An enchanting story....

Now children, are you sitting comfortably?
A story for you - as told to me by my ever intuitive husband.  No names have been replaced and no references have been exaggerated to form that of a more mystical story. Feel free to derive your own opinion and beliefs but just for 5 minutes forget about all of the nasty, horrid and poisonous doings of our sometimes cruel world and allow yourself to be open to a small nugget of natural gold……


‘  When I was sitting having my cold soaked porridge this morning, checking my emails as I normally do, I heard a very light tapping on the door. Thinking nothing of it, I resumed to the screen of my computer only to once more hear a little – tap, taptap, tap, tap. Poppy (our jack Russell), gave a most melodramatic performance as chief guard dog and started to growl profusely at the door’ (she likes to make the outsider believe that behind the door is a human – eating, rabies infected brute of a hound, not a doe eyed snuggly little puppy dog who would much rather curl up in her mums duvet than be associated in any type of brawl).’ This then had me convinced that someone was trying to get my attention, it wouldn’t be the first time the neighbour’s dog or a passing small relative has made their way to our door without the assistance of a guardian.’

‘Opening the door, I was a little confounded to see no trace of any caller. Thinking that someone was trying to outwit me, I proceeded to check all the prominent hiding places where I thought my persistent practical joker may be hiding, ready to jump out and surprise me, but I found nothing.’

‘Sitting down once again and deferring from finishing my usual morning espresso thinking that the strength of it could have prompted some sort of caffeine induced hallucination, I heard the faint tapping again. This time, trying to be clever I sneaked up to the glass panel of our door and peered slyly out, hoping to catch the trickster at his or hers game. There was nobody insight.’

‘Standing there momentarily as I tried to process some kind of rational explanation, I heard the noise again – tap, taptap, tap, tap. I stood right up against the small glass window pane with my nose pressed uncomfortably against it and looked down towards the foot of the doormat.
There, tapping away rhythmically with his little beak was a proportionately immaculate nuthatch.
 With his camel coloured breast and his decoratively alluring eye makeup, he seemed to be trying to attract my attention. One look across from the archway of our door made me realise why. The newly bought squirrel proof feeder we had been keeping topped up with black sunflower seeds was empty.
Trying hard not to startle him I went out to the outhouse where the bird food was kept and filled up the feeder. The mesmerizingly intelligent nuthatch flew to the nearest perch and watched me as I tipped up the container and filled it full of his favourite food. As soon as I had returned back to the house he had flown over and started to pick out the individual black seeds one by one, all the while looking extremely pleased with himself. As the nuthatch continued to fill his little tummy with his breakfast, I sat down and continued to finish mine.’

Blackberry and Elderberry compote
One large handful of blackberries – freshly picked and washed well                                                    Around 4 branches of elderberries – washed
2/3 tablespoons of sugar – depending on how sweet your tooth is!

Carefully pull the small elderberries off their branches and place in a small heavy based saucepan along with the blackberries and the sugar.
Gently heat the berries and the sugar until the mixture comes to a small boil. Allow to simmer gently for around 10 minutes.
It is now ready for a multitude of uses. Add it too Greek yogurt for a healthy breakfast, warm it up and mix it in with your morning porridge or one of my favourite ways to eat it is to mix it in with a freshly made batch of rice pudding, good to eat at any time of the day!

Picnic

I was promised a picnic. Of course I would be expected to conjure up some tasty, easy to devour morsels that could only be eaten with plastic inferior cutlery, but these are the candid moments I live for.

At the start of the week, seven days prior to said picnic day, the whole experience of eating outdoors was proposed to be an extremely grand affair. To be told of train rides and push bikes and riverbanks and sun kissed ripples of water had me pinning a long flowing pink ribbon to my straw bonnet in no time.

I pictured rowing boats with terribly gentlemanly men, boasting their seafaring stories whilst splintering themselves upon the boats wooden ores. Wicker baskets bulging at the buckles with smoked salmon pates and magnums of champagne.
 I saw myself poised, knees bent to one side (as a lady should sit) on the softest of angora blankets teacup in one hand and book in the other. A proud looking mother duck would be leading her duckling troops regimentally along the river’s edge, each one never making a fuss when gently coaxed into the water’s edge. One by one they would be encouragingly pushed into the dark unknown waters that would one day become their haven and their home. Woodland birds will be singing, dormice will be nervously collecting their winter’s larder and in the distance the dance like movements of two male hares would be seen taunting one another in amongst the heavily cropped fields of golden barley.

