fed him with a tea towel over his head while I ate this soup because there was nothing more likely to wake him for a feed than the presence of a warm dinner for me. The soup is nourishing because of the lovely Puy lentils, and helps cut through a bunged up nose or general winter blues with the kick of sour lemon juice and heat of chilli flakes. 

Hot and Sour Soup with Lentils 

1 diced onion
1tbs olive oil
200g mushrooms
300g Puy lentils
1.5l vegetable stock
3 crushed garlic cloves
lemon juice
chilli flakes

I fry the onions in the oil until they're lightly golden, then add the mushrooms and cook for another 5-7 minutes. I add the garlic for the last minute then pour the lentils and stock in, cover and simmer for about 30-40 minutes until the lentils are fully cooked but still hold their shape. Then it's adding enough lemon juice and chilli to fit your palate - in my case about 4 tablespoons of lemon juice and a heaped teaspoon of flakes, but I like things on the punchy side.

Other days it's nice to have something creamy and comforting. Leek and Potato is obviously a winner. Cream Of Tomato soup reminds me of snowy lunchtimes in Canada when I was a kid, dunking my grilled cheese into the soup bowl at the kitchen table in our house on Ann Street.  However, most often I make soup with a single type of vegetable, roasted until sweet.

A change to these old favourites I've adopted recently is to add white beans to all my smooth soups. When they are pureed it just adds a bit of velvety smooth texture while boosting the protein, iron, minerals and fibre of the soup. Beans are ridiculously good for you and cheap, so it seems a no-brainer.

Roast 'Something' Soup

An oven tray of roughly chopped vegetable (eg butternut squash, carrots, parsnips or cauliflower)
2 tbs olive oil
vegetable stock
1 tin or jar of chickpeas or butter beans or cannellini beans
spices and salt and pepper
cream (optional)

I toss the squash slices (or carrots etc) in the oil and tip them into an oven tray which goes into a medium hot oven until the vegetable is tender. How long depends on big or small you've cut your veg, but typically it's in there for 30-50 minutes. Then I tip it in the blender with the beans and add stock slowly until it's a soup and not a puree. With squash and pumpkin soup I like to add cumin; carrot likes coriander; parsnips benefit from a dash of horseradish.  This is the time to check the seasoning and add a dash of lemon juice to brighten the flavour of the soup. Then it gets portioned up with anything not getting immediately eaten being labelled (obviously) and put in the freezer.

I took a tub of this type of soups - butternut squash with chickpeas - to have lunch with a friend the other day, and we were agreeing how brilliant this sort of food is when you just don't have the energy to stand in the kitchen. Sometimes, whether through illness, the general peri menopausal hellscape or just a case of I cannot be arsed, a container of soup in the fridge is like a hug from your past self to your current knackered self. "There, there. Don't worry, I've got you covered."

Broccoli soup is a special one - it needs almost nothing doing to it at all. Gordon Ramsay demonstrated it on telly once and it was a revelation! Literally a 5 minute soup. Just steamed broccoli put in a blender with stock and seasoning. It's a vibrant green, and is absolutely delicious with a slice of goats cheese sitting on top, gently melting. If you've ever got a slightly sad looking broccoli in the veg drawer, I can highly recommend using it up this way. 

I've written in the past about the absolute queen of soup, Pasta E Fagioli  which is especially pleasing made with home grown borlotti beans. In fact, some of last year's borlottis are in this week's sausage casserole, reminding me that the veg patch is a gift that keeps giving even when the garden is asleep.

My favourite ready made soup is the Smoked Haddock and Salmon Chowder made by Cully and Sully. It usually costs between £2.20-£3 and is a hearty meal all of its own. It's not quite up there with the marvellous Fiskesuppe we had in Norway, but it's the best soup I've had from a supermarket. 

To be honest, for me there are very few vegetable soups worth buying in the supermarket since manufacturers started adding coconut solids to soups (rather than butter) to make them vegan. It's not nearly as nice. I stick to fish soups now  if I'm buying ready made. My freezer is packed with reused Cully and Sully tubs; I buy it most weeks through winter.

The best restaurant for marvellous soup, in my opinion, is The Jolly Fisherman in Craster. They have a magnificent Crab Soup that they serve with a generous helping of homemade bread, and the House Chowder is also superb. 

