Introducing...

First up- Scarlett Oak Equestrian. My lovely riding school is finally officially open today. I was very excited to go there today for my lesson. My darling big boy Sam was very pleased to see me. He had a lovely warm, happy expression. I am allowed to groom him and get his gear out and tack him up by myself. After our lesson I untack him and wash him down, then get him ready to go back to his paddock. My instructor, Celine, knows how much I love him, and she lets me pretend he's mine and spoil him. I gave him a lovely massaging rub to get some more of his winter coat out, as he is shedding like mad. He was almost groaning with pleasure. Today most of the horses were down in the yards, so I enjoyed chatting to them all. Tonto was a wee monster and didn't want to be caught and brought down to the yards. He is a little skewbald (brown and white patchy) Shetland pony. Celine and her two staff had been trying to catch him for 1/2 an hour when I got there. I gave them a hand, and a good idea, and he was soon in custody, with a belligerent expression on his face.

Today I worked on a dressage move called "shoulder in" which is a tricky business. Not as tricky as getting cantering right. I'm learning some challenging moves as Sam is quite a talented dressage boy, even though he isn't what is called a "push button horse." That means you have to actually ride him properly and intelligently to get the best out of him, which makes him great to learn on. I get all excited when we do clever things. I think Celine is a real inspiration because she has achieved so much so far. I really hope Scarlett Oak Equestrian is a huge success, and that I get to be a part of that with my darling Sam.

For my second introduction of the day, please meet Mrs. S.D. Sherriff. I've decided to experiment with a bit of old fashioned cookery and thought that Mrs. Sherriff would be a trusty guide. After all, her qualifications and experience (the women's division of the Federated Farmers, no less) speak for themselves.

This is her cookbook. I think it was among either Grandma or Aunt Beth's belongings. Who wouldn't be impressed by that collection of colourful food items on the cover? This wee gem comes with a first aid guide, complete with a paragraph on rescue breathing, and advice on how to deal with a black eye (cold compress or ice) and lightning strike (dash cold water over victim). On the recipe front, there are many classics, perfect for experimenting with. There are a few I wouldn't touch with a lunging whip- liver loaf, brain fritters, mutton broth and kidney soup.

Today I decided some cheesy, herby scones might be yummy pre and post horse riding. Mrs. Sherriff has a simple cheese scone recipe, and I have a herb garden and some parmesan and vintage cheddar cheese.

I picked some Italian flat leafed parsley, red spring onion leaves, thyme, and a tiny amount of sage, marjoram and rosemary. Plus a clove of garlic.

I cup of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder sifted with 1/4 teaspoon salt.

I rubbed in a big tablespoon (serving spoon sized) of butter.

Butter rubbed in.

In went the herbs, some cheese and pepper. Mrs. Sherriff said 1/4 cup of grated cheese. I took a few liberties with her instructions at this point.

I poured in enough milk to make a soft dough.

Then I lightly kneaded and patted the dough out, and cut it. The scones went on a floured tray and into a "hot" oven.

Yum. Out they came after about 13 minutes. I think 10 would have been enough.

Hot scones with butter. The perfect brunch. Thank you Mrs. Sherriff. I wonder what we shall do together next time?

My darling Johnny had an awful headache today. He was seeing lights and felt sick. A migraine, I think. Poor sweetie had to spend most of the day in bed. I think he has been exposed to too much Rugby World Cup and needs to lay off watching it. Since last night was the opening ceremony and we've got about 7 weeks to go, it is going to be hard for him to take my advice. I find it terribly traumatic watching the games because I find them very dull, but want our team to win so badly that I get stressed when they don't. I've got the perfect solution- crafting!

Tomorrow I hope to get outside for some close inspection of my daffodils, and to plant the first tomatoes and cucumbers in my greenhouse. I love weekends so much!

Shopping

Today Miss Dog and I decided to start the day with a lovely walk. She has been in disgrace since having one of her very rare (very enormous) poo accidents in the garage on Thursday night. Johnny had tidied up all of his tools and made the garage look lovely, and Miss Dog soiled it in the most hideous manner possible. He wasn't pleased. She is usually so good, and woofs only occasionally when she is desperate for the loo. On our walk today we met a gentleman chocolate lab who was pleased to make our acquaintance. His father said he was eight, and Miss Dog is too. It was amazing comparing the two of them because Mr Choccy looked like a well-worn teddy, and Miss Dog looks so fresh and young. She is such a delight.