Some slapped up wafer thin ham and cheese paste sandwiches would obviously be a no – no. I needed something that would fit the wondrous picture I had created in my mind. I wanted something elegant but not preposterously difficult, something that would be filling but not so that you are left unbuttoning the top notch on your trousers and most of all I wanted something elegant and observantly beautiful to look at.

 I watched tentatively as each day nearing to the picnic the temperature given was dropping rapidly, the prolonged  September sun had outlived its natural tendency to keep its rays heated long into the drawn in evenings and cool winds were becoming to become afoot.

My persistence was still prevalent even when my partner in my little tete a tete fantasy got struck down with the burden of a mornings straw baling. Things seemed to be doing their utter most possible to deflate my bubble of picturesque alfresco dining but with my resilient temperament showings its true set of colours, I became more determined this picnic was to go ahead come rain or shine or hell or high water.

Ok, so I may be over doing it a little, I still got my bike ride, but it consisted of the visitation of a number of pubs along the way. The closest thing I saw to a river bank was a precarious peddle over a small unhealthy looking bridge that had a narrow stretch of brook trickling underneath it. Hardly big enough to wet your feet in never mind see a charming family of ducks, the only feathered animal that seemed to follow me about all afternoon was a lone magpie, and being as superstitious as I am, I didn’t see this as a good omen.

I can hardly complain, the cosy alpaca wool rug I had so vividly envisaged me resting upon was swopped for that of an outdoor chair and the natural playground of the riverbank was exchanged for a view of our always inquisitive brood of poultry and a few butterflies who seemed to be extremely grateful to me for planting them their very own cabbages to lay their eggs on.

I have a disgusting habit of always craving more, but when it comes down to it I already have everything I could possibly wish for.

The Picnic menu

Rosemary and garlic marinated free range chicken legs
Sweet corn salsa
Green beans with feta, lemon and olive oil


Marinate two full chicken legs with some garlic cloves, rosemary leaves and some salt and pepper. Leave to marinate in the fridge for a good couple of hours but remember to pull out of the fridge a good half an hour before cooking to allow to come to room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 200oc and empty out your ingredients onto a baking tray. Blast in the hot oven for about 15 minutes then turn the heat down to 180oc and cook for a further 30 minutes. Always check the juices are running clear from the chicken leg before removing from the oven. Allow to cool and rest before serving.

Sweet corn salsa

Carefully slice the kernels off two sweet corn cobs and add to a pan of boiling water. Return to the boil for 5 minutes before draining. Whilst the kernels are still warm sprinkle over a tablespoon of white wine vinegar then add a handful of chopped cherry tomatoes, diced cucumber, sliced spring onions and a diced red pepper. Add a good glug of olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper to finish.

Green beans with feta

Add your green beans to a pan of boiling water and cook until tender. Once they are cooked remove from the pan and squeeze over the juice of a lemon, add a good glug of olive oil and a small pinch of salt. Add the diced feta cheese once slightly cooled and mix to combine the flavours.

                                   “Where, you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow “

This effectively simple sentence has proved to be an antidote to the narcissistic ways that had begun to engulf me.

Without wanting to provoke those self – obsessed feelings once more, the less that is said on the subject the better. All there is to know that having found some solace in the form of a book, with every page that was turned, another pane in the disused and fogged up stained glass window that is my mind would polish itself clean and allow the sun’s rays to sparkle through the crystal coloured glass making everything seem much clearer and brighter than it was once before.

