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