James Mackenzie treats us to his Flapjack recipe

Oh to be beside the sea.

Oh to be beside the sea

At times like this we all day dream of being in different places. I love the sea. These photo remind me of the last time I was there with my friend Susan .She lives on the coast so she likes to come in land . To be truthful I think we should all be grateful we are just well and ok and about to be at home.

I know a lot of my guests at the bed and breakfast like to come to stay with us . They like  the countryside views rather than looking out to sea , the wild birds singing rather than seagulls squawking. We dont have fog horns and sea frets. We have beautiful sunrising and sunsets.  We have wonderful restaurants and eating places even places thats serve up amazing fish and chips and sea food dishes...

 but I will continue to dream about going to the seaside ...to Whitby ...to the Magpie ... and eating fish that tastes as if it has just jumped out of the sea.  My last supper at the seaside when I chatting with Ian Robson and we put the world to rights.  I do hope we will meet up again before too long maybe Ian will venture over here into our territory and we will eat simple country food.
To eat with friends is the best thing in the world and what I miss the most. I eat with my best friend ever day but we both look forward to sharing our table with friends.

Afternoon exercise /// all together

We are lucky to have a field in front of the house so we can take the dogs straight out. Here you see them out with Tom for their afternoon walk about. You will see he has his blue gloves on with instructions not to touch the fence and stiles where unfortunately we have a right of way over the field and walkers come trooping across ,all grabbing hold of the style. The other day I tried to get over it without touching any part of it . It was more a balance act than I thought and I am getting too old in being a contortionist. What we are finding too is that walkers tend to leave the west gate open which is maddening. More work to have to go down to shut it that we dont need at the moment. As you can imagine the dogs see it open and dive through fortunately when called they come running back. Not like a few years ago when they gate was left open the we had the male sheep waiting patiently until it was the right time to turn them in to mate with the ewes. Some kind soul had left the gate open and these male members of the flock took it upon themselves to climb 2 steps and walk across the gangway and down 3 steps at the other side to get to the females. That year we had some very early lambs. So there is the saying where there is a will there is a way and these sheep certainly had a will.
`Despite all of this , we are very lucky to live where we do and look forward to sharing it with you all again when this is over.

Did you know you could eat Ground Elder.

No ,Coronavirus has not turned us into goats or even worse vegans, it has just given us another of natures plants to colour our plates along side a nice rare piece of beef.

 Ground Elder is a pain in everyones gardens who have it. Maybe it is a good friend in times like this and one thing is for sure, it is always there for you. Even RoundUp doesn't get rid of it.

As you read articles on foraging and free wild food I can across an article about this weed that plagues our garden.

The roots just go on and on and try as we may it stays hidden away to come back with vengeance year after year.

The tender leaves have been used in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages as a spring leaf vegetable, much as spinach was used. It is commonly used for soup. Young leaves are preferred as a pot herb. It is best picked from when it appears (as early as February in the UK) to just before it flowers (May to June). If it is picked after this point, it takes on a pungent taste and has a laxative effect. However, it can be stopped from flowering by pinching out the flowers, ensuring the plant remains edible if used more sparingly as a pot herb.

The leaves can be eaten in a salad where they have a nutty flavour, or cook in butter like spinach. also had a history as a medicinal herb to treat gout and arthritis,^[applied in hot wraps externally upon boiling both leaves and roots together. Ingested, the leaves have a diuretic effect and act as a mild sedative. Its use as a medicinal herb has largely declined during the modern era.

The plant is said to have been introduced into Great Britain by the Romans as a food plant and into Northern Europe as a medicinal herb by monks.

So armed with a dish I soon collected enough to use some in a salad and there was enough to cooked with some fish in butter.

Andrea Bocelli: Music For Hope - Live From Duomo di Milano

Easter Wishes

No Easter eggs this year I wasn't organised enough .Apart from milk and a quick trip to Mr Waind the butcher in Kirkbymoorside when I went to the vets the other week. `We have managed with one delivery from Hebdon

the green grocer  in Easingwold.

  For lunch today had some very nice lamb from our farm . Thanks to Nicholas. They sell it in the Wass Farm Shop and would thoroughly recommend you get some . They do local deliveries too with meat boxes being very popular .There is a website and also a Facebook page you can contact Annabelle to place your orders.