Now before you all think ( and I know some of you have thought it for a while ), that I am completely off my rocker , I’ll give you a recipe and some pictures to showcase the things that have helped me on a new road to self-discovery…

For a long time I have been mentally fending the month of September off with a big pointy stick.
September to me signifies –

The sneaky beginning of winter

September has this deceitful way of underhandedly making you think the summer is actually longer than it is. We are all too often met with glorious unprecedented sunshine in the first two weeks (hence the reason for our wedding anniversary being September 12th), which tempts us into thinking that this year will finally be the year that we will be granted an Indian summer that we see us still tending to the coals of our bbqs in late October.
Every year I fall for this trick but once the harsh winds and torrid wetness meets us in the last week of the month, all dreams of a sun – drenched Christmas day lunch cease to exist.

The month before my life meets my most pinnacle age yet

I can’t explain why or give any pathetic useless reason as to why I am quite fearful of turning 28.
Being 30 or even 50 has ever brought on the thoughtless panic attacks that I have found myself fighting with at the thought of hitting my late twenties.
Maybe I’m afraid something’s going to change, it might even be that I want it to change and it won’t.  All I can say is that I’ll let you know in a month…


However much it might seem, I actually enjoy the passing change of seasons that occurs in this mid – range month.  When summer and autumn amalgamate into one the most beauteous of landscapes can be seen, with the soft autumnal golden flocks of leaves being highlighted by the very last little bit of energy the summer sun has to give the views across land and field become awe inspiring. Brisk, cold, earthy mornings give way to warm days, with still enough light to stretch out the working hours in the garden that little bit longer.

And it is with September that we welcome the sight of the plum blackberry but we bid farewell to the strawberries, the blackberries and the raspberries that have enlightened our summer thus far. There has not been a day where my face has not been brightened with one or more of these berries, either as part of my breakfast or in the middle of the day when I want something to cheer me up. Now they are beginning to have seen their best, our season may be stretched a little longer with the help of heated greenhouses, but the majority of our good old English berries have seen better days and this is the most perfect recipe to give them the best send-off possible.

Strawberry and raspberry sorbet

400g strawberries – washed and hulled
200g raspberries
100g caster sugar
The juice of a lemon

Put all of your fruit into a large bowl then sprinkle with the caster sugar and the lemon juice.
Leave to macerate for half an hour.
Once to berries have softened puree them with a blender then sieve to remove the seeds.
If you have an ice cream maker pour in the mixture and leave for about twenty minutes until frozen, if not the place your liquid mixture into a suitable container and freeze for an hour, then take it out of the freezer and mix well with a fork and return to the freezer. Repeat this stage at least twice more at hourly intervals until frozen. Remove the sorbet from the freezer at least twenty minutes before serving.

Courgettes galore

I am completely useless at self- control.

Way back in the month of march, when the seedlings of the towering crops of the fields today were just beginning to feel the springs thawing warmth through the frozen soil, my over excitement in planning this year’s vegetable plot had got the better of me.

Not only did I enthusiastically get the other half to make it double the size, but I had a minor fixation with sowing every seed from all the vegetable packets I had accumulated over the winter months.

With seed catalogues arriving in the lifeless months of winter, you are enticed into believing that you can grow all over your necessary edible kitchen contents over the more hospitable spring and summer months.

My downfall came in the furrows of an early, fresh crispy spring morning. My eagerness for a summers worth of home grown stocks led me to sowing every courgette, squash, zucchini and patti pan seed I had available to me. In a sun radiated greenhouse I devotedly popped the flat pumpkin – like seeds on their sides in a carefully concocted mix of compost and perlite.

Courgettes and alike are my fail safe vegetables. Even if everything else fails to rear a small sign of life, the courgette will always prove to have the stamina to burst into action year after year.

What my squash adoring senses failed to remind me is that one courgette plant harvest is more than enough to feed a family of two, so what exactly I was going to do with the other 37 jungle like plants perplexed me.

If it was just me and the veg patch, I would have allowed all my swelling family of cucurbits to take over the plot, but the voice of strict reason that is my other half wouldn’t allow it.

He made me, no, forced me to give some of the now emotionally attached plants away. Separation from loved ones is never easy, but having to choose the blessed few that were to stay on and become my summer companions was heart wrenchingly difficult. After a few sleepless nights and tormented days, I whittled it down to 15 plants of 5 different varieties. The others waited in the greenhouse- come- orphanage for their foster parents to come and collect them and give them a loving home or at least that it what I was told.

