I Wonder if there is anyone still out there?

Hi. I'm still here. I know it's been a while but things have been pretty hectic down here in sunny Cornwall. I think the easiest way to tell you how busy things have been is to show you. This will be a photo-heavy post so grab a coffee and maybe a biscuit or two and make yourself comfy. 

Ok soooooo, the poly tunnel is now finished. Not only is it finished but it's full of stuff.

The grow-your-own-pizza bed challenge :-)

Those pictures were taken a couple of months ago, this is what the poly tunnel looks like now, it's gone totally MAD!
The really huge plants in the middle are sweetcorn plants!

The front garden has gone from being a bare patch of not-very-nice grass to a productive area with raised beds and a nice circular lawn.

Before

After

There is still a way to go, including digging a wildlife pond, but we are slowly getting there.

The new brassica cage my husband built.

Now filled with brassicas

We planted loads of flowers

and loads of veg ...... and of course loads of bunting 😀

We also have some new additions to the family. They're super cute and totally fabulous to watch, in fact I could watch them all day if only I had the time lol.

We have already started harvesting our veg.

And we have even started building a new house for the chickens, which hopefully, will be rat-proof! We are having huge rat issues yet again so we finally but the bullet and have started to construct a new home for them with foundations and everything. Fingers crossed that it works. 

If you want to see more pictures of the stuff we are up to, then pop on over to Instagram and have a peep.

The button is at the top of the page or you can click the link HERE 

Much Excitement In The Field.

Well, there was much excitement in the field last Monday with the arrival of this fabulous bundle of things. After a hernia-inducing 20 minutes lugging the whole lot through to the field because the delivery driver just dumped them in front of my house and legged it so he wouldn't have to help, I stood back and surveyed my poly tunnel bits. 

For years and years I have been saving up for a greenhouse and every time I manage to scrape together the money to buy one something comes along and I have to spend the money on something else. Not this time. This time I will be getting my indoor growing space and it's going to be epic. My poly tunnel arrived. It's HUGE! Well, the pieces are huge so I'm guessing the actual poly tunnel will be huge when it's finished. I'm thrilled to bits and I can't wait to try and get it put together, hopefully this weekend, weather permitting - although the forecast for the weekend is not looking promising, I'm still hopeful that we can at least get the frame put up. 

This is what it should look like, this is the photo from eBay, which is where we got it from. Our's is probably a bit smaller but not much. We fitted one of the hoops together and propped it in place and it's so big you could practically live in it!!

I have so many plans for planting things and making the inside look nice ..... I know that's a bit girly of me but nevertheless, I want it to look nice as well as being somewhere practical to grow things. I have bought a little gas camping stove and a whistling kettle so I can spend my days out there getting on with all sorts of growing and planting and harvesting ....... do I sound like a compete nutty loon about all this? It's probably because I'm hoping to be able to be so self sufficient that I can give up work and do it full time so I am very, very keen to make a go of it but I promise I will try and keep my nuttiness to a minimum :-) 

I harvested the last of my beetroot a couple of weeks ago and spent the morning boiling, peeling and pickling and I eventually ended up with 4 jars of delicious beetroot. A couple of jars of normal beetroot, one jar of a pinky coloured beetroot and some that looks a bit like pickled pears but which is, in fact, beetroot. I planted mixed colours by mistake this year, normally I just plant a variety called Boltardy but I have a feeling that the mixed colours were ones that I got free with a magazine and I'm guessing I thought it was a good idea to try something new. I won't be making that mistake next year. I also made the mistake of using pickling vinegar this year instead of distilled white vinegar because I couldn't get hold of any of the distilled stuff and the spices in the pickling vinegar are a bit strong for the delicate beetroot and completely overwhelms the lovely woody, earthy taste. Another one to chalk up to experience. It's been a very steep learning curve this year and I'm guessing the next year or two are going to be even steeper. Besides, my husband didn't even notice the difference so maybe it's just me. 

I also harvested my leeks last week and turned them into leek and potato soup for the freezer. I know it's too early and because they went in so late they were quite small but we needed the space to get the last two raised beds in place before we can start to fill them with compost over the next few months ready for next year. There will be six raised beds in all and although there is now at least four times more growing space than I had last year, I still don't think it's going to be enough. I guess we will just have to play it by ear and see how it goes. 

My gorgeous new preserving pan. Not only is it amazing for making jam but it's brilliant for making vast amounts of soup. It's like my very own cauldron .... I love it 😊 (I found the new emoji button thingy, how cool is that) 

Anyway, hopefully, by next week I can post some pictures of my new poly tunnel ...... weather permitting, so watch this space. 

