Growing up

When was the first time you truly felt like an adult?

A couple of weeks ago I was in a Mediterranean restaurant with about twenty of our friends for a birthday celebration. During the evening I gazed around as people relaxed round two huge circular dining tables, pouring wine, mixing up dressing from the bottles of Spanish vinegar and oil and laughingly passing round olives and crusty bread.

It suddenly struck me that I am an ADULT. No one organised for me to be there. I wasn’t just tagging along with my parents. I was there because I was part of a group of intelligent, engaging people who liked me for who I am.

Now, this might seem a little random and I’m certainly not saying I feel immature or out of my depth. It was just one of those light bulb moments where you feel how did this happen? When did I make the transformation from gawky teenager, to shy student to happy-as-I-am adult. Weird.

I guess all of this has been going round in my head because we are making some big decisions at the moment. In the next couple of weeks we will be taking another step towards our future, and will be finding out whether the door we’re pushing is going to be opened wider or slammed in our faces.

We’ve also recently found that a couple of our close friends are having a baby. They are the first in our close friendship group and it just makes you realise that we are getting to the age where loads of our friends seem to getting married and having babies.

 I wonder if people look at Josh and I and think we have it all together? I’ve already made the link between ‘growing up’ and ‘getting married’ – and we’ve been married for over two years. While, I’m not saying I feel immature (in fact Josh and I have had to deal with lots of situations that you could say are beyond our years), I’m not saying I feel like I have it all together either…

 I’ve got a feeling that becoming an adult is one of those mythical statuses that you aim to achieve as a child. Like turning 16 or 18…when you actually get there it doesn’t feel any different.

 So…a question for you. When was the first time that you felt like a real adult?

Things to do while on holiday: Stuff your face

If I could sum up us on holiday in one word it would be: fat pigs

Okay, that’s two. But you get the gist.

We seemed to spend an uncommon amount of time consuming good food and drink, and it was wonderful!

(Just incase you’re wondering, we were holding a living funeral for Anna here, you know – like you do)

Tea and chocolate round the kitchen table, scones and hot chocolates in stately home cafes, milkshakes and cookies in city centre Marks and Spencer’s (civilisation!), picnics by a lake and then straight back to the pub for more cake, anyone?

(Please note that I do not condone eating scones like this. Please consume sensibly, the Devon way. Cream and THEN jam. Thank you.)

But the best place we visited was this…

The pub in the village a mile down the road from our cottage had such a great atmosphere, not to mention 105 different whiskeys for Josh to get excited about.

AND they had very good food.

Yes…I ate this.

Take note family. Remember, I’m the one that used to hate eating food in restaurants?

Not anymore! Bring on the meat.

Strawberries and Cream

One of the things I love about summer is strawberries and cream. Plump, juicy British strawberries and lashings of golden Devonshire clotted cream. Yummy.

But when I started going out with Josh something weird happened. I found out that not everyone eats strawberries and cream like my family do. In fact Josh’s family found my strawberry eating habits hilarious.

But what could be better than simply grabbing a strawberry, dipping in a big dollop of thick golden cream, plonking it in some sugar and munching it on down. Mmm…my arteries are furring just thinking about it.

Who wants to spend time chopping up strawberries and sprinkling on sugar? And don’t even get me started on pouring on double cream. It brings me joy that I have converted Josh to my way of eating strawberries and cream…even if the only reason is that it makes less washing up.

So, how do you eat strawberries and cream? Are you a fellow dunker, or are you more civilised in your approach?
Is there anything that you have done for years only to find out that other people find it weird and hilarious?

Happy Saturday!

Raspberry and White Chocolate Trifle

Just a quick and simple post because my brain is completely fried from learning Welsh and I can hardly string a sensible sentence together (Welsh is going well by the way. It’s hard but I’m loving it).

This recipe is amazing. It’s fairly simple to make but looks impressive and tastes great! I think I originally got it from a BBC Good Food Magazine so I’m not taking any credit! The only change I have made is that I use good quality raspberry jam (heated up) instead of coulis because no where seems to sell it in Aber. I also didn’t use the kisch because I couldn’t be bothered to buy any!!!