Having nurtured them through the disorganised weather over the last couple of months, the time has finally arrived for the plants to burst into action. Daily I am bowled over by the vigorous blooms of the brightly coloured courgette flowers and the many unusually shaped fruits they are continuing to omit. Picking them quick is obligatory, unless you want something that resembles the size of a Russian submarine and carries more water than succulent squashy flesh.

Although it pains me to give them away, I offer them to people like bright bundles of joy, hoping to spread a little bit of the sunshine vegetable that invigorates me so greatly, but more often than not I am received with an ungrateful reply of rejection. I agree that back in the microwavable years of the 1980s the (as it was then) exotic courgette from distant shores was labelled insipid and bland, always being used as filler in a tinned tomato ratatouille or shoved in to bulk up a vegetarian lasagne.

With the recent revival of home grown foods, the courgette is once again making a welcoming come back and used for a multitude of dishes. If the last time you tried one you were wearing neon leggings, legwarmers and Margaret Thatcher was PM then maybe it’s time you reawaken your taste buds to one of the easiest home-grown vegetables around.

There are countless ways I have found to use up a surplus glut and although preserving them in oil is on my agenda, I have given you the recipe I find is the most expressive way to extract as much flavour out of the courgette as possible. To slowly pan fry them with a smashed clove of garlic, lemon zest, olive oil, salt and pepper is one of the most versatile recipes I have in my repertoire.

Serve them under a freshly grilled fillet of fish, mix them through a tomato sauce and serve with pasta or do what I did last night and griddle some sliced pieces of sourdough bread rubbed with a garlic clove then pile your summer coloured vegetables on top and drizzle seductively with extra virgin olive oil. Simple but impressive.

Multi – talented courgettes

3 or 4 varied sizes of courgettes, yellow or green, big or small

2 cloves of garlic – peeled and bashed but kept whole

2/3 big strips of lemon zest

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

Very carefully slice your courgettes into rounds with the width similar of that to a 10pence piece.

Drizzle a welcome amount of olive oil into a pan, throw in your garlic cloves and lemon zest and heat very slowly. Once some of the garlic has infused with the oil place all of your courgettes in to the pan, season with a generous amount of salt and pepper then allow to cook once again very slowly, stirring every five minutes or some to make sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Once they have softened and are decidedly floppy in appearance they are ready to do with as you please.

Courgette flower salad

Pick the most vibrantly bloomed flowers from  your courgette plants and tinkle through a splash of water, just before serving squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, sprinkle with salt and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

          Whilst the rest of the summer house awaits furnishing, poppy seams to be taking full advantage of her very own hand - crafted Laura Ashley dog bed. Only the very best for princess poppy!

The Great British Village Show

The time of year has hastily come around again for the season of the great British village show.

The dampening weather and fields that bog even under the feather weight foot of a sheep’s hoof have forced many a county show and countryside extravaganza to be cancelled.
Whilst some may grumble at the rising costs of entry fees and the lack of enticing eateries in the show grounds (given that they are usually situated in the middle of nature’s larder), local county shows encouragingly invite people that are not so use to being in the great outdoors to sample a slice of the life that us country-files find so addictive.

Not as well publicised as the county shows but evidently more charming, the village show tend to go discreetly undetected other than to those who live in the surrounding area.
Although growing in popularity and swelling in size, our nearest village show still manages to maintain the quaint cottage like charm it must have had when it was first arranged 155 years ago.

Many modern attractions have forced themselves onto the show in more recent years due to the increasingly popular affinity young people have with being hurled round some tummy upsetting, only just legally allowed fairground rides. I cannot deny I was not one of these thrill seeking human beings myself, usually after a morning flogging my poor pony to death in the shows own mini version of badminton.

These days I am more likely to be found browsing the craft and produce tents, keeping a keen eye on the way people meticulously display their exceedingly eye wateringly large vegetables and their strategically placed fruit.

I have not always been this fiercely competitive, on horseback, or at the school sports days when my father use to tell me that nobody remembers second place, I was always content knowing the fact that I had done my best.  It all changed the day I nonchalantly entered a Victoria sponge in one of the baking classes.  The self- gratification I received from seeing the highly prized red first card under my little ol’ cake was unbelievable, who would have thought that a seemingly innocent fluffy sponge would trigger in me a killer eagerness to win?