Oh and one final thing. If anyone out there has any tips for growing in poly tunnels I would be very, very, extremely grateful. I have absolutely no clue where to start. 

Liebster Blog Award.

Well, that's a first! Someone asked me to do the Liebster Blog Award thingy. I am flattered, I have never been asked to do anything like this before and despite the fact that the person who nominated me is my lovely daughter, I am still very excited to do it. So here goes. Firstly, thank you to Lucy at Becoming Mama Lucy for the nomination. (By the way, you should check out her latest blog post about my little Grandson and his nursery escapades, I laughed ..... A LOT lol !!)

These are the rules.

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to his/her blog
2. Copy and paste the Liebster Award badge to your post
3. Answer ten questions you’ve been asked
4. Nominate 5 new bloggers that you want to share with the world
5. Then create ten new questions for the bloggers you are nominating
6. Notify the bloggers that you have nominated

And here are my ten questions.

What is your favourite family moment/memory?

Meeting my little Grandson for the first time was pretty special but honestly, there really are far too many to pick just one.

If you could rule the world what would you change?

The inequality between the very rich and the people who have nothing.

Favourite holiday destination?

Wales. I went there a lot as a child and I still love going back and of course, Cornwall, which luckily, is where I live :-) And I went to Venice earlier this year which was absolutely beautiful.

Do you own a pet? (If so, what is it?)

I have 3 dogs, 8 cats, 2 chickens, 3 llamas and I am bunny sitting my daughter's rabbit Mr Darcy at the moment. 

What was your favourite school subject?

Biology, although I wasn't very good at it. I didn't really enjoy school when I got to high school, which is why, at the age of 43, I thought I would give it another go and I went to university and did a foundation degree in Marine Biology, a BSc in Marine Conservation and an MSc in Sustainable Environmental Management. I wish I had done it a lot sooner and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

What was the last book you read?

The Martian, I read it before I saw the film and I absolutely loved it although, about half way through, I did have to read the ending to find out if he survived or not, just so I could prepare myself if he didn't!! 

What is your favourite season and why?

Spring, it has so much promise and I love getting the garden ready to plant my veg, it's so exciting. Sad but true lol.

What do you love most about blogging?

People leaving comments and reading other blogs. 

What is your favourite phone App?

I have just discovered Instagram. I am now totally addicted. 

Who inspires you the most?

My mum. 

Anyway, those are my questions and answers. I now have to nominate 5 other blogs to do the same thing and I have to think of 10 questions to ask them. 

So, here are my blog nominees 

What Katie Did Next .......

Rosie's Ramblings.

Country Bumble

Lucy's Cottage

Frugal In Derbyshire

And here are my ten questions.

1. What is your favourite meal?
2. What has been your best ever bargain buy?
3. What are your top 3 favourite films?
4. If you could invite 3 people for dinner, either living or dead, who would it be?
5. What was the last book you read?
6. You are stuck in a well and the cast of the last television programme you watched are coming to rescue you ..... who will be hauling you out? (Mine would be the cast of Gardeners World, I watched an episode I recorded a while back last night before bed lol)
7. Marmite .... Love it or Hate it?
8. If you could have a super-power, what would it be?
9. What did you have for breakfast this morning?
10. What is the one thing that makes you think of Summer

Thank you again to Becoming Mama Lucy for my nomination. 

The Not-So-Simple Pasty

First of all .... let me say, this is NOT a sponsored post and all the pasties I ate I paid for :-)

I was very excited the other week to be asked to write a guest blog post for a holiday cottage company. I was given free reign over what I wanted to write about and I gave myself a deadline for submission and was all gung-ho and fired up about it until I realised that writing a post for someone else's blog is a far cry from writing one for my little blog and guess what ....... I had massive attack of writer's block. In fact I think that writer's block coupled with blonde moments, senior moments and menopause moments all collided and I could not think of one single thing to write. 

I submitted the words and pictures to the lovely people at the company but I am not holding out much hope of publication. In the meantime, however, I did get some lovely research done that I thought I might put to good use and write a blog post for here. For the guest blog post I wrote about Looe. I live just outside Looe, about 7 miles away and we often go and have a walk along the harbour or down the little lanes and there are some lovely places to eat in Looe, especially some fabulous pasty shops. 

