The life of Riley...

We have a new addition to the family! Meet Riley. As you can see he likes to rearrange the cushions on the sofa and then climb on top of them and sleep.

Riley is four, the same age as Harvey. There were a few stand offs before Harvey decided Riley would do. Riley came to us through the magic of Facebook. He was free to a good home due to a new baby. I thought he might have naughty habits that would be a bit challenging. We've got used to having one well behaved dog. So far so good. He sits nicely when you want to put his lead on, he comes back when he's called, he's rubbish at fetch but one obsessive fetcher in the family is enough! He's also quite respectful of the cat. She's taken to him much quicker than we expected (she sulked for three months when we bought Harvey home as a puppy).

He doesn't seem at all traumatised for being re-homed (he came via the owner's friend, so three homes in as many weeks). He's made himself quite at home, and it feels as though he's always been here. We've been on lots of extra walks just to see how he behaves, and he's passed all the tests with flying colours. He doesn't bother other dogs, he doesn't go too far ahead of us, he understands 'wait' when we get to the end of the walk.

So Harvey has a brother and we have a madhouse!

Foraging...

I've always been fascinated by 'wild' food. Way before all the TV programmes and websites dedicated to it. See previous post re chestnuts, our garden also had hazelnuts. When we were not building dens in our back garden we were out exploring local woodland. Thanks to the likes of The Famous Five we made it a game to 'live off the land'. More than likely just a handful of blackberries and some stolen apples. I say stolen, lying outside the property on the grass, but it felt like stealing hence we didn't hang about for long!

So M and I went back to the crab apple tree that we found tucked away in a corner of the village. No-one else seems to be in a rush to make crab apple jelly so we filled a basket with roughly the amount we needed, leaving plenty for the birds.

We spent a while removing stalks and that tufty bit on the bottom and then simmered them until they were soft and pulpy. There's no need to cut them up because they split easily when cooked. Well ours did, maybe bigger ones would need cutting in half. (We reckon ours are Golden Hornet but we could be wrong). A jam bag would have been handy at this point but we made do with the muslin square we had from making marmalade last year and suspended it over a sieve over a pan (don't squeeze or the jam will end up cloudy). It made a surprising amount of juice.

Add seven parts sugar to ten parts juice and keep on a rolling boil, removing scum, until it thickens. Then keep testing it on the back of a cold spoon. This is never an exact science and we may have erred in the side if caution here and left it a tad longer than necessary (nothing worse than runny jam).

We halved the recipe given on the BBC Good Food website and used 2kg of fruit. This made three large jars. Tested for breakfast by M...

...and announced a big success. So three big jars of jam for the price of 1kg of sugar, about 50p per 600g. That was fun.

Are you sitting comfortably?

When my brother and I were young (and foolish) we decided one day to gather up all the fat chestnuts in our garden and sell them from a makeshift market stall outside our house. We had at least half a dozen mature sweet chestnut trees in our garden so there was plenty to gather up. Bear in mind that we didn't get a lot of passing traffic (our road was a dead end) and we were both painfully shy when it came to strangers. Mum wasn't keen on the idea but reluctantly agreed thinking the project wouldn't last five minutes. She was right, but not in the way she (or we) expected.

We reckoned on being out there for quite a while so after weighing up portions and bagging them up we set up our table and a lunch box containing various refreshments and snacks for ourselves. Every aspect was thought out including our prices (we knew what was being charged elsewhere and undercut it by a little). Five minutes into our venture a car drew up and a man got out. R mumbled something like, 'oh heck' and I tried my best salesperson smile. Even more terrifying was cutting a deal for him to buy the entire stock! I said if he bought everything I would give him 10% off and he laughed heartily and accepted. No doubt he ran a shop somewhere.