Although the many women behind the many prize winning fruitcakes and sausage rolls have a predisposition to want to win at all costs and are not afraid to show it, the real hard core, cut throat competitors are the ostensibly, silent types ( usually older men ) who come and arrange their –ahem, enormities under the cover of darkness. This, I thought is where the flouncy happy – go – lucky competitor leaves and the manically deranged, obsessive competitor comes in.

With the enlisted help of my mum (due to a husband being whisked away to the south of France), we took the preened and pampered vegetables to the show ground the night before. This enabled the first time vegetable competition entering person like myself to take a swift walk through the un – guarded trestle tables and have a shifty glance at the other competitors entries and look how best to display my own arrangement of vegetables.

Porcelain plates, frilly doilies and artistically arranged specimens started to set me off in an uncontrollable fit of hysteria, fortunately only recognisable through my penetrating eyes. Upon seeing my strained gaze and ridged body pose, the nurturing instinct in my mum kicked in as she took the clammy vegetables from my sweaty palms and quietly exhibited my wares in her own poetic fashion.

After all the stress and killer vegetable themed nightmares from the evening before, I surprised myself at the lack of the unbearable tension that I had highly anticipated to suffer from, even my cheeks had regained their recognisable rosiness. Proudly flashing my exhibitor’s badge at the car park attendant and receiving my free entry in, the good – feel energy that was being emitted from the hundreds of happy visitors, great grandparents and children alike, was intoxicating.

Although there were still one or two that wouldn’t let this humble feeling of exuberance penetrate their thick competitively poisoned skin, most found it impossible not to praise and congratulate on the excellence of their entries. Friendly growing tips were being shared, winning recipes were being divulged and the slandered of produce was being highly commended by all kinds of members of the public. It now seemed irrelevant whether your entries were placed or not, the sense of enthusiasm that you received from total strangers was worth more than a winning rosette.

Thinking that my husband would be wanting to share some of this village love, I rang him, only to discover that he and his friends were sharing some of their own type of village love in a french way with 9 bottles of rose wine - it surprises me that they were capable of any form of love after drinking that.

Strawberry and rose petal jam

1kg strawberries – tops off and halved
6 tbsp. lemon juice
900g jam sugar
One large handful of scented rose petals, white heels removed and tied in a small muslin bag
2- 3 drops rose water

Put a saucer in your freezer.
Place your strawberries, lemon juice, rose water and rose petal bag into a large pan with a good solid bottom. Cook on a medium heat for about 10 minutes, when the berries have started to break down.
Add the sugar, and stir constantly until the sugar has dissolved. Turn the heat up and bring the mixture to the boil, cook for a further 15 minutes then get your saucer out of the freezer so you can test to see if your jam is set. Place a teaspoonful on the cold plate and leave it for a minute or two to see if it forms a soft jacket of skin, then using your smallest finger push the jam up to see if it forms wrinkles, if it does it has set and is ready to decant into sterilised jars, if not then return the plate back to the freezer and keep testing at five minute intervals.
Once set remove the muslin bag of rose petals and decant into sterilised jars.

Lamb cooked in hay

Dare I say it but it feels like summer is finally making a sneaky arrival. Just when I had gotten use to the fact that my feet were unlikely to see anything other than the inside of my wellies this year, last week provided a grand total of seven days of pure sunshine based satisfaction.
Spending any moment inside just wasn’t an option I was going to consider especially with the dreaded jury duty I was obliged to endure was only a few days away. I don’t see the sunshine as an excuse just to lie around and add colour to my jaundice looking shade of skin, to me it’s a time when outdoor jobs are at their most pleasant, weeding, pruning, digging and most types of horticultural chores become enjoyable rather than the laborious tasks they seem to be when the rain seems to be on a constant flow.

Living a farmer girl type life for some time now, it has become installed in me that when the sun starts to shine, work must not be avoided but embraced in the most slave flogging ways.

