Kitchen Notes In Soft Fruit Season

There were strawberries from the field (and the supermarket).

And there was rhubarb from the garden.

And so there was strawberry and rhubarb jam.

In the rare event that I grow anything edible, it cannot be lost in a mere crumble or pie. It must be jammed, bottled or canned, so that I can gloat for as long as possible.

And, actually, this is a pretty fantastic flavour combination, not too sweet, not too tart.

There were two wrinkled peaches in the fruit bowl. Not so much on the turn as fully flipped. 

With strawberries, they formed the basis of a simple, delicious summer crumble. 

John ate his with cream, I had mine with fat free vanilla yogurt. I really wanted vanilla ice cream but I'm on a diet. It was still lush, though.

And then there was some basil in a jug, also on the kitchen windowsill.

I'd always wanted to try strawberry and basil jam, and so I did. Just a small amount, enough for two small jars, as I wasn't sure if I'd like it.

I like it a lot. It has a faintly anise flavour, a little grassy, if that makes sense. John and the kids are less enamoured, but I think it's a more grown-up version of strawberry jam. Also, the thought of strawberries and basil - two flavours that are so evocatively summery - together, pleases me no end. The only thing I don't like about it the way the leaves go in the jam; a bit brown and weathered, and you want to pick them out. Next time I might try and make a kind of basil bouquet garnis or something similar, so that I can infuse the fruit with the herby flavour but not include the leaves in the bottling process. Has anyone else experience of making strawberry and basil jam?

So that is what you can make throughout the week in soft fruits season, with a load of strawberries and whatever you can find languishing in the fruit bowl or on the kitchen windowsill.

Summer's great, isn't it?

Friday Happies

I'm glad I have this routine, this anchor of sorts, in my blogging week as otherwise I don't think I'd have made the time to sit down at the laptop today. As I look back at the photos I see that it has in fact been a pretty good week, if a busy one, and that's why writing these Friday posts is so important to me. It makes me stop and notice, prompts me to record these moments, and then I remember and am grateful.

So here are this week's happies:

*****

1. Breakfast with John in a lovely new cafe not far from us in West Leeds, just after we'd dropped the kids off at school. I love the idea of going out for breakfast and I'd already looked at their menu online and chosen what I wanted. (I don't get out much.) I had their "Baked Beans" which was homemade baked beans (amazing) on top of toasted sourdough (my favourite kind of toast) topped with a poached egg and scattered with chorizo. Seriously good. I didn't eat again until about 4 pm that day. And fantastic coffee too, with the milk in cute little mini bottles - I'm such a sucker for details like that. I'm so excited that we finally have somewhere lovely to eat nearby!

2. Good weather, and the opportunity to be outside in that sunshine. 

I looked after Bella and her best friend yesterday as their teacher was on strike, and it was such a happy day. There was playing, baking, crafting, bubble blowing and general free spirited merriment. It felt like there was some education in there, just a different kind to what happens at school. And I even managed some crochet in the garden.

3. Crochet, specifically crocheting in these gorgeous colours. Oh, I love crochet, I really do. Looks at those tight little stitches, row after of uniform neatness.*

I don't normally understand what people mean when they talk about colour-play, I just like the colours I like, but when I was selecting these I thought...oooh, hello new favourite colours. The cool blue and gritty grey, the rose pink - just soft enough but not too sugary - and that sandy mustard, always a favourite of mine. 

4. The way these clothes hung on the washing line, in a row of glowing primary brights.

5. The simple act of preparing a spare room for guests. We haven't had a spare room for some years, using instead a sofa bed downstairs, and it was so nice to potter around making the space look pretty, buying flowers, folding towels. Trying to make a tiny bedroom look as welcoming as possible.

6. This amazing bumper parcel of goodies my parents brought me back from their recent holiday in France. 

Salted caramel sauce, a star fish, blackberry jelly (ok, Mum made that last week, that's not from France), divine smelling soap and....FISH SOUP! 

I am obsessed with this stuff. I could slurp it by the gallon, it is one of my absolute favourite things in the world. And this brand is from the Vendee, a region I love, the place of many, many happy childhood beach holidays. 

And bonbons!! Does anyone else like these? I can thank them for my excellent knowledge of the French words for most fruits. 

7. This pretty, elegant enamel coffee pot I found in a vintage shop in Saltaire today. I love the shape and that deep navy blue. A total bargain, it would have been wrong to leave it behind.

I promise to change the table cloth soon, it seems to have featured a lot here.