There is a very long history of pasty making tradition in Cornwall and it has been a documented part of the British diet since the 13th Century. In the 13th century, it was mostly the upper classes that ate pasties, with scrumptious fillings like venison, beef, lamb and seafood, flavoured with rich gravies and fruits. It wasn't until the 17th and 18th Centuries that the pasty became widely consumed by miners and farm workers as a means to provide them with a warm, hearty meal during the day. Apparently, the sign of a good pasty was that it could withstand being dropped down a mine! I'm not sure how the shop keepers would have reacted if I had started chucking the pasties into a mine to test how good they were So I had to come up with a plan B ..... I had to eat them :-)

Source

Pretty much every bakery in Looe, in fact probably every bakery in Cornwall, sells their own tried and tested version of a Cornish pasty and I'm sure that most people who come to Cornwall have tried one, I mean, let's face it, it's practically compulsory and the traditional filling of beef, swede, potato and onion encased in a golden pastry crust is absolutely delicious but, some shops have experimented with other ingredients and have come up with some amazing combinations. Including ...... sweet pasties. Oh my goodness. SWEET PASTIES ...... just how heavenly is that?! Fruit, jam, custard and a whole host of other delicious sweet fillings all topped off with a dusting of icing sugar .... oh my! What's even more fascinating is that sweet pasties are not a new idea! Apparently, it was common for the pasties to provide not only a hearty, savoury main course lunch, but also a sweet or fruity desert course. The savoury filling would be cooked at one end of the pasty and the sweet course at the other end. So ingenious :-)

Anyway, after tasting countless pasties from many, many shops in my quest for deliciousness and probably gaining more than a few pounds in weight,

Here is the verdict. 

Drum Roll Please.

My very favourite pasty was a tie between the breakfast pasty from Sarah's Pasty Shop, a scrumptious combination of bacon, sausages, egg and beans 

and 

the apple, rhubarb and custard pasty from Pasty Presto, both of which were utterly delicious. 

You can click on the names to get links to their websites.

Sarah's Pasty Shop East Looe and pasty menu from the shop. They do sell a whole host of other pies and pastries as well although there were way too many for me to eat my way through in such a short period of time.

Pasty Presto in East Looe

Breakfast Pasty

And here is one last small crumb of pasty-related information.

The crimped edge of the pasty, apart from holding everything inside, was a very important part of the pasty, particularly with tin miners because, not only is tin mining a mucky job, even worse, arsenic was often present, along with tin, within the ore that the men were mining. The thick crimped edge, that the men held onto, wasn't eaten but was was thrown away in order to avoid arsenic poisoning.

 Fascinating stuff. 

Garden Design and a Pasty Disaster

Today has been a beautiful day. It's been sunny and calm and deliciously spring-like. The birds are busy darting here, there and everywhere finding soft things to line their nests with, I have seen bees diving in and out of the flowers in my garden and I have finally spotted blossom on my apple trees. It's fabulous and it makes me want to rush outside and start gardening and planting seeds and growing veg. With this in mind, I have been scouring the internet to find some ideas that I can use to make my growing space more effective and frankly, better looking because at the moment, it looks awful. The thing is, my garden is at the front of my house. I don't have a back garden, just a field where my llamas live so I have to make sure that my garden looks presentable .... although last year that didn't go according to plan and it looked overgrown and jungle-like for most of the year. I have massive garden envy. I know how I want it to look but I never quite manage to get it looking like that. So here are some of the ones that I totally love although I have no idea how I am going to get it to look like this but I'm certainly going to give it a go.

I love the order and neatness of this one.

Source 

And the beautiful symmetry of this one

Source

But my absolute favourite is this one.

A perfect mix of function and cottage garden beauty . 

And so to my pasty disaster! This year, for Easter, it was just me and my youngest daughter as my middle daughter was away for the weekend and my eldest daughter, who lives in Sheffield, is now 7 months pregnant and the proud owner of a very large bump. On Easter Sunday, I made a a lovely lamb lunch for the two of us and as usual, I totally overdid it on the piece of meat that I bought. It was on special offer and was cheaper than the smaller joints in the store so, obviously, I thought it was a good idea. It was huge! Almost 2.5kg of lamb for the grand total of £9.28 with a further 10% off at the till so £8.36 .... absolute bargain. 

Needless to say, there was a lot left and after some delicious leftover soup on Monday, I was trying to come up with something different to do with some of the leftover lamb. I decided to try to make a sort of spicy lamb pasty concoction with lamb, diced potatoes, peas and various spices so, having chopped the lamb, added the potatoes and peas and some garam masala, I gave it a quick taste and added a decent squirt of tomato ketchup to give it a bit of sweetness, added some hot water and heated it in a saucepan to make sure the spices were dissolved. 

