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 :-)

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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. 

What a Hectic Week!

It's been mad, mad, mad this week. I have been chicken sitting for my neighbours, one of my llamas has been giving me sleepless nights because of a cut on his leg, my youngest daughter is still home from uni for the Easter Hols and to top it all off I had to call out the RAC when the wheel on my car started to smoke on the way to the shops on Friday!! I'm shattered from all the running around and sorting and worrying but hopefully, things will now get back to some sort of normality because I'm rapidly running out of steam. I haven't had time to do any sewing for my Etsy-shop-in-the-making, the garden is looking like a jungle again and the dreaded tussocks are back (you can read about the saga of the tussocks here and here) so, as soon as my daughter goes back to uni, I am going to have to crack-on and get things under control again ..... I hate it when the house gets out of control. On the plus side, we did nip off to Looe to visit our favourite cafe for a cream tea which, although it has changed hands, was just as nice as ever, despite it now being a cash only establishment. I'm not very good at carrying cash in my purse, I always forget to go to the bank so tend to rely on my debit card. We spotted these lovely daffodil hearts on the hill behind the cafe .... someone has obviously been busy and I think they look lovely. 

I also whipped up a batch of shortbread. I had a craving for something sweet and as I usually always have butter sugar and plain flour in the house, it's my go-to-sweet-craving-quick-fix recipe. Simple as can be and you can be eating delicious shortbread in half an hour ..... less if you don't let it cool first ..... I have to say I do like shortbread that is still a little warm :-)

Ingredients

125g/5oz butter
55g/2oz caster sugar, plus extra to finish
180g/6oz plain flour

Preparation method

Heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.

Beat the butter and the sugar together until smooth.

Stir in the flour to get a smooth paste. Turn on to a work surface and gently roll out until the paste is 1cm/½in thick.

Cut into rounds or fingers and place onto a baking tray. Sprinkle with caster sugar and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Set aside to cool on a wire rack.

I know it says beat butter and sugar but I don't do it that way. I rub the butter into the flour then stir in the sugar and press it into the cake tin but either way works just fine. It's just that I'm a bit lazy and I usually can't be bothered to unearth the hand mixer. 

What a Difference a Week Makes

What a difference in the weather, last Sunday, I was happily snapping away in the sunshine like a demented, camera happy tourist while collecting bits of driftwood and shells and generally having a lovely time on one of my local beaches. Yesterday, the weather was grey, the Cornish mizzle, a cross between mist and drizzle had firmly set in and the whole atmosphere was decidedly autumnal and gloomy. Still, I'm not one to let a bit of rain stop me from having a walk by the sea so I hopped in the car and nipped off to Looe with my camera to pretend to be a tourist again and see if there was anything interesting to find on the beach.

I was thrilled to find a new local shop on the quay, I'm all for promoting local produce and I buy locally as often as I can, usually from the market where I have my stall but I also like to support other local retailers if I can. I bought some lovely mushrooms which I had for my breakfast when I got home, they were absolutely delicious.

And of course there is Pengelly's where I buy my fish whenever I'm in Looe

Banjo pier was looking empty and gloomy.

The fishing boats were having a day off.

I did spot something I've never seen before though, even though I have been visiting Looe for the last 11 years. A cute little petrol pump for the boats to use all neatly tucked away on the quayside.

I really love this old building, it would make an awesome house or workshop space, preferably both at the same time. I have a sneaking feeling though that I love it so much because the doors and windows are painted in a colour very similar to my front door. It's my new favourite colour. 

And despite the mizzle, these geraniums are totally beautiful and cheer up the gloomiest of days. 

The beach was deserted. Apart from a flock of seagulls having a nap on the sand and a couple of brave souls who had obviously finished their breakfast quickly and headed to the beach early in time to beat the rush there was no one in sight. Not only was it empty of people though, there was no driftwood or shells or anything at all. For some reason, the council have taken to scraping the beach with a tractor each day after the tide goes out to get rid of every trace of, well, just about everything that you would usually find on a beach. There is no life left at all, which is a real shame. I have no idea what they do with the seaweed and of course, the sea creatures that live within the micro-ecosystems within the seaweed, after they have scraped it all away but I'm guessing that not much survives. I don't understand why they have to do this. I'm assuming it's because the tourists don't like seaweed on their beaches. Ridiculous if you ask me but then I suppose that's just a personal opinion. Collecting shells was one of my favourite things to do when I was a child and we went to the beach.

A totally barren beach 

And finally there was this little fellow. I know a lot of people think that these birds are pests but I love the way they hop and walk along the ground. He was very obliging too and I managed to get nice and close to get a picture.

A Stroll by the Sea

Yesterday, amidst days and days of chilly, grey weather, there was a day filled with sunshine. The kind of beautiful day which hints that summer might not be too far away. Seventeen degrees of warm, breezy loveliness which was, quite frankly, most welcome and definitely a day for a walk by the sea. 

Usually, we avoid touristy places during the summer months but yesterday, it was nice to be able to go and wander by the sea in the lovely June sunshine.

The lovely little narrow streets in Looe. 

Looe was very badly affected by the storms earlier this year. Many properties were flooded and the damage was extensive and during one high tide, Banjo pier went from this 

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To This

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Yesterday, the red light on top of the pier looked like this. Such beautiful colours.

And of course, there was the necessary cream tea.

A Walk in Looe

Well. I know it's been a week(ish) since my last post but the gloom set in again and I felt like hibernating in front of the fire, which is basically what I did. Today, however, I decided that I needed to get out of the house and go and do something. After feeding and watering the llamas, giving the cats their breakfast and taking the dogs out for a run in the field, I set off for Looe. The weather is  chilly and grey and not very pleasant and I really didn't want to leave the house but I wrapped myself up and forced myself to get in the car and drive. The sight  of the sea always cheers me up and the smell of the salty sea air makes me feel invigorated, even though today, the weather mostly looked like this ......

Since I started to blog, I always carry a camera with me in my handbag, in case I see something interesting and today I took some lovely pictures of the little lanes in Looe, the beautiful boats moored along the quayside and I managed to get a picture of a buzzard, although it's a bit blurry. Occasionally, the sun kept peeping out between the clouds and I managed to snap some pictures that look a little less gloomy. 

I love boats, I would love to live on one.

I adore these multi coloured flower pots on the steps outside the Pasty Shop.

And this cute little restaurant on the quay with the gorgeous red geraniums. 

And finally I managed to pull over into a layby on the way home and hang out of the window to snap this picture of a buzzard sitting on a telegraph pole.