Today, dear readers, I found my own mecca. I found culinary peace, zen and pefection. I have attained baking enlightenment. And it came in the form of bread rolls.

Not just any bread rolls, but homemade, perfect, fluffy, wholesome bread rolls. Gone are the usual rock-hard bullets which taste good but are all stodge, and in their place are these light, soft, perfectly-risen rolls, and I will confess it now: I've eaten 3. The recipe was from an All Colour Library book simply entitled "Baking". It was a charity-shop find, and has all of these wonderfully retro 70's ingredients and recipes, yet has some very nice staples in there as well. None of my other recipe books seemed to have a simple, good bread recipe, yet this one came up trumps. It is actually a recipe for milk bread, and uses milk instead of water. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I have never eaten a bread roll this nice in my life. Ever.

I think it's the best remuneration possible for 4 hours spent in the kitchen this morning, cooking, cleaning, baking and enjoying yummy smells. Whoever said baking was a chore must've not been doing it right, how can making gorgeous yummies ever be a chore?

I've been experimenting with ingredients alot recently, and have changed my views about the use of moderately-priced ingredients in place of particularly expensive ones. At least in cakes, I've tried switching self-raising and plain flours from shop-bought generic to Doves Farm Organic (available from many supermarkets and whole-food shops) and the difference was surprising. Using the self-raising for the first time I could instantly see that the madeira cake I had made had a different texture and different "mouthfeel" (oh no! Another Heston moment!) which now has me vowing that I will not go back to generic brands over The Good Stuff.

And the stilly thing is, the organic flour isn't expensive, it comes from England (whereas cheaper stuff could feasibly come from anywhere) and makes better produce. For heaven's sake, please heed my words and get decent things from now on, ok? Recipes for both the cake and the rolls will be up very soon, but excuse me for now, I must go and give in to temptation!

We used to spend sundays in the garden, with neighbours either side in theirs we'd talk over the fence, swap vegetables and dig, plant and make our gardens beautiful. But since I started working on sundays all this has stopped, and the weather hasn't been conducive to a good day's gardening for a long time - until Saturday, that is, when I took the brave step of going out and digging. I can't however take all the credit for this hard work, the glorious 2 hours were spent digging in tandem with my husband, who got just as much out of it as I did (and he's not usually one who enjoys it).

I dug with a spade, with a fork and with my hands. The smell of soil, that primal feeling of being close to nature and to the world was a very wonderful feeling. The robins and blackbirds constantly singing in the background and the squirrel leaping from branch to branch. In amongst the weeds we found a meal's-worth of potatoes, chard and forgotten onions!

Most of all it felt exciting, because I hadn't paid the garden much attention in the last few months, and me being the procrastinator that I am, I'd just let it go. But it all looks much nicer now, still 3 more beds to tackle.

When all the weeds had been cleared, I noticed this little fella, a tiny, stunted pea plant.

An escapee from last year's crop had made it through the winter even though they are very delicate plants and can't withstand any cold at all. And look, there is a perfect little flower, and one perfect (although empty) little pod. Needless to say, that is perfect proof that the world has gone to pot, and that climate change is something to be worried about.

But I have now "officially" been bitten by the gardening bug again and can't wait to get back out there (hopefully later this week) and start hanging washing out on the line again (yes, it is still January!) and start the arduous task of digging 3 enormous beds and fertilising the soil.

It's starting to be really beautiful here, the heavy ice and frost has dissipated (the skyscape last night was breath taking) leaving a feeling of heady-springtime in its wake. There are many more frosts to go before I can start planting and spending days in the garden, but I'll settle for the earlier mornings and later evenings.

I took the dog for a little run up and down the still-frozen lawn, and witnessed this beautiful sky. Mackerel skies, as they are known, are stunning to look at and make me want to dive into a really exciting book that mum got me for christmas, the Cloud Appreciation Society's "The Cloudspotters Guide".

In the pots in the back yard area, all manner of interesting things are popping up. Bulbs mostly, iris reticulata and daffs, narcissi and hyacinths.

But the cold weather brings me back inside quite quickly, lest my feet should return to their usually-blue state, and my nose should glow like Rudolphs. This weather, hail, sleet and ice makes me love some good ol' British fayre, and yesterday I found the Holy Grail of sausages. Not only are they organic (and therefore animal-cruelty-free and ecologically sensitive) but they don't contain any preservatives barring a little bit of vitaminC (perfectly fine in my book). They tasted gorgeous to boot. So what else could we do than bangers, mash and veg with homemade onion gravy (which really makes it).