As a young girl, my summer months would consist of long heat sweltering days on the back of a rickety old wooden hay trailer with not even a postage stamp worth of shade.
For hours we would be passed the hay bales via some weight bearing but incredibly strong men on a hay fork, which we would then proceed to stack in a interlocking fashion that meant it would be possible ( and safe ) for the 10 – layer high trailers to be travelled down the lane.

If we thought it was bad enough in the bare heat of the mid-day sunshine in the middle of a harvested field, it was preferably refreshing compared to the suffocating hours we then had to spend re – stacking every hay bale once more on the inside of a heat retaining barn where the air seemed to be sucked up by some un known force as soon as it had exhaled itself from your body.

Looking back I have no idea why I endured it for so long. The hours dragged on, the temperatures were immense and the injuries were a plenty. But when I could have been hanging round some run down park, swigging from a bottle of cider that tasted like the contents of someone’s bladder, I think I got off lightly ( even though the wage was mildly Victorian like ).

Laughter was a plenty and the thickly buttered best ham sandwiches brought to our starving selves by the farms 90 year old first proprietor ( god rest his soul ) made my allegiance to the cause all that much greater.  The next two generations down from granddad ran the show, well, being father and son they naturally thought one was boss of the other, a mutual respect that still runs strongly through them both today. Little was I to know that the teasing, whip cracking, slave labour enforcing son of the business was to become the person who I was to spend the rest of my life with.

Over the years I’ve been promoted from lowly bale stacker to chief tractor driver to the one who just turns up with the sandwiches. I would like to thank my marriage for my uplifting through the ranks but thanks to new machinery and time saving new ways, my assistance is no longer needed. My marital status would be a pathetic excuse in my husband’s eyes.

For two summers on the row now my tractor driving skills have not been called for, which if I am being honest was doing my credibility no favours, but my inability to sit still in the sunshine is still prevalent in me. The smell of the harvest chugging past me as I relentlessly slapped paint on to the never ending summer house ( as it has seemed ) triggered a unwanted feeling of envy to those who were collecting their harvests in this short lived bout of good weather we were having.

In my newly appointed role as ‘Farmer’s Wife, it is my duty to provide a hearty feast for my man on his arrival home after a hard day’s work in the field. Feminists can worry not, for I am not dressed in an   a – line style skirt and pretty frilly apron (yet), or do I get his pipe and slippers ready for as soon as he walks through the door, but having been there and done it I can appreciate how much of your blood sweat and tears goes into making just one bale of hay, so the need for a hearty meal on your return home is not just necessary but it is a must.

Lamb baked in hay.

I appreciate that hay isn’t likely to be found on the shelves of your local supermarket but look out over the next couple of weeks in any nearby fields for any harvesting going on. If you are quick you may be able to sneak a bagful before the farmer gets back from his dinner!

1 joint of lamb – shoulder/leg etc.
2 cloves of garlic – peeled and sliced
2 sprigs of rosemary – cut into small pieces
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
One wine glass of white wine
1 handful of freshly cut hay

Pre – heat the oven to 180oc.
Soak the hay in a large bowl for about 15 minutes, then drain.
Make small incisions in your lamb joint then fill them up with the slices and garlic and the rosemary. Drizzle the olive oil and the wine all over and season with salt and pepper.
Place a layer of hay in the bottom of a lidded roasting tin and put your lamb on top. Cover with another layer of hay then place the lid on top of the roasting tin taking care to seal any way word strands of hay and roast in the oven for 30 minutes per 500g. Once cooked allow to stand for 15 minutes before unwrapping your parcel and seeing the moist and juicy lamb that awaits you underneath.

Perry chicken

I can hold my hands up and say without any grievances that I caused the argument that I was now having with my husband over the phone in the supermarket.

Not being fully aware that I was standing hovering over the onions while I was having this mildly heated discussion, it bypassed my attention that a small queue was forming behind me. Whether these bystanders were bending an ear towards my gradually rising irritating voice or just genuinely waiting in line to pick their shallots, who knows but after an ' interrupt me and suffer the consequences' glance thrown at them by me they dispersed blindly, almost knocking one another aside in an attempt to avoid the wrath of the crazy lady screaming down her phone in the veg section.