I rolled out my pastry, cut around a plate as a template, popped the hot meat mixture into the pastry circle, crimped it and then started making the next one. 

Did you spot the rookie mistake. Guess what happens when you add a hot filling to cold pastry ....... it goes soft and soggy and melts the fat in the pastry so all the filling then escapes and oozes all over the baking tray ..... and that was before I even managed to get it into the oven! It was a total disaster! I had to scrape it up off the baking tray with a spoon. 

Hey ho ..... live and learn

I'm guessing it's not a mistake I will be making again :-)

I will be trying again tomorrow. 

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I posted last. It's been a busy time, during which I turned 50 ....... nicer than I thought it would be, had a hospital appointment for my knee .....  a mean doctor who wrenched my knee, made me cry and then diagnosed a severe arthritis flare up and referred me for physio and I have continued to tame my out-of-control house ....... many, many trips to the tip to get rid of all the rubbish accumulated over 11 years of living here and finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I also did the first piece of sewing since giving up may market stall a month ago. I made this little chap. 

He's a pin cushion. He's only a prototype. I like to make a prototype so I can work out any kinks in the pattern and to decide whether or not it's something I feel I can make well, make relatively easily and make relatively quickly. I think he's very cute and I think once I have worked out a couple of issues in the making of him I will be making a whole load of these little dudes to sell on the little Esty shop that I am in the middle of setting up. It's very exciting. Did you know .... a whole bunch of tortoises is called a Creep. Who knew! I'm making a creep of tortoises :-)

I have also been making lots of thrifty food. My local Aldi were selling aubergines for 39p each so I bought a couple along with some courgettes and peppers and made some delicious ratatouille and some roasted vegetable lasagne. I made three large portions of each for the princely sum of £4.52. Total bargain and I love the feeling that I am filling up my freezer for the times when money is tight. I realise that some people think I mad, getting excited about being able to live on very little money but I get an enormous amount of pleasure from coming up with delicious food and money saving ideas. Weird I know but there you are.

Three courgettes, six peppers, two aubergines and 4 cans of tomatoes made all this roasted veg. 

I have also managed to tame my unruly sewing corner. Even though I have 3 spare bedrooms that I could take over to use as a sewing room, I like doing my craft and sewing in my living room. It's a big living room, about 35 feet my 15 feet so there is plenty of space but the thing I struggled with was keeping the space looking relatively tidy. I also needed more light so, I sorted out the storage issue with some oh-so-cute mini storage suitcases for things like embroidery thread, buttons and trimmings and some white baskets that I re-vamped with some white paint and a new anglepoise lamp. I have to say ...... I am totally loving my new sewing corner.

Now .... all I have to do is get sewing .... watch this space :-)

Grey Day Comfort Food

This week has been a bit grey. The lovely sunny weather we had last week has been replaced with grey skies and gloomy days and it's really been a week for comfort food. On days like these, my go-to food is either a wonderfully warming casserole or a deliciously hearty pie. In my weekly shop from Aldi this week, I bought a pork joint for &1.99. It was a decent sized joint which I knew would make a couple of lovely meals.

First of all, I popped the joint into my casserole dish, added a good squeeze of BBQ sauce, a beef stock cube and some water and I cooked it on a low-ish heat for about 3 hours until the pork was falling apart, stickey and tender. Half way through, while I was turning the meat, I took off the skin, put it on a baking sheet, sprinkled it with salt and turned it into golden crackling which I then broke into pieces to snack on while the pork finished cooking.

Once the pork was cooked, I tore it into pieces and my first supper was pork and refried bean tacos with sour cream and salad. Completely messy to eat but totally delicious. I used tinned refried beans but there are plenty of recipes out there if you wanted to make your own. I just happened to have a tin in the cupboard and I was feeling lazy and hungry and I couldn't be bothered to go to the shop to buy the ingredients! Sorry but I didn't take any photos because after smelling the delicious pork roasting away in the oven all afternoon, I was absolutely ravenous and I was too busy scoffing my tacos to think about my camera. 

