Let's catch up!

Dear foodies, bakers, cooks, gardeners, mothers, fathers, creative peoplezz and other interested folk,

Life has been a bit hectic recently... And that won't change very soon. Will it ever ;-)?
So let's try and catch up a bit!

Last post was from the 4th of October. Since then we have had the 'Slob' family over with their 3 little girls (that is actually their real family name - Dutch!) which was a lovely weekend. Suzanne is an old uni friend of mine and the two of us hadn't caught up for a year - let alone met up with both families... Cakes were in order of course! Made a 'Lime and Basil Bundt' and 'Chocolate & Hazelnut Cupcakes'. Think they all went down well.

The weekend after that we went to Holland ourselves to celebrate the Birthday of the gorgeous Myrthe - my eldest niece. I had offered my sister to bake one of the cakes and tried to make a special thing of it for the 10 year old young lai-dee!
Another Bundt - as the shapes are so spectacular without having to do much about it. A chocolate cake with a hint of cinnamon and mixed spice for an Autumn twist. Decorated with 10 sugar roses. Fit for a 'little' chocolate queen. The result:

That same week I also 'harvested' an enormous bunch of cutting celery, simply because I had let it go wild completely.... Without wanting to waste it of course, I decided to chop it all up in the food processor and make a 'cutting celery pesto':

I added garlic, walnuts, pine nuts, salt, pepper, parmesan and olive oil. Great simple way of keeping and storing a surplus of herbs from the garden. Did this with sage as well a couple of months ago.

You don't have to make loads to have enough for a few plates of pasta. And if you do make a bit more, divide it over cute little pots - they make great presents too!

Same evening I had a spelt spaghetti with the cutting celery pesto and it was delicious. Don't need anything else... Although I added a few blobs of young goats cheese ;-)!

Also, I often feel that eating your pasta in the simplest way possible is also the best way possible. That's what the Italians do: keep it simple, fresh, pure. Respect the original ingredient(s). 

Might have this dish tonight again actually.....!


Then there's the 'speculaas' project I have introduced into this household.
Many of you will probably know that in Holland and Belgium people celebrate what we call 'Sinterklaas'  - St. Nicholas in English. His Birthday is celebrated on the 5th of December in the evening when children sing their hearts out in front of the fire until 'someone' knocks on the door... If you're lucky, Sinterklaas and his helpers will have left a big bag of presents for you by the door....! 

Living here now, we felt last year we had to introduce this phenomenon to the kids. There simply wasn't any getting away from it with school etc anyway. Plus it's great fun :-)!! 
So these two are lucky in that they get to celebrate the Birthdays of both old men: Sinterklaas and Santa Claus.... Funny that....quite similar names ;-)! I shall leave it to you to look up the history on the Internet but it is all quite similar and close between the two old grey 'beardies'!
So when I was in Antwerpen recently, I saw the wooden moulds for making 'speculaas' - bit like gingerbread men/cookies. I bought three of them - together with the special 'speculaas' spice mix.

Before the old man arrives I shall be making my own speculaas men and women and a bunch of smaller cookies too. Look forward to it! And I will show you the results. If you follow me on Twitter @BeezzzzzBee then you might get to see them sooner. I tend to tweet cooking results more frequently, using Instagram for the piccies.

Then there's of course the fire place project....................................................!!!!!!!!!!!!
What can I say..................................?

This is what it looked like before we started:

It had to be completely demolished as we had a huge smoke problem last winter. So bad that one night we had 12 firemen standing in our lounge trying ripping out bits that were smouldering away... Dangerous!
Appears that the people who sold us the house never really used it... Only to burn bits of paper.....!!!! I ask you.......!!?? 

Anyway, the malfunctioning monstrosity was finally going to go!

This is what it looked like when it was all taken away. They have now built a new wall around this mess and the new big stone tiles have been laid in front of it yesterday.

We have ordered a lovely wood burning stove which will hopefully be installed early next week after which the plastering (by pro) and painting (by me) can be done. Let's hope we can light our fire again by the weekend of the 10th of November..

Will share a picture of the end result.



The weekend of 20/21 October we had the gorgeous Susie Buckridge over from London. She had recently got engaged with her 'Mush' on mount Kili - how cool is that :-)!? Congrats to both of you: super news!!