When my other have often tells folk that we don't argue, I always worry that it comes across quite smug so I usually cut across this with ' but we always bicker about the most studied of things ‘as a way of making us seem as vulnerable as any other couple, the truth is we don't really fall out but the one thing that always seems to ruin our domestic bliss is the subject of food.

I don't wish to bore you with all the laborious details and neither will I talk mind - numbingly on about the problem at hand, but the main gist is after weeks of fresh baguette and butter for supper on a Saturday night, I had wholeheartedly been promising that this
Weekend was going to be different. Whilst I had bravely proclaimed that three courses were to be made I left it to the hands of the gods of the local market to decide what those three courses were to contain, once again ignoring the planning ahead side of my brain.

As you can probably gather, the market (or most likely, my lack of intuition) had left me with no inspiration or brainwave of an idea for an outstanding evening meal so when the phone call came from R in anticipation of the fine cuisine meal I was supposed to be planning for him, I was a little more than on the defensive as any frantically eager to please female would know.

‘So then babe, what's for tea? '

I hesitated before I retorted with my meagre mannered plea-

' Well there wasn't really anything I thought you would fancy from the market, so how about I just get some bread and some of your favourite nibbles? '

I think it was the pause that had instigated his immediate response, or it could of been my use of the word 'nibbles' that prompted his irritated reply  -

' You told me, no you PROMISED me a proper sit down meal, not one that we can just politely pick at like guests at our own buffet style party '.

And so this how it carried on, my building frustration stomped me from the onions where I zig zagged impatiently round the Saturday shoppers in the ready meal section until I reached the multi optional choices of the yoghurt shelves where I proceeded to throw my backside against the clammy handle of the shopping trolley and admit defeat to an annoyingly correct husband.

It took until the baked goods section until we had reached a solution, yes I may have used the chilled cabinet for some divine inspiration but it was a welcoming end to an unnecessary affair. Reconciling affectionately, I released the phone from my ear and gained awareness of my surroundings. The crowd that had been noticeably following a short distance behind me were now inconspicuously passing me, some giving me glowing looks of encouragement and others avoiding me like the plague.

Perry Chicken – serves 2

Instead of opting for the traditional chicken in a white wine sauce (and inspired by the special offer on the vintage ciders), an intriguing bottle of Perry came to mind as an interesting alternative. In the most discreet and elegantly disguised way, the Perry imparts a delicately fruity flavour to the dish which not only empowers the chicken but rounds off the cream sauce quite perfectly.
Ever the fan of a spot of home butchery, I always lean towards buying a whole chicken and dissecting it to my own requirements, generally freezing the bits that are not intended for usage straight away. And although my earlier frustration was now dying out, the sinister sensation of a bit of knife wielding was welcoming – better to vent my feelings on a local free range chicken than on my other half.
I have in the past deemed the simple potato as boring and ineffective, but since growing our own Cheshire’s my senses have been re - awoken to the potential powers that they evoke, especially when served with a rich and intense dish as this. ‘Behind every great man there is a great woman' and behind every great chicken dish there is a great potato dish.

4 chicken pieces of your choice. This may include – chicken thighs, drumsticks, legs or breast
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
200ml Perry/cider
200ml chicken stock
¾ tablespoons of double cream – depending on how naughty your feeling!
250g mushrooms
Knob of butter
1 large handful of chopped tarragon and parsley (if available)

Heat the oil in the pan and add the crushed garlic, taking care not to let it burn.
Season your chicken pieces and add them to the pan, allowing them to brown on all sides. This should take about 8 – 10 mins. Once coloured all over, remove the chicken and the garlic from the pan. Keeping the pan on the heat add the Perry and allow to reduce by about a third.  Whilst waiting for the alcohol to burn off, half your mushrooms and pop them into another pan with a knob of butter sauté until slightly coloured.
Once the Perry has reduced put your browned chicken and mushrooms back into the pan with the Perry in and add the chicken stock and the cream. Your chicken pieces should be just covered by the liquid, if not add a little more stock. Bring the mixture to the boil then cover with a well fitted lid, turn down the heat and leave to simmer away for around 30 -35 minutes until the chicken is cooked.

 Once the creamy sauce has reduced and thickened add your chopped herbs and serve preferable with some freshly dug up boiled new potatoes.