December

December at the cottage

Welcome to our cottage in December. This is my very last entry on A Year In A Country Cottage and I’d like to extend a very big thank you to everyone who has visited or followed this blog over the past year. I've had a lot of fun taking photographs throughout the past twelve months and sharing my country cottage with you. Early in the New Year I’m hoping to get my new author website up and running and I will be working hard on finishing my next novel - so I do hope you will all keep in touch.

This month started out on a festive note with a Christmas lunch in Babbity Bowsters restaurant in Glasgow. I took the train to the city, as I had said goodbye to my trusty Landrover during November in anticipation of a new and more economical vehicle, which had not yet been delivered. After enjoying a wonderful lunch with my writer buddies, I returned on the train but somehow, in the pitch black, I managed to get off at the wrong station! Mr Country Cottage, who was waiting to meet me, was not amused when I phoned him on my mobile phone to say I was stranded in a village almost twenty miles away. What happened next, however, was so absolutely typical of the lovely folk who live in the rural hamlets and towns in this part of Scotland. A woman on the platform, overhearing my anxious phone call, immediately offered me shelter in her home near to the station. She said I was welcome to sit by her fireside with a nice cup of tea – or something stronger if I felt it was needed. I was deeply touched by her generosity and grateful for the kind spirit of her concern. In a world were people are often shown to be uncaring and selfish, this I felt was a wonderful reminder, especially poignant at this time of the year, that there are still plenty of good and thoughtful people amongst us.

Mid month, the snow caused disruption here just as it had all over Britain. Getting out and about, by foot or in Mr Country Cottage’s van, proved difficult as the ice and snow deepened in the narrow lanes leading to our cottage. A weather warning had been issued and a white Christmas promised so I set to making lots of soup. Chestnut. Broccoli and Stilton. Scotch Broth. Pea and Ham. Bacon and Lentil. I love soup at any time of year but especially in the depths of winter!

The garden in the depths of winter

In the days that followed, Mr Country Cottage made sure we had fuel for the generator in case of a power cut and plenty of logs in the woodshed ready for the Yule Time fire. The dogs and the hens prepared themselves too. In Polly and Ruby’s case – this was to lie by the fire or warm themselves by the Aga. To the hens, it meant tucking into an extra meal of corn and making sure the local pheasants and wild birds didn’t steal it from under their very beaks.

Kylie watches out for those feathered friends who might steal her corn...

An opportunistic corn-poaching Pheasant heading for the hen hoose..!

Meanwhile, Polly toasts herself by the fire....

With Christmas fast approaching, I iced and decorated the Christmas cake - made last month and ‘fed’ with a very good Scotch Whisky - and adorned the seven foot high pine tree, now sited in the sitting room, with all it’s festive tinsel and baubles. Then, when number One and Two sons arrived back from their respective universities and declared that our family Christmas could officially begin - I suddenly remembered that thanks to not having a Landrover anymore - I hadn’t actually done any Christmas shopping!

In the sitting room: The Christmas tree decked in traditional decorations

In the garden: The Buddlia - decked in traditional winter snow

Just four days before Christmas, my new eco-vehicle – a retro styled Fiat 500 – finally arrived. The car transporter driver telephoned to say he couldn’t make it up to the cottage and so the car had to be delivered into a snowy lay-by a few miles away. I was beside myself with excitement and, although it had been ordered many months earlier, it being delivered so close to Christmas, made me appreciate it even more. I immediately drove into the village to do my Christmas shopping, and then, feeling very pleased with myself, I bravely headed back uphill to the cottage where I was met by my husband and three burly sons who helped me to coax the little car safely home. Since then, and to date, the snow and ice around the cottage has worsened and so I’ve yet to take a second drive out in my lovely little new car!

A four-wheel-drive it isn't!

Recipe for December: Turkey Soup.

There are so many things to do with turkey leftovers. This year I made a turkey and ham pie with the leftover Boxing Day ham and white turkey meat. I made a turkey Balti curry with the leftover brown meat - and a delicious turkey soup with the absolute pickings and bones. I’m pleased to report that not a morsel was wasted. This is how I make my tasty and warming turkey soup.

Ingredients:Leftover turkey meat scraps picked from the carcass
Several of the larger turkey bones, scraped clean
2 carrots, chopped
1 stick of celery, chopped
1 leek, sliced and chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 large potatoes, peeled and diced into small peices
1.5 litres of chicken or turkey stock – I used 3 Knorr chicken stock cubes
Seasoning of salt, black pepper, & thyme – fresh or dried.
A splash of olive oil
A dash of cream

Method:Wash, peel, and chop all your vegetables to a similar size and put into a large stock pot. Sweat over a low heat in the oil. Once softened, but not browned, add the stock, the turkey meat, and the bones. Stir together and bring to a rolling simmer. Skim occasionally as the oil and residue from the bones will come to the surface as a foam.
Simmer for 40 minutes either on the hotplate or in a simmering oven. Remove the bones. Use a hand blender or whizz in a processor to blend the soup and add a dash of cream before serving.

