Breakfasts & feeding the monsters....

The past week has been a strange one....I've had to find a new rhythm to my days since I stopped supplying the Coffee Tree...and also something new to blog about here! Almost all of my day to day baking at the moment comprises trays and trays of brownies...and while these taste & look delicious, they're not the most interesting of subjects to photograph or to talk about!

So for the moment I'll head back into more personal food territory, and see where that takes me. I'm beginning with breakfast!
Paul is someone who really needs breakfast. By that I mean that he just doesn't have a good start to his day if he doesn't eat properly. I, on the other hand, have to force myself to eat anything - it just doesn't feel natural at all. Perhaps that's the legacy of such an early start to my working day - I'd just rather get up and get out and get going!
But there's no doubt that I feel better when I do have something...and so I'm trying to train myself to be better at cooking for both of us first thing. I try and vary things every day...and we both like different meals. Paul adores a grilled kipper (especially on Sunday mornings) with brown bread & butter...I love yoghurt, especially gooseberry or rhubarb. This morning he had no time to sit and eat so I got the frying pan out...

and cooked some dry-cured outdoor bred unsmoked back bacon (very important to get GOOD bacon from as happy-as-possible-in-the-circumstances pigs, I think) and made him a bacon sandwich to go...

He likes his sandwich on untoasted wholemeal bread, buttered on both sides, with the bacon cooked but NOT crispy! Very particular, my husband....
I had a bowl of porridge - my absolute favourite thing on a cold, dark November morning...

made with water, not milk...sprinkled with cinnamon, seasalt flakes and just a soupcon of real Canadian maple syrup. I'm quite particular myself, come to think of it! Absolutely delicious. I also have to have at least one cup of (real) coffee...in one of my favourite mugs...

See a pattern emerging there? There aren't many Mozart mugs, but between my Mum and I, I think we must have most of them. And it makes me so happy to drink my coffee from one...it doesn't feel right any other way. It's the little things like this that help to start my day in the right frame of mind, I've found!
Fridays at this time of year are also feeding time. For my Christmas cakes that is...
They are all baked and ready for the Christmas Farmer's Market and other orders...and sit, tightly wrapped in double layers of clingfilm and foil, at the back of a cool dark cupboard awaiting the time when they'll be dressed in their icing finery nearer to the Big Day! But for now, every Friday they are unwrapped and fed with either brandy or rum (according to the fruits they contain)

this keeps them beautifully moist and ensures that they taste gorgeous on the Christmas tea table. Of course, I do make some with no alcohol too - but these are the biggest sellers by far. They do have their personalities, it seems to me, as they sit and glower in their cupboard...the small and squat ones, the bigger taller ones....cakes are like my babies, as you can see!

I'm just eating a wonderful bowl of soup, made with the help of my youngest nephew William yesterday. Carrot, cumin & fresh pear. The pear was his idea - inspired, it is absolutely delicious. We cooks should listen to three year olds more often!

I'd love to know what your favourite breakfast is...leave me a comment and let me know? Thanks so much for reading and have a wonsderful weekend xoxo

Beautiful Soup!

The days are beginning to feel a little Autumnal now. Yesterday was beautifully hot, but there was a cool edge to the wind and the garden is looking a little ragged and faded. Today is overcast and I have to stay in as the attic is being insulated...lots of crashing going on overhead!The Farmer's Market in Marylebone was wonderful on Sunday - stalls piled high with the new season's corn cobs, English plums, bunched ruby beetroot and apples, but still there were late Summer bouquets of old-fashioned deeply scented roses and wonderfully warm-greenhouse-smelling tomatoes, the best of two worlds...it was hard not to buy everything!

Today I've decided to make a soup for lunch, thick with vegetables and pasta and sprinkled with pecorino cheese just before serving.

Cavolo nero cabbage is something I always buy when I see it. Trim the leaves from the tough stalks, wash & chop into thick ribbons and cook immersed in the tomatoey broth of the soup. I also love it cooked in olive oil, chili and garlic and stirred into pasta.

yellow courgettes - just because I adore their sunny cheerfulness against the red and dark green of the soup, cut into dice.

I try not to use tomato puree from a tube in this soup as I find it can be a little metallicand overbearing, but the tomatoes are so ripe and full flavoured that they need little help anyway. I stir in some orzo pasta, the kind that looks like little grains of risotto rice, to thicken the thin broth and add their unique, silky 'mouth feel'.

I have a chunk of Pecorino to grate roughly on top of each bowlful

plenty of ground black pepper, roughly chopped flat leaf parsley - and that's it! Along with the white sourdough loaf that I also bought, which I'll toast and drizzle with some grassy extra virgin oil and sprinkle with a little Maldon salt flakes....absolutely delicious.

I'm also making several batches of Triple Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies today, and then I have to think of a big cake to make for the coffee shop tomorrow....I'll let you know!

Hope you're having a gourmet day too....xo

Comfort over style....

I woke up this morning at 2.15am....that dark, lonely time of night when it seems you're the only one awake in the world. I have a really bad cough at the moment, the kind that sort of strangles your throat at intervals and makes you cough until your neck & stomach muscles hurt & your eyes run and sting. I went downstairs and took some medicine, had a glass of water...but when I went back to bed it all started again. I knew that Paul had a really busy day today, so I took my pillow and went to sleep on the sofa downstairs (the upstairs bed is covered in books and I didn't have the energy to move them about!) Alice was pleased to have a companion and I slept until 5, propped up with cushions....

Of course, I had to bake this morning but when the first deliveries were over I came home, walked Alice & then decided what to have for lunch. It was a really hot & humid day today....little knots of gnats buzz in patches over the water butt...a day for salads and cool cucumber sandwiches. But I was tired, my eyes swollen, my throat sore. I just didn't feel like anything beautiful, pure and summery. Actually there was only one thing I did feel like, and it's what I had in the end:

baked beans on hot, brown, buttered toast. Perfect. Comforting, warming and nostalgic all at once.

It may not have cured me, but I certainly felt better.

I now have a pot of Beetroot & Tomato Soup with Preserved Lemon bubbling gently on the hob. My dad gave me a bag of his wonderful homegrown vegetables yesterday, and this seemed a good way of utilising some of them (we had his roasted new potatoes, cabbage with cumin seeds & garlic & more beetroot baked with feta & a little pomegranate molasses drizzled over last night)

Style reigns in our kitchen once more....but, every now and again, there's nothing like a bit of comfort eating to give your soul a little hug.

xox