I've also fallen headlong in love (again) with bands that I'd once loved, had promptly forgotten about, who are now making beautiful noises. Two of the bands, Barzin and Songs:Ohia sound like spring to me, and are being played repetitively in some hope of invoking spring to happen (both can be found here and here, with MP3s to download, free ~ and the site is legit, they don't spam).

I love the sunny colours of the wintergreen growing in the back garden, with its red berries and white flowers, it smells lovely if you rub the leaves (they use it in deep heat) and is apparently, edible (tasting like deep heat and germolene!).

The Cerynth shouldn't be up now, but it started growing in October and is now in fine fettle ~ albeit in the wrong place and at the wrong time of year.

And then I turned around to leave,
when again the skies caught my eye,
whisps of white upon clear azure blue,
fluffy mackerel blankets in the sky.

We've had a visitor recently. Or should I say visitors, we've had more than one. They are here quite often, looking for food, nibbling all the birds' peanuts and running along the fence like deft gymnasts balancing on a waifer-thin balance beam.

It is not only beautiful to watch, as they literally go back and forth, squirrelling their food, it is quite a priviledge to see them. Red squirrels are pretty much extinct from all of England, the only places to see them are Northumberland and Scotland. The grey squirrel has invaded their territory and literally eats them out of house and home (as well as carrying the deadly squirrel pox).

Although as both Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall and Gordon Ramsay have stated, the grey squirrel is inordinately yummy to eat. Perhaps one way of keeping our red squirrel safe? Either way, if a grey squirrel even comes near my little Squirrel Nutkin, it's grey-squirrel-satay time.

I was tagged by Zoe to the Six Weird Things meme, so here are my six!

1. I get inordinate amounts of pleasure from letting our dog, G, lick out yogurt pots. I think it's because she crosses her eyes whilst doing so which is very endearing in a dog, and makes me howl with laughter!

2. When I was younger I used to spend almost every clear, cold night watching the stars and learning their patterns, the constellations and hoping to see a shooting star. Being under the stars gives me a feeling of being so small, it's rather refreshing. I believe something special will happen if you see a shooting star ~ it always has for me!

3. I will one day, if it is the only thing I ever do, have a smallholding. It will be somewhere in the South-West, there will be animals and I will become as self-sufficient as possible. I plan to sell our vegetables and become a market gardener.

4. I like melancholy music, and will always be drawn to minor chords over major. I don't know why, I just feel that sadder music has more to say. That's not to say I don't like loud, happy stuff too ~ but I tend to err towards the sadder music.

5. Every spring I feel a bit of panic overcome me at the thought of having to get organised in the garden. This almost always disappears as soon as I get going in the garden, where worms are my friends, the robin sings for me and our squirrels dance above my head.

6. I like to touch trees, will never snap a branch, and feel completely at peace sat at next to, or touching a tree. I love deep, dark pine forests the most, although I love deciduous forests at dawn in the spring. I apologise before I cut a plant down.

I have a confession. I haven't looked at the garden for many months. I haven't taken the time to even stop and really give it a look-over, because it's just been a mess. I was also put off because there is so much to do, and I honestly wasn't sure what I wanted.



I keep a garden diary, and in it I post helpful tips and tid-bits of information, ideas for the next year's planting, plants I'd like to grow, things that work and things that don't. It's very useful to a gardener to see what has happened before, to gauge how things will work in the future. But even that has been left desolate of writings until now. Lo and behold, on the shelves of WHSmith I found inspiration and ideas all at once in the form of Grow Your Own magazine. Created especially for the GYO movement, there are hardly any advertisments (hurrah!), it's presented in a very readable, easy, pleasant and intelligent way. I have found a new love.



Watching Return to River Cottage the other day, it got me thinking about just how much we'd need to grow to be able to live completely from the garden. There are obvious restrictions: for a start our garden is not an acreage, and we wouldn't have the room to grow large fruit trees or masses of any particular crop, but with that aside we did very well last year growing only the staples of onions, potatoes, runner beans, pumpkins, lettuces and tomatoes. However with some added knowledge, our cup overfloweth with ideas of just what we can do this year.



Our soil isn't ideal to grow everything, and I believe in moderation at all times (even with moderation!) so I'm not going to grow more than I think reasonable. However with the knowledge gained over the last two years, and more ideas from magazines, catalogues and the television itself, I think 2007 is going to be a winner in the garden!



