River Cottage

Last night I cooked the second batch of mince pies, the first lot having mysteriosly dissapeared. Think husband and son are responsible for most of that. Husband cooked jacket potatoes, tinned peas and faggots in the oven while I was doing the mince pies. I make mine very plain; ordinary shortcrust pastry with a filling of bought mincemeat, and they are quite small, but the combination is good and not as oversweet as most you find.

Bacon and Egg pies - the smaller one is no longer with us ...

They look good Ozzi. I hope you enjoyed the one you ate.

One of our customers has ordered a bag of charcoal, and I asked if they were going to use it themselves or give it as a present, as we have one damaged bag I was willing to sell cheap. They are going to have a barbecue on Chrismas Day, and it looks like being a white Christmas this year. I asked for photos.

Only the English would have a barbecue in the snow .... It might actually be a lot of fun!

If people are getting charcoal as a present at Christmas, does that mean they have been very naughty all year?

OOoohhhh I love bacon and egg pies I thought it was a Northern thing.. Southerners don't seem to have heard of it when I have mentioned it in the past... They look terrific ozzi ((droooling)) puff or flaky pastry too..more droooooooling..

We will be having left over S&K pudding and chips and peas for dinner tonight followed by yoghurt and fruit. 

I made up some pickles today - beetroot pickles and orange pickles - not quite sure what you would use orange pickles for, but it sounded interesting and was on the same page as the beetroot recipe, so I did both. My entire crop of beetroot - which I had anticipated being way more than I could possible use, was reduced to four jars of pickles ... sad really. And six oranges made two jars, so after all that effort I feel somehow unrewarded ... At least, having strained the pickling juice through a sheet of calico I now have a nice piece of pink fabric, with some red areas that have bled out into the pink which will be nice on a patchwork something or other ...

The colour will not stay Ozzi. Using alum as a mordant beetroot turns gold coloured, but think it will wash out more or less from cloth that is not mordanted and at the very least will fade to gold.

Your orange pickle sounds interesting. It might be rather nice with cheese, duck, or some other fairly fatty meat.

Having a barbecue in the snow is a bit eccentric, even for England. We delivered it with a log load and some kindling yesterday. Have asked for pictures as it seems rather mad to us too. As far as I know nobody has bought charcoal for a Christmas present, but it is something different. We did get an enquiry for a log load to be delivered as a present, but unfortunately we could not oblige as we are fully booked for log loads until Christmas and hoping we will be able to keep going with the weather. We did deliver one once and added a bit of holly and a Christmas card to go with it.

Well, that's annoying - it looks rather pretty. I had hoped that all the vinegar in the mix might fix it for me. Oh well, live and learn.

As for snowy barbecues, I have attended the odd one or two, but we try to have a roof over our heads when we do it ... or at least, nearby ...

Potty, most of my English forebears are from up north so perhaps that is where the habit came from ...