We were awoken by the front door bell. It was 11.30 and the lady from next door had called to drop off a large package that had been delivered in our absence.
For the first time in over a month, we had a veggie sausage sandwich sat in the window, looking out over our garden. Hub always has Lincolnshire sausages and I have Cumberland because they are more peppery.
Three Bullfinches were eating the seeds left on the blackberry bush, and five fat pheasant hens were perched on or around our collapsed fruit cage. The weight of the snow has brought it down.
One cheeky pheasant even perched on our nut post!
The snow is all but gone now and I picked up my car from the garage. The flat roof above the front door started to leak just before we went on holiday, and is now a mouldy mess. We decided to try and put some temporary cover on it, before it can be reroofed. So this would include a trip to Sutton-in-Ashfield.
I asked the hub what he wanted for dinner. He wanted "something nice." And to be precise, what he wanted was Gary Rhodes's "Layered Mushroom and Onion Suet Pudding with 'truffle' cream sauce" with potato gratin.
I first had to find the recipe. I have four Gary Rhodes cookbooks and it wasn't in the ones I thought. It is in "At the table." For someone who loves cooking, I am not that keen on watching cookery programmes. But whenever I have caught of glimpse of Gary Rhodes, I am always taken in by his twists on traditional British food.
OK, most of his recipes are meat based but his veggie recipes are very good - a rare thing amongst chefs who seem to despise vegetarians and fob us off with pasta or risotto, and then charge us the same as they would for a fine cut of meat.
His recipe is for one grat pudding that feeds 4-6, but I scaled it down to make two individual puds. Lemon thyme is a key ingredient, and as you do not tend to get lemon thyme in our local shops, last year I dried some which I had bought from Waitrose.
Waitrose! Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? One of the great thing that came out of the demise of Safeway and its buy-out by Morrisons, was that we got Waitrose up north. In the past the nearest was a 49 mile round trip to Newark - and I have done that! But now there is one in Sheffield and another in Buxton. Whether it be lemon thyme, Jerusalem Artichokes or quinoa - I have faith that Waitose will stock it. Why can't other supermarkets have such a diverse range of stock?
Anyway, less of that fawning about Waitrose.
It must have been around six when I started cooking. Hub used the mandolin to slice too much potato - a deliberate ploy on his part, so I would make extra gratin for freezing. I'm not sure what he likes more - chipos or gratin.
For once, I carefully sliced the onion, browned the mushrooms and read the recipe! The suet pastry was chilled and then rolled delicately thin so it didn't stodge out the dish, and I took care with my truffle sauce. It requires quite a reduction. I even blitzed it at the end to make it frothy.
At the same time I steamed a "Steamed date pudding with toffee Grand Marnier sauce" - another Rhodes recipe that I hadn't tackled before.
In fact, I was really chuffed with myself today. It may have taken 3 and a half hours to make, but it deserved the Casillero del Diablo Riserva Privada Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah 2007 that we had splashed out on to accompany the meal.
The downside? At six a.m. on Sunday morning, poor hubs was sick. He's still in bed now.
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