Central heating...or not

It's ironic the way things happen in life. We have lived in this house for two and a half years and have an arrangement with an oil supply company that means they top up the oil tank to supply the boiler with oil proactively. We don't contact them, their computer estimates when we need it and they deliver accordingly. Or not. Unfortunately their computer miscalculated and the oil has run out or very nearly done so. Despite endeavouring to circumnavigate the automated system we have had some difficulty organising a reactive delivery.

We discovered the oil was extremely low at the weekend. These things always happen at the weekend. My son was given the task of working out the volume of the full segment of the predominantly empty, cylinder-shaped tank (glad it wasn't me that got that task - mathematics is not my strong point) and how many days heating we had left. He estimated three or four. That was Saturday. No oil is now visible in the gauge at all. I ring the oil company (again) to investigate and inquire anxiously what will happen if the tank runs completely dry. The answer is one that chills the blood more quickly than the prospect of no central heating. Worse than Ronald Reagan's "We're from the government and we're here to help" which he deemed the nine scariest words in the English language. "If that happens," the cheery lady on the end of the phone chirps, "You'll need an engineer to come out and restart the boiler."

A heating engineer. In a very cold week in January. One of those "am" or "pm" phantoms that usually have to be chased a number of times prior to an authenticated sighting. OK. I decide to turn off the heating entirely. Today is cold. In fact the weather forecast tells me it is the coldest week of the winter so far. I don't need the weather forecast to tell me that actually. Look at what was on my windscreen this morning.

But hey! man (or woman) does not live by central heating alone and one can be too dependent on these gizmos.

So in the absence of central heating,

1 I have laid the open fire in the sitting room that normally doesn't get lit during the week and will be working in there for a change once the sun goes down and the temperature drops. It will be rather nice. When H gets back from school he can do his prep in there too which will be much more companionable than him sitting on his own at his desk upstairs and me in my study on my own downstairs.

2 The oven is working fine - it's electric - (today I am quite grateful that I don't have an oil-fired Aga) so I have made flapjack to accompany steaming cups of tea during the afternoon and there is an enormous chicken casserole in there as I write to provide internal central heating this evening. I love flapjack and don't need any excuse to make it but today I feel it is morally justified.

3 Mrs Mudd's jumper has emerged from my jumper chest. Mrs Mudd's jumper is venerable - at least 15 years old. He is made from thick Swaledale wool and is extremely warm. He is known as "Mrs Mudd's jumper" because when I bought him from a little shop in Muker in Swaledale, he bore a label saying "Made by Mrs Mudd."I don't know who Mrs Mudd is but her knitting is the business and I bless her every time it's seriously cold and I wear her handiwork. Today it is seriously cold. Encased in Mrs Mudd's jumper, I am, however, seriously warm.

4 I have discovered that I can get by without central heating (for a while, at least).

Our grandparents got by perfectly well without central heating. It may not always have been fun but people managed. Winter was cold and you wrapped up. You didn't get chilled by doing silly things like going out with wet hair or wandering around in thin shirts in January. You cooked and ate food that warmed you from the inside. You gathered around the open fire or the stove companionably and sociably. Perhaps I am discovering that I can not just "get by" without central heating but my day is better and and has a warmer glow than if the radiators were like furnaces.

I notice all these photos share a colour palette of mostly winter whites and neutrals - not intentional - just how they came out. Winter serendipity! 

I hope your day has had a warm glow in it too, even if, like me, you have no heating!

Making Winter - Sticky Toffee Puddings

This is my recipe for Sticky Toffee Puddings and is  a contribution to Silverpebble's wonderful Making Winter project. It's based on Delia Smith's version in her original "Christmas" book. Here is my adaptation. I hope you enjoy it! I defy anyone to feel filled with winter blues while (or after) eating one!