*****

Well done if you made it to the end. I always forget how relentlessly busy end of term feels. It's a bit like the run up to Christmas; extra assemblies, plays or performances to attend, fairs to bake for, teacher gifts to make or buy, extra things in the diary that I mustn't forget. And then the (very welcome and long overdue) arrival of my lovely parents for the weekend, which was all arranged at the last minute, leaves me running around thinking about shopping lists and spare bedding and forgetting to blog. And then another day passes, and then another, and it's hard to return. I'm going to blog LOADS next week! You have been warned.

I feel better for writing this post. I knew I would.

*****

* It's a curtain tie back for the box room, which was Angus's bedroom and is now a spare room - more on that next week.

My Yorkshire Photo: Strawberry Fields

Inntravel recently asked me if I'd like to take part in a photography project called  #My Yorkshire Photo, in which Yorkshire residents share and celebrate their favourite parts of our county. Inntravel are a Yorkshire company who offer a slower, more pared down approach to travel, a bit off the beaten track. I like their ethos very much, and I wanted to take part as I do love to take photos, and also since they very generously sent me a Polaroid camera and some film so that I could have fun documenting our adventures. Now, I know what a Polaroid camera is and what it does, but I'd never used one before. Call me childish, but I was not expecting the absolute thrill and delight when that little photo emerges from the camera. It's so cool. (And I'd forgotten how powerful and meaningful it can be to hold an actual photo in your hand, rather than look at one on the screen, and it reminded me that I must get some of my Instragram photos printed out.)

So I had a think about what and where I'd like to photograph and, my goodness, there is a lot of choice in this glorious county; the moors, the coast, the Dales, the sheep, the pretty villages full of stone houses and dry stone walls...but the thing is, I do not live in those places. The part of Yorkshire I wanted to celebrate is my Yorkshire, Leeds, this huge sprawling city in which I've lived for almost 14 years. I'm gradually finding the bits that mean the most to me, those pockets of calm and beauty that lie between ring roads and junctions, where the traffic noise disappears and you feel you are almost in the countryside.

I decided to share our afternoon spent picking strawberries yesterday. Since the children were very small it's become a little tradition of mine to go at this time of year; we always go to the same place, every July, and it's always just the children and I as we go at the weekend when John is at work. We spend an hour hunting and gathering (Bella and I enjoy it much more than Angus, who is soon bored) then we take them home and I make jam and do lots of strawberry related baking and eating. It truly is one of my great summer pleasures.

The children's reaction to the Polaroid was priceless. They actually fought over who's turn it was - that thrill of the click and whir, as the little picture emerges, was as fascinating to them as it was to me. I had to keep saying "Don't just snap away, tell me when you're taking a photo!" as it costs about £1 a photo. Not cheap, no, but hugely enjoyable.

Today I made jam with the 2.5 kilos of fruit we picked, and had fun playing around with the images here.

But I wanted to find a better way to display our fun and so I blue-tacked the photos to the wall, creating a little summer display, a visual memory of our family time. I've got one film left and I'm saving it for when we go on holiday to Cornwall in the school holidays.

It doesn't take the best photo in the world, they are all a little overexposed, but as far as photographic fun goes, I don't think you can beat it.



Thank you Inntravel for this fabulous camera, I have enjoyed using it enormously.

Friday Happies

Some of the things that have made me very happy this week are:

1. Blue cornflowers. 

Back in March, my friend Leanne sent me some seeds which she'd collected from her own garden. Zinnias, cosmos, nigella and these cornflowers. I planted them all with, ahem, mixed success and now suddenly, I have these beauties. Last week I had reedy, weedy looking plants, then they all sprouted the most stunning blue flowers, seemingly overnight! Gardening, wow. I like the blue and white - always a favourite combination of mine - with the Dala horse.

2. Sewing. I've done lots of embroidery this year, but It's been months since I did any applique or delved into my fabric stash. I'd forgotten what delights lie (crushed) in that drawer! 

A mum at school ordered a t-shirt (the first I've made this year I think) and I had fun sorting and searching, looking for the right sort of fabrics to make a monkey swinging from a tree.

3. Salted liquorice from IKEA. Impossible to photograph, but oh so moreish.

4. A new mattress.

A freshly made up bed is a heavenly thing all on it's own, but when you've just taken delivery of a new mattress, and waved goodbye to the old, lumpy one...well that is very good indeed.

5. Charity shop finds. This pyrex Carnaby dish cost me all of 50p. It's a small casserole dish, missing it's clear glass lid, but very useful all the same. I love pyrex, but I particularly love this pattern as my Grandma had some of this style in her kitchen, and so it reminds me of her too.

I've never bought plants in a charity shop before, but three little succulents, for only £1? Ok then. I just need some cute little pots now.