We had mussels with her for supper on Friday eve and I made a chocolate beetroot cake for the weekend which went down a treat, especially after our Susie's hockey results on Saturday morning! Top of the table still after drawing against biggest rival 'Victory'.
Soon thereafter Susie B and I escaped to Antwerpen for a grown up girls day in town ;-). Lovely to see how much Sus liked Antwerpen and thought she could easily live there. She bought some gorgeous clothes by Dutch and Belgian designers and spotted this 'cake tray' at an antique stall with old hotel silver:

I HAD TO HAVE IT!!!

Actually got it for an almost ridiculously low price. 

Can think of soooooooooo many ways of using this.

Duncan insists it can only have one purpose: champagne fountain. I might just let him...

Out for supper with Susie B the second night which gave me time off from the kitchen - lovely too! Great to have you chick. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Next time: bring Mush too!

This weekend just gone we had Duncan's parents over so did lots of cooking and baking again. In short (and any particular order): marzipan fruit cake, chocolate brownies, Irish brown yeast bread, wild boar ragu with papardelle, 'the last of the chard'-tart, roast lamb, amaretti pudding with cherry sauce, schnitzels with Duncan's chips and home made coleslaw, vanilla custard pudding with blueberry/blackcurrant sauce. 

Think I kept everyone happy.....

Irish yeast loaves & marzipan fruit cake:

 

'The last of the chard'-tart.












This coming weekend we are having Liz Bath-Jones over. Another friend from London! What I have in mind food wise is:
Friday 
- Beef & stout pie (Jamie Oliver's 'Kate 'n Wills pie')
- Ice cream of sorts for who has space left..
Saturday
- Smoked salmon with soda bread
- Mussels
- Cheese board (Liz likes her cheese, hasn't got a sweet tooth - just like me :-)!)
Sunday
- Pear, walnut & blue cheese salad
- Roast chicken (Liz lives on her own and rarely does this - I know she likes it!)
- Chocolate mousse

Will also make a lemon drizzle cake as have a large number of lemons in fruit bowl and probably a banana bread for the same reason!


In the meantime I have also kicked off my 'bulb project':

I have planted numerous bulbs (mainly loads of different tulips but also grape hyacinths, dwarf daffodils, crocus, etc). Lots of them in pots (so that I also have a few nice presents lined up come Feb/March) but also in some of the beds in the garden. 
I am excited like a child and CANNOT wait for them to come out.

Broad beans have already come up. So quickly!! Apparently quite normal. Thanks to @TheMontyDon for reassuring me.

Dahlias had the first frost last weekend and can now be dug out to keep over the winter.



Today I put a new sheet of water colour paper on the board and am finally going to start the robin painting I have promised my little sister when she turned 40 in February..! Wish me luck - here are some previous drawings I hope to rely on:

Right....... Think that that was it from Belgium for now.
You can see: I have not been and won't be sitting still for very long...!

Stay warm! Keep baking! Get cooking! Until next time.

Love,

X Bee

Autumn Pleasures

Good morning everyone!

Happy Autumn rain.....! Not to everyone's taste and pleasure I know...

However, for our garden - and in particular the vegetable bed - it is very welcome right now. We decided last week to get a skip and cut/trim down all the trees, bushes and hedges. Good shot! The weather was amazing in the weekend - sunny and 18/19 'C - and we got it all done by Sunday late afternoon. Skip was measured by skip company on Monday and it was 1 ton of garden rubbish in total...! It looks very neat now - a delight to see from the warm and cosy house.

So....all veggies gone. All tomato pots emptied. Only things left are the rhubarb, rhubarb chard, cutting celery and of course my beloved Dahlias! We even had a 'new Dahlia kid on the block' a couple of weeks ago, this deep red one - it must be my favourite colour:

Because of the stormy weather last week, I cut out some very large and heavy branches from the older Dahlia plants before they were hitting the ground. I guess it's only a matter of weeks now before they will all be going so trying to enjoy the bright colours as much as I can before 'doom & gloom' time in the garden ;-).

Back to the rain. Can you hear it...? We found that after clearing the veg patch of all the veggies that were left (parsnips, carrots, onions) the soil was actually quite dry - almost dusty. Our summer was not as wet as the English one so the current rain is very welcome before we put in the onion & garlic sets and sow some winter seeds (spinach and winter lettuce).

This was our last harvest. The onions (from seed) have not done that well. They're ok but too small really. So I have decided to use them for Boeuf Bourguignon and/or pickle them.
The parsnips we roasted last Sunday (with olive oil, lemon, honey) to go with a roast chicken and roast potatoes and the carrots and kohlrabi are still in the fridge.

