Sweet Onion Jam

Recently we went to see the Julie & Julia film which I absolutely LOVED! I thought Meryl Streep was amazing as Julia Child and I loved the blogging aspect of the film - if you haven't seen it, make sure you do. Anyway, getting back to the point, it has made me want to be a bit more adventurous in the kitchen.

While I always cook from scratch and often try new things, I am easily put off by a complicated recipe or one that has a list of ingredients longer than about 6 lines! I like simplicity, and there's nothing wrong with that, but am now inspired to try new things and attempt to be less restrictive.

My next stop was the local library website where I searched, cross referencing with amazon, looking for inspiration. I started out with Rachel Allen's Bake. This book came out around last Christmas, I think. I have to admit here that I'm not really aware of who Rachel Allen is - I don't watch television really so I was completely oblivious to the accompanying series (which I only know about because the front of the book tells me there was one). I browsed the pages and drooled for a while. Particularly at the large amount of recipes using anchovies, we are big fans of anchovies in the Home Baked house.

I gave the Sweet Onion Jam a go last Saturday. I used red onions, just for a prettying effect really, and omitted the creme de cassis as I didn't have any and had no intention of buying a whole bottle for one recipe.

You may have noticed, if you have been reading here for a while, that I almost never follow a recipe exactly. I can't help but read a recipe and decide that I can do it better, or prefer it another way, or don't have the right ingredients. Sometimes it's just that I make a mistake and have to fix it!

The recipe called for 680g of onions. Peeling and chopping this amount of onions is, in my opinion, excellent therapy - even when you don't think you need a good cry - it was a very calming and meditative outlet for me.

I made enough to almost fill a pint sized jar and is absolutely delicious - no exaggeration - we adore it. It goes very well with cheese and has been in sandwiches, on cheese on toast, used instead of tomato base for picnic pizza, eaten on crackers and even sneaked straight out of the jar by the spoonful! We will definitely be making more of this and possibly giving some away for festive presents.

A picnic and Michaelmas bread dragons

Yesterday we went along to a Not Back To School Picnic (more info about the picnics nationwide here). It was a bit of a trek for us and not really what Cameron had expected so he didn't feel like joining in, which was a shame. He spent some time camped out under a tree while I chatted to a few other parents, took some (bad) photographs and generally fretted about whether or not we were setting a bad example for the newspaper reporter!


Cameron did have a great time on this massive swing at the park


and we found more conkers than we could carry home - great big ones - so it wasn't a completely negative experience.

Today we made Michaelmas dragons - an activity we've been doing for three years now. I use the guide in All Year Round for telling The story of the Harvest loaf as you mix the dough ingredients (egg yolk to represent the sun etc). It's a really magical activity and the story of michaelmas is useful for some inner reflection whether you follow the particular religion or not. With the dough, we made dragons. This is always quite comical as the shapes mutate as the dough rises! We like to use flaked almonds for scales.

Here are our baked dragons, mine is the two headed one and the other is Cameron's


I looked back through the blog archives to find a picture of last years dragons and found that I'd mixed the post about Michaelmas dragons with one about Cameron's diagnosis. It's hard to believe it's only been a year since all that happened.

This afternoon we went out with Grandad to look for more conkers and we came home for Dennis and Gnasher and some chickpea chilli from the slow cooker - yum!

A Weekend of Markets

We seemed to do very little else but talk about, and visit, markets this weekend.

Saturday brought us a European market which was a little disappointing (unless you're looking for cheap watches and other tat!). A few things did take our fancy though. We found a french cheese stall where Cameron chose some smoked brie. We also found a stall selling a variety of Corsican hanging sausages - Cameron chose three different kinds to bring home (vegetarians look away now!): duck, garlic and wild boar.

On Sunday we went to a car boot sale. I hadn't been to one of these since I was a child and I'd forgotten how crowded and scary they can be when you're small - so much pushing and shoving. We had a good time though. We found a full set of Classic Monopoly for 20p, some vintage Beano/Dandy books for 25p each and Cameron was most excited to find a retro, limited edition, Pokemon Nintendo 64 with two Pokemon games for less than £10. More amazing than the price was that it actually worked when we brought it home!

