Not foraging season, yet.

I went for a somewhat optimistic little bimble to an area on campus that I know grows wild garlic in abundance during my lunch break today.
Despite myself, the Chap and his brother managing to find some Navelwort to nibble last weekend, and spying these fungi on a tree, there was no sign as yet of the Ramsons.

I didn't really expect there to be, but as it's the first sunny day for a while after all these storms, I fancied a breath of fresh air and a little vitamin D.
Sometimes I forget just how lovely the Campus is here; I really should make more of an effort to have a ramble around in my lunchtimes.

 I did come across this fungus; given it's somewhat forbidding purple hue I left it where it was though!

  Anyone know what it is?

First frost

First frost of this winter here today.  We're lucky down in the South West that we get a lot warmer climes most of the time than a lot of the rest of our wee island.  Today the river steamed gently in the morning sun on a truly beautiful morning as I wended my way to work.

The cold I can cope with but I do love it to be bright and sunny.  It's those grey dreary November days that get me down.  As I read recently 'November is like the Thursday of the year.'  And as the great Douglas Adams wrote in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays...'

Pics, seaside and graffiti

Once more there’s been a little while between my last post and this one.  Here in the UK it’s hot hot hot at present.  I'm sure you’ll be well aware of that though so there’s really no point me utilising extraneous words to portray the nastiness of an office that’s 27⁰ at 8.30am and has climbed to 29+⁰ by lunchtime, or the unpleasant feeling when you get up and know your skirt has stuck to the backs of your legs in some sort of nasty take on the embarrassing tucking it into your knickers theme, or the constant watering needed of any plant in a pot or, or or…&c &c.

 In fact I like watering the plants as it enforces a little reflective time and the cool water in the warm evening is very pleasant when accidentally spilt on your feet.  J

Anyway, no particular thing to post but thought I’d share a few pics taken recently of things I found interesting.  Excuse the quality of some; they came from my (very old) 2mp phone.

Shortly after the last post I saw the cygnets out of the water, grazing up on the banks.  Here they are looking lovely.  They’re a fair bit bigger than this now!

Speaking about the plants (I was you know – do try and pay attention…) you can see our flourishing fig here, this was just a 3” high twig when we got this from the Eden project 2 years ago.  Not doing too badly huh?  You can see one of the chillies in the window behind.  We have 3 others in the plastic plant house thing out the back having cheated and got 4 plants from the food fest in April as we (I) were a bit late with the seed planting this year.  All this hot weather is doing them wonders too.

As the Chap has been working continuously it seems like – or all days, every evening and mostly all weekends, my friend took pity on me last Saturday and invited me along to the beach with her, her husband, his sister and her husband and their 2 kids.  We took the train to Teignmouth – a great piece of line that runs right along the sea, then the little ferry boat across the estuary to Shaldon on the opposite side.  I had a lovely paddle – here’s your proof!  This is looking back over to the ‘back beach’ at Teignmouth, with the harbour entrance on the right.  As previously mentioned, apols for the quality but I took this on my phone to send it to the Chap.  Show him what he was missing!  (Was that mean?)

Over the last few months I've noticed a rash of graffiti around that all seems to be done by the same hand.  Now I'm not averse to writings that make you pause for thought or well executed street art but this person is starting to annoy me.  You see their idealistic anarchy 'A' symbols all over the place including where it really does detract from the environs.  And I'm sorry my child, but anarchy would never work as unfortunately someone has to make sure the bins are emptied and the water keeps running &c.  

Anyway - see what you think of this little lot.  I'm not entirely sure what Brian Eno has to do with anything though...  :-)

First forage of the year

 As the sun made a rare appearance today the Chap and I went for little bimble along the river before heading for a lovely roast for National Potato Day.  (Really.)
I wanted to take a certain route to see if there was any sign of the wild garlic yet and we were super pleased to spot some sprouting through the mud in our favourite spot.  Due to all the rain and melted snow the river's rather higher than is the norm so the most advanced plants were on the sunny bank that was also most nearly flooded - here's yours truly harvesting, pretty much 'in' the river!  Nearer the camera and behind me you can see the thin sprouts where the plants in a little more shade are still just pushing through the earth.

As we didn't get too much garlic (it's still early in the year after all) I also picked a handful of nettle tops and I'll pop them all in a soup/stew with some beans, veg and whatever comes to hand later. 

Very pleasing to know that even in January we can get some free tasty food with the minimum of effort walking and rummaging in the undergrowth.  It was a thoroughly pleasurable amble in the sun so I wouldn't really count it as effort myself.  Also nice to see that it looks like a healthy year for the wild garlic as we want to make masses more pesto from it this year.  Top stuff - we ran out far too fast last year! 

We finished the afternoon by going for the aforementioned roast at The Mill on The Exe, a riverside pub near us where they have the distinct advantage of doing a veggie option on the carvery.  Being right on the river they do have somewhat tenuous boundaries to their garden area!

& the storms continue unabated...

Ok, ok, that isn't technically correct as we did have a day off (mostly) from the rain on Friday.  The river fell so you could nigh on see the paths, if not actually pass along them without dipping your toes in but yesterday was a return to form with heavy rains battering us along with some high winds and up went the water again.  Here's a daytime shot from about the same viewpoint as the night shot in the last post. 

The water's actually slightly higher this time. 