I am alone in my Soup Devotion in this house. Mark enjoys the odd bowl, but he'd usually opt for a sandwich instead. (Mark and I have VERY different ideas about what qualifies as acceptable bread. I am very much Not A Fan of the damned Chorleywood process that ruined bread quality in the UK, whereas he doesn't mind) Zach never quite forgave soup for being the only thing he could eat for weeks when he first got braces, and Miss B thinks soup is boring. 

One thing we can all agree on is that Andy Warhol preserved for posterity the most truly repellent flavour of Campbell's Soups in his second Soup Cans collection of  paintings. It's currently on display at the rather wonderful Cartwright Hall in Shipley, on the edge of Bradford. What on earth were Campbell thinking?

Hot Dog Bean Soup? No ta.

 

 

Beets me

 One of my favourite experiments in the veg patch is growing something we think we don't like. 

My reasoning goes that if you can taste something picked at its best, prepared freshly and still dislike it, you've given that food every chance and you never have to try that thing again... but you might be surprised.

I used to think I didn't much like sprouts until I grew them and harvested them myself. Peas got a lot more interesting to small children who could eat them fresh out of the pod. Somehow red currants off the bush are vastly nicer than those in a supermarket. In fairness kohlrabi remained boring and salsify just wouldn't grow so there's not always a success, but it's a game worth playing. 

In my opinion, the worst family of vegetables is that loathesome Clean Dirt masquerading as food, beets and chard. There's no faster way to destroy a salad than to add some baby chard leaves, or that duplicitous, misnomered leaf Perpetual Spinach. Aside - It's not spinach, it's a chard. The name is to make it sound good when it's actually dreadful. Just accept that spinach bolts and sow it successionally.

Worst of all is the Root Vegetable of Doom, beetroot. 

I've had it grated raw in salads, pickled, roasted with other veg, added to hummus, as a so called crisp, ruining added to a smoothie  and god knows what they do to the weird vacuum sealed stuff in the supermarket, but I've had that too. All tasting like a mouthful of earth. At least the pickled one was dirt with added vinegar. 

I'm not alone in this. When my Dad did a bit of vegetable growing in a corner of their herbaceous garden, he was delighted by the success of his beetroot crop. My Mum actually had nightmares about him force-feeding it to her. 

A few years ago I blew a moderate fortune on booking 6 months ahead to take Mark to Tommy Banks's restaurant The Black Swan at Oldstead*. Don't get me wrong, it was money well spent, it was the meal of a lifetime! What I didn't realise was that one of the signature dishes is a slab of crapaudine beetroot cooked for 5 hours in beef fat or olive oil. Yikes!

It was absolutely delicious.

With that in mind, this year I decided to give beets a chance**.

If Tommy Banks goes to the hassle of growing 14th century French heritage beets, and I really want to give beetroot the best go at being acceptable, I thought I should probably do the same. Crapaudine means toad, a reference to the rough skin on these unusual beets. Only specialist and heritage growers sell the seeds, but there are lots of chef-type recipes specifying them in recipes so I figured they must be worth the hassle.

Looking a bit moth eaten by October

Germination went quite well. I sowed the seeds direct in May, with a second, less successful sowing in late June. The leaves looked like pretty much standard beets but the root itself is more like a fat parsnip shape than a globe. I wasn't expecting that. Unfortunately, the same problem as I've had with both carrots and parsnips happened with the beets - they hit an obstacle in the soil and split. I had a nice thick cylinder for the top few inches of root, them they split into useless leggy strands.

Slightly deformed beetroot

Still, I had some healthy looking plants, so was free to experiment.

First I tried the baby leaves, which I'd been told were good in salads. Nope, they taste exactly like chard and are horrible. The hens were extremely grateful to my picky tastebuds as they got loads of nice leafy treats. Personally, I'd rather go hungry.

Next, I tried one of the tiny beetroots raw after I'd thinned the row a bit. Dad said they are particularly nice when young. Nope, still like willingly eating dirt. 

When it came to cooking them, I decided on a split approach. I would drizzle some in oil and salt and roast in a tinfoil parcel, and the other I would try approximate the Tommy Banks approach by cooking it on a very low heat in olive oil on the hob for a few hours.

The latter didn't work at all. Even on the lowest setting on the smallest gas ring, the oil cooked too vigorously. I ended up with a weird halfway house of boiling olive oil then turning the heat off, back and forth for about 2 hours before I abandoned it. I think I should have removed the beetroot from the oil at that point but I let it cool down first.

The second worked really well! I couldn't justify having the oven on for a couple of hours for just beetroot, so I also baked a gluten free lime yogurt cake for my Very Excellent Mate SJ, then one of my favourite easy meals, confit tandoori chickpeas from Ottolenghi. 

