Marie Cookpad

  I saw these marshmallows at Asda the other day and I just could not resist picking up a package!  They are so cute.  Little snowman faces.  I just couldn't pass them by without picking up a package! (or two)   Hot cocoa has never been my favourite drink. First of all I am not fond of chocolate milk, or chocolate ice cream.  I adore chocolate candy and chocolate bakes, but when it comes to milk, I could take or leave it.   Add to that the fact that most hot cocoa powders you get to use at home and largely disappointing.  You end up with watery hot cocoa with lumps and bits of cocoa powder in them, because no matter how hard you try you just can't get the cocoa to dissolve completely!      About the only place you can get a decent hot chocolate is at one of the coffee shops and then it costs more than a coffee and is far too sweet for my taste.    Todd, on the other hand, really loves a nice cup of hot cocoa, although...

  Our blackcurrants are coming fast and furious now.  In all truth in about a week, they will be all done, and what's left on our bush will be left to the birds to enjoy. They don't mind one iota, and neither do I.  Give nature back a bit of what it gifts you with is my motto.    I love to make fruit cordials in the summer with some of our soft fruits. I do freeze a lot, and I even freeze some of the cordials for the winter. If you pop them into an ice cube tray, you can just pop them out once frozen into a baggie and you have single servings of cordial  to enjoy all winter long. You can't beat the taste of a homemade fruit cordial made with real fruit!    I have always loved the flavour of blackcurrants.  Back home my favourite Halls cough drops were the Blackcurrant ones.  Cordials are really easy to make.  You just mix fruit, sugar, water  . . .     Cook to extract the juice, and thicken it, then strain. ...

   We have had such a fantastically warm and sun drenched summer thus far, which in some ways has been quite fantastic for farmers growing silage for their animals Its perhaps a bit tenuous for other crops, but for getting in the hay its been a really great year thus far.  In fact our own house garden is looking a bit like dry hay fields at the moment! Dry, wheat coloured and not our usual verdant green.       “Oh our hay it is mown and our corn it is reaped,  our barns are full and we’ve garnered the seed…” I would wager that in these modern times, making hay is not quite as much of a labor as it was in olden times. Back then it would have required a lot of workers and helpers, and taken days of hot and dusty work, with most of the hay having to be cut by scythes.  I saw a bit of that in the series Larkrise to Candleford, in one episode . . .  with the  the whole town participating in the harvesting of the hay/corn/wheat.  Even in ...