love those cupcakes

Venturing

Over a weekend, the baking Boy ventured into the world of Italian patisserie, a la GBBO.  Making sfoggliatelle, to be precise. It looked a laborious and messy process but he ended up with some lamination and a tray of pastries.  And a new respect for the current series' participants.

Venturing once again into the realm of small knits for small people has produced mixed results.  A friend is about to welcome triplets into her family so I picked up the long rested knitting needles and various patterns which didn't appear too taxing, aware I need three of whichever item I decide to knit and that I'm currently bothered by a painful golfer's elbow.  No, I don't play golf, it's just my elbow seems to think I do.  A pair of boots turned out looking more or less like they should (they're not perfect but they're intended for feet) whilst a beanie hat was just tiny.  Far too tiny, unless my friend's daughter gives birth to three boiled eggs. 

It seems I've ventured into the writing world of Nigel Slater.  Never a fan of his TV shows (I prefer it when it's just the potatoes that look like a good scrub wouldn't go amiss), never having bought any of his books and skipping his column in the Guardian, I finally succumbed (his latest publication has the word 'Christmas' in the title and was half price in Waterstones, so of course a copy came home with me).  Surprisingly, I'm enjoying his words (I doubt I'll be giving any of the recipes a try as they're far from vegan friendly),  particularly those describing his obvious love of the colder, darker months of the year (which pretty much matches my own).

Today is the last day of October and I'm about to venture into the loft to retrieve the bag of spooky stuff.  There's a bowl full of sweet treats for anticipated little (and not so little) callers, a giant pumpkin has a face, a batch of vegan pumpkin cupcakes is awaiting a topping of gingerbread spice buttercream, pumpkin, butter bean and coconut curry is simmering away on the hob and a couple of seasonally scented candles will soon be lit.  In between answering the door knocks, I'm planning to watch the remaining episodes of the second season of Stranger Things (it's so very good and so hard to ration), followed by the obligatory viewing of Hallowe'en and a creepy book at bedtime (I really shouldn't do any of this as I've been having a few too many bad dreams of late).

And now I'm signing off for a few weeks as we venture east in search of Richard Parker and friends. 

 

Comings and goings

We heard them before we saw them, honking away as they flew across a post Ophelia blue sky in that unmistakable v formation. 

A wedge of geese (don't you just love avian collective nouns?), necks outstretched, following the leader. 

Boo, predictably (he's a gun dog, it's in his genes),  took up the chase, barking loudly as he sped across the field, leaping into the air at intervals, conceding defeat as they continued their journey out of sight.

But were they coming or going?  I have no idea. 

The littlest and his parents live at some distance and they usually come to us.  Last Sunday, however, we arranged to meet up at a more or less half-way point, York, specifically the railway museum.

The last time we visited was years ago, when the Boy was just a nipper (he has absolutely no memory of that week we spent exploring the city from our vegetarian B&B base), so another nose around the locos was well overdue.

Littlest is very much the train fan and was somewhat dumbstruck at that first sighting of all those impressive engines.  We have a saying in our family when actors visibly overact, that they'd attended the Lost In The Woods School of Drama.  Well, littlest did a fair impression of being lost in the woods.  Actually, we all did as we entered the Great Hall.

I'd previously had no idea that, during the First World War, trains were used as ambulances.  Initially, British railway companies supplied ambulance trains for use in this country only, picking up injured soldiers from ships and transporting them to hospital, but eventually thirty trains were in use in France and Belgium, ferrying thousands of casualties.  Conditions on board were challenging and dirty.  As one nurse wrote in a letter to her family,  ‘Imagine a hospital as big as King’s College Hospital all packed into a train.  No outside person can realise the difficulties except those who try to work it.’

As we wandered the museum's exhibits, memories of waving off my uncle (my mum's brother, Bob, now aged 97, the last remaining sibling and living in the US), aunt and three cousins at Darlington station when I was five or so came flooding back.  Auntie Joan leaning out of the train window, waving the hankie she'd been using to dab tears, the train noisily belching steam as it left the platform, heading south towards the ship that would take them to a new life in  Africa.  All so very Brief Encounter in my head.