To serve it, I meant to have nice seeded flatbreads with Abergavenny goats cheese and walnuts. As it turned out, the shop didn't have any flatbreads and the walnuts in the cupboard were stale, so we went with just the beetroot and cheese.

The attempted confit beetroot was a bit oily, but other than that they all tasted pretty much the same. Remarkable sweet, a smooth texture and yes, a little bit like Clean Dirt but only a tiny bit, and it complemented the cheese. I think the walnuts - or a bitter leaf like radicchio - might have improved it by cutting through the sweetness but it was still more of a success than I'd anticipated. 

Mark's verdict was Absolutely Delicious. Mine was Not Bad, Actually.

I don't think I'll be rushing to buy great bunches of the stuff, but as an occasional thing, slow roased beetroot is a nice surprise. 5 months from garden to plate, but I don't garden hoping for fast food.

A small plate for such a long project

As I have been putting away gardening things for the winter, I see I still have half a packet of crapaudine seeds. I might even plant them next year. 

Maybe.

* It was later voted best restaurant in the world, and I believe it. If you should ever stumble across a giant wad of money, I heartily reccomend spending it there, or Roots in York by the same team.

** Apologies to John and Yoko

Time After Time

October 7th, 2018. 8pm.

That's when Doctor Who returned. Well, sort of returned. New face, new sex, new friends, new writers. Probably a new TARDIS, sonic screwdriver and title sequence too. Regenerating in every way and still being the same.
Got to love Doctor Who.


In late August the magnitude of my Hamilton overspend hit me; over £450 for one night out.
Oh.
Even in the cheapest of cheap seats, that's 5 tickets, 5 rail tickets to London, 2 hotel rooms needed.  That's before dinner, breakfast and lunch for 5 and spending money.  I decided to recoup it as best I could. I listed toys on eBay and Facebook, washed and dried many kilos of Lego, looked for anything else of value that wasn't needed. It went well, and I raised a good chunk towards the costs.

Mark suggested getting rid of a lot of the DVDs and CDs sitting crates in the office. He sold them in a bulk lot, making us over £100, but we all had a check through the boxes to make sure nothing vital was being disposed of.

The lunatic had only gone and included my DVDs of Doctor Who.

(Yes, I know they are all online at BBC iPlayer and Netflix, but it's not the same.)

Rescuing them from the crate, I thought it might be fun to re-watch every episode from Rose through to Twice Upon A Time, in time for the arrival of Jodie Whittaker's Doctor in October. So many great episodes, it will be ace, I thought. There are probably about 60 episodes or something, I can definitely do it. Rose! Donna! Amy and Rory! Angels, Cybermen, Daleks, Ood, Adipose, Silurians! It will be a blast.

No, Jay, you twonk. There are 166 episodes from Christopher Eccleston's Doctor grabbing Rose's hand and saying "Run" to Peter Capaldi meeting himself in the form of David Bradley in the snow. That's an awful lot of telly viewing to cram into 6 weeks. I didn't start counting until I was already 20 episodes in, and I'd kind of committed to it by then.

Series One:
Ah, the joys of the Eccleston year. I love this season with all my heart. Eccleston is a delight to watch, Billie Piper converted me from thinking "some vacuous pop pixie" to "I love her forever, even though her mascara scares me". The delightful Captain Jack, the massive story arc in the Buffy style. Sobbing fit as the Doctor kissed Rose and changed. He really was fantastic. It was even more fun than I'd remembered, although I still can't be doing with the Slitheen.
Never did like a fart gag.

Series Two:
That magical boy from Taking Over The Asylum and Casanova - isn't he a delight? A less than wonderful Christmas special and a few absolute duds (Absorbaloff? seriously? was it a dare?) but my goodness there are some right belters. Werewolves, alternate worlds, the Satan pit, the glory of a Dalek vs Cyberman standoff. I love the humour ("Look at me! I'm a chav") and the glee of this series.    Sarah Jane Smith comes back - hurray!
Again, my heart broke. Cried buckets, the sentimental thing that I am. Lots of people hated that but tough luck, cynics. Love and sacrifice are great stories.