Thank you all so much for your wonderfully warm, supportive and downright lovely comments on my last post. The generosity of spirit in the blogging community is a good, good thing, and  it is to be celebrated.

I hope you all have a great weekend. The Tour De France begins in Leeds tomorrow and it is a HUGE deal up here in Yorkshire. It's not really my cup of tea, but I'll be mentally cheering on Yorkshire and the cyclists while I avoid all main roads and public spaces until it's all over. I may take the kids strawberry picking.

And happy fourth of July to my American friends! 

Style At Home Magazine

A rather exciting thing happened today. August's issue of Style At Home went on sale. Not something I might ordinarily have written in my diary, if I'm honest, but this one was special because our home has been featured! Yes, it's true! I honestly didn't know how to title this post. That Time Our House Was In A Magazine? I Feel Awkward? Fame at Last? I don't know, so I just went with the magazine title. What is the right etiquette in these situations I wonder? Squeal or feign indifference, tell no-one or tell everyone?  I feel funny about this. Mainly VERY excited, thrilled, happy and giddy, but also a little embarrassed, a little shy. Silly I know.

I was wondering how to broach it with friends on Facebook but there was no need, my Mum did it for me. She's been possibly more excited than me and as soon as she'd gotten her hands on a copy, she photographed it, uploaded it and tagged me. (My Mum loves social media. It's only a matter of time before she's on Instagram too, so she can embarrass me there as well.)

↑ I suspect they airbrushed the crumbling render on the front of our house...fine by me! If only it really looked like that.

I always wondered how people got their homes in magazines. Do they email in their photos or are they friends with someone who works on the magazine? Or are they just well connected media types? I thought I'd tell you what happened to me as I am always curious about this sort of thing. Back in February I was contacted by Photoword who look for homes to feature in magazines. They are an independent photographer/writer team, not attached to any one publication. They asked if I was interested and if I could send them some snaps of our house. I was, and I did, and then a few weeks later Colin, the photographer, came and took some "reccy" photos - very quick ones but on a much better camera than mine - to show to a selection magazines. A couple of weeks after that Annabelle, the writer, rang to say that Style at Home were interested and it went from there. Colin came to the house for the day in March (on a gloriously sunny day) and spent all day taking photos. On that morning, there existed a strange state of utter calm, tidiness and cleanliness in our home. It has never been that tidy before and never will again. There's nothing like a photographer coming to motivate me to get those niggley jobs done, sort the piles of clutter, wash the cushion covers.

"Get Gillian's style in 3 buys" - floral suitcase, Orla cushion and fairy lights. Yep, I can't argue with that.

Colin is such a lovely man - I grilled him on everything he knew about photographing houses, the poor man. and he was very patient with me. I was fascinated by all the details - the magazine requested that I didn't wear heavy woollens in the photos, as it would be a summer edition. Also, no daffodils in any photos, as they are too seasonal. Apparently there is a four month delay between writing or shooting for a magazine, and it's release. I've always been curious about Christmas magazine editions - do all those people deck out their house for Christmas in August?! Well, yes they do, although sometimes a house might be photographed in December and then featured the following autumn. Sorry, I am going on a bit here. It's just that, as someone who's been buying "house-porn", as John calls it, since I was 20, I am fascinated by how all this works. Colin came with a boot full of props, just in case I had no vases. Luckily I have plenty. There were lights and tripods and big lenses and I'm kicking myself for not taking some photos while it was all happening. I spent an hour on the phone to Annabelle who asked me all about our house, then she wrote the article as though I'd written it. About a week later the copy and photos were emailed to me so I could check I was happy with it all, and then it went off to the magazine. I didn't get paid. I didn't ask about money and I didn't do it for money. I agreed as I thought is would be a lot of fun, which is was, and an experience that I wasn't likely to ever have again.

I always thought houses that appeared in magazines had to have something that we didn't have, like huge budgets, fabulous locations, and owners who were always architects, bankers or interior designers. I went off a lot of interiors magazines a while ago as they felt too aspirational to me, just too many industrial apartments, vast London townhouses, and ancient farmhouses with acres of land. Where are all the houses that normal people live in, I wondered. Apparently 32% of Brits live in a semi-detached house. How do all these people decorate their homes, that's what I always wanted to know. Well, I think Style At Home is very good at reflecting a more...achievable style of interior design. The emphasis is on high street buys and make it yourself, and I like that very much.

I feel I should point out now that we've had a broken toilet sitting in our drive for the past ten days. The plumber is supposed to have taken it away after replacing the one in the downstairs loo, but he keeps forgetting. If it stays there much longer I'll have to plant a geranium in it.