A Vintage Start to the Day

I am still on holiday from work until September, but Dave has returned to work and the only daughter still living at home is working, so when I get up in the morning I have the luxury of having the house to myself. Now as you might have guessed I just love collecting bits and pieces of pretty vintage china and housewares, but for me these aren't items to be simply stored away or set out on display to catch the dust, but things I like to use and treasure. This morning I decided to treat myself to a leisurely breakfast - nothing fancy just some wholemeal toast spread with butter and heather honey, but with a nice big cafetiere of real coffee to wash it down with. What better way to make an occasion of breakfast than by setting my vintage tea tray that I bought yesterday with pretty china and a flower from the garden.

This is my idea of luxury - simple I know, but using pretty things from the past that I continue to love and treasure.

Country and Game Fair

Dave and I went to the Game and Country Fair at Raby Castle today.  While there I watched a cookery demonstration about how to prepare and cook rabbit. The dish that was cooked was rabbit in a cider and cream sauce, so a rabbit and some scrumpy cider just had to be bought and the recipe tried for tea. It was easy to make and at only £2.99 for the rabbit it was reasonably cheap (though the rabbit wouldn't have served more than two).Pictures and recipe below.

Rabbit with Cider & Cream Sauce

1 Rabbit jointed

2 tbsp Seasoned flour

About 1/2 pint decent cider

Rapeseed oil for frying

1 Chopped onion - (In the demonstration they used shallot, but I didn't have any)

Chopped or sliced mushrooms

A sprig of fresh thyme - (They used tarragon, but Dave doesn't like the flavour of tarragon so I substituted thyme - they did say in the absence of fresh herbs to use a pinch of dried.)

4 tbsp Cream

Coat the rabbit joints in the seasoned flour and lightly brown them in rapeseed oil, just to seal. Transfer to a saucepan. Add the chopped onion and mushrooms to the frying pan and saute lightly then add the cider and scrape up any tasty bits stuck to the bottom of the pan - add the contents of the frying pan to the rabbit in the saucepan. Add the herbs then bring to the boil and then turn down to a simmer  - continue to cook for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes add the cream and reheat, but do not allow to boil at this stage. Serve.

I served it with boiled new potatoes, steamed carrots and courgettes sauteed with garlic - it was yummy!

It wasn't all about me and food though - Dave was in his element - he got to fire a big musket loaded shotgun, not once but twice! - Boys and their toys ; D

Courgette Rissoles and Monsters

Whilst on our holidays we saw some little monsters in a gift shop similar to the one above, but with an £8 price tag I wasn't going to let "Grandad" buy one for our little granddaughter when I could make her one myself. So that's what I did, and I have to say he was very well received.

The front side is shown in the picture above and below you can see the reverse side.

The fabric was recycled from a patchwork skirt that I bought in a charity shop...

...and now for the courgettes!

I keep getting loads of courgettes in my vegetable bag and with another bag due to be delivered this afternoon I thought it was about time I tried using some up. Having read a few recipes for courgette rissoles recently I thought I'd have a go at making some for my lunch, but as is typical for me I couldn't be bothered to hunt out the recipes I'd seen so decided to make it up as I went along.

I fried a chopped onion with a clove of chopped garlic then put them in a bowl with a grated courgette, about 2oz of grated mature cheddar, a small slice of wholemeal bread grated, an egg and salt and pepper.and mixed it all up. I heated a frying pan with a teaspoon of olive oil in and placed two separate tablespoons of the mixture in and flattened them slightly. Whilst they were cooking I decided a dip of some sort might be nice to go with them. I had a couple of teaspoonfuls of guacamole left over from last night so I mixed them with a tablespoon of mayonnaise, then went to flip my rissoles - Disaster!!! they just broke up into pieces. Not liking to waste things, I popped them onto a plate and still ate them - they tasted okay but a little bland.

Sooo... back to the drawing board, or in this case the mixing bowl - to the mixture still in the bowl I added 1/2 tsp chilli powder, 1 tsp tomato puree and 1/2 oz flour and mixed them well in. This time I tried frying just a teaspoon first - success!!!

Recipe: Courgette Rissoles with Chilli and Cheese

1 Small onion - chopped

1 Clove garlic - chopped

1 Largish courgette - grated

2 oz Grated mature cheddar cheese

1 Small slice wholemeal bread - grated into crumbs

1 Med egg

1/2 tsp Chilli powder

1 tsp Tomato puree

1/2 oz Flour

Salt & Pepper

Lightly fry the garlic and onion and add to a bowl with all the other ingredients. Mix well. Shallow fry tablespoons of the mixture on each side till browned and cooked through - serve.

Olive oil for frying.

Haggis & Black Pudding

We loooove haggis and black pudding and were green with envy when Ellie's boyfriend Stu described the wonderful Stornoway black pudding that his father had brought back from a recent trip to the Isle of Lewis.

Apparently the makers Charles MacLeod have a website and these famous puddings can be bought by mail order, but  the downside is that  on a 1.4 kg roll of black pudding costing a very reasonable £7.40  postage is a £6.10!!

Stu to the rescue - buy 3 or more puddings and postage is a maximum of £18. Apparently we weren't the only ones being regaled by tales of the glorious pudding and there were others interested in acquiring the said delicacy, so a joint order was collected and duly sent off. 