Series Three:
Oh dear, the difficult third album.
Martha drove me nuts the first time because she was mooning about like a lovestruck groupie instead of being smart and focused. Second time around, I wasn't in mourning for lost Rose, so could view her more compassionately. She still got on my wick but I felt she'd had a revelation in the Family Of Blood two-parter; even when the Doctor was free to fall in love, he didn't fall in love with her. I think it finally clicked and she moved on. I did hate the "it was all a dream Pam had, Bobby's really in the shower" bit about rewinding the last couple of years in the final episode, though. It felt stupid.

Series Four:
The mates.
Donna was a wonderful companion. They were sparring equals, they were drinking buddies, they were glorious. She never once let him get away with ego, and she was fantastic fun. The adorable Adipose - please can I lose weight like that? pretty please? - the Oods, the Daleks, the reappearance of  Rose and the gang... one of the strongest series of the lot.

Series Five:
Amelia Pond, name from a fairy tale.
Matt Smith, a man with insufficient control of his limbs.
I loved the moral quandary of The Beast Below, the Vincent episode was lovely, and obviously Rory is everyone's relationship goal. He's utterly wonderful. Amy is fun and stroppy; James Corden does a corking job as lovelorn Craig in The Lodger.

Series Six:
Strong start - murdering the Doctor in the first episode.
Unfortunately this series featured very annoying voiceovers in the opening titles that felt like nails on a blackboard every single time. Loved the eeriness of drawing a line on yourself every time you see The Silence, it was properly disturbing. Completely DON'T love the over the top Look How Zany I Am stuff Matt Smith was forced to do. He wasn't so much a Time Lord as a Time Toddler on a sugar rush. Grow up, man, and calm the heck down.
The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People was the best story for me. Mark Bonnar and Marshall Lancaster never fail to charm me, and Raquel Cassidy was superb.  It actually made up for the stupid Pirate episode. The Doctor's Wife was brilliant (because OF COURSE Rory is The Pretty One)  and the reappearance of Craig with baby Stormaggedon was great fun.


Series Seven:
Goodbye Amy and Rory, Hello various incarnations of Clara Oswin Osgood.
No stupid voiceover, now a great opening sequence with the Doctor's face, like the 70s and 80s.
Like the sentimental fool I am. I was distraught at Amy and Rory's estrangement, delighted by their reunion, and loved Souffle Girl. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship's only redeeming feature was the accidental kidnapping of Mark Williams as Rory's dad. I actively dreaded Angels Take Manhattan because I knew I'd miss Amy and Rory, and I wasn't wrong.
I didn't take to Clara at all. Sorry.
However, the Cold War episode with the ever-lovely Liam Cunningham was a stand-out episode. I swear I could watch that man read aloud from a phone book and be charmed. Really not fussed on The Great Intelligence and the Trenzalore rubbish. It was entirely too convoluted for my taste.

Day Of The Doctor
Happy 50th birthday, Doctor Who!
I was at a wedding when this was originally screened. We came home and watched it in the middle of the night, then again the next day. I love it.
John Hurt punctures the manic gibberish of Tennant and Smith magnificently. His calm, weary stillness throws Matt Smith's gurning into stark contrast. I'm as much in love with David Tennant as I ever was; is that man ever anything but charming? I loved the Zygons as they were my first Doctor Who memory as a child and they scared the bejeezus out of me back then. The wonderful Osgood and a reappearance from Billie Piper were marvellous.

Series Eight:
Look, it's a grownup!
Hello Peter Capaldi, how lovely to see you. Although not as a demented twerp belched from a dinosaur, running around and shouting, having a deeply weird relationship with Clara, and watching the moon hatch. This was a real low point. The moon hatching was definitely the thing that made me most angry, for such a daft reason... It got heavier.
It was an EGG. Eggs don't get heavier, because there is no new matter (ie food) going into it. it's not like a placental mammal, getting nutrients piped in. Eggs containing chicks ready to hatch or wee crocodiles are NOT heavier than when they were laid. It drove me insane.
The overnight forest was also stupid, while I'm having a moan. I did like the Cybermen and Missy, though. Chris Addison as an irksome afterlife civil servant was perfect.


