Fabulous Fife Food in Foaties!

Well, what a busy week!  Saturday we went to the farmers market in Dunfermline (http://www.fifefarmersmarket.co.uk/) and the Fife Diet Christmas Fayre in Burntisland (http://www.fifediet.co.uk/).  Sunday saw the event that was the 4th annual Festive Lasagne at Casa Blair. Alister and I plus 3 of my very best and long suffering friends gathered for our usual pre-Christmas stuffing of our bellies.

This is the table all set and ready for the girlies:

We had the obligatory Blair family recipe home made lasagne, which I used to help my dad make when I was just a lass.  I'd probably struggle to write exactly what I put in the bolognese sauce but roughly speaking it's pancetta, onion, carrot, steak mince, peppers, mushrooms, tinned chopped tomatoes, bay leaves, Italian seasoning, bouquet garni and seasoning. But you can't use a fresh bouquet garni. Oh no. You have to use the shop bought ones that look like a teabag because for years that's what my dad had me believe it was. It always makes me smile when I pop it in and I remember that and remember happy times with him.

Dessert was a rather yummy milk, dark and white chocolate cheesecake from M&S.  I would have made something myself but at this time of year life is so hectic with festive goings on that there just isn't time.  After the dessert was coffee and mince pies and a beautiful but small cheese board. I'd much rather have a small amount of good cheese than a whole host of cheap supermarket cheeses (not that you don't get good cheese in supermarkets these days!).  It was the Dunfermline Farmers' Market on Saturday, however, and I had bought a big chunk of Anster cheese and of Red Anster cheese from St Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company (http://www.standrewscheese.co.uk/).  Anster cheese is a Fife cheese made with unpasteurised milk, it has a real nice tanginess to it. The Red Anster has garlic and chives added and is slightly addicitve! Those gorgeous cheeses were served very simply with 'Fife Cut', wonderfully rough oatcakes by another Fife company; Your Piece Baking Company (http://www.yourpiecebakingcompany.com/OurOatcake.htm). They are the roughest oatcakes I've had and the creaminess of the oats in your mouth is so lovely with the tangy Anster cheese.

I also bought venison burgers, pork sausages and chorizo at the farmers market. More on them at a later date:

Also on Saturday we had gone to the Fife Diet Christmas Fayre in Burntisland, which is where I bought the amazing oatcakes. Wow!! What a great afternoon! If you are free next year make sure you go along! We made a lovely wreath for our front door to which I added a big red bow later and it looks beautiful (well, I think it does, what do you think?)...

Not bad, eh?! After that, Alister made gingerbread biscuits at the cooking workshop. There were a few local maker stalls there and we bought some beautiful bread from The Steamie Bakehouse (http://www.steamiebakehouse.com/) as well as the oatcakes from Your Piece. The bread is a white bloomer and a fruit loaf.  I ate about half of the white loaf just with butter and a few glasses of red wine on the Saturday night when Ally went to bed, heaven!!  The fruit loaf was full of plump juicy raisins and lovely sticky bits of candied peel with a wonderful warm spice in the background, all topped off with the most wickedly sticky and delicious glaze on the crust. It's lovely just sliced and munched, or try toasting it with some butter melting into it. Yum!!!!

Then Ally had a lesson in knitting, turns out he's a bit of a natural! After knitting a few and purling a few we moved on to the wee cafe area for a big slice of home made Victoria sandwich and a cuppa before heading over to the Christmas tree decoration workshop where Alister made this very cute addition to our tree:

After about half an hour in the storytelling room, the boy re-emerged to ice his gingerbread biscuits (no photos, they were pretty much inhaled as soon as the icing went on!) and then we headed home.  All of the workshops were free and we had a brilliant afternoon. It will definitely become part of our annual Christmas plans!

Lots more been going on but I'll spare you all for now!

Hope you're all enjoying your Christmas preparations. I'm full of festive joy, I can't wait!

Love, Jill xx

Practise what you preach

Further to my Keep It Local post, this weekend I'm planning a bit of a Fife foodfest! Practise what you preach indeed.

The Fife Farmers Market is on in Dunfermline on Saturday.  My shopping list includes duck eggs from Kilduncan's, sausages and chorizo from Puddledub, veg from Bellfield and maybe a cheeky ice cream from Nelson's if they're there!

Then, after that, we are off to Blacketyside farm shop in Leven to pick up some Foodles mixes so I can try them out before writing a review of them.  Yum! What a tough job...  I've also been told that their café is nice so we'll probably have lunch there. Then it's off to Burntisland for the Fife Diet Christmas fayre which includes making gingerbread and festive wreaths etc. Really looking forward to that, and it's free!

Then back home, to make a bolognese sauce and possibly to collapse on the sofa and order a chinese for tea!!  Sunday is usually a busy day for us but this week, as well as church/Sunday school, there's nativity play rehearsals too. Then swimming lesson at 12.30pm and home to get the house ready for the annual Festive Lasagne!

Every December, although snow buggered it up last year, my lovely friends, Fi, Karen and Kirsty, come over for a lasagne dinner. We used to exchange presents but these days Alister's the only person who receives presents, it's just too expensive for us all to give to everyone else.  We have the Blair Family Recipe Lasagne, hence making bolognese sauce on Saturday night, garlic bread, salad, wine, fizz and dessert. It's one of the very few times in the year that we all get together, no questions asked - Festive Lasagne is compulsory in our calendars!

So, a busy weekend ahead!  After that, next week I really MUST get my Christmas shopping started/finished. Not done a thing so far. Oops.