What you need for 8 little puddings:


For the puddings:

3oz unsalted butter

5oz soft brown light muscovado sugar

2 large eggs

6 oz self-raising flour

6 oz pitted Medjool dates chopped

6 fl oz boiling water

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the sauce:

6 oz soft brown light muscovado sugar

4 oz unsalted butter

a large (300 ml) carton of single cream

What you do:

Firstly measure out the butter and sugar for the puddings into a large bowl and leave on one side until the butter is at room temperature. You can weigh out the butter and sugar for the sauce at the same time and put them in a saucepan. Get the eggs out of the fridge, if that's where they live - they too need to be at room temperature. Do not omit this stage of the preparations - the temperature of the ingredients is critical to success (and your own sanity)!

Some time later, when you are ready to make the puddings, preheat the oven to 180 C (170 C if using a fan oven).

Pour 6 fl oz boiling water over the chopped dates in a small bowl. Add the vanilla extract (make sure it's the real McCoy that comes in those rather expensive, dark brown bottles) and the bicarbonate of soda. The mixture will look like this.

Cream the butter and sugar for the puddings until pale and fluffy, with an electric whisk, if you have one. You can do it by hand with a wooden spoon but I am lazy and use the electric option. Even so, it takes a bit of time to get the correct pale and fluffy texture. Persevere, it will happen! You may need to bash down the odd lump of brown sugar with the end of your (stationary!) whisk or your wooden spoon as you get going.

Break in the eggs and whisk them into the mixture.

Now whisk in the flour. Recipes often say fold in the flour at this stage but I just whisk it in with my trusty electric whisk. The mixture will now look like this. You can do all this in the food processor, if you prefer, but I think you get better results with the whisk method and there's less washing up.

Tip in the date mixture.

 Combine well. What you now have is this.

You are now ready to cook the puddings. I use individual aluminium pudding basins but you can use any small oven-proof containers, such as little porcelain or glass ramekins. You need 8 containers and you need to do something to help the little puddings unmould nicely, when they are cooked. I used to grease the basins and cut small discs of baking parchment to go in the bases, but more recently I have discovered a magical non-stick baking spray, which works, well, like magic!

I think the spray is a combination of a fine oil and an emulsifier such as lecithin. It looks a bit freaky when it comes out of the can - a bit reminiscent of that expanding insulating foam that builders use but get past this; it works like a dream and I won't be  returning to the greasing and paper disc method. You can get Bake Easy spray from here and other specialist baking suppliers. Anyway, prepare your tins or ramekins according to your chosen method.

Spoon the mixture into the tins.

Place them on a baking sheet and bake for about 20 - 25 minutes at 180 C (or 170 C if your oven is hot like mine). They rise most satisfactorily. When they are a beautiful golden brown and just firm to the touch. remove from the oven and allow to cool. You can do all this way in advance, if that suits you.

For the sauce, you just pour the carton of single cream, yes, all of it!, into the saucepan that contains the butter and sugar you have already measured out and heat gently.

 The dissolving brown sugar, butter and cream marble beautifully.

What you end up with, once everything has melted and dissolved, is this.

You can serve the puddings and sauce straightaway or reheat both. The puddings take about 10 mins in a warm oven and just reheat the sauce gently on the hob.

I like to serve each pudding veiled with some of the tawny, translucent sauce poured over the top and with the rest of the sauce separately in a jug, for people to add more if they want.

They are unashamedly sweet and indulgent and the quantity of sauce is wonderfully generous. If your experience of sponge puddings is dry and uninteresting, try these! They are light and moist and can give far more sophisticated desserts a real run for their money. I love them and they never fail to cheer me and mine on a dull winter's day.

Winter sunshine 2

Ok here is Winter sunshine 2, the sort you can eat, and today the sun is not shining so this might help to fill the gap. There are various recipes for similar risottos around but this is my own Butternut Squash Risotto and is both easy to make and cheap. More importantly it's soul-cheering in colour and taste - comfort food at its best. It is also self-contained so you don't need to accompany it with anything other than a glass of wine perhaps.

I have costed this out using Waitrose's prices and it works out at about £1.55 per head. I used parsley from the garden which was free. If you need to buy parsley, it will be more like £1.75. Either way it's not going to break the bank and if you are a canny shopper you could probably do it for even less. If you are a canny gardener and grow your own squash that would be better and cheaper still!

