Cornflower

Mindroom at Muirfield

    The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers generously gave Muirfield to Mindroom for a fundraising day last week. Fortified by a breakfast guaranteed to keep out the keen East Lothian wind, eighteen teams of four played a round on this most famous of golf courses. Lunch followed, as did speeches and a prize-giving, and an excellent day was had by all. Mr. C's team came third, missing out on second place by just one stroke, but their prowess nevertheless won them gorgeous Hawick Cashmere scarves which had been kindly donated.

    I don't know yet how much money the day has raised for the charity - of which I've been a small part for ten years, and which does sterling work in the field of learning difficulties - but I do know that every penny will be well spent. Thankyou to all who have supported us, through this event and others, with donations of time and expertise as well as money; onwards and upwards!

Friday flowers - seed heads

    A frustrating day of computer malfunctions, internal and external, and ongoing email woes. My recent spam deluge has slowed to the more usual trickle, but for the last month I've had frequent, lengthy spells of mail not opening at all, arriving hours/days after it has been sent, and deleted messages opening when a 'live' message in the inbox has been clicked. At this rate I'll still be tackling my backlog at Christmas.

    Something calming and contemplative is needed, hence posting these seed heads taken on a recent trip out of town. Looking at them has made me pick up my copy of Plants and Places as they are 'very Angie Lewin':

"I collect seedheads," she says, "stones, flints, shells, broken pottery, wood, driftwood, seaweeds, coral, lichen growing on branches, and so on. Many of these objects relate to very specific places and, when I'm composing still lifes in the studio, they carry memories of where they were found."

Gregory's girl

    You may remember this post. Well, look who's got the specs! Not the actual Peoples' Gregory Peck ones but a very similar pair, the change from my old glasses prompted in part by my hero, Gregory/Atticus, and partly by a yen for a new look (see this video - and note the "once nerdy, now cool" line).

    This is, I think, only the second time that the camera-shy Cornflower has actually appeared on her own website - and isn't it difficult to take a picture of yourself?

River Cottage risoniotto and a few words on mushrooms

 

    I hadn't come across risoni or orzo - a tiny rice-shaped pasta - until I saw it specified in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe for mushroom risoniotto in his new book River Cottage Veg Every Day, and being someone who finds mushrooms irresistible (e.g. Monty's mushroom savoury) here was a recipe I couldn't pass by and an ingredient I wanted to try.

    Quicker than a risotto and without the need for constant stirring, this dish is as simple as it is satisfying, the little 'grains' of pasta providing the comfort factor and the mushrooms (cooked with garlic, thyme, balsamic vinegar, white wine and cream) that wonderful earthy flavour.

 

    A few words on mushrooms from Niki Segnit's informative and entertaining The Flavour Thesaurus:

"Morel caps look like homemade beanies, knitted with big needles after one too many parsnip wines."

"Mushroom and onion: warm, soft and as inviting as a pair of sheepskin slippers."

"Mushroom and walnut: both ligneous. Mushrooms tend to the sort of heavy, damp woodiness you greedily inhale on a forest walk in autumn; walnuts to the warmly sweet, dry fragrance of timber in a DIY store."

"Mushroom and butternut squash: toadstools and pumpkins. A fairytale combination."

    Hungry?

Cornflower on air

    I've been 'wafting through the ether' again today, talking about a book at the BBC, so I think it's now time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down!

Doing the dishes with Bertie

 

    Get your Bertie tea towel here!

    Edinburgh's Context Interiors - both in the flesh and online - are the sole stockist of this and other items inspired by Iain McIntosh's illustrations for Alexander McCall Smith's very popular 44 Scotland Street books.

    If you're a fan of those books and of his Isabel Dalhousie series (Mr. C. makes another appearance as himself in the latest one, The Forgotten Affairs Of Youth), you may like to see this short film of the author touring some of the books' locations.

Books and cakes - 45

    For once our Cornflower Book Group book contained an obvious answer to the question of what to bake to go with it. At one point in Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea (our post on the book is here) when the alphabetical restrictions are tripping up the good souls of Nollop and banishment from the island is a common fate, Agnes writes to Mittie as follows:

    " ... I bake my raisin-pecan cookies, darling Mittie, because there is little else I can do. What is happening here to you and me, to our families and friends - it frightens me so that I sometimes find myself standing for long periods of time in the middle of my kitchen - much like a statue - much like that infernal statue of Mr. Nollop - immobile, unable to do anything except return by cursed rote to the baking of my cookies. And this I do, often late into the night. ...When I bake I do not have to speak. When I bake, I do not have to make sense of anything except the ingredients summoned by memory that I have laid out in front of me... So eat them. Eat them all. I will bake more."

