Willow House

Want a good excuse?

Today sees the start of Chocolate Week, so go on indulge yourself!

Chutney

How do you turn these

and these

into these?

Simply take:

2lbs tomatoes

2lbs apples

2 onions

8ozs raisins

8ozs sugar

2 tsp salt

1 pint of pickling malt vinegar

Chop the tomatoes, apples and onions and put them in a large saucepan with all the other ingredients. Heat gently until the sugar desolves then bring to the boil. Boil (gently) for about an hour, occasionally stirring to prevent sticking. The chutney is ready when the fruit and vegetables are tender and the whole thing is a thick and pulpy consistency.

Spoon into warm sterilised jars and seal.

Approx 2 weeks later the chutney will be ready to eat, perfect with a nice mature Cheddar.

It's that time of year

It's the time of year to make sloe gin and do things with elderberries. I say do things with elderberries because I know that some people make wine very successfully with them. Unfortunately that has not been the case here at Willow House. A certain somebody, who will remain nameless, we wouldn't want to embarass HIM, has for a number of years insisted on making elderberry wine none of which has been remotely drinkable despite many "blending" attemps.

Anyway enough about the wine, below is the Willow House recipe for Elderberry Rob (shamelessly copied from last year) which is actually quite delicious and our recipe for Sloe Gin.

ELDERBERRY ROB

This is a lovely sweet, syrupy cordial that is reputed to be good for treating colds and flu.

First pick your Elderberries.

Then strip the berries from the stems and wash. Take a large pan and add equal amounts of brown sugar to elderberries and slowly bring to the boil.

Simmer gently until the mixture reaches a syrupy consistency.

Strain the syrup through muslin,bottle.

Dilute with hot water to serve.

Delicious!

SLOE GIN

Very easy to make. Pick your sloes, about a pound will do a bottle of gin. Wash them and pierce the skins. Place in a jar with an equal amount of sugar and add gin. Then all you have to do is shake the whole thing regularly. In approx. three months time strain and bottle the sloe gin, just in time for Christmas.

8 things - part 2

Okay I confess I'm a bit of a chocoholic but it gets worse...

I'm also rather fond of cake. In fact I think that I might actually prefer cake to chocolate. But I'm not sure, so a chocolate cake takes all the difficulty out of making a decision.

Anyway I make that a total of four things now, the collecting pictures of horses, being horse mad, being a chocoholic and liking cake. Four down, four to go.

More Comfort

I've been organized! This morning Stuart sat on the edge of bed having delivered a cup of tea to me and "suggested" that as James wanted to go to Kings Lynn clothes shopping and as I needed to go to Spalding perhaps we could get this accomplished today. Of course what this really meant was could I not only go to Spalding but also take James shopping as well?

Well what's a girl to do? It's cold, it's dark, it's wet and it's windy do I really want to go out. No I do not! Did I go out, yes I did. And did we buy, well yes we did. We found an overcoat for James in the Debenhams Blue Cross Sale, wool and cashmere marked down from £275 to £82.50. Bargain!

But, to be honest I wasn't really in the mood to be out and about today, all I really wanted to do was come home and eat Chocolate Pudding.

Perfect for a cold, wet and windy night in the middle of January.

Chocolate Fudge Pudding

• 9 ozs self raising flour
• 2 ozs cornflour
• 1 oz cocoa powder
• 6 ozs caster sugar
• 6 ozs margarine
• 3 beaten eggs
• Sauce
• 1 3/4 ozs cocoa powder
• 6 ozs sugar
• 1 pint water

Sift flour, cornflour, cocoa and sugar into a bowl. Beat in margarine, eggs and milk until well mixed. Turn into a greased oven proof dish.

For the sauce mix the cocoa and sugar with a little of the water in a saucepan, add the rest of the water and bring to the boil on the stove, stirring all the time. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Pour the sauce over the pudding mixture and bake in the centre of the oven for about 40 minutes on Gas mark 5, 375 deg F or 190 deg C.

Yummy!

Comfort

 

January, time to get back to normal, you must be joking!

Having indulged in a marvellous sugar fest over the 12 days of Christmas (and then some) we really need to get back into some semblance of healthy eating, but not yet. I need to start the weaning off sugar process gradually and what better way than with a lovely old fashioned nursery type pudding, real comfort food.

This is a Banana Bread and Butter Pudding, so simple to make and so good to eat. In a way it is quite virtuous as you get to use up stale bread.

This one took one whole loaf of white bread, I never measure / weigh the ingriedients. Just butter the bread, cut off the crusts and cut the bread into bits that will fit the dish. One layer of bread and butter (butter side up) followed by a sprinkling of sultanas, some chopped up bananas and a spoonful or two of sugar followed by another layer of bread etc until the dish is full. I then poured about a pint of milk with four or five eggs beaten into it over the bread, letting it all soak in. More sugar on top along with copious amounts of freshly grated nutmeg. (I absolutely adore the smell of freshly grated nutmeg). This went onto the bottom shelf of the oven while I was roasting a loin of pork and there it stayed for about two and a half hours until the eggie custardy stuff was all set and the bread was all puffy like a souffle.

There should have been about 8 - 10 servings there, but the kids and I scoffed the lot and very good it was to.

Okay own up, who ate the Jaffa Cakes?

Starring in this post is one of our cats - Jasper. Yes, he does only have one eye (poor boy), the result of a run in with a grass seed of all things, not a backyard brawl.

Nature's Bounty - Part 2

Elderberry Rob

This is a lovely sweet, syrupy cordial that is reputed to be good for treating colds and flu.

First pick your Elderberries.

Then strip the berries from the stems and wash. Take a large pan and add equal amounts of brown sugar to elderberries and slowly bring to the boil.

Simmer gently until the mixture reaches a syrupy consistency.

Strain the syrup through muslin,bottle.

Dilute with hot water to serve.

Delicious!

Natures Bounty Part 1

The hedgerows are full of berries this year, hawthorne, geulder rose, byrony, elderberry, blackberries and sloes. I have never seen such a good crop of sloes, so sloe gin it is.

SLOE GIN

Very easy to make. Pick your sloes, about a pound will do a bottle of gin. Wash them and pierce the skins. Place in a jar with an equal amount of sugar and add gin. Then all you have to do is shake the whole thing regularly. In approx. three months time strain and bottle the sloe gin, just in time for Christmas.