My second meal from the pork was a pie. Into a pan I chopped a sweet potato, 3 carrots and about 1/3 of a butternut squash. A little tip I have discovered about butternut squashes, If you buy one that has a small round bit on the bottom and a long neck bit (if you know what I mean), you get more flesh and fewer seeds so there is less wastage ...... I'm sure most people have figured that out but I just thought I would mention it. As they cost the same no matter what shape you buy it makes sense to get as much out of them as you can :-)

So buy one like this                                                        not like this

Anyway, back to the pie, I added a beef stock cube to the pan containing the pork, squash, carrots and sweet potato, along with some water and I cooked everything together until the vegetables were tender and the gravy had thickened up and then I tipped it all into a pie dish, added a shortcrust pastry top and popped it in the oven until it was golden brown. 

I just added some veg and there you have it, a delicious supper for about £2.00 for the whole thing. 

Fancy Schmancy v's Good Old Fashioned Real Life

I read lots of blogs. Lots and lots of blogs. Even more since I hurt my knee and have a lot of time on my hands when I'm resting it and I love reading them. I love having a peek into other people's lives, seeing how they live, what they sew and knit and create, how they make their houses and gardens look amazing and also, what they cook. I read all types of blogs but, the ones that seem to always catch my eye when I'm looking for new blogs to read are the ones that are slick and beautifully presented. Amazingly perfect pictures, mouthwatering food and the most exquisite hand-made items that could happily grace the pages of a high-end magazine. I love reading them and looking at the artfully composed and fabulously lit pictures. I love stepping into their lives for a short while and experiencing how they live and it's 100% pure escapism because a part of me, a very big part of me in fact, wonders how on earth these people find time to do all the stuff they do, lead these perfectly, beautifully, wonderfully photogenic lives and still have time to blog about it! They must have way more hours in a day than I do, they must all be fully qualified photographers, chefs, seamstresses and interior designers and the only logical conclusion I can come to is that they either have servants or a magic wand ....... possibly both! :-)

My blog is very much a way for me to write down all the stuff that is going on in my life, both good and not-so-good. My photographs are generally passable but not usually great and sometimes, when I read back through old blog posts I can't help but notice the odd spelling mistake or grammatical error, which the compulsive perfectionist in me always has to go back and correct. My blog, like my life isn't perfect and it isn't always photogenic. I never seem to have enough spare money to do all the things that I would like to my house and garden and there are never, ever enough hours in the day to get everything done that I would like to get done. But hey ..... that's life. Apart from a bit of extra cash every now and then and a less leaky roof, there isn't very much that I would change.

So, in the spirit of my not-so-perfect, lovely life, here are the cleaned out and organised cupboards that I have spent the last week sorting out. No out of date food, well ..... nothing more than a few months out of date anyway and now, there is no danger of a head injury from falling tins or bags of flour when the cupboards are opened. It's fabulous :-)

 And here is the car-full of junk that was taken to the tip this morning!!!

Now ...... what next?!!

8 Cupboards Down ...... Only 4 More To Go!!!!

Well, I am totally into all this de-cluttering malarkey. I have now completely emptied most of kitchen cupboards and I have dumped maybe 70% of the stuff that was in there. A good 20% of what was left has gone either to charity shops or is being saved to make a bit of money in the summer when the car boot sales start and what is left has been put through the dishwasher or thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed and has been put back into the lovely spotlessly clean cupboards. It's heaven! I still have some of the food cupboards left to sort out and then I intend to paint anything that doesn't move with brilliant white paint. After that, I can start the fun bit of putting everything back in and making it look pretty. My knee also seems to be behaving itself at the moment too so I am getting a fair amount done before I have to stop and give it a rest.

The sun has made an appearance again which is also nice. It makes me feel so much happier when the sun is out, even if it's not particularly warm. There are signs of life all over the place. 

The snowdrops are starting to flower. 

The daffodils are starting to come through although for some reason this year they are looking very small and stunted, almost like mini-daffodils.

The plant in the next picture, believe it or not, is a sweet pea plant, kind of an everlasting variety. It was given to me by one of my lovely friends when it was past its best and could no longer be sold at the market and I am ashamed to say I dumped it in a bag and left it on the table outside my house. Miraculously, it survived the dry weather last year, it survived being soaked and blown around during the wet and windy Autumn and it has survived the bitterly cold spell we have just had. I think the least it deserves is planting nice and deep in a big pot or maybe next to my wooden arch so it can clamber over it and make it look fabulous. So, as soon as I have finished blitzing the kitchen, I will make sure it's sorted out and find a nice permanent place for it to go. 