I ordered a black pudding and a haggis which would have cost a whopping £8.90 postage if I had ordered alone, by joining together with three others the postage cost was a much more palatable £4.50.

Said puddings arrived this evening. Guess what we're having for breakfast tomorrow? (and for tea too ; ) ) 

Vintage Bargains

Today we went to the market at Tynemouth Station. Tynemouth Station is a wonderful partly restored Victorian station, which is currently in use as a Tyne and wear Metro station. At weekends however the platforms are transformed with the hustle and bustle of a fantastic eclectic market. The stalls predominately sell vintage items, though increasingly there is a good selection of people selling artisan food products.

I couldn't resist a wonderfully rustic loaf of ciabatta bread and a similar sourdough loaf, both baked using traditional methods and organic flours and from the same stall a wonderful lemon tart. Then there was "scone mad" a small business that produces a bewildering array of scones all made using the same basic recipe of flour, butter, water, pinch of salt and egg for basting. They have a range of 100 different varieties! we bought four - Bacon egg and black pudding, smoked sausage and cheese, cheese and leek and cheese bacon and onion.

As well as the yummy food , I also picked up some brilliant bargains:

• The four cup/saucer/plate trios pictured at the start of this post, for £1 each.


• A Brexton picnic set pictured above for £12- In a lovely green and white spotted case with white and green spooted china. It is all intact however one of the cups has been repaired and one of the flasks has it's inner broken. I'm going to be on the look out for a couple of suitable replacement flasks, possibly vintage but so long as they fit in well with the rest of the set I won't mind.


• Two sets of vintage embroidered pillowcases. One set still in the box and wrapped in the original cellophane, the other set still in the base of the original box but without a cover. These were £7.50 for the two sets. I have pictured these as they were bought below and also added a picture of the set that were fully boxed already on my freshly made bed - I just couldn't wait!!

All in all today has been a lovely day : )

Disappointment and Compensation

To say this week has held a few disappointments is an understatement, all in all it's not been a great week. With this in mind I thought we would spoil ourselves a bit and eat out tonight. We decided to go to a pub in a little village about 7 miles away, we'd been there three times before and always had quite a good experience so we didn't expect to be disappointed - but we were.

We ordered king prawns with a lime and chilli butter glaze - we got insipid king prawns on a bed of lettuce with a slice of cucumber and a slice of tomato with a hint of butter - no whiff of either chilli or lime.

Main course - Lamb leg steak with lyonnaise potatoes served with a red wine jus - we got a "steak" that was UNDER 1/4" thick and all of 4" in diameter with a few halved potatoes and a slice of onion on a pool of what tasted like a packet mix red wine gravy stuff, with this came veg - cauliflower and broccoli.

Yes I know we should have complained instead of pathetically saying "yes everything was fine" when asked by the waitress, but to be honest I couldn't have been bothered with the hassle.

We arrived home not only disappointed but hungry. So...

Toasted some homemade wholemeal bread, fried off some chopped bacon, onion and mushrooms and piled them on top and then topped with mature cheddar and grilled till melted - served with alcohol:

That's compensation!

Trying to lose weight

One of the reasons I have set up this blog is to encourage myself to do the things I want to do and need to do in order to lead a simpler more resourceful life. It’s not that I do terribly badly at it right now; it’s just that I sometimes wander off the path and forget the way. I can be quite scatty and I often forget what it is that I really want, so hopefully setting up and writing this blog will help me to focus on what I want to do and actually get me motivated to do it – well that’s the theory anyway.

I have been trying to lose weight for the past couple of months and have succeeded in losing two stones by (loosely) following the Slimming World diet. I started by going to the class, but after a couple of weeks I felt that I was just paying to be weighed and then hang around for an hour to find out how everyone else had done so I decided to go it alone. Since then my eldest daughter Ellie (who is the only one still living at home) decided to join me and a number of people at work also began slimming world, so we all try to support each other. Anyhoo, in the last few weeks I have sort of lost momentum so while I haven’t put any weight back on I’ve sort of stagnated and need to get back on track, so this week I’ve done a menu plan. I may not stick entirely with it, but it gives me a focus.

Today’s menu plan:

Today:
Breakfast – Yeo Valley Organic Yogurt (Yes I know only mullerlight are syn free, but they contain sweeteners and the rest, so I made a decision that for me any organic yogurt is syn free – told you I follow slimming world loosely – if you stick with me you will see I have introduced many other idiosyncrasies into the diet, but I reckon so long as I lose the weight and it works for me it's ok. Oh and also breakfast is actually at 10.00 break time as I don’t like to eat earlier.)

Lunch: (Wasn’t organised enough last night so had to grab something quick from ASDA on my way to work this morning) Tilda steamed brown

basmati rice with butternut squash, north Atlantic prawns ( I don’t like to buy farmed prawns after reading news reports about the chemicals used) and some mixed salad.

Eve Meal: Prawn ommlette, Slimming World Chips and Salad made from the ingredients in my organic vegetable bag, so excepting the prawns all ingredients will be organic.

I've also tried to get organised for tomorrow with lamb shanks in the slow cooker and HM bread for Dave's sandwiches, pics posted below.