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Home Grown Ham

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Delicious garden edibles on offer

Don’t worry dear readers, I haven’t gone completely mad and bought myself a pig.  Although, if I am completely honest that really would be one of my top ten ‘must-haves’ on my journey towards becoming a country bumpkin.  I have always harboured a soft spot for the perfect little Ginger pig, a Tamworth.  One which is wonderfully well behaved, devoid of mud, doesn’t require mucking out and could be decked out in Cath Kidston of course….  Sadly no pigs matching this description were found on my jaunts this week.  No, the ‘Ham’ to which I am referring is the rather large and elegant Ham House.

The perfect backdrop for indulging in some tasting

Having been members of the National Trust for years and only used the membership a handful of times, Jerry and I decided to get out and enjoy the autumn sunshine with a trip to one of our nearest NT gems.  We stumbled upon a wonderful event hosted by Ham House this weekend.  Nestled in the stunning and rather enviable 17th century kitchen garden, ‘Home Grown at Ham’ brought together lovers of fruit, vegetables, plants and artisan products.  I was determined to learn something about growing my own fruit and veg but in reality, I was seriously sidetracked by the glorious garden, tasted a lot of cheese (we found a favourite in Sussex Slipcote), sampled some ‘Hammy’ goodies from the Giggly Pig and had a chat with a very nice lady from Ruben’s Bakehouse about the demise of the cottage loaf.  Why has the shape of this loaf fallen out of favour?  Maybe I should attempt to bring it back if I can ever get the hang of breadmaking?!  Last breadmaking attempt resulted in the need for a tooth to be crowned!

Thank you Ruben’s Bakehouse!

Primrose even delighted in the largely forgotten arts of apple bobbing and posy making as well as testing out her food knowledge with a trip on the Slow Food Kids’ Taste adventure.

Apart from all the eating…..I found out some interesting uses for aloe vera jelly.  Did you know that you can use it for treating burns?  Definitely something for the kitchen clumsiness.  The number of times I have burnt my fingers on the oven, I might as well get my own patch of aloe plants!  Inspiration did come in the form of some tempting recipes from the cooking demonstrations and I admired the manicured patch of lawn recreated in the image of the floor of the Great Hall and cut each year using scissors!  This has to be my absolute favourite of the day though so hats off to Quack’s Pickles – you have compelled me to have a go at making my own specimens!

Jerry, what do you mean we can’t afford a house like this?

Boxing clever

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Doing the weekly shop, I stumbled upon this…..instant kitchen gardens.

http://www.rocketgardens.co.uk/search.asp?instant=1

What a brilliant idea.  Oh I do love the idea of someone else doing all the work for me!  I am not sure I could be bothered with all the faff of germinating seeds and potting on.  Isn’t that what you hire a gardener for?!  I wouldn’t want to dirty my deliciously vintage Liberty gardening gloves.  With an endorsement from dear Hugh, my River Cottage favourite, it has to go on the Christmas list!  Must remind Jerry.  Some very useful tips here too if you have no idea what ‘mulching’ is all about!  Now all I need to find is a Georgian country house in Hampshire with a big garden…

I had a little nut tree

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Always ready to add to my ever increasing hoard of countryside paraphernalia, I found this little gem which belonged to my grandmother, whilst trawling through a box of family photographs.  I did giggle at the thought of a book entitled ‘The Young Naturalist Series’ belonging to Grandmamma as she was notorious for her love of town and hated all things flora or fauna, muddy or farmyard.  She didn’t even enjoy her own garden!  ‘A Useful book’ as it describes itself with some beautiful illustrations and useful descriptions of all manner of flora which might just serve me well.  Jerry has been quite concerned that my new interest in foraging could lead to us all being poisoned so the book was a welcome find!

Well I soon found myself knee-deep in countryside plant wisdom and even found some titbits of countryside trivia to share with you this week.

Now you probably already know that there are two types of chestnut tree – Sweet Chestnuts and Horse Chestnuts.  I have to profess that I didn’t.  A walk in Richmond Park had yielded a bumper forage of what I thought where edible conkers.  It turns out that…..

Conkers come from Horse Chestnut trees and are not considered edible to humans.  However, they make an excellent tea time treat for deer and cattle.  You would think horses too given the name of the tree but apparently not!  Apart from anything else, conkers have been the talk of a good many school playgrounds in autumn for centuries.  I was particularly keen to train Primrose and hone her conker ‘battle’ skills until I was promptly reminded of the ridiculous health and safety rules preventing playgrounds from allowing children to hold conker championships.  A conker in the eye never hurt anyone.  (Soak them in vinegar if you want undefeatable conkers).  Moving on, I also found out (courtesy of the National Trust quarterly magazine) that if you place some conkers in the corner of a room in autumn then it is said to keep spiders away.