Our garden is going to remain mostly unchanged for now landscape-wise, however with the addition of a small pollytunnel on the dark border, I believe we'll be able to salvage some yummies from a border that has, up until now, been unused. Last year we managed to cut down considerably on our visits to grocers and supermarkets purely through eating our own veg. This year we hope to go one step further, do away with all vegetable buying for a good chunk of the summer at least, aiming for our "5 a day" completely using our own veg. And this year also learning about ways to store our vegetables, through cool-storage or freezing, to maximise the edibility of our crop.



The vegetables we'd like to grow will be placed according to their needs, i.e. carrots which failed miserably last year (a mix of drought and being put in the wrong place) will be planted in containers, where I can monitor their every movement, water as necessary and move around. Whereas hardier crops, potatoes, crucifers and onions will go directly into the ground, in larger numbers than before. We also plan on having the obligatory tomatoes (growbags), peas (ground), runner beans (ground), aubergines (container), radishes and salads/lettuces (containers), courgettes (ground), pumpkins (ground), chard (ground), onions and finally beetroot (container). It sounds alot, but as I've got all the time in the world to plan (and more importantly, to find the right species for our conditions) I think we'll be able to muddle through. We also have one big added bonus ~ we're not planning a wedding this year, so all of my time can be devoted to veg production on a large scale. Any vegetables left over in our time of glut will be shared amongst our neighbours. A perfect way to ensure there is no wastage.



Anyway, I have mumbled on about gardening for long enough, I'm off to plan!

This is my progress on my newest knitting project. The ribbing for the back of the tank-top jumper that I decided I'd knit.

This will be the first piece of clothing that I've knitted apart from my socks. I've knitted hot-water bottle covers, scarves, cushion covers and blankets, but never something I can wear. I looked for the simplest pattern possible but one that I know I'll wear. And the green? Because I can't seem to get enough of the colour, I've become a little bit of a closet green-a-holic!

In between bright sunshine, there have been dark clouds which has brought sleet. A cold wind whipped at me and the dog as I took her out at lunchtime. After the dark skies it brightened, continuing to sleet, so appeared a sleet-bow. Rainbows are the normal bright well-defined phenomena that happen in rain, snowbows are white (or reduced spectrum) and occur in snow (who woulda thunk it?) and then there is my little beauty, a sleet-bow. Very hazy, pale and short-lived, but gorgeous nonetheless.

And as I was in the mood for some poetry today, I opened my Wordsworth book and look what I came across.

'My heart leaps up when I behold' by William Wordsworth
(This poem is now generally known as The Rainbow)

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a Man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is Father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

After all that hassle and stress about my car's tyre, all it took was a visit to our neighbours next door and it was sorted. Our neighbour had the necessary expertise and equiptment to pump my tyre up which allowed me to get to a local garage that he recommended and within 10 minutes it was all fine and dandy. Mended. That was a huge weight off my mind!

But seeing as my darling husband had rented a car just in case I couldn't get to work, we decided to make use of it, and the place we chose was one of our favourites ~ Alnwick. I was wearing my new clothes (and feeling a million dollars rolling up in new clothes and a new car, albeit a rented one!), hubby on my arm we slunk into a coffee shop to warm up from the gales we've been having recently. For the last 2 weeks or so, on and off since New Years, it has just blown and blown. I found 3 very old-looking rooftiles in our front garden, panicked, and was told by our neighbour (who knows this house and every other on the whole road better than anyone) that they weren't from our roof, and on inspection, it was true. We do have a loose aerial on the roof that has finally dislodged in the 70mph gusts and is hanging perilously close to the edge.



We walked around the town, I bought some wool for my very first knitted piece of clothing ~ a very pretty tank-top type jumper. And we also stopped in our favourite organic and fairtrade shop where I bought the yellow-split peas above, to make a variation of Nigella's Yellow Split Pea and Frankfurter Soup, using up some of the 80-odd meatballs I made on Friday and froze (a very economical recipe) in place of the Frankfurters.

We wandered some more, picked up warm brie and crispy bacon sandwiches which we ate in the car, along with a little tub of heather-honey icecream, before driving home. On the drive the wind was gusting, the sky at one side of us blue, the other was studded with deep grey clouds.

