Back fill

It’s a gardening term, isn’t it?  You dig a trench, and move the soil back into it.

In this case, with Christmas around the virtual furrow, it’s time to back fill some more stories onto the blog, so that there’s something there for people to read when you eventually send them their Yuletide email.

Last year, after getting the laptop, I spent quite a chunk of time filling in the blanks of previous months’ activities, for that very purpose.  This time, I’m filling in the Spring-Summer Hiatus (ooh, there’s some sun out there…somewhere…I’ll not turn the computer on), which isn’t so daunting.  You never know, I might even get Dan to remind me how to add pictures again.

One of the features of this year is not so much back fill as tum fill.  We have started having weekend breakfast options, things to help you feel like you are actually resting, and that take longer to make and eat than you might make time for on a week day.  It feels very peaceful, anyway, building family traditions, that kind of thing.

I should probably add that various of the options have come out of Nigella Express.  But I would add that for some reason, reading about breakfast or brunch options in cookbooks is particularly restful.

One of my early memories of cookbooks for pleasure was managing to borrow an American one from somewhere, where it devoted large sections to the value of breakfast or brunch as a way to do relaxed entertaining.  It even had quotes about food items for breakfast, which your then very literary writer was particularly pleased about.

Summer has brought in the partially frozen banana smoothie – an alternative to filling my freezer with bananas that have gone beyond eating point, without as much effort ask making a banana cake.  Now we’re back to central heating days, the main options are porridge or pancakes – Scotch pancakes, drop scones, you know the ones.

The porridge making started on our Easter holiday, staying in a cottage that had not been visited for a few months.  We needed to be warm AND we needed options for not consuming milk too quickly, being on an island.

Porridge fitted the bill very nicely, particularly with the discovery of adding brown sugar to the top. Crunch vs smoothness.  Even for a child brought up to believe that golden syrup was the real way ahead with porridge, this was a definite discovery.

We have also happily discovered that two people can indeed eat their way through a whole batch of pancakes for brunch, although if they have a guest staying, they will be polite enough to share.  We’ve even invested in a large silicon pancake flipper, when I realised the spatula I’d been using was threatening to become another flavour on the pancake.

Our particular tip is slightly acidic jams to offset the thicker pancake – apricot was particularly good, blackberry also worth considering.  Marmalade can be good, but not as good.  At least with a batch, you have plenty of opportunity to experiment on which toppings work.

So, send in your brunch options, and we’ll even fork through a few, if they’re good.  Avoid overly eggy suggestions, or pass them straight to Dan, who has a better stomach for eggs than me.

But more importantly, start a few food traditions of your own at the weekend, if you haven’t already.  Particularly ones that cause you to linger, and admire the day outside, the person sitting next to you, or simply the notion of slower food as a regular household blessing.