And, last but by no means least, my chickens are starting to lay again which is fabulous. My two girls are now laying me an egg every couple of days. They do sterling work keeping me in delicious eggs during the lighter months and I usually get two eggs each day from them from about April 'til the clocks go back in October but, during the shorter days and chilly weather, they take a break from their egg laying duties and concentrate on keeping warm and cosy. They tend to get a bit spoilt in the winter and they love it when I make them some nice warm porridge for breakfast when it's cold. This year, they will be getting a really really big walk-in run so I can open the door during the day when I'm home to keep an eye on them and they can free range around the garden and when I'm not home to look out for them, they will have a really big area to run around in. I have already bought it and it's standing in my hallway waiting for the weather to improve a bit more and my knee to get a bit better then I will be putting it together for them.  

Right, back to the kitchen to finish off the last of the cupboard clearing !

Beware ...... Spring Cleaning Maniac on the Loose

I don't know if it's the recent bout of spring-like, sunny weather, the inactivity of spending most of my time sat on the sofa resting my knee or the fact I have no sewing to do because I have had to give up my market stall but, I'm really bored and lately, I have felt the urge to spring clean. To de-clutter not only my house but my life too. Next Friday, I will be reaching a milestone birthday (50 .... eeeek!) and I have to be honest, I think I might be having a bit of a mini-mid-life-crisis!! Too much time on my hands to sit and think about things. About where my life is taking me and about whether or not that direction is somewhere I want to go. I feel like I need a change. Maybe a really big change but a change nevertheless so, while I am pondering what this change might be, I am going to sort out my house in the hope that the rest might fall into place or at least become a little clearer and ..... if all else fails, at least I will have a clutter-free house :-)

Kitchen stuff from one of the cupboards waiting to be sorted and broken electrical stuff waiting to be taken to the recycling place.

So, after what feels like a million trips to the tip with junk, several trips to the charity shops to drop off things I think other people might be able to use and a big box tucked away in the spare room for the summer car boot sales, I now have kitchen cupboards that are empty of junk. I have cupboards that hold only the things I use all the time and I have to say, it feels very good. I found things in my cupboards that I haven't used for years. I'm terrible, I never throw anything away, just in case, but I am slowly realising that if things don't work or if I find I don't use them any more, I should either throw them out or pass them on. Something I am going to try and do from now on. My kitchen is still a mess. It's going to a take a bit of time to get things put away and back to normal and I really want to re-paint the kitchen as it's only been done once since we moved here so I still have a way to go before I move on to the next room, probably the living room. I fully intend, over the next few weeks, to go through every drawer and every cupboard in every room and de-clutter. I'm going to free up as much space as I can and simplify the way I live and when I'm finished, I'm going to stand back and take a look and see what's next. 

Flapjack and a So-Called Fence

Thank you for the message of support on my last post. I'm sorry about the rant, it was a bad day yesterday and I just needed to let off a bit of steam. I spoke to some of my nice neighbours A & P this morning who told me that the fence is not a permanent one but something temporary until the rest of the work has been done. I do hope so because this was what greeted me yesterday, after the hordes of people had gone, and I went out to have a look at what they had put in place of the post and rail fence they ripped down.

Note the very attractive slope of the fence, the wonderful gap next to the wall and the extremely useful HUGE gap between the end of the fence and my gatepost! Such a professional job ..... NOT!!! I have no idea what their plans for this particular fence is are but I am sincerely hoping that A & P are right and that this is just a temporary measure.

So, today, after all the stress of yesterday, I was really craving something sweet. I'm on a very tight budget again this month, particularly as I have had to give up my market stall, so, I hunted through the cupboard to see what I had to make some cakes or cookies with. Lurking right at the back of the cupboard, there was a 1kg bag of porridge oats and a bag of very hard, lumpy, supposedly "soft" dark brown sugar. Who knows how long they've been in there but, never one to throw something away unless it's absolutely necessary, I immediately thought of flapjack. Deliciously sticky, oaty goodness to help relieve the stress of the weekend.

I have no idea where I originally got this recipe, it's been written in my note book for years so here is is, in case you have a craving for flapjack :-) I will post some pictures after they are cooked and chopped into slices if I remember. 

Flapjack

Ingredients

175 grams butter
175 grams soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
250 grams porridge oats

Method
Preheat oven to 150C. Lightly grease a 20cm baking tin.
In a large pan, melt together the butter, sugar & syrup, while stirring. When melted, remove from the heat and stir in the porridge oats.
Pour into tin and smooth the surface with a spoon. Bake for 35-40 mins or until the edges are brown and the surface has turned golden.
Place the tin on a wire rack. Cut into squares after 10 minutes, but leave to cool completely before removing from the tin.