Series Nine:
The best of times, the worst of times.
I'd totally erased this from my memory, had thought there was a Clara series and a Bill series. Would that it were so.
First up, the good bits: The Christmas Special with Nick Frost as Santa with a pair of bickering elves was a corker. Fun, frightening, made sense (not always a given in the Moffat years) and as festive as it's possible to be. Davros and Missy meant a cracker of an episode in the Dalek city - indeed Missy's dialogue throughout is a joy. "See that couple over there? You're the puppy." Top quality snark, it was great.
Otherwise? hmmm. Clara overstayed as a companion, there really wasn't anything good to do with her. Jenna Coleman was fantastic in Victoria, I honestly don't dislike her as an actress. I did loathe Clara, other than as Souffle Girl, because she was such a cipher. She brought nothing but big eyes and shiny hair to the party. I've missed Amy, River, and especially Donna so much in this series. I felt Moffat had created a character he was in love with, and didn't bother to explain to us why we should love her. RTD *showed* us why we loved Rose and Donna. Clara just stood there and we were expected to see something in her that I didn't.
The other significant character, Ashildr, had some interesting moments but didn't hold together that well (not Maisie Williams's fault, she was great). The only bit that really worked for me was the two of them riding off into space and time together, the long way 'round.
The antepenultimate* Heaven Sent was so nasty I could barely stomach it. The merciless terrifying and torturing of the Doctor again and again, clambering out over his own skulls... just NO. (Luke disagrees, by the way, because he loves a time loop.) I felt like I do when I see Dumbo - complicit in the bullying of someone. For god's sake, Moffat, seek therapy, ditch Clara and move on!
He does move on, and then it gets better.
The Christmas episode that followed the series, The Husbands Of River Song, was marvellous, and the superhero boy in New York for the following Christmas was the sort of episode that made me love the Doctor when I was young.

Series Ten:
Hello Bill! Love Bill, me.
This was the Doctor Capaldi was meant to be. He's fantastic - he looks at ease with himself in the role at last and his band of Bill, Nardole and Missy sparked off each other beautifully. The Pilot was a wonderful start, the emoji robots were suitably menacing, I love any excuse for a Frost Fair, and the final battles with Missy and The Master were super. I loved that they went to look for the lost Ninth Legion to settle an argument (although Kar being the reason crows saw Caw was stupid and irksome). A few sluggish episodes but on the whole a massive return to form. I even got over a smidge of my Moffat-dislike.  I don't think he's terribly good at writing women except in relation to men, so Bill was a refreshing change.
I'm also glad so many got a happy ending - Nardole with his Hazran, Bill with Heather and in a funny way, the Master and Missy destroying each other.
The final episode, featuring the masterful David Bradley as the First Doctor in a reprisal of his role as William Hartnell in An Adventure In Space And Time, was a stonking way to acknowledge the origins and prepare for the future of one of the most loved television characters in the world. And the more TARDISes the better, in my opinion.

And there we have it - ten series and many specials in 6 weeks.

I finished with a whole 27 minutes to go before the new series started (I'm the kind of gal who likes to live on the edge**). Thrust headlong into a new adventure, enjoying the full exploration of 'Lots of planets have a North' through the Sheffield setting, revelling in the first female Doctor engineering her own sonic screwdriver instead of having one gifted by the TARDIS. I couldn't be more chuffed.

All that, and it's nearly time to use those Hamilton tickets!

*Isn't that such a delightful word!
**If you haven't watched Rob Reiner's film The Sure Thing, you should do it immediately

Further Adventures in Yarn

Last month I went to the 5th Yarndale festival of all things woolly. If possible, it was better than the earlier years, as the logistics are managed with even more careful planning and the range of stalls on offer grows ever wider.

I felt a bit of a fraud, as I had entirely lost my crafting mojo in the crushing depression of last autumn and winter. I hadn't finished any of the projects I'd begun after last year's purchases, and they lurk in the other room, oppressing me with guilt whenever I see them. If I still had those things to finish, what business did I have shopping for new projects?

However, I hoped a nice wander around amongst the crafty women, surrounded by beautiful things in vivid colours would inspire me. If nothing else it would be a chance for my Very Excellent Mate Rachel to come for a visit.

I needn't have worried. A quiet train ride and chatty bus ride on the Yarndale Express built my excitement, as did the gloriously yarn-bombed show area. I love the bonkers souls who send in bunting, mandalas, flowers, sheep and hearts each year to turn an agricultural building into a Mecca of yarn and bright colours.  I did find my crocheted heart among the display somewhere.

There are so many people wearing their own creations; some are true works of art. Others resemble the output of fevered minds with access to too many colours, but at least they are happy. A sneaky game of "just because you can doesn't mean you should" keeps Rach and I entertained for hours. Crocheted granny square trousers were definitely a sartorial step too far.

I found loads of lovely things and small (ish) projects to try. I've had to crop the photo as there was a Christmas present amongst my purchases, so I can't show you absolutely everything.  I also held back from purchasing the *GREATEST* book of crochet patterns I've ever seen, the Toft book of crocheted people and costumes.  I knew I have no time to do that level of project just yet, but it was so brilliantly laid out I was sorely tempted.