Going to put onion sets into the (wet!!) veg patch this weekend - 'Electric Red Autumn' and 'Radar' organic onions. Also putting in 'Vallelado' organic garlic. Apart from the onion & garlic department, I am sowing two winter lettuces: 'Rouge d'Hiver' and 'Winter Density' as well as 'Super Aquadulce' broad beans. 

I am waiting for The Organic Gardening Catalogue to send me the 'Giant Winter' spinach early next week so that those seeds can go in as well. This is the box of goodies that arrived from them earlier this week (always a happy moment!):

You can probably spot another treasure in there....! Can you smell them when you think of it...?! Sweet peas! 

After having followed Monty Don and his sweet pea project on BBC2's Gardener's World, I have decided to put the sweet peas in much earlier than I did this year. I bought 'Spencer', 'Little Sweetheart', 'Old Fashioned Mix' and 'Chelsea Scented'.

Sweet peas always remind me of mum who used to absolutely adore them and grow them herself to put them in the house.



So back in the garden on Sunday afternoon after my guests have left!

That's another theme this Autumn. Guests! We're pretty much 'fully booked' up until Christmas. 
As I mentioned last time, my sister was going to be over with her new(ly) constructed family - all 6 of them! Well, that was great fun! The weather gods were totally with us still as the kids even went for a dive in our oversized paddling pool on Sunday afternoon. 

They arrived Saturday lunchtime for a bowl of 'my mum's tomato soup' and cupcakes for afters ;-). That went down very well....

I made Mary Berry's Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Butter Icing and Nigella's Blueberry Muffins with Violet Icing. I think that most of us even had two cupcakes after the soup.... One of each... Piggies!!!

The remainder of that Saturday afternoon was spent outside, playing ball games (curb ball became very popular again that weekend...remember that?). 

We had planned Duncan's chips in the evening, with roast za'atar chicken drumsticks & thighs and roast veggies from the garden. The latter was the fun bit as I got some of the children involved in digging out and cleaning the root veg. They did a brilliant job!
Here they are:

Beetroot, carrots and parsnips! Roasted them with olive oil, honey, lemon and cumin seeds. Together with the chicken and the chips, the kids absolutely wolfed it down. I think that when you involve them in all the prep (especially in growing the veg too) that they will be much keener to eat things like this. It's sort of 'cool' to pick your own crop, clean it, cook it and eat it.

We also harvested our pudding: rhubarb! For a crumble with apple. 
Of course we had to make hats again of the rhubarb leaves, although this time they were so big they became a bit (too) floppy!



The rhubarb crowd:

Sunday was pretty lazy and relaxed after relatively short nights for some.... Chatting, hanging out, more curb ball and a walk around the woods nearby. I had made a chocolate coffee Bundt cake to go with late morning coffees to keep everyone going and that went down a treat! A funny, 'golden shine' picture I took of it before it was demolished looked like this:

So that was the weekend with my younger sis and her gang!

Since then Duncan and I did embark on a bit of a detox (8 days of no coffee, alcohol, wheat and dairy) which of course came with the 'necessary' head aches.... OUCH!! 

Delighted that we were able to eat and drink 'normally' again last week, we made our own pizzas again - Friday night is now pizza night here with the boggins off to hockey and footie at different times. 

In honour of @EnglishMum (who I follow on Twitter) I created an 'ARSE' pizza, after having admired her 'BUM pie' and 'ARSE cake' creations! Hilarious! A right laugh! Arse pizza:

Yes, there's a lot of fun to be had on Twitter - for those of you who are not following yet...! If you fancy following me, my Twitter name is @BeezzzzzBee . You will probably get more regular and smaller snippets of info on family life, cooking, baking and gardening there.

I have finally made some proper sourdough bread again as well. The previous lot were too flat (collapsed when slashing the dough as it went into the oven). And I am delighted to share with you that I am back on track with some beautiful loaves, proper oven spring and good air pockets. Result:

I think that this is the most competitive I have ever been...but competitive with ME! Having to improve on my sourdough every time again. It will have to be perfect one day.... If there is such a thing.. It is slowly becoming quite an obsession. The sourdough project. Am also thinking of creating another starter. A white one. Currently have a rye starter which is now nearly one year old.

For the white starter I am probably going to use Dan Lepard's recipe from his book "The handmade loaf". He's my sourdough hero, who's just come back from San Sebastian where he did the amazing 'Loaf in a Box' project all summer.

On that note...

And with this Autumn arrangement on our garden table...

... I shall leave you to be cosy and warm. Wishing you everything wonderful that this season and your family and friends can bring.

I will be back soon with more bread, garden, guests, cooking, baking and other family stories!

Love,

X Bee