As Hogmanay approaches, I’d like to wish you all not only a very happy New Year but a wonderful New Decade to come. I hope that the year 2010 and beyond offers us all hope, peace, and prosperity.

Happy New Year!

Love from, Janice

August

From the bonny bells of heather, They brewed a drink longsyne,
Was sweeter far than honey,Was stronger far than wine…
From Heather Ale, by Robert Louis Stevenson

You know it’s August here at the cottage when the hills all around are carpeted with vibrant purple flowering heather - that tough traditionally Scottish plant used for centuries to thatch cottages, fuel the fire, to make ale, tea, honey, as well as being woven into fences around the croft. Today, here on the shooting estate, the heather is managed by game-keepers to ensure it is plentiful enough to feed the grouse and so maintain the local shooting industry. Which, come the Glorious Twelfth, is the reason we have so many tweed-clad trained guns trooping past our cottage and through our blooming heather until the grouse shooting season ends in mid-December!

In the cottage garden, early in the month, we harvested our not-so-early potatoes. I was a little late in putting them in the ground this year but this didn’t stop us getting several buckets full of delicious potatoes in return, which I have used, stored, and even frozen ready for roasting later in the year. As I might have expected, Polly and Ruby, who have made a great job of digging up the flower beds this month while persuing mice, voles, or even frogs and toads, wanted to help me dig them up.

Also in the garden, despite a summer of torrential rain and little sunshine, the Buddleia has been taking centre stage by flowering magnificently and attracting plenty of butterflies into the garden – which I then have to keep ‘rescuing’ when they flutter into the greenhouse!

The hens have been disgruntled with the wet weather throughout August. They hate it when their feathers get wet and, instead of trouncing through the muddy fields after juicy worms and bugs, they sit all dedraggled looking under the henhouse, complaining loudly. I do hope September offers us more in the way of sunshine...

Socially, the highlight of the month was a village wedding. Robert and Laura, a local farmer and his new wife, were married amongst the August summer flowers in their farmhouse garden and with the magnificent heather-clad hills behind them. Afterwards, they held a reception for everyone living in a twenty five mile radius, in their cattle barn. Except that, despite what it sounds like, this was no traditional barn dance! Everyone was taken by surprise when, upon entering through the flower festooned barn door, they suddenly arrived into a sumptuously decorated silk-lined and glass-chandelier lit marquee, fully carpeted except for the bedecked dance floor and stage, over which tiny lights sparkled and resembled a midnight sky. Seating was at one of the dozens of tables set for a what turned out to be a fabulous evening of celebration, great food, lots of drinking, and dancing to a live band. Not a hay bale or stray heifer in sight – and the only green wellies and waterproof jackets - were the ones Mr County Cottage and I took from the back of our Landrover at around two o’clock that morning in order to walk home over the hills. Congratulations to Robert and Laura and thank your for sharing your special day with us all in such fine style!

Back in the garden, the new greenhouse, a welcome addition to the cottage garden this year, has been a saving grace for the tomato plants. Last year, grown outside against a sheltered wall, the tomatoes rotted on their vines before ripening due to the wet summer. This year, the summer has once again been wet and, not particularly warm either, but the tomatoes have thrived and are ripening nicely. They are full of flavour and delicious in salads and summer soups just now and, the end of seasonal glut, will keep us in tomato based sauces for some time to come. So, this month's recipe, made mostly from the contents of my greenhouse, is called Greenhouse Soup...

Greenhouse Soup.

Ingredients:
1 Medium sized onion, chopped.
3 medium sized potatoes, peeled and chopped.
Dash of olive oil/butter.
1 kilo or approx 2lb of tomatoes.
1 sweet red pepper
2pts or approx 1 litre of vegetable stock (I use stock made with Knorr Stock Cubes).
1 tablespoon of tomato puree.
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
Good handful of fresh basil, washed and torn up.

Method:
Wash peel and roughly chop the red pepper, tomato, and garlic. Place in a tin and sprinkle with olive oil. Roast in a hot oven until starting to blacken. Remove from oven and allow to cool – then you will then easily be able to peel away the skins and discard them. Put the onion and potato into a large soup pan and cook in a dash of oil/butter until softened. Prepare the vegetable stock cubes (2 or 3) by adding 2pts/ 1 litre of boiling water together with the tomato puree. Add the roasted vegetables to the onion and potato in the large pan and pour on the stock. Add the tinned tomatoes and torn basil leaves. Simmer for 20-30 minutes. Season to taste. Puree with a blender and serve up with your favourite crusty bread.

I hope you have enjoyed this month’s county cottage update. I’d love your comments and I have extended the preference poll until the end of September, so please do vote on what you’d like to see more of on a year in a country cottage blogspot before you click away!

Janice.