I'm learning Corner to Corner crochet to to use one of the beautiful self-coloured yarns I couldn't resist. This proved to be a bit complicated - being left handed so having to reverse everything when I'm struggling to picture how it goes can sometimes send me into a tailspin, and I had to undo about a third of my work when I realised where I'd first gone wrong, making it bigger and bigger every row. Then I messed up the decreasing bit too much and had to redo another sizeable chunk, with fine yarn that snagged and broke. 

However, I think I've *finally* got a handle on it. The trick for a rectangular scarf is to chain 6 as you start a row from the top of the diagonal row and to slipstitch and chain three when you start a row from the bottom of the diagonal - increase as you go downhill, decrease as you go uphill, like riding a bike.

And here it is, modelled by its discerning owner:

Brunch for superstars

It's half term here in Yorkshire. The concept of half term confused me when I first moved here from Canada - only 6 weeks of school and already a holiday?  2 weeks as well at Christmas and Easter? Geez, those Brit kids are lucky slackers.  But then I realised to my horror that their summer break was only 6 weeks long. Shudder.  For someone used to 10 week summers entirely free from the drudgery of homework and classrooms it seemed cruel. How could you feel properly free with school looming over you.

Anyway, here the terms are about 12 weeks long, give or take. Six weeks then a week off in October, February and late May, then the rest of term until Christmas, Easter or late July sets them free again.  Once I got used to it I rather liked the rhythm of it. As a parent I love it - regular holiday time with the kids, able to relax and enjoy their company. I'd far rather have them here than in school.

One of the pleasures of the start of the holidays is feeling at leisure. We don't have to cram as much into a weekend, so we can have a lazy breakfast of French toast or eggs and sausages. I fancied making something new to start our languorous start of GMT - the best part of British Summer Time coming to an end. I'd seen a recipe on The Guardian's website called Breakfast of Champions: Rosa Parks' Peanut Butter Pancakes.

Discovered written on an envelope amongst the civil rights heroine's papers, it combined lots of things we love in our house. Pancakes! Easy recipes! Peanut butter!  What's not to totally love?

NB - peanut butter is wonderful stuff.  I don't mean the healthy, wholefood stuff; I want Skippy, the vastly processed peanut butter I'd had a kid. I never understand why so many people in the UK are resistant to it.  Or even worse  - spread butter on the bread before the peanut butter.  Seriously, that can happen.  My in-laws were awful for doing it and it took years for them to drop the habit.  It's like eating pizza with a knife and fork.

The recipe calls for 150g of plain flour, 2 tbs of baking powder, 2 tbs of sugar and a bit of salt to be sifted into a bowl.  In a jug, beat together 1 egg, 100g smooth peanut butter and 300ml of milk.  Because peanut butter is gloopy and milk isn't, I beat the PB and the egg together into a slack-ish liquid before stirring the milk in. They combined really well, and my concerns of blobs of PB floating in a jug of milk were unfounded.

Anyway, mix wet ingredients into dry and let sit on one side for 10 minutes.  Then fry blobs of batter in butter to make small American style pancakes.  I used a serving spoon as a measure and got nearly 20 pancakes.

They were LOVELY.  Miss B went for the traditional PB&J approach and spread them with raspberry jam.  Zach, Mark and I went for maple syrup.  I'd have sliced banana on them if we'd had any to hand.  I know from experience that peanut butter and sliced banana go beautifully on French toast, so I'm sure it would be ace.

Luke... well, Luke marches to the beat of his own drum. Lemon curd is his favourite spread by far.  Rather than branch out, he insisted his lemon curd/peanut butter pancake combination was delicious. However, he didn't join the others in mithering for extras. I think he'll opt for chocolate spread when I make them next time.

Once we'd finished all the pancakes we all headed outside to get the garden ready for winter.  The kids were absolute stars - helping with weeding, pruning, lawn mowing and clearing up. I cleared out and scrubbed down the polytunnel and did the winter sowing while Mark and the kids cleared the raised beds, top dressed the currant patch and netted off the veg beds from cats.  A lovely big empty raised bed looks suspiciously like a litter tray to the local mogs, so we need to keep them out.

Laundry done, shopping sorted, cakes in the oven and the early sunset definitely noticeable, we're feeling all tucked in and cosy.  It's a nice way to welcome Autumn in.