Bad national news needs an urgent offset

Hot biscuits from the oven, ginger and lemon marmalade, English breakfast tea.

Trying to keep despair at bay.

This is fuel.  A lot of work ahead, GOTV, Get Out The Vote, for November.  If you have a vote in the US, please use it. Every single election, even the unopposed ones, to preserve your right.

Why people like me can't watch TV

I usually have raw materials prepped in the freezer for when the urge strikes to cook.

I don't have tv service, not interested in what's on. Working in public TV tends to remove the need to watch at home.  Anyway I do have favorite DVDs, and today I was watching Mapp and Lucia, the episode where Mapp is making ginger and marrow jam. Using marrows from Diva's garden. She's rented out her own house for the summer to Lucia, rented Diva's house for herself, Diva's staying somewhere else, but visiting to gossip.

Mapp was back biting Lucia as she took out the hot jars for the jam, when something went off in my head, and I suddenly was in the kitchen

 boiling up jars and cooking down the ginger and lemons from the freezer in a simple syrup.

So now they're cooling and I can watch the rest of the episode. 

I just hope Mapp or Diva or Georgie don't start hooking a rug or something or I'll never get to the end of the series.

New kind of bread, and other great stuff

Before I go out to a local concert this afternoon, and a visit to the library gallery to cast a ballot for best in show at the artist's group annual exhibit, a bit of baking and other things.

Tried Patricia Wells ham and cheese loaf. I think this is in her salads book, but in the book the list of ingredients is in italics, too likely to cause slipups on measuring. So I just googled on it, and you can too. Here it is, and pretty successful. Since it had eggs, cheese and ham, it's great with a green salad or, for me, as a breakfast food. Warmed a little to soften the cheese.

And a German potato salad, red local potatoes, one of which I planted for future ones, tossed with olive oil, bit of minced fresh tarragon, and vinegar I made from Chardonnay.

And, since raspberries are in at the farm, some in the freezer, maybe for jam, and one lot to eat fresh, little sprinkle of sugar.

Good food, set for several days.

Seeds and neighbors

The herbs are all growing nicely. All planters are by the front walk, so neighbors can pick. Thai and Italian basil, English thyme, rosemary, tarragon, lavender. Several neighbors are good cooks who are happy with fresh herbs, just take what's needed for today's cooking.

And one, who's talking about making lavender ice cream using my lavender, made me a present. Bought the copper tops, created a fitted base for each, removed old fence tops, replaced with these lovely additions to the patio. And the lovely new deck, ahem...

Midsummer lunch, and little visitor

Lunch today, hot summer weather, local peas, steamed with carrots and homegrown thyme, tuna salad with homegrown tarragon, local strawberries with mango yogurt and chocolate drops. Followed by Vietnamese coffee and Goya cookies.

Then a tiny visitor came to play on the deck, safe from the active local foxes.

The pitcher's final journey to the well

So if you're one of the afternoon tea guests over the years chez Boud, who've worried in case yours might be the hands in which the valuable Wedgwood Queensware pitcher might meet disaster,  your troubles are over.

Yesterday a cheap old saucepan lid fell into the washing up bowl I'd just put the pitcher in, ready to wash it. And this is the result.

It's retired for flower duty, sigh. Served me well. I can probably glue the handle back, but it won't work as a pitcher you can trust not to dump the milk on your guests.

Sic transit gloria Wedgwoodi.

But there's always home cooking

Midst shot and shell, home cooking definitely helps the spirits.

New batch of hot biscuits, with golden raisins in, chocolate button on top, to be split and spread with homemade strawberry preserves from local berries, and labneh. Anywhere you'd use cream cheese, labneh works.

These went over big-time with handsome son visiting last evening to hear the latest dispatch from the plumbing front.

And my deck builder received a little pot of the jam and rushed off to try it.

Afternoon tea on the (beautiful new) deck features these, too. The biscuits, not the son and builder.