Another delight in my day was a visit to Stitch over on Colombo Street. I arrived there after rather a fraught trip getting there due to hoards of skinny creatures pedaling madly around the streets of Cashmere (elite cycle racing nationals). I was anxious not to kill anyone - spectator or competitor- and the vast quantities of stewards randomly flailing signs at every corner didn't exactly help.

Gosh I love visiting Stitch! I'm working on developing my passions in life (more about that another day), and I figure the fact that I get so excited by beautiful bolts of fabric that I forget to breathe means that working with fabric must be one of my passions. I had so much fun choosing the right fabrics with the lovely Fenella. And it turns out there is the perfect class starting next week. I've been wondering how I can learn some more quilting skills as I am a "stitch in the ditch" girl. The class is a "quilt as you go" class so each week for four weeks we work on new quilting skills. Perfect.

Ignore the need for a good iron. It was flat when I put it together. Here is the gorgeous stripe which I am using as a wee sash and the binding on my Happy Holidays quilt.

And here is the truly fabulous fabric I chose for the outer sash.

Makes my heart sing! That's how I know I've made a choice I'll be happy with. It only takes one fabric in a project that I'm not happy with and I won't be able to look past the problem. That's why Miss Dog has an unfinished quilt with no binding. One of the fabrics does not make me happy.

After running the gauntlet of the cyclists again on the way home (they were everywhere), I visited the supermarket and decided Johnny would make his ravioli again.

Rolling out the dough.

Popping the filling on.

Funny little parcels. Yum.

No gardening today. Must do better tomorrow.

Holiday Heaven

Here I am making my second attempt to blog today, after the shift key got stuck down, which, according to the ever-patient Mr B, was the reason why the computer suddenly flicked through pages and lost my work. Grrrr. We couldn't find the draft anywhere, even though it said it autosaves. Anyway, onto less mundane matters. Here is the giant bite I took out of Dirt Mountain today. That is six wheelbarrows worth of soil extracted for my Digging for Victory campaign.


And here are the very appreciative baby leeks relaxing before starting to grow VERY FAST so I can eat them up in leek and potato soup, and other newly discovered leeky concoctions. These little treasures were leftovers from Mrs CT's own vege growing crusade. Check out her Canterbury Tales blog from my list.


These other beauties are today's Christmas voucher purchases. Mr Cucumber is my first ever cuke and I'm hoping I'm not too late getting him in. He cost the same as a supermarket cucumber, so even if he produces 2 fruit I'm in profit. I love cucumber in vinegar. Mad on it. Also featuring here are spinach, lettuce mixes and tomato food.


Take a look at this divine rose, a housewarming gift. It is Charles Austin. I had him in my first garden. He has a tendency to grow very tall and leggy, so I will have to exercise judicious pruning to keep him civilised. Mr B's dad was a fantastic rose pruner. He had his roses in perfect order year round.


Can you believe I actually got on the phone and invited people around for tea last night. They weren't exactly a scary bunch, just Mr and Mrs CT and Mr and Mrs Ferg. I put my new mixer to good use (thanks Nanny!XXX).


Can you guess what I'm making. Here's a closer look.


It could go two ways. But here's another clue.


Yum! Meringues. Much better than my last lot, which turned out like a bunch of saggy bums. Wrinkled and flacid. Here was another success of the evening. Even though I made enough grated carrot to serve a herd of hungry racehorses.


This was my twist on Jamie Oliver's carrot salad. It has three carrots, finely sliced mint and parsley, bottled red pepper (I'd use a chargrilled one if I had a freshy), sundried tomato and toasted sesame seeds. Onto this I put a lemon vinagrette made with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic smoked salt and pepper. Sorry Mrs CT, amounts are totally random depending on what you've got, but next time I would do less carrot and throw in more herbs.

Aren't these inspiring. Free range lemons. I picked these from the cottage garden on Mum and Dad's farm. They are lovely and juicy. I was given a lisbon lemon for Christmas (thanks Fisherman Jim). I'm going to put it in the corner where it can grow huge and I can easily cover it to protect it from frosts. I must find out if it is especially susceptable to frosts.