Also we have been pondering over Christmas/festive/Yuletide markets. The festive season is something we celebrate in a big way and now that I'm doing much better with travelling (have you been noticing?!) there are more options opening up for us. The market in Leeds looks fantastic and exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to find - the traditional wooden stalls and German things. We're also looking at York's St Nicholas Fayre, although the website doesn't have very much information. It has a good reputation though and is open in the week so we have a better chance of managing it when less crowded.

A day of pottering

We have been having a very relaxed and comforting day of pottering about today. Cameron chose to have a break from having his picture taken so I'm sharing a few images from my own day.

I'm so grateful to have discovered the habit of blogging for so many reasons, but particularly that it makes me stop, look and be more mindful of the everyday beauty around me. I'm having a lot fun trying to capture it to share with others and learning new photography skills in the process (although I'm sure my efforts with the camera so far are only the tip of the iceberg).

We popped into town this morning to return some library items and everything just seemed to be so autumnally inspiring, much to my delight of course!

Chinese lantern plant from the market which was quite expensive (in relative local market plant terms) but already worth it for the joy it has given me

Shiny apples in a bowl

There were amazing baskets of gourds at the florists this morning. This one came home with us to add to our ever growing seasonal nature table

Fantastic pasta, striped with natural colourings which will be served up this evening with home made, Jamie Oliver inspired, tuna meatballs

I hope you managed to find some beauty and joy in your day too.

Day out at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

More on breakfast

I have been flicking through my cook books thinking about breakfasts after I wrote this post about wanting to change things up a little and discussing them with Cameron. This one appealed to him most - home baked rusks and cocoa.

We found a recipe for rusks in Falling Cloudberries which has simple ingredients and today we had a go at making them. The recipe makes 50 and says that they keep for about 5 days so we halved it. If you want to try them out but don't want to buy the book, I found a lot of rusk recipes with an internet search. The recipe we used was yeast free.

Cameron is extremely pleased with them. When I make them again I might experiment with less sugar and maybe a mix of different flours, adding some wholemeal.

Next, I'd like to move on to warm breakfasts. I'm interested to hear what your favourite breakfast for a cold morning? Don't be shy, leave a comment and let me know.

Electrical circuits, potato clocks and that old chestnut of socialisation

A few weeks ago Cameron asked me if we could buy some supplies for learning about electrical circuits and also asked for a specific kit - a potato clock - that he wanted to try out.

The circuit things arrived first. I just bought some really basic items to begin with - crocodile clips, bulbs and holders etc. As soon as they arrived Cameron dived straight in and began experimenting. He asked some fantastic questions and had a really great time, especially with trying out different household things in the circuit to see what conducts electricity.

The potato clock kit was very interesting. It arrived whilst someone was here visiting, and I was busy talking, so Cameron dived in by himself and set it up using the picture on the front rather than reading the instructions (not sure where he gets that habit from! *whistles innocently*). It worked straight away. He then tried it with apples, and later, with little cups of lemonade. We finally got around to reading the science behind it at the end.

Cameron has been busying himself a lot these last few days, not wanting much input from me. We've had a crazily busy couple of weeks and so I arranged for there to be hardly anything on the calendar this week because I could sense that there were a lot of ideas brimming in Cameron, waiting to be realised. There has been wood work, painting, gluing, colouring, newspaper making, reading, Christmas list research and writing (and typing, editing etc), action figure play, hama beading, and playing of his favourite Wii game - My Sims - desperately trying to get to star level 5!

We spent most of the summer setting up more things to do with other people and opening our social circles a bit after an outside influence had applied some pressure. Now we've discovered that actually, we prefer to spend most of our time in our own little world (aspie trait I guess). Not that we're hidden away when we do that, we are out in the woods, the library, on the train, at museums, home education groups etc. but not in such an intense way as we had ended up last week. I think we need to find a happy medium somewhere but for now we'll just keep plodding along and find out what works (for us, not for other people's expectations) by trial and error.

Seasons Round Exchange: Harvest

Autumn Equinox greetings to you all!

Today feels like a good day to share about the Seasons Round Exchange: Harvest which I signed up to in the Summer. All the participants who have blogs are listed on the sidebar on the link above and there are some really lovely ones. There is also a flickr group where people are posting their offerings - I'm really enjoying seeing what others have come up with.

