2011.03.27 My Day

I have to say I am missing my extra hour in bed this morning and since I got up its been a very busy day. The house was tidied in readiness for my mum coming, the roast pork was put on to cook in the oven, for the first hour it is always put on gas mark 8 to get a nice crispy crackling  - I don't use salt at all.  The floors were scrubbed clean with an old fashioned mop and plenty of boiling water soap powder and a squirt of bleach. I prefer the old fashioned dolly mop you can really get a rythm with it, and with lots of paws paddling around everything has to be clean.  Mum arrived and I sat down and had a chat with her inbetween cooking dinner and all its accompaniments.  Then we sat down to dinner we had roast pork, with lots of crackling, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and home made apple sauce with lashings of tasty gravy.  It was delicious.  All three plates were quickly cleared.  Served with my home made elderflower champagne it went down a treat.  

For afters we had home made bread and butter pudding.  I had some hot cross buns that needed to be used up which I cut in half, buttered, sprinkled with sugar, grated nutmeg and mace and then covered with a home made egg custard made from boiled milk,  which is then poured on to beaten eggs, vanilla sugar or vanilla essence, and sugar and whisked.   I then strain through a sieve and pour onto the bread mixture.  Put on a foil lid put dish in a bain marie and fill with hot water and cook until the mixture is set - serve hot or cold with some double cream.  Yummy.

I use ground mace a lot in baking.  Mace is the outer membrillo/casing of a nutmeg and I think the flavour is much sweeter and more fragrant than that of the nutmeg, but I do use the two together.  You can buy whole Mace from Asian Foodstores, it can be used in pickling eggs etc, but it is best to buy it ready ground as it is extremely hard.

So all in all a very pleasant but busy day  - lovely to be with my mum, but we have just nattered and nattered and nattered.  I do love her lots.

All is quiet in our household at present, Squeak's asleep on the settee, Tyson is flat out behind the chair in corner of the bedroom and Missy is fluctuating between being curled up on the setee next to me or up on her cushion in  the computer room next to her Dad who is on his computer internet game.  I am just chilling as its back to work for me tomorrow.

This is how laid back things are:

Hope you have all had a lovely day wherever you may be.

Take care 

Pattypan

xx