Extreme lazyness

I've been a bit quiet of late mainly because I am once again in the UK getting a bit of extra dosh and I felt a bit sulky about it to be honest but I've got over myself now. It's lucky that I can do it and that I have a brother who will pick me up at the airport and put me up in his spare room for the price of a couple of bars of French chocolate with raspberry bits in.

TS is at home looking after the gang, working and doing DIY on our house in my absence. I'm in two minds on this one. Half glad that I don't have to do it and half wanting to stick my oar in because I just can't bear not to be in charge. Actually I'm at least seven eighths glad that I don't have to do it and I can offer reams of advice and guidance by e-mail anyway.

To make sure I can play my part properly on my return I have been studying Extreme Makeover. Honestly that's the only reason. I don't really want to spend hours vegging out in front of the telly eating Martin's ice cream and crying buckets over all those tales of hardship while TS does all the work. I just want to do my bit. So whatever the house looks like I will jump up and down, scream and cry and shout Oh My God.

Come to think of it that will be fine either way won't it?

Just need to look up the French for bus driver move that bus and I'm sorted

Pumpkins and stuff

The first of the pumpkin harvest and a busy cooking day.

Cornish pasties (nothing to do with pumpkins but anyway a batch of 14 for the freezer)

Butternut squash soup was the next on the list to be followed by an attempt at pumpkin pie.

The large orange pumpkins were from a volunteer plant. I didn't have a big enough, sharp enough knife to slice through one but TS came to the rescue with his wood splitting axe and split one in four for me.

We were so busy chopping up this pumpkin and turning it into puree that I accidently invented a new recipe, butternut squash and ginger mash. This involves a couple of cloves of garlic, an onion, a carrot, a potato, a teaspoon of ginger, lovage and coriander leaves, two butternut squashes and a litre of vegetable stock. Combine as if for soup ie sweating veg first in butter then adding stock then forget about it while you wrestle with an oversized pumpkin so that the stock is absorbed by the veg and the excess boils away and the vegetables will mash with a fork. But catch it just before it starts catching on the pan. Delicious! I might try making it on purpose next time.

Just waiting for the pumpkin pie to cool now. If we like it I've got another 5lbs of pumpkin puree on standby.