Comings and goings in the kitchen of late have included a loaf, baked from a recipe in a Sainsbury's magazine and more successful (well, it was edible) than yet another attempt at a cottage loaf (which fell off its warm perch in the airing cupboard and grew stubble in the process).

The other two here are fans of chocolate and peanut butter (I am, too, but they prefer theirs mixed with eggs and butter) so I re-jigged a favourite recipe and made a batch of brownies, complete with blobs of creamy peanut butter and a topping of chopped up Reese's cups. 

This was more a case of they came, posed for a picture, hung around in the cake tin for a bit and then ended up in the bin.  At least, most of them did. 

'Don't you know brownies freeze well?', queried the baking clever clogs, after I'd moaned about wasted time, wasted effort, wasted ingredients, rejected love (not that last one, we're not at all soppy here).   

Well, I know now.

 

Chugging along

The central library in town is a Carnegie library, in operation since 1912 and a familiar, if not particularly striking, building for most locals. 

Whilst the surrounding area has changed beyond recognition (the terraced streets and corner shops have long since gone, the little park complete with bandstand has been paved over,  the police station is now a car park, MIMA is next door in all it's glass fronted glory and there are the controversial plans to build five office blocks round the corner), the library has been quietly chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much. 

Some visitors use the bank of computers, some go in for a sit down and a warm, some, like me, browse the books and the noticeboards. 

The council, in its wisdom (and I use that term very loosely) has decided the library is 'intimidating'.  Big changes of an undisclosed nature have been announced.   Change here usually means demolition.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried. 

The reference library is housed on the first floor, the place I used to hang around outside every week all those years ago, waiting to meet my friend who had a Saturday job there, and now the perfect spot for quiet reading or writing or attending one of the literary events library staff are so good at organising.  

One Saturday more recently, I was lucky to nab a ticket to see my favourite band, fellow Teessiders Cattle and Cane (have a listen here), who were performing an acoustic set.  Great music amongst shelf after shelf of books.  How perfect is that? 

Of course, books are an ever present feature at home.  (I'd had another good clear-out but then, looking in the loft for suitable items for the local Scout group's annual jumble sale, I was reunited with a huge box of forgotten but much loved reads.  I'm still trying to find space for them.)

Jane Casey's The Kill is part of the DC Maeve Kerrigan crime series and is a well paced police procedural.  A killer is at large in London.  The body count is mounting and someone clearly has a grudge against coppers.  I gobbled this one up. 

House of Spines has been hailed as a chilling contemporary gothic and is a book I've been itching to get stuck into.  Ran McGhie, a young writer with no immediate family and a history of mental illness,  inherits a mansion on the outskirts of Glasgow from a relative he'd not only never met but didn't know existed.  The vast house comes with certain conditions but Ran, struggling to keep his head above water, thanks his lucky stars and quickly moves in.  But all is not as it seems and Newton Hall begins to whisper its secrets.  The novel is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, with a smidgeon of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw  but, for me (yes, I know I'm in the minority), it was disappointing.  The annoying printing errors probably didn't help.

The current TBR pile is a mix of borrowed and purchased from Waterstones (well, who can resist a buy one, get one half price offer?).

The garden is well and truly in autumnal mode, slowing down but still providing some welcome splashes of colour.   There's an accumulation of spring bulbs awaiting planting.  It's on the to do list but, given last year's are still languishing in a pile in the shed, they may be in for a lengthy wait.

The oven has been working hard so far this month. I've been working similarly hard to keep it clean and could have done without the tomato and mozzarella tart overflowing spectacularly whilst cooking. 

Simple bakes (lemon drizzle cake, brownies, cheese and chive scones) are keeping the other two here happy (a vegan ginger cake just for me ended up in the bin, it was so inedibly damp) whilst the Boy has been turning his hand to all things filo (me, I just buy the ready-made stuff). 

He mentioned he was planning to have a crack at baking a seasonal loaf and I had pictures in my head of a crusty golden wheatsheaf, complete with cute bread mouse.  You know the ones.

We were presented with.....

Of course, the Harvest Tarantula.