Finally, a look at my pantry door, with the very special present I got from Mrs So Tread Softly. I guess I'm going to have to take the Christmas treasures down sometime soon. Sigh...

Sharing

This is a mangosteen. Nothing to do with a mango, this little fellow was available at a vaguely affordable price (probably due to the age of the beast), so I decided to take one home to try. I sliced it open to see what was inside, and here is the result:

Such a neat little parcel of white, juicy flesh. Very delicious too. Sweet and tasty, but not like any other fruit I've had. Each little segment has a black seed inside. I will be eating more in the future, if I ever come across an affordable one again. Well worth a try.

Here is the corner of our little house where one of the world's worst showers lurked. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Mr B and Dad are busy working on installing a nice new one.


Here is evidence that making biscuits in a big hurry does not always pay off. These were from NZ House and Garden and are supposed to be neat little swirls of chocolate and honey flavoured biscuit. They are not only aesthetically a disgrace, they are an unpleasing texture - soft rather than crisp and snappy, and bland in flavour. I can blame the recipe for some of the misfortune, but must take the blame entirely for their appearance. Sadly, due to the flavour, there won't be another opportunity for me to take the required hour or two (rather than a messy and frantic 15 minutes) to recreate to delightful, perfectly formed chocolate and vanilla tinted swirls that graced the hallowed pages of NZ House and Garden.

Saturday

Mountain climbing on my new house!

New coat looking fabulous! Weightwatchers starts again tonight. Good hair though.

New gumboots. These are really cute. I got them at The Warehouse, which I must say is up marketing itself quite successfully. My old ones are all split (plus I stood in a dog mine and haven't scrubbed them yet). These are for visiting the building site as it is rather muddy.

Tonight is the pudding-off challenge at Mrs CT's house. I have made a pavlova from the Weightwatchers cookbook. It has a meringue pavlova (rather than the recipe I usually use which has items in addition to the meringue egg white and sugar). Mum will know what I mean. Plus it has a ricotta and yoghurt whipped up topping (with icing sugar to sweeten), then it is topped with fruit. In my case boysenberries. Apparently we are having pizza, but because we are having puddings I am going to make myself a big salad to eat instead. See, told you I'm back on the Weightwatchers. Not going to the meetings though. Too many miserable looking plump people paying over cash to stand on scales and buy the overpriced, underflavoured Weightwatcher's food. My jeans are digging into my tummy and I've decided to make a stand. So Taming the Chocolate Baby will explore my lower calorie cooking experiments. Shame I'm so greedy. I'll set myself some goals tomorrow, and any fatties who want to join me confessing their sins and offering support will be most welcome.

The Good Life

I've had a very busy morning doing housework and cooking. I had a heap of tomatoes that Jim left here that needed eating up so I made a brew of tomato soup. That is an incredibly simple recipe. Lots of tomatoes roughly chopped added to finely diced onion with salt, pepper and herbs. This is cooked for ages then rubbed through a sieve to extract the skins and seeds. It is even yummer with garlic but I had used it all. It would make a lovely pasta sauce too, but I'd probably skin the tomatoes before cooking them down so I didn't need to rub the pulp through the sieve. I love the idea of being able to grow lots of my own veges and cook up pure, healthy concoctions out of them. Along with this goes making my own bread. Today I made a loaf of lightly herbed bread, and it was fantastic with the soup. The trouble with homemade bread is that we can never resist gorging ourselves on the loaf while it is still warm. My tummy is like a barrel! Sorry, I can't give you the exact recipe as I make it rather randomly. I always use dried yeast (never surebake), warm water and honey or sugar. Then I add olive oil, salt, seasonings and high grade flour. The amount of flour depends on how much water I happen to use.

These are my Laura Ashley strawberry cups. They are perfect for soup. I had to go to Australia to buy them. Actually, come to think of it, I would love to have some Laura Ashley fabrics in my new house. I will have to investigate. I am off to de-clutter the living room. Mr B has mowing and hacking to do in the garden. I have a cunning plan for a navy crocheted scarf that I might tackle after tea. Plus I've got to wrangle the bias binding for the NZ quilt. School tomorrow. Three weeks of term to go! XXX