White Chocolate & Raspberry Trifle 

225g white chocolate
4 egg yolks
50g sugar
300ml milk
300ml double cream
1 large swiss roll
2 tbsp kisch
450g raspberries (I used less than this – about 300g and it was okay)
8tbsp raspberry coulis

1. The day before serving put 50g of the chocolate in the fridge then roughly chop the rest. Cream together the egg yolks and sugar until pale. Put the milk and cream intoa pan and bring almost to the boil, then pour this onto the egg mixture, stirring all the time. Put the mixture back into the pan and stir with a wooden spoon on a low heat until it thickens.
2. Take the pan from the heat and add chopped chocolate. Stir in to melt and leave the custard to cool.
   Then cut up the swiss roll into finger-thick slices and place them round the base of a serving dish (it looks more impressive if you use a glass one!) and sprinkle with the kisch. Cover with 300g of the raspberries and the coulis, the pour over the custard and leave to set.
3. When you are ready to serve, decorate with the remaining raspberries and grate the rest of the chocolate over the top. Serve and enjoy!

Beautiful Bream

You wouldn’t think that cooking Bream could cause such confusion as it did on Friday night. Trying to organise people to come and help us eat it was a nightmare! People could come, then they couldn’t, then they might be coming, and then other people turned up instead. It isn’t normally that hard to give away free food.

But when we finally got round to eating it, mmmm it was good. I’ve never eaten Bream before so it was good to try something new. It was more meaty than fish such as Sea Bass but still flaked off the bone and melted in the mouth.

 

I boiled 800g of small potatoes and then cut them into slices and mixed it with 2 handfuls of black olives, some olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and half a bunch of chopped parsley, and put it in the base of two medium dishes.

 

I then placed the parsley stalks in the cavity of the fish, seasoned it and placed one in each dish before drizzling it with oil.

 I put it in a hot oven (gas mark eight) for 15 minutes and then added a small glass of white wine to each dish before roasting it for another 15 minutes.

We served it with crusty bread, goats cheese, salad and dressing.

This a really, really easy way of cooking fish but it looks impressive when you bring the whole fish to the table to serve from the dish. We certainly got the thumbs up from our guests.

Ants in your pants!

We visited Yarner Wood on Dartmoor today. Even though I grew up on Dartmoor I have never visited the reserve before. My only memory of it is when it was almost destroyed by a huge fire twelve years ago, which was luckily stopped just before it reached the woodland. We lived miles away but we could still see the leaping flames right over the horizon. I was convinced we were going to be burnt in our beds so eventually had to be sent to my room with the curtains closed!!

Today everything was bursting with spring beauty.
However, you couldn’t look up at the canopy for too long without looking down to find your legs covered with ants! There are loads of nests throughout the woodland and that meant in places the paths were crawling with the insects, which made me paranoid for the whole day as I was sure I had ants up my trouser legs!

We then drove up onto the moor and climbed a very cold and windy Tor. On the top we found two letterboxes, which are an old fashioned version of geocaching. It’s basically like treasure hunting – you just follow clues to try and find boxes hidden all over the moor which contain a rubber stamp and a book which you sign. It’s good fun, and often leads you off the beaten track and into some of the most beautiful areas of Dartmoor.

 And then it was off to Widecombe-in-the-moor for a Devonshire cream tea!

Frugal Meals #1 The easiest tomato soup you’ll ever make

Now I’ve managed to pull myself out of my winter stupor enough to be interested in cooking decent meals again I’m determined not to break the bank with organic food. Therefore, as always I’m on a mission to buy and cook good, wholesome, healthy, organic meals each day on a budget.
It’s not going to be easy as food prices have gone up noticeably in our local shops (I paid £2.69 for one organic red pepper the other day!) so that means I have been busy rummaging through my emergency ‘frugal meals’ recipes, and thought I would let you in on the best over the next few weeks.

Frugal January

We are having a frugal January, which means cranking up our simple living and spending as little as possible.

This isn’t the same as the buy nothing challenge we did last year because I found that incredibly difficult – as soon as I’m told I can’t have something I just want to rebel and buy lots. It just makes things difficult if you are invited out by friends but you feel guilty the whole time you’re there because you’re spending money.

 

So instead we are just spending as little as possible, and we’ve done really well so far – even having spent a hideous amount on new glasses we are still well inside our budget for this month.

 

We’re taking little steps to help us along the way. For example we’re eating veggie this week because we want to buy a joint of meat for a dinner party we’re having on Sunday. On Wednesday we ate before we went out to meet some friends in a (casual) restaurant and just shared a cheap starter when we were there, and we’re staying at home or playing games with friends instead of paying to go to the cinema.

 

The key for me to not buy things is just not go near shops. I don’t have a particularly materialistic attitude and don’t covet things unless I actually see them! Having said that, even when in a stationary store yesterday I managed not to buy the amazingly beautiful pink suede organiser/ diary.

I saw, I coveted and I conquered!