Today is going to be about simple pleasures with as few nasties thrown in as possible. The last couple of days have been very stressful, as I was outside in a gale, walked past my car and noticed that it had a puncture. Which means I need a new one, right? The place that sells tyres order them in for next-day fitting, but as I couldn't get there to physically pay the deposit, because my car would've been running on a flat and home again, they won't order it in. Which means no tyre until at least next week. So my husband has hired a car to make sure that we can get to the garage to give them the money and so that I can get to work and back on Sunday. *Sigh*.

That plus having to change my driving license to my new name (I positively hate filling in important forms) and another doctors appointment for this chest complaint that seems to have turned itself into some form of allergy-caused asthma (complete with wheezing and inhalers).

But on the upside, I'm not going to complain because a wonderful parcel popped through the door today and fell with a thud. Thankfully the dog wasn't present as it would've been in a hundred little pieces by the time I got to it otherwise! Who wouldn't smile when you open this?

I saw it and had to have it ~ whilst on my little shopping spree I also ordered Kathryn Williams' new album 'Leave To Remain' which is just beautiful.

Tonight I'm making Nigella's pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce with Waitrose's (have a look at their recipes section, yummy!) organic, free-range minced pork although I can't decide whether to make the pasta myself or not, I might just be lazy and enjoy using ready-bought stuff. Either way, today is going to be spent doing as little of the boring stuff and as much of the enjoyable stuff as possible ~ excuse me, the DVD player is calling :) For the rest of the day I'm 'past all concerns'.

In my usual state of bleary-eyedness this morning, making my husband's bento-box-style lunch, I caught something brown on the floor race past me and go into the dining room. At first it looked like some paper, but then I did a double-take and, to my sheer horror, realised it was a mouse.

It ran straight past the dog, who watched in disbelief as it ran past her legs ~ even though there is greyhound in her, did she make one move for it? Did she attempt to sniff it out in an "i'm-bigger-than-you" kind of way? No. She let it run past her, I squealed (great for the neighbours at 6.30am!) and she shot to her bed. The Husband ran after it with one of my bowls (a cheap plastic one, thankfully) and after destroying our dining room, we caught it. I believe it was probably a 'her' and probably just sheltering from the really bad gales we've been experiencing.

Thankfully my knowledge of British wildlife does extend to rodents, and with much ooh-ing and aaahh-ing can definitely tell that it's a Wood Mouse (Apodemus Sylvaticus) and not a horrid (that's a tad harsh and subjective...) House Mouse (Mus Musculus). Having caught it my husband took her down to the bottom of the garden, where I had seen a wood mouse previously, living near the compost heap, and released her. She shot vertically up two fences before diving off into the trees. Definitely the one that got away!

Now we really need to block up the hole that she used to get into the kitchen ~ but I'm just glad it was a good mouse, and found her way back to the great outdoors.

Because my Mum isn't feeling 'great' at the moment (I think she's coming down with something), and I can't be there to tuck her up into bed (where she needs to be!), I thought I'd bake her a muffin and send it through the wonders of the Internet so that it'll reach her without making her feel queasy. So Mum, this is for you ~ an apple, pear and vanilla muffin.

Of my own devising, with help from the Green & Blacks cookbook for quantities of batter, these are little pieces of heaven. For Christmas Mum very kindly got me pods of vanilla, as well as organic, fairly-traded nutmeg and cinnamon. The vanilla was subtle but it was there and complemented the apple and pear really well. In the photo below you can see the little vanilla seeds, which looked very attractive!

I myself love the texture of the pear and the apple and the contrast they give. The pear stews gently and goes translucent, while the apple retains some bite. The batter wasn't very sweet (the original recipe was white chocolate, banana and cherry) because the original batter contained sweet elements, and although the pears were very sweet it needed some extra sweetness. This came from 'injecting' maple syrup into the muffins (using an actual syringe ~ my new favourite cooking implement! Oooh er, I think I'm going a bit Heston!) when they'd been put into the muffin tin. The result was unctuous, warm, gooey and gorgeous. I also drizzled some on top for sheer decadence!

Hope you feel better soon, Mum :)

Ooooh, so many new things are going on around here. People are posting beautiful things, there is beauty in the mild (although unseasonal) weather, and the sun is rising a little earlier every morning. My music tastes have changed from the wintry tones of Sufjan (although he's like an addictive lover, I cannot be without him for long) to The Be Good Tanyas, Joan As Policewoman and Kathryn Williams. I am also looking forward to moving blogs, because this Blogger beta nonsense has gone on for quite long enough ~ not to mention something *very* exciting that I'm going to be unveiling soon. But I can't just yet because it's not quite ready. Patience, patience!