Hope you are all staying safe. We've been hit by a terrible storm today which has been a bit scary but seems to be passing now and moving on. Tiles flew off houses in our street, windows blew in at one of the high schools and at someone's house locally, awful!  Stay inside, keep safe and warm and eat something lovely!

Jill xx

Keep it local!

I'm supposed to be cleaning the house just now. The living room is spotless (well, by my very low standards!) and ready for us putting the Christmas tree up when Ally gets home from school today though.  I'm this [    ] close to feeling festive, the tree might just do it!  And I have a pack of ready made puff pastry in the freezer and a jar of mincemeat in the cupboard so there may even be super speedy mince pies on the go later too.

However, as I was dusting the window sill and hoovering the rug, my mind drifted off to thinking about local foodie companies. Some I already use, others are on my 'to cook' list.  One of my favourites is Chillipapas (http://www.chillipapas.com/), a company based right here in Dunfermline who make a range of curry spice mixes. As a busy mum I always have a stash of their mixes in the cupboard as they are so quick and easy.  You can just bung everything in a pot with the spices and leave it to cook.

I also know there is a company called Foodles Mixes (http://www.foodlesmixes.co.uk/) just up the road in Markinch.  I haven't tried their mixes but they are right at the top of the 'to cook' list!

I'm planning to dedicate a blog post to each of them in the very near future but in the meantime if there are any Fife based companies you think I should know about then shout about it right here! I'm a big supporter of The Fife Diet (http://www.fifediet.co.uk/) which aims to get people eating local produce but I think supporting local companies like these should also be a part of this.  Maybe if any of them read this they can get together!

Ok, I HAVE to go and clean Alister's room. I may not make it out alive...eek...

Jill xx

Winter veg

This is really more of a test post so I can play around with a few things, but I do have something damned tasty to share too!

I used to get a fortnightly veg box delivered by Bellfield Organics in Fife (http://www.bellfield-organics.com/). I try to use organic produce when I can. I know it isn't any better for you but if I can avoid putting potentially carcinogenic chemicals into mine and Alister's bodies then that's got to be a good choice.  I've also started direct selling Neal's Yard Remedies products - here's my website https://uk.nyrorganic.com/shop/JillBlair/ . The skin is the largest organ in our body and yet whilst some people think twice about what they put into their body through their mouth, the products we put on our skin are just as important.  I'm a total Neal's Yard convert and Alister can use all the products too as they are so natural and safe.

Anyway, back to food!  I stopped getting the veg box as the quality was a bit hit or miss. You just don't want to be able to bend your carrots without them even considering snapping! However, fast forward a couple of years and there was a Groupon offer for an £18 veg box for £8, or something like that. So a month or so ago I had a big family sized veg box delivered. I'm happy to say the quality was much better.  This is what arrived:

A lovely selection of good Fife grown organic winter veg. There was a mountain of tatties, onions and (non-bendy) carrots, a couple of cauliflowers, turnips, parsnips, a green pepper, some cherry tomatoes, a couple of huge leeks, green kale, purple kale and about 8 of my very favourite root veg, beetroots!  It was like veg porn, I could hardly contain myself.

From that lot I made a pot of tattie and leek soup, cauliflower and kale soup, a veg curry and the pepper, some of the carrots and some of the onions went in to a stir fry. But, my very favourite meal was our meat free Sunday dinner. I chopped up a load of veg, added about 6 garlic cloves whole, a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme, a good glug of olive oil and coated all the veg well in the oil.  This is how it looked going into the oven:

What a beautiful sight! I would have taken a photo of it cooked but it didn't stay in the roasting tin for long enough.  We had it with some yorkshire puddings, mashed potato and some veg gravy. The veg gravy was really lovely. Our Sundays are pretty busy so I like shop bought shortcuts. I got a tub of Asda own make vegetable gravy granules and it was really nice, would definitely use it again.

So hopefully the layout of this has worked ok and my photos have appeared. Fingers crossed as I hit the Publish Post button!!

Happy munching,
Jill xx

Hello!

So, here we are, the first step on my latest writing venture. I love writing, I just don't have the time to do it regularly enough to produce anything of great length. So here I am!  Many thanks to Stephanie Smith for coming up with the perfect name for this blog!!!

As well as writing, one of my great passions in life is cooking. Nothing poncey or pretentious, there's a lot of excellent chefs out there to cover that market!  No, what I love is feeding my friends and family with good, honest, wholesome home cooking. Whether it's beef stew and dumplings, veggie korma, the Blair Family lasagne or an apple pie and custard, sometimes a nice plate of food and a listening ear is as good as an hour with a psychologist! And let's face it, not many shrinks give you a plate of homemade ham soup when you walk through their door.

Another thing that makes me smile is involving my little person, Alister, in cooking. He's 8 years old and has recently discovered a real love of Nigel Slater's style of cooking: simple recipes made with excellent ingredients and a lot of passion. He's tried his hand at a pumpkin pie and sweetcorn fritters so far. Next on his list is Nigel's stewed apple ice cream, I can't wait!

So if I had to sum up what this blog is about? Cooking with love, for and with people I care about and hopefully making them smile a little. A slab of lasagne can be a comforting hug on a plate! Hopefully I can figure out how to post photos on here, you'll have to use your own imagination to conjur up the smells and tastes though.

I hope you enjoy my ramblings.  Feel free to leave comments, however, anything abusive will not be approved so you'd be as well not bothering! Have fun, Jill xxx