I would have gleefully roasted my gathered booty in the woodburner had it not been for a quick glance at my ‘Young Naturalist’s’ guide.  My chestnut roaster will have to wait now until the delightful greengrocer down the road has the shiny edible beauties in stock.  However, I might just give that old wives’ tale a go and see if I can rid the cottage of spiders.  Worth a try!

A case of a stitch in time….

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This week I dusted off the ‘old’ sewing machine and tried to turn my hand to a bit of clothes making.  I say dusted off…what I really mean is I took off the brand new cover and trawled through the manual of a birthday gift received years ago and never used.  Whilst on maternity leave with Primrose some four years ago now, I decided in a moment of ‘Barbara-ness’ to ask my dear Mamma for a sewing machine.  I had grandiose ideas of becoming a ‘mumpreneur’ and making vintage children’s clothes on an old-fashioned Singer machine in a shepherd’s hut in the garden.  A fad which lasted all of five minutes and resulted in one lavender bag being made.  The sewing machine has been in the cupboard under the stairs ever since.  The only reason I had to remove it from its comfortable home this week was because Jerry bought some wine and insisted upon using the cupboard as his new wine cellar.  Of course, Jerry promptly found the wretched machine and dragged it out demanding that it was a waste and that I had to put it to good use.  I could curse Berry Bros. for their Burgundy sale!

With the advent of the dreaded ‘Woodland fairy’ birthday party, I had intended to buy a new outfit for Primrose to wear from a dear little shop famed for its frothy tutus.  However, with the emergence of the sewing machine, I did feel a little guilty that I hadn’t managed to master the art of sewing and I do hate to let things beat me.  I decided to make my own tutu and having no idea where to start, trawled the internet for ideas and quite frankly, a step by step guide.  I found only a couple of You Tube videos and I couldn’t even follow the nifty fingered seamstresses on those.  Oh dear I thought.  Then I had the brilliant idea of reworking one of Primrose’s old dressing up skirts.  I say ‘rework’ but you know me a little by now and actually ‘rework’ is more trash than transform.  Well where does one start when one hasn’t sewed since one’s school days and embroidery isn’t really the same thing as making an outfit is it?

I had already had a disaster, trying to hand dye the skirt olive green before I began reading the instructions on how to set up the sewing machine.  I persevered in a painstaking fashion, trying to make sense of what Kirstie Allsop had made look so bloody easy on ‘Homemade Home’.  Put thread onto bobbin, pass bobbin into bottom of machine, thread this, pull here, use pedal (somewhat tricky as it would happen).  Some hours later, I was hitting my head against the kitchen table, there were only 24 hours until the party and the Flower fairy outfit was more trashy Tinkerbell than little pixie from Tumbledown Wood.

It turns out that when all is said and done, I am NO Kirstie Allsop or Barbara come to mention it.  A stitch in time on a sewing machine would have saved nine BUT that old idiom clearly didn’t take a novice seamstress into account.  However, sew it I did.  All sewn by hand in the end after I broke two needles on the machine and I had tangled up all the thread.  The finished article was wearable at least and Primrose did tell all (and with some pride I might add) that her Mummy had made her outfit.  YES it did look homemade and YES you could see the stitching close up but for a first attempt, it stayed on and that’s what counts!!!!  Sadly, the sewing machine sits forlornly in a forgotten corner for now but you know, just watch this space as I may just use it to make another lavender bag….

Channeling magic

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Michaelmas Daisy Fairy – Cicely Mary Barker

The first glimpse of autumn in our little corner of suburbia always heralds frantic birthday preparations.  Dearest Primrose turns 4 next week and my stress levels have reached a dangerous peak with thoughts of birthday teas and cakes which the usual number of G&Ts cannot shift.  Clearly my past ‘form’ was also on Primrose’s mind this morning as she uttered “Mummy, don’t you think you should practise making the cupcakes before next week?  You know what happened last time.”  Clearly my histrionics, burnt cupcakes and pavement thick icing had not gone unnoticed last year…..

Inspired by the beautiful stories and illustrations by Cicely Mary Barker (and by Primrose’s burning desire to meet/be/fly like a real fairy), I decided in a moment of madness to give Primrose’s birthday party a Flower Fairy/Woodland theme.  My penchant for themed parties has driven poor Jerry to breaking point on many occasions.  He shudders at the memory of creating realistic ‘teak decking’ on last year’s Pirate ship cake with Mikado biscuits and chocolate fingers at 3am the day before the party.

It has to be said that cakes just aren’t my forte.  I have dreamed of nothing but bloody ‘toadstool’ cakes for the last few nights and have broken out in a cold sweat every time someone mentions Primrose’s birthday.  I can’t help but think “What would ‘country’ Margot do?”  She certainly wouldn’t have the Hummingbird Bakery on standby.

Here is the first attempt….. It would seem that I am going to need to harness the magic of several fairies if baking perfection is to be achieved.

Oh well, if all else fails, perhaps I could just serve up my newly made Cherry Gin and let the children play ‘Sleeping Lions’?!