What you need for 4 people:


1 large butternut squash - this one is called a Coquina squash - it was on special offer at Waitrose but any decent sized butternut squash will do

1 tbsp olive oil - I use a thick green extra-virgin olive oil in all my cooking but any olive oil is fine

300g risotto rice - any kind - Carnaroli, Arborio, Vialone but it must be proper risotto rice or you will end up with mush

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 l vegetable stock - I use the bouillon powder you can see in the photo - 4 tsps: 1 l boiling water. If I have an open bottle of white wine to hand I might use a glassful of wine with the boiling water to make up the litre of liquid required

black pepper - freshly ground from a pepper grinder

about 40 g grated Parmesan cheese - I do buy this pre-grated but get a good brand with a foreseeable use-by date on it not that dry stuff that looks like sawdust

a decent handful of fresh parsley chopped

What you do:

The first thing is to split the butternut squash in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.

Put the split halves in a roasting tin and roast in a hot oven for about an hour. I do it at 190 C in a fan oven which cooks quite hot. If your oven is less fierce you might want to crank the heat up to 200 C and do a bit longer.

When it comes out it should look like this.

Leave it to cool. When it's cool enough to handle without scalding yourself (!), remove the skin and put the beautifully soft, deep orange flesh into a bowl and mash with a fork until  you have a puree consistency like this.

I often do this bit in advance earlier in the day or even the day before. (Most of my cooking is done in broken down stages as I find it easier to fit it into my schedule like that.) You can also cook the squash way ahead and prepare to the puree stage and freeze in a freezer bag or plastic box. Defrost well before proceeding with the risotto though if you do this.

When you come to make the risotto itself, allow about 20 minutes preparation time.

Put the olive oil into a heavy flameproof casserole and cook the onion gently until softened.

Add the rice and stir into the fragrant oniony oil until the grains begin to go translucent. Keep stirring or the rice will stick.

Now add your stock a bit at a time. Purists say it should be a ladleful at a time but I add it in fewer instalments - probably about 250 ml at a time but it's not an exact science. Stir each instalment of stock into the rice until it is more or less absorbed before adding the next lot.

Season with a good grinding of black pepper. I don't add extra salt to my cooking but if you like to add salt, add it to the onions when you are softening them - it helps to bring out the juices.

Once all the stock is in and well on the way to being absorbed by the now fluffy grains of rice stir in the squash puree. Keep stirring gently.

Add about 4 tbsps of Parmesan cheese and stir in.

Sprinkle with the chopped parsley and ladle into warmed soup bowls with extra Parmesan and parsley to spoon over the top.

Enjoy! Winter sunshine in a bowl!

Winter sunshine 1

The sun came out properly today for the first time in a while. I love the impact of a bright winter sun. It's still cold but buoyant somehow instead of bleak.

Both these photographs were taken at the end of the afternoon which is heartening when you think a month ago it would already have been dark.

Sunshine came through the letterbox today too in the form of this:

.... all the way from Freeport, Illinois!

The contents are sunshine that you can wear every day in your hair (even when the sun is not out) made by the very talented Pam of myfusedglass. Have a look in her beautiful Etsy shop for all the beautiful light-filled things she makes. If you like dichroic glass as much as I do, you will be in seventh heaven. Anyway here is what was in my parcel:

There are three hair-slides, two were intended as presents but can I bear to give them away?! I must also confess to having purchased one or two others and not that long ago!

You can see them nestling in the box with two of the new ones. Aren't they just so beautiful? I had a dichroic glass hair-slide some years ago but it got dropped on a tiled floor and they don't bounce! Pam markets them as "jewellery for the hair" and that is exactly what they are. They aren't cheap as chips but thy aren't extortionate either bearing in mind each one is handmade and you could easily spend what three of them cost on a decent haircut / highlights. I would rather have these any day.

Hope your day has had some sunshine too!

This post is called Winter Sunshine 1 because tomorrow, if I have time, should see Winter Sunshine 2 - sunshine you can eat this time!

Japanese flower scarf and other things inspired by Lucy of Attic24

I know this is only one version of quite a number of these Japanese flower scarves out there but I am absurdly proud of this.