The cookery books keep coming out and talk about inventiveness. Jack has never had so many different meals although some have been good some I wont be making any more. As those of you who know Jack , he is fussy and every meal has to be a feast less he thinks he has been put on a diet. His cooking skills are more or less zilch and he doesn't like baked beans,  so baked beans on toast would be a proper no no . For me when I was in my 30s I survived on bacon sandwiches, pork pies and chocolate. Other than having vegetables on a Sunday at my mothers I think I racked up 3 jacket potatoes which was the whole of my vegetables intake in 10 years. And I weighed 3 stone less than I weigh now. I still find that habit hard to break.
Sometimes Jack enjoys a steak pie from Auntie Anne's Bakery in Helmsley which gets me out of cooking . We dont really have chips at home either as our Aga never seems to hold the heat long enough to cook them properly. So with this beautiful weather we are having, I sit in the garden and ponder through my cook books to see what we can have next .

I used this spelt flour the other day which was kindly given to me to try by the producers, Craggs and Co. where they say it is lovingly grown, harvested and milled in the beautiful North East of England . It is based at East Close Farm ,Sedgefield if you would like to try it ..  . Maybe it isn't really for making pizzas but I thought I would have a go -Jack doesn't really do pizzas either only the ones from the Grapes in Slingsby. We dont like to do the mileage to pick one up at the moment so he had to make do with a Carr House special instead.  The weather was so nice it even raised in the sunshine .We are very sheltered  and it quite a little sun trap here. It is nice just to sit in the garden and view the world from your garden seat .I dont expect you to have to knead the bread when you come to stay.

A walk through the woods after the Coronavirus

It was only when a friend from New Zealand had posted when her and her husband had met on June 23rd 1996 it made me think .
 That was my birthday ,I had reached  arghhhh the grand old age of 40 years old . That was before I had a grey hair ,wrinkles and didn't have to wear my glasses perched on my head, as if I dont I forget where they are. That was nearly 24 years ago
.
I was having a party on the Sunday which was the actual day. Jack had asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I am not high maintenance but I am very much a sentimentalist , much to his relief.
We had ridden the horses many times up past the Observatory but he was always in too much of a rush or more to the point the horses were too fit to have dallied . My Dad and uncles had taken me up when I was small and we had picked primroses on the way back. But really as near as it was I hadn't gone up for ages. So yes that was what I wanted for my birthday to go up to the Observatory. It was  a lovely balmy Summer's night.Even though it would have been around midnight it never gets really dark here at that time of year.
So Saturday night Jack took me up after we had been at the pub. His Landrover could go anywhere so he said so we would take a short cut.. I thought I wasn't going to reach my 40th but hey ho we and the vehicle all lived to see another day. I hadn't envisaged going backwards seeing trees flash past me through Landrover window . I thought hey ho we will have to walk down to the farm to get a tractor to pull us out but luckily we didn't have to .The Landrover made her way steady out with a few shunts and spins .

Here is a piece about the Observatory you may like to read and if you come in the future after the restrictions are lifted it makes for a nice walk from our house.. You never know we might get up there this year when it is my birthday and find the Champagne bottle we forgot to bring home.

The tower was built at Snever Point, the highest spot on the Oldstead estate. Work was underway in October 1837, and there was great excitement locally when a human skeleton was discovered as the foundations were being dug. The observatory was complete by the following summer when Wormald threw a party to celebrate the coronation of Queen Victoria on 28 June 1838. All of the village was invited; loyal toasts were drunk, a band played and a royal salute of 21 guns was fired from the terrace of the tower.  ‘No one has shown more loyalty to their Queen and Sovereign, than Mr Wormald … and the inhabitants of the village’ wrote the local paper.

There’s a second inscribed stone on the south elevation which contains several lines of poetry adapted from ‘Windsor Forest’ by Alexander Pope:

Here hills and waving groves a scene display
And part admit and part exclude the day
See rich industry smiling on the plains
And peace and plenty tell VICTORIA reigns!
Happy the MAN who to these shades retires
Whom NATURE charms and whom the muse inspires
Who wandering thoughtful in this silent wood
Attends the duties of the wise and good
To observe a mean, be to himself a friend
To follow NATURE and regard his end.