    I've made Raisin Pecan Oatmeal Cookies using the Barefoot Contessa recipe - hence my oatmeal question yesterday. I got 32 out of the mixture and even then they are quite large, but my tester here describes them as "yummy, chewy and soft - just good", so thankyou, Mrs. Garten.

Friday flowers - late cosmos

    I was very late in sowing these cosmos, so they've only just come into flower in the last few days. Focusing on their centres as I've done here reminds me of buttons on pleated silk - a simpler, natural version of this, perhaps!

A question about oatmeal

    Can anyone tell me what "old-fashioned oatmeal" is if listed as an ingredient in an American cookie recipe? I've googled it, of course, but can't make out from the results whether it refers to oatmeal (above) or rolled oats (below).

Later: many thanks for your help, ladies. I'm off to bake now.

Dancing cats

 

    I haven't inherited the cat phobia which affects a swathe of my mother's family, but I've never had a cat and am, as you'll know if you're a regular visitor here, very much a dog person. However, to redress the balance a bit, I thought I'd quote the following passage which is from a footnote to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke because it conjures an amusing image. (I'm enjoying the responses to the 'Have you read it?' post, by the way). 

    To set the scene, this is an extract from a report of the case of Tubbs v. Starhouse, Starhouse being a coachman whose one great talent was a way with animals:

"... he could command cats in a way that the people of Nottinghamshire had never seen before. He had a whispering way of talking to them; any cat he spoke to would stay quite still with an expression of surprize [sic] on its face as if it had never heard such good sense in all its life nor ever expected to again. He could also make them dance. The cats that belonged to Mr. Tubbs's household were as grave and mindful of their dignity as any other set of cats, but Jack Starhouse could make them dance wild dances, leaping about upon their hind legs and casting themselves from side to side ... One of the other servants observed that if only cats had been good for any thing - which they were not - then all this might have had some point to it."

    I look forward to hearing the thoughts of Dark Puss on this unusual feline behaviour, meanwhile the picture is of a Black Cat chocolate: ganache, amarena cherries and Kirsch, from The Chocolate Tasting Club.  

Five weeks

    Five weeks from planting to flowering: paperwhite narcissus, bowl no. 1.

    Bowl no. 2 - thanks to kind Lucy who brought me some bulbs the other day - is coming on nicely, set to brighten the dark November days.

Who loves the rain?

     If you do, click here.   

Forest fare

     I know it's only October, but I had to try Heston's pine-scented mince pies for Waitrose: tear open the sachet of pine-oil flavoured sugar, take a sniff and I guarantee you'll say "wow!". You bake the pies for ten minutes, then sprinkle the sugar on top, but while the pine is an assertive fragrance, on the palate it blends in with the mincemeat's ingredients (which include lemon curd and rosewater) and the result is wonderful - a very good mince pie.

Mr. C. said he'd like a greater proportion of filling to pastry, and I think he has a point, but it's puff pastry instead of the more usual shortcrust, and the result is a light bite or two rather than the more substantial traditional pie. Delicious!

Lit. knit - Whit's mitts on the mountain

    Once again, the knitting and the reading serendipitously go together, with The Yarn Yard's Ochil (100% Falkland merino, shade: Ruck 'n' Maul) matching the colours of the new Canongate Canons edition of The Living Mountain.

    In progress here is the first of a pair of Whit's ribbed hand warmers from the always lovely Purl Bee. What I set out to make was Whit's colourblock hand warmers, but despite having cast on for the smaller size, and after two or three inches, moved down to needles smaller than specified, they were looking far too loose and baggy for a slim arm and hand. I rattled back and went for the ribbed ones instead, and the fit so far is as it should be.

    To get back to the wool itself, while ruck and maul are rugby terms, Ochil is the name of a range of hills between Stirling and Perth, not as large and dramatic as the Cairngorms of which Nan Shepherd writes, but fine enough nonetheless.

Refreshment

    It's been a long day of paperwork, technical problems (email, again) and concentrating on moving small things out of the way so that I can get on with bigger ones. It's time to take a break, and since Harriet has made a batch of Sticky Toffee Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream (from Fiona Cairns' Bake & Decorate), what better than a little sweetness with a restorative cup of tea. 

(There's another source of refreshment here).