Put away your purse & become debt-averse

savingmore

Foxgloves, thanks for making me laugh tonight...i love how  you used butternut squash and celeriac to make macaroni cheese🤣🤣🤪.  lol.  isn’t mac cheese made with macaroni, and cheese sauce?  you are SO inventive.   Blackberry vinegar sounds delish, do you have recipe.?  I too love sour things and adore hm cranberry sauce.  one of my treats to make with oranges and port or brandy.   don’t care if no one else likes it, more for me 🤣🤣

foxgloves

Lol, savingmore, yes, of course it was made with macaroni & cheese sauce but the recipe is Roasted butternut macaroni cheese, so really his only adaptation was replacing some of the butternut with celeriac to make up the weight.
F x

foxgloves

Hello diary readers,
It's noticeably chillier today. No ice on the cars, unlike a couple of days last week when I awoke to the sound of car windscreen-scraping, but generally colder & I'm grateful for our new central heating. 
I weighed out the freezer blackberries & enough apples this morning to start off a batch of bramble & apple jelly, as planned. I think the smell of gently simmering blackberry & apple must be one of the most lovely & evocative autumn kitchen scents. Anyway, it bubbled away for an hour or so, & is now dripping through my best ever jelly bag, aka an old sterilised cotton pillowcase with 4 holes cut in it for hanging. I shan't bother buying another nylon one again, & being cotton this will be compostable when it wears out. There were sufficient blackberries left over to stew into compote with a few more apples & I've potted that up, one container for the freezer & the other in the fridge ready to top tomorrow's porridge. Mr F is defo the porridge maker in the relationship. He reckons I get bored of stirring after 2 mins, & then cba with squashing the resulting lumps out. I'm not going to argue with that assessment, as it is absolutely correct.....apart from the fact that I usually get bored after 1 minute!
I've also shopped from home for craft supplies this afternoon & designed a birthday card for Mr F. He does like a hand made one - we have a tradition that I make him a funny card annually themed to one of his geeky interests - I didn't have time last year & haven't mentioned it this year, so I think he will be surprised to receive it. I have cut out all the pieces & just need to stick it all together tomorrow. I've hidden it amongst a pile of invoices with a notice on in big letters saying 'Do not move this pile'. He won't touch it......I know I would have to have a look. There's nothing like being told 'Don't' to get me suspicious.
Next job is sorting out some suitable jars from my stash for when I make the bramble jelly tomorrow. I have plenty of jam pot covers, wax circles, etc, so should be able to crack on good & early tomorrow as well as getting my regular Friday cleaning done. I'm making a lamb curry tonight. I always think curry improves, if anything, from being made a bit earlier & sitting in the pan mellowing, so I'm aiming to get it on nice & early while I listen to some more of my current audiobook.
Am putting our big Christmas cups out today. They are really festive (Portmeiron) but the saucers take up too much room, so I am going to use those as plates, as they are pretty too, & treat the cups as mugs. 
Well, I'd better sign out, as I'm not sure how much time I will need to ferret in the back of the jar cupboard & I also need to empty the compost bucket before the light goes as it is too dark to go & do this safely in the wilder end of our garden in the dark.
So I'll say bye for now,
F x

Onebrokelady

I'm another who loves marzipan, I was in M&S earlier buying my cherry liqueur chocolates for Christmas and they had marzipan fruits, my gran always had these when I was little and I love them. I was very tempted but managed to drag myself away without buying some 😇

foxgloves

I think a nice treat would be a twin pack of walnut whips, OBL, but the 2nd one topped with a marzipan fruit.
I could eat that (both!) right now!
F x 

Onebrokelady

foxgloves said:

I think a nice treat would be a twin pack of walnut whips, OBL, but the 2nd one topped with a marzipan fruit.
I could eat that (both!) right now!
F x 

I might have to email M&S with that suggestion 😍😍I do also love a walnut whip 😊

foxgloves

Me too, OBL. I also very much like the Lindt chocolate bar in the dark blue wrapper which is essentially 3 lovely praline-surrounded hazelnuts joined together into a chocolate bar. I am trying to convince myself it's a protein bar because of the nuts 😁! 

Onebrokelady

foxgloves said:

Me too, OBL. I also very much like the Lindt chocolate bar in the dark blue wrapper which is essentially 3 lovely praline-surrounded hazelnuts joined together into a chocolate bar. I am trying to convince myself it's a protein bar because of the nuts 😁! 

Definitely a protein bar Foxgloves, if its dark chocolate you benefit from lots of lovey antioxidants as well 😀

savingmore

i def. think mr. f is a keeper, loving his inventive recipes, esp. the mac and cheese and butternut squash!  will go looking for a recipe.   

foxgloves

Savingmore - It's a Waitrose recipe, which I'm sure is still online - It's from their free 'Weekend' paper from a few years back. If you google 'Roasted butternut macaroni cheese', you should find it. I always try to pick up one of their free papers if I'm in there, as I've had a few good recipes from them over the years.
F x