M is under strict doctors orders to walk more for his sore hip. This is music to my ears because it's always nice to have company on a walk. Today we didn't venture too far but came across a very small sweet chestnut tree. I couldn't believe the squirrels hadn't got there first. We scooped up the entire windfall. I've since googled recipes and there's more you can do with chestnuts than I realised. I think we will probably just roast these though.

We also picked what we thought might be a crab apple, and may go back for more now that we have a recipe for crab apple jelly. No sense in wasting free food!

Another year older...

The best laid plans and all that... we shelved plans to go to the coast this afternoon on account of the dreadful weather. I did a spot of crochet, opened my pressies, got lots of nice cards...

...and just when I was worried I might never find a tasty gluten free cake, one arrived here via Jake (whose football training week was a bit of a wash out) in the shape of a Warburtons Blueberry and Cranberry muffin complete with birthday candle. Thanks Mum! Now all I need to do is force everyone to sing Happy Birthday and my day will be complete.

PS. Thanks R&L for the very apt 'too many candles, so little cake' how true, how true.

NB. I resisted the blue hair dye. I'll have my mid life crisis next year.

T. A. C...

So I'm surfing the net and thinking about doing something vaguely Halloweeny. Yes I know that's not a word, but it should be. Then up pops a crochet skull. Very cool I thought. Looked a bit tricky. Studied the photo and knew it would probably start with a figure of eight chain... dug out some white cotton. Ten minutes later casually show E what I made, 'Wow, cool!'. So there you have it, teenage approved crochet (TAC). I'm now attempting to circle it off in black cotton to make a coffee coaster for her room.

before the rain...

I'm so glad we went for a lovely sunny walk yesterday before the heavens opened. It is torrential here in Lincolnshire today. No walk is complete without taking home a little of nature's treasure. I couldn't resist a pocket full of shiny conkers.

It's a lovely peaceful walk, the old coach road, only known to locals and a much better option for us than the very popular nature reserve down the road. Harvey doesn't really bother other people or other dogs but I always worry that he'll take a shine to someone and place his large muddy paws on a clean pair of trousers. You never know.

It's a shame this walk is littered with odd car parts. This piece was at least half a mile in from the road.

Loved the autumn colours.

...and mission accomplished, we wore the dog out. We thought he'd vanished but when we caught up with him he was having a crafty rest on a pile of soft leaves. I always thought Spaniels went on forever, not this one.

It's going to be a restful half term. We are hamster sitting while their owners are sunning themselves in Spain. J is football training at the ground of his favourite local football team. E is mainly sleeping, 'cause that's what teenagers seem to do/need. M is stripping wallpaper in the kitchen. I am making tea and dreaming of a new kitchen with an oven that works and a cooling tray of large oaty gluten free cookies. Dream on.

Little cat, big nuisance...

Mollie has been a bit of a pickle lately. She's been doing that street running business in the kitchen; running and leaping from object to object without touching the floor. Clever. Not so clever is the dusty footprints she leaves behind. The dust from the kitchen floor is a losing battle.

She's also started her winter mouse culling programme. Last year she left them whole on the doormat. This year she seems to have developed a taste for mouse heads. This Is Not A Good Thing. Last week I had to step over two mouse bodies quite a few times before M got home from work and gave them a watery burial. Yuk.

Just when we've finally found the bed of her dreams (her Amazon box) she decides it's time to explore other options. See above for sunny afternoons on the deck, in Jake's old bed which is now Harvey's outdoor basket. Harvey was not impressed. Not one bit.

Then she discovered the freshly washed cushion cover on Ella's bedroom chair. She's a sucker for fresh linen, but so am I. I think this cover had been on for all of an hour before her nose led her there. It's now covered in black hair. Thanks Moll.

Is there a cat thing going on here that I'm unaware of, or is it just Mollie? I find dogs are a lot easier to understand. Harvey's language is mud and water. Preferably at the same time.

I think the cat might be having a mid life crisis! She's not the only one. Next week my age begins with 4 and ends with 4 and I'm thinking, is it too late to dye my hair blue?