Down The Lane

One of the nice things about living in the countryside (that almost makes up for isolation, lack of public transport, poor internet connection, lack of phone signal etc)is that there's so much pretty about. Just walking down the lane I see loads of lovely trees and flowers and rolling countryside that really puts Bristol to shame. Urban trees can be a nice relief from general concretey greyness and leafy garden-y areas can be pleasant, but nothing beats being surrounded by green with only the sounds of songbirds (plus the odd tractor) in the air.

Bit fanciful? Maybe. But look:

















All these photos were taken on my Pentax ME Super on Fuji Superia X-Tra 400.
For more ramblings see my Gone For A Walk! set on Flickr.

August Things

Our garden in the sun



Sweet chestnut leaves, a rose and pink hydrangea flowers.

Things I like

The cat who isn't ours but wants to be

Homemade Afghan biscuits

Amazing old photography book

A collection of little things (click through for annotations)

Wheeeeeee! As Jith might say.

Cake!

Now I've got your attention I can prattle on about other things! (don't worry, there will be cake eventually)

Today has been another day of not much (they will end soon enough... and then I'll wish I had done something with them). I was "in charge of" the laundry, meaning I loaded and unloaded the machine a couple of times and hung things out to dry, with help/hinderance from the cat. He started by pacing up and down the path under the washing line and occasionally rubbing himself on my legs and throwing himself on the ground. When this failed to attract any stroking or attention he tried to climb into the washing basket & had to be pushed away. When I'd finished hanging things out, instead of staying to be stroked he went and hunted things in a flower bed. Fickle.

I should probably point out that he's not our cat. We don't currently have any pets but our garden, being fairly big and neutral territory, is a kind of cat Mecca. Catty, as we imaginatively named him, comes from one of the houses up the road and seems to have decided that he'd much rather live with us. (this may have something to do with his people working a lot and having small children, another cat, a dog and chickens) He likes to sit in the flowerbed under one of the windows, or on top of the old mattress by the garage if it's raining, and mew whenever he thinks we might be listening. If he hears us behind the front door or we open it he comes running and attempts to get in. We've learnt to expect this so we're fairly good at stopping him, but when he does get in he seems unsure of what to do and just wanders around exploring until someone ejects him.

Anyway! Your reward for reading all that is here: cake!

I was looking for something to do with the glut of redcurrants, apart from making muffins, and a Google search yielded a few thousand recipes for redcurrant jelly, and this, a yoghurty pie-cake thing as made by a lady living in little wooden house in Finland. Her recipe is here. It's a very nice recipe and, I expect, could be made with almost any fruit or even jam.

And in close-up

I've made this twice now. The first time I used Flora because I didn't have any non-olive oil (it's too strong flavoured), I calculated that 2/3 cup of oil is roughly equivalent to 134g of Flora... It turned out fine both times, although the mixture for the 2nd one (using walnut oil) was very oily indeed. It just slid out of the mixing bowl with no need for a spatula or to grease the tin. Slightly disturbingly the oil resurfaced in pools when I got it into the flan dish, but it cooked fine!

The 2nd time I used 3 cups of redcurrants and no raspberries. I'd recommend fewer redcurrants if you do it this way as it gets very soggy in the middle. Another idea for avoiding sogginess is to use a metal tin rather than a ceramic one. The middle should cook a bit more & you won't end up with a pile of crunchy crust and underdone sludge.

So... go and make it!