These are the items I sent to my exchange partner Cristina

A large kite paper harvest star, a gnome that Cameron and I made together which is stuffed with sheep's wool, a little wooden platform for the gnome, a corn dolly from a local farmers market and some autumnal leaves for scattering.




We received Cristina's parcel in the post this morning. Here is what she sent us

A gnome, a coconut top, a knitted and felted mat in autumnal colours, a needle felted pumpkin and some ginko leaves from her garden. Thank you very much to Cristina. Our favourite is the pumpkin with the lovely curly stem!

Our seasonal/nature table is already looking so full with items we've collected, made or couldn't resist on etsy. It's larger than our usual seasonal/nature table area but it is our favourite season and it's also nicely hiding a bit of the wall where the plumbers made a mess of installing our new boiler!


We plan to pin many, many collected autumn leaves onto the background fabric.

If you fancy taking part in an exchange like this - signups for the next one Seasons Round Exhange: Light begin on October 1st!

Waldorf, window stars & a glimmer of hope?

We spent a lovely afternoon today at our local home educators social group. Cameron played in the park and I got to chat with lots of other Mums - particularly a lady who I'd pre-arranged to meet at the group and chat about waldorf-ish books. We both brought our book collections along so we could swap and browse them and chat about what works for our families.
I didn't take any pictures as the books were extremely heavy to carry to the group meeting so I didn't take the camera along. Instead, here's a picture of a window star - I've recently been toying around with different designs for these using different sizes of kite paper. I'm aspiring to being able to create something like this but I made this simple "harvest star" as a gift for the Mum I was sharing books with, and another for our seasonal nature table area.

I was most pleased to come home and read this post, and this one too - many posts, in fact, on the same subject. It feels like a really good sign and is a reminder that we can make a difference.

One more thing to link you to today - GardenMama is having a giveaway that may interest you. I absolutely adore her blog, it's worth checking out whether you're interested in the giveaway or not - such inspirational posts and beyond beautiful photography.

Apple Cinnamon Butter

Cameron and I have found ourselves in a bit of a breakfast rut lately - eating the same things (mainly cereal) day in day out so I've been thinking a bit about ways to change things up.
I made a small quantity of Apple Cinnamon Butter last Autumn and it was delicious on toast in the mornings so I made a big batch today so we can add toast back into the mix.
I have read some great recipes for fruit butters in Apples for Jam and Festivals Together but I made this one up using what I had and what I fancied, using the methods I'd read about in the books above. Obviously you can fiddle with the recipe to suit your own tastes or cupboard contents and it works in much smaller quantities too.

Apple Cinnamon Butter

2 very large cooking apples
a little water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
a pinch of ground ginger
3 tablespoons golden caster sugar
500g unsalted butter

Peel and core apples and chop into small pieces. Place in a saucepan with the cinnamon and ginger and a little water to stop them sticking or burning. Cover and leave on a low heat, stirring only occasionally until pureed (or still a bit lumpy if you like fruity bits rather than smooth). Take off the heat and leave to cool.
Meanwhile put the butter in a large bowl and beat (electric
beaters help for this) until soft and then beat in the sugar.
When the apple puree is cooled completely, beat into sugar butter mixture and put into jars.

Easy peasy and very yummy. The amounts above filled about one and a half pint sized jars (the other jar in the picture is some home made vanilla sugar).

I have plans for more breakfast recipes, particularly warm ones, as the weather starts getting colder.

Cashing Up

Cameron decided to break open our piggy bank and count the coins this week. It was excellent maths practice! He sorted the coins into similar coin piles and then made £1 piles using the least amount of coins he could - working his way down to the pennies. In the end he counted £13!!!

We went to the bank and got some money bags and he worked out how much to put in each bag, of which coins, by himself. We also weighed the bags like they do at the bank.

Cameron decided we should put the money towards our Christmas fund. He has his eye on a little tea light decoration we saw in a card shop the other day. It's a festively decorated fireplace with hooks and you can buy mini stockings with your name on to hang on it. He's hoping to be able to get a Cameron, a Tom (for his teddy Super Baby Tom) and a Mum stocking for me.

Practical maths really seems to work for Cameron in a way that a text book never does and the added motivation of being able to choose what to do with the money at the end definitely helped!

Happy International Freedom in Education Day!

Another lovely Tuesday afternoon with Grandad, another gorgeous park.