I can't settle, my mind is in overdrive at the moment, which is nice after months of being relatively uncreative. I have been back into the groove with writing, poetry mostly, and getting back into reading. It helps when you've got a stack of books that you really do want to read, from Didius Falco novels to Little Women and Cider With Rosie.



It's also been good to start thinking about the garden again. It has been such a long time since I just went outside and imagined how I'd like it to be. Plans are being formulated for where we want to go this year, what we want to do, and how we're going to do it. I was going through old photos, and just imagining the smell of a freshly-cut rose, and the warm newly-mown lawn smell makes me want to invest in a tipi this minute and live on our lawn. Except the neighbours might wonder.



I have been watching the seed catalogues, eyeing the garden centre shelves and deciding which vegetables to grow. Which seeds to nurture and which beds to cultivate. There is so much possibility, it's a nice place to be.

I'm not usually fond of this time of year, although it is nice when the morning start to appear ever-so-slightly brighter, earlier. I also get impulses to do things, yesterday it was to 'gut' our bedroom. My hubby has had the week off (delightful) and on the night of my birthday I went to sleep and vowed that we'd have a tidy bedroom by that time the next day. I was up bright and early, which was just as well, because the task that lay ahead was mammoth. I didn't realise just how much rubbish, clutter, junk, ephemera, dust and dirt one little bedroom could harbour. We removed boxes from under the bed, went through every one and got rid of things we didn't need, cleaned, vacuumed, dusted, wheezed and then we had a move-around. It's one of my favourite pastimes. I love it. So now our bedroom is just like new, with vows made all-round that it really won't get that bad again!

So I feel all clean and happy with my surroundings. Whilst on yesterday's sorting/cleaning high, I decided to take down the Christmas accoutrements and pack it all away. Another huge job, and we don't have that many decorations, but just taking them all off the tree, wrapping every one individually in newspaper and putting them in boxes was tiring. Especially since we'd spent 6 hours cleaning our bedroom! Our living room now looks and feels larger, and is no longer mostly Nordmann fir!

Today we went to Hexham, we hadn't been there since November and decided to take the time out (now that the winds have abated) to spend some time at one of our favourite haunts. We scoured the charity (thrift) shops, I found a lovely book on wildflowers (another one!) and some bargains in the various sales taking place. It really was nice just to walk and talk, stop and photograph trees and stained-glass windows, before coming home and making some warming spiced pumpkin, lentil and parsnip soup.

When I said I was off having fun, I wasn't lying! Today marks my 21st year of life, and what a whirlwind these years have been. Not all wonderful, but each serving a purpose.



Today I feel really "grown up", we haven't done much differently, or celebrated in any over-the-top way, but still it felt lovely. From waking up and making pancakes, to spending the day pottering with my husband, it's been lovely.



My husband bought me an enormous bouquet of flowers, with some of the blooms from my wedding bouquet included (although that part was serendipitous), my mother spoilt me by sending a big red box topped with a golden bow, full of amazing things. A Radley handbag, something I'd been not-so-quietly coveting for ages and a Waterman pen, possibly one of the best presents I could've received. My hubby got me a wonderful portable-speaker system for my iPod (she will have music, wherever she goes!), a silicone muffin mould (don't tell me you didn't get one of those?!) and many other wonderful things. I am such a lucky, pampered girl!

As for being 21, I feel more optimistic about the year ahead and what it will hold. I am always cautious about optimism, but so much has changed, and is continuing to change ~ I can only hope it is for the good.



I've been indulged in one of my birthday rituals - tea and cakes, and have had a thoroughly enjoyable day. Usual programming will be resumed shortly ;-)

This week has been magical - we've both been amidst a whirlwind of new years, food, friendship and birthday preparations. I am exhausted but buzzed at the same time, it is just magical.

As I type I'm running a bath, my husband is downstairs making my birthday cake (Nigella's Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake ~ with some help from me) and I feel a little over-stuffed from eating too much icing (it is delish!). I also had time to make some muffins ~ Pannetone, white chocolate and apple, no less (my own devising, as that's what we had in the kitchen!). Scrummy.

So excuse me if I'm absent, I have got a reason, honest! I'll blog more tomorrow :)