I was taught the basics of crochet when I was about 6 or 7 by my aunt. It all lay  dormant for almost 40 years and then I found Lucy's wonderful attic24 site almost exactly a year ago and everything changed! The singing colours and vivid objects of brightness she conjures up just compelled me to have a go myself.

My first attempts were pretty woeful. It took me a while initially to work out how to turn at the end of a row for a start, ( I know, I know - basicsville!) so the very first sample I made, which, as my son keeps reminding me, I should have kept to remind myself how I began, was an ever-shrinking cone-shaped, sorry-for-itself panel that did not augur well for producing anything either useful or pretty.

Practice makes perfect however, well, not perfect actually, but not bad, and one thing led to another. Having mastered the row-turning, Lucy's jar jackets were a perfect beginner's project and suddenly I was on a roll.

A vintage stripe blanket of vast proportions and for which I completely underestimated the amount of yarn required followed. (The whole business of yarn acquisition has been a saga punctuated by various dramas over the last year and resulted in a secret shopping habit across the pond here though I have now discovered a more budget-friendly option that does not require hedge fund management prior to purchase, in my local yarn store in Abingdon) ....

A ripple baby blanket....

A tea cosy covered in roses from Nicky Trench's book "Cute and Easy Crochet" and some fingerless gloves for Christmas presents.....

Some birds - attic24 again - sorry, Lucy, I'm an addict! to hang from covered hangers also for Christmas presents....

And in the last month this Japanese flower scarf....

I had some difficulty locating instructions to make this. My crocheting skills are not quite experienced enough to work it out just from pictures. But a bit of hunting around on the internet resulted in a creative and gifted Dutch lady's blog here which, miracle of miracles, had step by step instructions! I don't know whether Revlie's Japanese flowers are exactly the same as Lucy's but they look close.

I started off in a fit of gung-ho enthusiasm without knowing how to join the flowers together. That vital step had to wait until an exotic parcel arrived from Japan with the original pattern book. No, I don't read Japanese but Lucy's blog assured me that the graphic diagrams could be followed regardless. She was right. The only snag was that my flowers all had 16 petals instead of the required 12. I had been wondering why they seemed so crinkly and reluctant to lie flat! Note to self: next time read Revlie's pattern instructions more clearly and don't be so gung-ho.

Having undone the outer 2 rows of all 20 of my already completed flowers : (
and recrocheted them correctly with 12 not 16 petals we were in business again and here is the finished objet.

Lucy, I hope if you see this you will feel chuffed at the creative inspiration you sparked! You should do!

The only question remains, what next? Possibly Lucy's tin covers. Tuna anyone? The tins we seem to get through most of are 14oz tins of tomatoes which are no good for this project.

I have been known to build what we eat around creative requirements before. My son had a mosaic making project one school holiday which used coloured cardboard from food packaging to make the tiles. Great idea and green too but unfortunately certain colours were missing from the palette provided by our normal shopping trolley. Some peculiar meals were eaten to provide vital shades of turquoise, purple and orange! I also confess to buying those neat little tubs of Gentleman's Relish which no one in the household can stand in order to release the containers for beads, sequins etc and to mix paint in!

Anyway a big thank you to Lucy and her colourful inspiration and to anyone toying with the idea of taking up a hook for the first time or after a long gap, don't hesitate! - it's brilliant fun and easy to pick up and put down - handy if one needs to squeeze it into odd corners of the day - and best of all, if you go wrong, like I do frequently, it's easy to undo and pick up where you need to which I always found absolutely impossible with knitting.

January rain....

I don't know what it is about rain in January but somehow it's British weather at its bleakest. I took these photos from the top of a Park and Ride bus on the way into Oxford this morning. The view was not exactly promising but there is a strange, bleak beauty in the combination of rain, traffic and condensation.

The weather has been like this most of the day but just to counter the wintry grey here are some irrepressible spots of colour to cheer the soul (not from the Park and Ride bus this time!)

Chocolate hearts in Whittards...

A window display in the Covered Market with good advice for a January day...

Flowers that say "Spring is coming!" in The Garden in the Covered Market...

Tulips that say the same...

English purple sprouting broccoli - it may be January but not everything is grey...
 ... even in England!

And for a soundscape ...