Apple Crumble and berry thief.

First, find your apple tree and pick apples (shake earwigs off stalks)

then pick some blackberries (those that haven't been picked already)

next look for raspberries.

Discovered that four-legged-friend displays distinctly less finesse over his raspberry stealing behaviour. He is an extremely cautious but effective thief of brambles and gooseberries, gingerly plucking individual fruits with sensitive lips that must have experienced the pricking hurt of thorns. Raspberries are thorn-less, so the technique is brutal:

Sniff out a cluster of ripe berries

grab the whole tip of the plant in your jaw

rip the end off

result! ... mmm

So, gather what Four-legged-friend has left (observed him earlier doing a flanking manoeuvre past the kitchen window, along the hedge and across to the apple tree; it would have been far easier to take the shortest route across the grass, but much more obvious)

Wash and peel. Drizzle with fruit juice.

Put crumble mix (plain flour, porridge oats, cinnamon, weetabix, demerara sugar and white sugar in a bowl)

Add melted butter. Get messy making crumble topping.

And bake for about 20 to 30 minutes at 180degrees.

Serve with vanilla ice cream, cream or custard. Add friends. Enjoy. Don't anticipate there being much left - certainly not enough for Four-legged-friend's midnight feast (he can look at me as long as he likes with big eyes and wagging tail - he's not getting any).

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

Holiday cake and old friends

Chocolate cake. Most of us who bake probably have a favourite chocolate cake recipe - the one that always works; that forgives being made in a rush or once without eggs (added to the cake tin five minutes after it was initially placed in the oven ... even I didn't think I'd get away with that one); that tolerates the fickle heat of different ovens and different tins and without fail, at first sniff of it baking, brings back delicious memories of old friends and old holidays. And picnics and sand between toes and laughter and blustery walks and holding hands and eating too much and wind in your hair and squinting in the sun and dancing in the rain and dragonflies hitching a ride and castles and hill-tops and freezing cold lochs and a long walk with a black and white cat. This is my favourite chocolate cake recipe. Written by the dearest of old friends, on this scrap of paper, over twenty years ago. (Annotated by he who should have known better and me. He was right abo...

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

Walking The Dog

Search This Blog