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Bits and bobs
Still no sign of the road guys. V surprised. The electricity guys, on the other hand, are working away: they were even around on Saturday. Must remember to expect power cuts tomorrow.
Yesterday, we took the boys out for a hack. GB seemed to be doing ok until we had a canter along a flat but slightly slippery path: he skidded on his bad leg three times in a couple of hundred yards, so it's obviously not taking his weight properly. We took it very slowly after that, which did at least mean that we could have an enforced walk in the boys' favourite place for a blast.
Well, we'll see how he does in tomorrow's lesson, after three days of 'bute.
Still, it was very pretty and autumnal-looking (if not feeling: overnight low of 16, last night):
(I've got the time lapse camera set up, taking a video down the valley. It's been there for a couple of months, watching the leaves turn: I should probably take it down soon and see how it looks!)
After last year's not-terribly-successful marron glaces attempt, and seeing all the chestnuts lying around the woods, I started thinking bout having another go. As I looked around, though, I realised that all the recipes were variations on 'boil the chestnuts in sugar syrup for varying amounts of time, then put them in a low oven to dry out'. The recipe I followed last year, which involved bottling them in sugar syrup and then putting them in the aga avery day for a couple of weeks, is basically the same as the first part of that process.... There was still a jar left from last year, so I tried bunging them in the simmering over for a few hours and it worked! I then spent a week trying to find the recipe I'd used last year (I was convinced it was Mary Berry, but it was the other Aga book that we never use and that is mostly just lists of tips), partly to check if I'd missed a step or the recipe had (the latter, as it turned out) and partly to check the details of the instructions so that I could make some more!
(I also used a TKC tip for peeling chestnuts: make a slit in them then microwave for ten seconds. Three seemed to be the optimal number to do at once. They're not only easier to peel than when you boil them but you don't have the un-peeled ones sitting in the water getting soggy as you do it.)
A week or so ago, I chopped down some shrubby things by the side of the school, something that they'd obviously had done to them many times before. Yesterday, I sorted through the trimmings and now have a pile of different sizes of cane to use in the garden next year. I've also got a couple of sweet pea and a couple of mange tout seedlings poking their noses out of the soil, ready to use them, and yesterday I planted a second batch of seeds.
I really wish that I could retire icons. I don't want to delete them, as I want them to still appear where I used them in the past, I just don't want to have to scroll through them to choose an icon for a post. This is why I so rarely use anything other than my default icon....
Yesterday, we took the boys out for a hack. GB seemed to be doing ok until we had a canter along a flat but slightly slippery path: he skidded on his bad leg three times in a couple of hundred yards, so it's obviously not taking his weight properly. We took it very slowly after that, which did at least mean that we could have an enforced walk in the boys' favourite place for a blast.
Well, we'll see how he does in tomorrow's lesson, after three days of 'bute.
Still, it was very pretty and autumnal-looking (if not feeling: overnight low of 16, last night):
(I've got the time lapse camera set up, taking a video down the valley. It's been there for a couple of months, watching the leaves turn: I should probably take it down soon and see how it looks!)
After last year's not-terribly-successful marron glaces attempt, and seeing all the chestnuts lying around the woods, I started thinking bout having another go. As I looked around, though, I realised that all the recipes were variations on 'boil the chestnuts in sugar syrup for varying amounts of time, then put them in a low oven to dry out'. The recipe I followed last year, which involved bottling them in sugar syrup and then putting them in the aga avery day for a couple of weeks, is basically the same as the first part of that process.... There was still a jar left from last year, so I tried bunging them in the simmering over for a few hours and it worked! I then spent a week trying to find the recipe I'd used last year (I was convinced it was Mary Berry, but it was the other Aga book that we never use and that is mostly just lists of tips), partly to check if I'd missed a step or the recipe had (the latter, as it turned out) and partly to check the details of the instructions so that I could make some more!
(I also used a TKC tip for peeling chestnuts: make a slit in them then microwave for ten seconds. Three seemed to be the optimal number to do at once. They're not only easier to peel than when you boil them but you don't have the un-peeled ones sitting in the water getting soggy as you do it.)
A week or so ago, I chopped down some shrubby things by the side of the school, something that they'd obviously had done to them many times before. Yesterday, I sorted through the trimmings and now have a pile of different sizes of cane to use in the garden next year. I've also got a couple of sweet pea and a couple of mange tout seedlings poking their noses out of the soil, ready to use them, and yesterday I planted a second batch of seeds.
I really wish that I could retire icons. I don't want to delete them, as I want them to still appear where I used them in the past, I just don't want to have to scroll through them to choose an icon for a post. This is why I so rarely use anything other than my default icon....