Another day, another flood...the plumbing saga continues.

So yesterday, finishing up a load of laundry, upstairs, I was in the living room, downstairs, having a peaceful cup of tea.  When suddenly splatter, splatter, sploosh, a cascade of water joins me in the living room, through the ceiling,  all over the floor and the cat, and requiring an instant basin.  The shutoff for the house is right there in the closet, did that, called the plumber who blessedly was at home, and came in five minutes.

After a bit of detective work and trudging about he diagnosed it as a clog in the washing machine drain.  Which accounted for the waterfall downstairs.  As it spun dry, the water rose up, over the drain, down the wall, and directly into the room below.  But he said not a clog, mor likely a small object had fallen, been dropped, in the course of installing the washer a couple of months ago. I also wondered about the plumbing and other handy work done since and wondered if a small tool had fallen down there. It took a bit of dislodging, but he finally managed it, and all is now well.

He tells me the ceiling won't fall.  Which is something, I guess.  My heart and my wallet are struggling to keep up with the excitement around here.

I have to rest on the (beautiful new) deck now and read something quiet and peaceful like a murder mystery.

Tea outdoors, and strawberry jam happens

The weather veering wildly from summer to fall, complete with high winds, and back again, any afternoon that allows for walking then tea on the deck is welcome. 

 
Here's the last slice of banana bread with a nice spoonful of labneh, great contrast, between the sweeter, fruity bread and the tart labneh, a favorite of mine. And a couple of shock horror, bought cookies! Goya Maries to be exact.

The book is Second Honeymoon by Joanna Trollope, great deck reading.  This is one I got enough of before the end, though, since there's a lot about actors and their lives, and it's sadly tedious stuff, as theater is to me, when it's just talking about it.  I've known quite a few actors over the years, and they're most interesting when they're on stage interpreting other people's words and thoughts.

And strawberry jam happened. I remembered having frozen a couple of containers of strawberries after eating some fresh, and last evening thought it would be good to have a little something to spread on bread.  Also to give to helpful neighbors who have been very good lately, what with setting up my washing machine after the plumbing adventure, the kind of job that's too small to get anyone to do for pay, but way beyond my strength to just do.  You need burly relatives or friends, and fortunately I have burly neighbors.

They are both mad for my bread, and the preserves, sooooo, a breakfast kit is going to happen for them soon.  And I need to buy more strawberries before the season ends.  Next jam plan is ginger and lemon, already prepped and in the freezer, the ingredients, that is.

Making jam, or in this case preserves, whole fruit in there, is not a big deal.  This small batch took half an hour start to finish.  It's just a matter of remembering to do it.  It used about one and a half strawberry containers.  Small batch is not only good to make, it's very good to taste.  And it's well received, since homebaked bread and jam is just not available even at the poshest stores.  Boutique food, even the best, has been packed and shipped.  Mine travels about fifty feet to its destination. I like this.

June is here! white rabbits, and the deck almost ready for summer loafing.

And, since you're already reading here, please note the following.

As you probably know, the EU GDP (General Data Protection) laws recently went into effect, and you have a right to know how and if they affect your participation in  my blogs.  Though the law applies only in the EU, it's important to know that my own policies have always respected personal information, and here's my assurance on that.

Your privacy is important to you,  so the statements below outline how I handle your personal information. First of all, thank you for visiting my blogs, following my blogs, and for leaving comments on my blog posts, all of which I so much appreciate. 

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"Field and Fen" and "Art the Beautiful Metaphor" are independently operated blogs created, written and run by me (Liz Adams) and within which I share a range of subjects, including my creative work and process along with book reviews, art exhibit reviews, recipes of my own cooking, adventures with my character dolls, the Dollivers, and my forays into DIY, and my own photos of the work.  I am the owner, creator and only administrator of this blog. I do not have any advertising contracts for these blogs.

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So that's where we are!  Same as we always were, in fact.

Enjoy the weekend!