Waste not, want not.

Life has been super busy and enjoyable recently. We were away in May for a few days staying near Rutland Water. Our bedroom had the most fantastic view of the water framed by a pink clematis on one side.

We had time to visit Oakham and Stamford but the main reason for visiting the area was to attend a private event at Althorp, the home of the Spencer family. Charles, the 9th Earl Spencer, read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford. My husband studied chemistry at Magdalen in the 1960's before changing direction and reading medicine. The Magdalen Society was invited to Althorp for a reception and lecture by Earl Spencer on his new book, Killers of the King- the men who dared execute Charles I. The lecture was fascinating but the best bit of the visit was being able to wander around this wonderful Grade I listed house wine glass in hand. Click through for history and official photos of the house.

I spent several days preparing for a lunch party for special friends to celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary. Mike has known Mike and Peggy for more than 30 years.  I decided on a traditional summer lunch of poached salmon with new potatoes and green bean salad followed by meringues and strawberries. I also made a cake but chickened out on the icing by using fresh flowers as decoration.

So what has this got to do with the title of the post? Well the consequence of making 48 meringues were 8 leftover egg yolks. I hate wasting food so put the whole egg yolks in a container and added a small amount of cold water to cover. They keep well for a couple of days in the fridge like this. Today I felt recovered enough to do some cooking and decided that a good use of the eggs would be to make lemon curd.
I found a recipe online which just needed the yolks and not whole eggs. The only thing I changed was to increase the amount of sugar- in fact I doubled it! The curd was still fresh and lemony but not mouth puckering.

 Butter, sugar, lemon zest and juice are combined in the same bowl and heated gently over boiling water, making sure the bowl does not touch the water.

 The finished product- delicious!

So sorry once again for the blogging drought, I hope you understand.

We had a meeting of the Honey Bee group here last week too so I will post about that soon.
Have a great week,

Catherine

Summer's end

The weather changed suddenly overnight and I woke to a blustery day and rain. A perfect day to get my sewing machine out if only for a short while. This afternoon we are back to summer but I am not sure it will last.

I settled down to finish the flower pot blocks which will be on the outside of the cutting mat bag that I am making in class. The flowers are saw-tooth stars with machine appliquéd stems and leaves. The green fabrics were scraps from my stash and I used a simple zigzag to outline the leaves.

The inside of the bag will be Kaffe Fassett Shirt stripes- I just love saturated colour!

We were asked to choose some highlight fabric to add a border to the group of 4 flower blocks but I decided that since I had so much bright colour I would use a dark colour to frame them. The following is an example of how not to take a photo- please excuse my shadow! The border will be squares of the gold background and squares of the dark green with black squiggles. It is  Pheasant Hill by Kanvas Troubles for Moda. The green matches the flower pots and the green in the Kaffe Fassett fabric perfectly.

I love autumn with a passion. Maybe it is because this is my birthday month or maybe it is the rich colours around in the garden. I picked a few dahlias for the table in the sitting room. We finished off the last of our ripe tomatoes on bruscetta for lunch and I labelled my green tomato chutney for the cupboard. There is something so satisfying about filling the cupboards with preserves for winter.

My friend Jane gave me 4kgs of green tomatoes last week. The recipe contains onions and sultanas with brown muscovado sugar. The house reeked of the spiced pickling vinegar for a few days but the results are worth it. Six huge jars to accompany cheese and meats. I'll leave it to mature for a few weeks before we sample it. I might give a couple of jars as presents at Christmas.

Lastly, I have made some progress with my Coastal ripple crochet blanket. It is becoming quite heavy to manoeuvre on my knee but is lovely and snuggly. 33 ripples done and only 51 to do.

I have been fairly busy this weekend visiting family and I am enjoying spending today pottering around the house and catching up.

Have a great week,

Catherine

I'm linking this week to

and