Anyone for a nice relaxing bike ride on a Sunday?  No??!  (Look at the size of that log!  If only we had a wood burner.  I'd be out after every flood scavenging the river banks for free fuel.)
'Welcome to soggy Exeter' that should perhaps read. 
I think this little chap is wondering where his home's gone.  Along with a lot of unfortunate people in these floods.  Sadly a woman also lost her life locally when a tree fell which in turn took a wall down on top of where she was living in a tent.  Another example that if we as a society could take better care of all members rather than worrying about sh-t like what we'll be sitting on come crapmas day we'd perhaps all be a little bit richer human beings.  (What is it with this pressure of supposedly needing a new sofa for chrimble?  Will my old one spontaneously give up the ghost in shame at it's non-newness?  I somehow doubt it - it's managed to tough it out each year so far.  Piss off ad-men.)
I didn't intend this to be a ranty post so excuse the slight tangent; though I am asking no excuses at all for the content.
Anyway - a whistle round blog-land this morning has appraised me of 2 things.  Firstly, in a slightly suspicious coincidental way Blogger has apparently told several of the blogs I perused that they've run out of space and would they like to pay for the privilege of uploading photos?  It just gave me this message too.  Now, I know that the finite space they give you will fill up but the fact that they've all gone at the same time makes me think it's a ploy.  Plus someone had put a comment somewhere saying it's Blogger wanting to shift us all to another provider or something.  :-(  Anyway, no, I do not want to pay, especially to an online company that can't tell I'm in the UK and would therefore use a corresponding unit of currency so I am using Flickr instead from now on and uploading from there.  Or at least I am if there are images in this post.  If it's a bit lacking on the image front then I evidently failed to get it to work!  Hmm - you seem to have to add it as html code otherwise if you use the 'share' to blogger option it makes it a new post.  Slightly more longwinded but I'll cope with it.

The second fact I quickly caught on to is that it's 'stir-up Sunday' - traditionally the day when chrimble puddings are made.  (Having just skim read the wiki article I've linked there it actually appears to be a religous thing that has become associated and overtaken by the pudding thing.  Shows how much of a heathen I am that I had no idea of that I guess!)  Now, being somewhat lackadaisical in some areas I have yet to make our chrimble cake (having been inspired to by both Being Penny Wise and Frugal Living UK's frugal based versions) so I figured that with a month to go perhaps I'd better worry about that first.  Although when I think about it I probably prefer a very small pud rather than cake.  Never made pud though and it strikes me as something one ought to have at least a little forward planning for so it shall have to wait for next year, or the year after, or...you get the picture.  I'm slightly alarmed by the reminder that both those blog authors soaked their fruit for a week - mine shall have overnight and be grateful for it I think. 

Given that I'm stealing some of the dying-from-man-flu (that I gave him) Chap's medicinal brandy to soak the fruit in, along with a mix of some in which he steeped spiced baked apple, a freebie single malt whisky and possibly some of this chrimble mead (though I'm not sure that at 13% it's up to the job.  Anyone?) I don't think I can really nick enough off him to last a full week! 

Anyway, in keeping with their Frugal theme but with a slightly different bent I decided to make my cake only utilising what is in the cupboards already.  IE no new purchases.  Hence the theft of the Chap's brandy and slightly idiosyncratic line up of ingredients / booze that will be utilised.  That's another post though - right now I really must get the fruit and brandy in the bowl before he finishes drinking it all.  If that comes to pass I'll have to sacrifice some of the sloe gin instead.....  Noooooooo.........  :-D

Let's hear it for Local! Devon Flats.

Devon Flats.  That's what these are.  I have to admit to never having heard of them until this time yesterday when I went in search of a simple and quick biscuit type recipe I could make some halloween biccies for work with.  They're very simple although my recipe differs from a purist one in that it uses double cream rather than the original clotted cream and has the addition of spices.  In these biscuits the cream takes the place of butter / other fat.  Anyway - here you are:
Halloween Devon Flats
8oz SR Flour
0.5tsp allspice / mixed spice
4oz Sugar
0.5tsp salt
1 egg - beaten
3.5 fl oz double cream (100ml if that's an easier measure)
Approx 1tbsp milk - plus extra for brushing
Vanilla sugar - optional

Put oven on to heat - the recipe I based these on said 190 which I reduced to 180 as mine's a fan oven but ended up back putting up to 190.  I think 200 would be better having scoped a few more recipes out now.  Greaseproof paper a couple of trays.  Again diff' recipes said you could grease them - I haven't tried it so can't vouch for any sticking / non-sticking using that method.   They didn't stick to plain greaseproof paper so I'm happy with that.
Sieve flour and spice into a bowl and mix sugar and salt through.
Stir in beaten egg and cream and enough of the tbsp milk to make a stiff dough.  All the recipes I saw said if it's sticky pop it in the fridge to firm up.  If like me you don't have time for this as you decided to do these at 7am before work rather than the night before like a sensible person then you can just add a wee bit more flour instead.
Roll out on a very well floured surface to just under 1cm thick.  Keep re-flouring both surface and rolling pin - these want to stick.
Cut into shapes of your choice, whack on the trays then brush with milk and sprinkle with vanilla sugar if liked.  You only need to leave a little space in between these as they spread but only a very little - they puff up more.  (Described as a cross between a cake and a biscuit.)
Stick 'em in the oven for 5-10 mins until golden-ish - mine looked quite pale but were cooked through.  May have had something to do with the temp' changes.
That's it - very easy and one of those recipes that can take endless variation.  Leave out the spice and use a tbsp of cocoa instead.  Or ground almonds.  Or - most things really.  Enjoy!  Oh - and I guess I shouldn't forget the obligatory WOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOooooooHHHHH!!

As this is an old local recipe I'm going to enter it into Chris's 'Bloggers around the World - Great Britain' challenge.