In Praise of Pumpkins

Just now they are inescapable, aren't they? Lanterns, cookies, decorations and mercifully, simply as vegetables. There was a time when pumpkins were only sold at this time of year. They were orange, round and best suited only for carving. Now we have greater range of squashes and pumpkins, some ornamental but others such as gem, acorn, butternut and Crown Prince with flesh that is richer both in colour and flavour. As locally grown butternuts are available now I like to make the most of them; soup, pies and, this year, bread.

Pumpkin Bread

This is my take on a recipe from Beverly Sunderland Smith's book,
Bread and Beyond.

Ingredients
375g pumpkin peeled and chopped
30g Butter
1 small onion finely chopped
a 7g sachet active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
100 - 150 ml water
500g strong white flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk plus 2 teaspoons water

How to
1.Steam the pumpkin until it is very soft. Meanwhile melt the butter in a pan and cook the onion over low heat until it is softened but not brown. Take off the heat and add the steamed pumpkin to the pan and mash it till smooth. Leave to cool until warm enough to handle.
2. Sift the flour, turmeric and salt into a large bowl and stir in the yeast and sugar. Make a well in the centre and add the warm pumpkin, onion and butter mixture. Add 100ml of the water and work to make a soft dough. I know it seems a small amount of water for the amount of flour but the pumpkin puree is semi-liquid. Depending on the flour and the type of squash, it may need more liquid but work the mix first to see just how much if any.
3. Knead the dough for ten minutes until it is even and elastic.Form it into a ball and place it in  a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave it in a warm place to double in bulk. This should take about an hour.
4. Punch the dough down and take off a small piece. Shape the rest into a ball, keep tucking the edges under and turning until a good shape is made. Place it on a greased baking tray. Poke a hole into the top and shape the small piece into a little stalk and pop it into the hole. Make several deep slashes around the slides - about 8 or 9. Cover again. This time it might be better to use a large polythene bag and ensure it won't touch the rising dough. Leave in a warm place for another hour to rise and double in size.
Heat the oven to 220 deg C.
5. When the loaf has risen, make a glaze with the egg yolk and water. Brush on the glaze leaving the slashes unglazed. Bake for 25 mins or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Made like this, the loaf makes a good centrepiece for  a seasonal feast, cut into wedges with soup or sliced with cheese or ham and chutney. It could of course be shaped into a more conventional loaf. 
 I added the turmeric for flavour and extra colour but I think this would be worth experimenting with herbs and or spices.

Hooked again!

 I have taken up my crochet hook again. I learnt to crochet when I was confined to bed with mumps as a child and it has been an off and on past-time ever since. This latest 'on' came about since I have been seeing all the throws and cushion covers made of squares with gorgeous colours bordered with white and when I found Posy's instructions for just such a pattern, the urge to give it a go was irresistible.

 At the dreamy planning stage of this project, I made a list of the shades I would use for the colours; a restrained and elegant palette of colours.  That ideal lasted until I finished the first square and checked my yarn stash of left over odds and ends  for the colours on my list and I realised that it wasn't going to work out like that.

You see as well as enjoying the process of the craft, my other aim was to put all those leftover bits to some use. We have lived in this house for so long that we have become decades deep in accumulated 'stuf'f' and  the time has come to excavate all those shelves, boxes and cupboard corners, bring out all those things that haven't seen the light of day for years; things we have long forgotten we ever put away for safe-keeping, in fact stuff we never knew we had. Recycling, re-purposing, reviving, restoring and yes, even removing have become a whole new set of by-words, a sort of by-vocabulary. With that in mind, I hardly thought my new project should involve the re-purposing of any of the stock of the local craft store or yarn shops.( I admit to raiding the yarn stash of my daughter-in-law for a few, a very few, oddments.) 

And now having 16 squares done, I need to decide what the work should become. I certainly  would have no trouble in finding the materials to make a cushion without leaving the house. Do we really need another cushion? If it was like the ones that Son and D-i-l bought from the big blue store, that unzip to release a quilt to wrap up in on the sofa, then yes.

I feel a challenge coming on!

First Frost

This morning was bright and cold. Frost crystals rimmed the leaves and crunched under foot on the grass. Even without the weather forecast the evening before, that chill gasp of air as I closed the bathroom window before going to bed was indication enough that the almost full moon moon would be overseeing our first frosty night of the season. Why did I ignore the signs and leave the two potted citrus trees outside? Who knows, but they are safely tucked into their winter quarters in the conservatory now along with the scented pelargoniums.

First frosts will make for brighter colours of autumn leaves and sweeter parsnips it seems but more immediately the fine ice crystals transform otherwise ordinary leaves flowers and berries until the rays of the sun warm them.  There is so much to capture with a camera, even the least spectactular of the rose hips.
And who would have thought that the ubiquitous ivy would have become camera-worthy? Each leaf edged in bright silver and catching the low rays of the sun.