Cameron absolutely adored this tyre swing - it was a hard job convincing him to come home!

If you missed it yesterday - pop along to Deb's Home Education Blog Carnival to celebrate International Freedom in Education Day.

Sorry

Sorry for the lack of post today - Cameron and I decided to break free from our scheduled activities for a date in the city. We took in a film and had tea in a restaurant for a treat!

Instead of reading our adventures from today get on on over to Deb's blog for the the Home Education Blog Carnival. There are some great posts on there - I'm going to get a cup of tea and do some serious reading of the fantastic blogs featured too!

Signs of Autumn

Goodness me, that was a busy week! Several play dates, with new friends and old, meetings, train rides, walks, cooking, comic making, action figure playing and so much more. The weeks and months to come are filling up swiftly with activities, free cinema showings, workshops, special markets, puppet and orchestral performances and all sorts of other things too.

This morning we had some free time to relax and just be which was very welcome. The weather was so beautiful we had to get outside. We headed off to the park and had a lovely play and catch up with each other.


We went hunting for conkers and acorns and found squirrels doing the same thing.


Admiring things such as the sparkling dewy grass and the silky chestnut shells I couldn't help but be reminded of this hymn that was popular during my school days. I'm not really a hymn person but you wont be surprised to read it was my favourite one.

Our findings


There were leaves starting to form their annual carpet on the grass and pathways and the trees are very subtly changing colour



We popped into the supermarket on our way home to get something for lunch and found them stocking shelves with Christmas items! As much as I love the festive season, I really want to keep my focus firmly set in Autumn for the time being.

Thank you so much to everyone who left well wishes for Cameron on my last post, they really have made a difference. He's very excited and nervous about tonight. I really hope it works out for him.

Bandanarama!

Inspired by this story in The Dennis the Menace book from 1999 Cameron decided he wanted a bandana to wear while he did his menacing.

We used a well worn menace striped t-shirt from this Summer (so well worn it had a hole in it!) and cut it to the size he required. He was so anxious to wear it that he wasn't bothered about tidying up the edges on the sewing machine!

I think it looks more cute than menacing, not that I told him that! And it will make him easier to see when he's stalking me around the house and playing tricks on me hehe!

If you have a minute, do please leave some good wishes for Cameron in the comments box today. He's being very brave tomorrow evening and trying out a youth club where he wont know anybody. Knowing he has lots of people wishing him on will give him an extra confidence boost.

We Grew Sweetcorn!

Last Spring we planted just two tiny little sweetcorn kernels as a bit of an experiment. Everyone told us (even the books) that you have to grow a block of at least 9 plants to get any produce but it turns out they were wrong.

On Sunday afternoon we picked 3 cobs of sweetcorn from a pot in our little back yard, almost 6ft tall plants, but didn't expect them to be developed much inside but they were - how exciting!

I think we will try a block of them on the allotment next year, they were delicious and extremely low maintenance.

Turkish Delight

Following our Narnia theme we had a go at making Turkish Delight.

We used the recipe from this book but used two lemons instead of an orange and a lemon as we didn't have any oranges. The method was very simple but rushed towards the end - we got in a bit of a sticky mess at one point!

Here is the mixture waiting to set before we cut it and roll it in icing sugar. The recipe says it will take a day to set which is quite a test of patience for a 9 year old boy with a sweet tooth.

"It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently. "What would you like best to eat?"
"Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty," said Edmund.
The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious...

...for she knew, though Edmund did not, that this was enchanted Turkish Delight and that anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it...

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis.

Not Back to School Day

Today we woke to sunshine and uniformed children from our street skipping off to school and decided to ditch our plans and head off out for a day of fun and fresh air.
I packed lunches and a book, Cameron packed paper, a pencil and a spade and we were off!
It was so beautiful we spent a little time just sitting and looking when we first got there.


We had a few close encounters with overly friendly cows, sheep and ducks before finding a fairly secluded spot for the day.


Cameron spent a lot of his time throwing stones in to the river to try and splash himself.




He was experimenting with different ways of throwing to find the best splash in his direction.


A little girl came along later on and copied him but misunderstood, thinking Cameron was throwing them at the ducks! It's a good job she didn't have a very good aim!
After lunch there was ice-cream and then Cameron did some sketches of the birds.




And then home for this very important event!