A Perfect Day

Yesterday we had the best weather for the whole of the month. How can I be so sure with so much of October yet to come? My meteorological skills are almost negligible; mountains of dripping laundry and rows of drought-stricken plants are testimony to that. I know that yesterday was the best because I can't imagine any October day being any better. Warm sunshine, clear skies and gentle breezes.
And yesterday, after weeks of living behind a screen of 2 metre high corn, the silage harvesters came into the field at the back of the house and restored our view out over the new South Downs National Park.

 

We decided to mark the event with late 'elevenses' in the garden, watching the precise choreography of the harvester and the tractors towing the trailers to collect the silage as it was cut, since  by then they were working at the lower end of the field. I made scones adding cheese, apple (no surprise there if you have read my previous posts) and rosemary. I imagined these additions would work well together as I know that  apple pie served with a mature cheddar is not unheard of and I have recipes for apple pie which have cheese added to the pastry. From there my mind moved to the cheese and rosemary flapjacks I used to make from a Cranks recipe and then it circled back again to the internet recipes I have seen lately pairing apple with rosemary. Being a little short of milk I substituted creme fraiche mixed with water instead. I was pleased  that the whole recipe worked very well. The creme fraiche made the scones very light and the flavours all worked together. Warm from the oven they went down a treat.

Making the most of the glorious sunshine we went to Old Winchester Hill for an afternoon stroll. Hazy though the sunshine had become, the views were as lovely as ever. 

Walking back to the car, we seemed to be engulfed in small clouds of airborne ladybirds. Whatever social ritual they were involved in, I have only once before seen them in such large numbers - oh, the aphid population must have been quaking in terror!

Back home as I loaded the laundry basket with fresh garden-dried bed linen, I heard a piercing call high above me and looked up to see a buzzard hanging high up in the blue. 

Just one day and so many pleasures.

Bramble Rambles

I love the way birds visit the garden. I encourage them with food and plenty of shelter. In their turn they repay me with amusing antics, birdsong and a degree of pest control. And they perch in the trees and shrubs and deliver seeds from the berries they have been feasting on in the nearby hedgerows. This leaves me with an endless battle against dog roses, hawthorns and most of all brambles. For most of the year brambles are a nuisance; catching at clothes, scratching at skin and embedding thorns in un-gloved fingers bold enough to try to pull them up. But early autumn is different. Now I am grateful for those defiant few which have taken root so deep in thickets of shrubs or bamboo that they have proved indestructible. The berries are gleaming, plump and ready to be picked. I gather them in handfuls - if I wanted more I would have to take a basket and forage among the hedges bordering the footpaths between the fields and would soon have enough for any culinary project. But these few would be enough to add to my breakfast porridge or heat just until the juices run then sprinkle with sugar and a flick of Five spice powder to make a warm topping for ice cream. Either way the scent of a bowlful of fresh blackberries is one of my favourite aromas and if they are soft and juicy enough they may never make it as far as the kitchen anyway.
I have until this evening to enjoy this particular pleasure. Folklore has it that from the tenth of October onwards it is unwise to pick blackberries as the Devil spits on them all then. That aside, country wisdom  reminds us that other foragers besides us will be harvesting as well and the berries will  likely be infested with insects and mould.

With fruit for me

Life continues  to be about all things apple as other varieties ripen. The last is Katy. As red as Snow-white's temptation, crisp,  juicy and mostly what the supermarkets would label 'lunch box size.' Now with no lunch boxes to be packed they will  overspill the fruit bowl and sprawl across the worktop, scenting the kitchen with the fragrance of their waxy coating while they wait to be snacked on or crushed to yield their pink-tinted juice.
 We will leave some on the tree to be enjoyed by the birds.One of the few joys of being snowbound  was seeing fieldfares coming into the garden for the crabapples and Japanese quinces. They would love the apples. Meanwhile roe deer have been coming in to nibble on the leaves on the tips of the branches since the leaves first appeared in the spring.

Working  near the apple trees in this part of the garden, I often caught myself humming snatches of a Vaughan Williams tune and realised it was bubbling up from memories laid down as an eleven year old when singing lessons were delivered by the ABC Schools Broadcasting Service. Amongst a rather eclectic mix of folk songs, bush ballads, sea shanties and the occasional hymn was Linden Lea. I suppose that the words rather suit that particular spot, with the oak tree, grass and  birdsong. I remember loving that song when we learned it, singing it  while doing my evening jobs on the farm. It must have been the melody that appealed then as there was little match between words and that setting of undulating acres of wheat, sheep pasture and mallee scrub. I guess it was all part of a kind of subliminal programming, predisposing me to feel a sense of home in a place I had no idea I would ever visit let alone make my home in. Not that all our cultural education had an English bias. I must have been eight when I could recite the second verse of Dorothea McKellar's My Country with patriotic fervour, even if subsequently I would have to admit that 'the love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes' began to run in my veins. I suppose  it is rather special to feel a sense of being at home in two very different countries even if it is difficult to explain.  See? Pause to reflect in a garden and your thoughts can end up in all kinds of places; from apples to poetry to patriotism.