5 Bratton White Horse

When I first read about the chalk horses scattered around Great Britain, I was of course, intrigued. I can't remember where I first heard about them; perhaps Atlas Obscura (a collection of some of the world's greatest and most fascinating wonders- I found The Garden of Cosmic Speculation on there!) but I'm not certain.

I digress, though. The Bratton White Horse, also known as the Westbury White Horse, is located in the Salisbury Plain. I found the approximate location in our English Heritage guide and it was mostly on the route between Salisbury and Avebury, so Paul wasn't too annoyed by my fascination with this particular weird and wonderful (he's not as keen on jumping at any festival or strange site).
But anyway. Chalk horses and other hill figures have a murky and vague history; some are prehistoric and others are quite modern, but done in a sort of homage or re-creation of the older ones.  The usual method is to cut away the top soil and expose the chalk layer, which requires maintenance over time.
As for the Bratton Horse specifically, he was excavated and restored in the 18th century. The current shape has been altered from the ancient form, even turned to face the opposite direction, and was just restored again a few years ago.

We didn't walk over to the figure due to time, but the view we got wasn't too bad, I think!

12 Salisbury Cathedral

In September we took a quick 3-day trip down to Bath, Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Avebury. To say it was a whirlwind would be an understatement and our lack of time did a great disservice to both of these amazing cities. We will get back to each of these historic places one day. In the meantime, I've got my pictures from our little jaunt.
Salisbury Cathedral sits in a lovely green space, which was filled with people enjoying the beautiful day. A bit envious of their leisure, we hurried into the cathedral to crane our necks in awe once again.

The main part of the cathedral was completed in a very quick 38 years during the mid-13th century, and has the tallest spire in the United Kingdom.

A large reflective four-pointed... shape... is in the center of the nave.  It offers a new perspective as well as a break for the neck-craning.

I just love the ceilings. I want elaborate ceilings everywhere.

I also love arches, especially painted ones.

The Quire stalls are the largest in Britain as well as being the first completed. I love the intricate carvings of most quire stalls, but the animals on this one were especially fascinating!

Salisbury Cathedral's Chapter House is also home to the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta, and one of only four of the original 1215 version (no photographs allowed, though). Another copy resides at Lincoln Castle, which we unfortunately weren't able to see during our visit to Lincoln. We'll be back, though!

The cloister, as usual, was Paul's favorite part. I wouldn't turn it down, either!

When you go to Stonehenge (more on that in a future post), be sure to take some time around Salisbury. Not only is it a charming city, but its beautiful cathedral inspired an incredible novel, Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which I strongly recommend reading before you visit any of Europe's incredible cathedrals and abbeys.  If you're not a reader, well, then, just be astonished and amazed at the immense beauty in these masterpieces of architecture.


Can you tell I miss Great Britain?!?

6 Heaven on a Plate: Apple and Wensleydale with Cranberries Pie

 I don't think it's a secret that I've got both a raging sweet tooth and a massive cheese addiction. England was very, very good to both of these problems pleasures in my life, and a couple of years ago I found a way to combine them.
Our first house in England was a 1780s farmhouse complete with five Bramley apple trees in the garden (yard). Once fall hit, so did the apples, and I couldn't make enough pies or give enough apples away. The problem with Bramleys is that they're painfully tart- so nearly inedible raw. This also means they are excellent for cooking and baking, so I took full advantage of that.
One night when I was making yet another apple pie, I decided something that fell into another food group would be a good idea, so I snacked on some of my favorite cheese- Wensleydale with cranberries- and crackers. I began thinking (something about getting protein in one's system for the first time in probably a week...) and remembered the Southern addition of cheddar that I'd always thought ruined an otherwise delicious apple pie.
Well, those apples were usually sweet, to counter the sharp cheddar. I had face-alteringly tart apples, with a more sweet, creamy cheese...
and an idea hatched. I made my first Apple and Wensleydale-with-cranberries Pie and took it over to a friend's house, where she was packing up to move away. I apologized in advance about 60 times, just in case the pie was awful... but I had two slices before leaving the rest with them- and got rave reviews!

I've made it a few more times since, and each time it's better than I remembered. After mentioning it enough times to Betsy that I've begun to feel a bit guilty, I thought it was time to put it on the blog.
Warning: I bake for taste. Not for pictures, or even perfectly crimped crusts.

I use Gesine Bullock-Prado's basic pie crust with only butter- no shortening. I'm not opposed to shortening (the lowest-possible trans-fat kind), but even with my high cholesterol I believe natural fats are better and easier for my body to process than fake fats.  Ahem. I pretty much think Gesine Bullock-Prado hung the puffed-crust moon and perfectly sugar-spun stars, so I refer to her for nearly all baking (or sugar) queries.
I use my apple corer/slicer to cut up my apples; it's such a handy gadget I don't know why piemakers wouldn't have one. I don't peel the apples, though. My mom was a firm believer in the nutritious peels, and since I don't mind them it'd be wasteful and silly to peel them.  I then toss the apples with flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon- I'm bad about not measuring, but I tried to this time:
(approximately)
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons muscavado (or brown, if muscavado isn't available) sugar- NOT packed
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
With the cheese flavor I tend to leave out the other traditional apple pie spices, but cinnamon goes so well with the cranberries.  The brown sugar is negotiable, but my sweet tooth appreciates it.  The flour helps the apple juices from mushing everything up, so it's vital.
I sliced up 5 medium sized apples. I used Honeycrisp, and I'm not crazy about them for this (or for eating). Gala and Fuji would both be too sweet with the cheese and I refuse to touch the mealy varieties (Red Delicious, Granny Smith, etc.) and those were my only choices. I'm going to keep searching for a better apple for this pie.
**Update: So far Braeburn seems to be the best apple for this pie. I'm still on the hunt for a nice, firm tart apple like Bramley, but Braeburn's flavor fits the pie much better than any other US varieties I've sampled!

Now, the cheese... Obviously I can't just drive up to Wensleydale Creamery anymore. (hang on. I need a moment.)  But thankfully, I found some (fake- it's from England, just not Wensleydale itself) Wensleydale with cranberries cheese at Whole Foods. I think the cheese monger's eyes about bugged out when I picked up the 1/4 wheel instead of a little wedge, but he'll get used to me eventually.
I used about half of the 1/4 wheel, so slightly over 1/2 pound of cheese. Yep.
**Update: If you're near a Harris Teeter, (locations here) they carry real Wensleydale Creamery Wensleydale-with-cranberries! (Also the apricot and blueberry varieties… but unfortunately not the plain Wensleydale.)

 Roll out the pie crust, put it in the pie plate (I use Pyrex glass so I can check on the bottom crust during baking), press it into the corners gently.
I slice the cheese thickly, otherwise it tends to melt down in the oven and change the consistency of the pie. Thick slices (about 1 cm) keep the portion similar to the apples. I then layer it with the apples- thicker layers of apples between cheese: cheese, apples, cheese, apples.  Sometimes you also have to eat a piece of the cheese. That's okay, too.

I like to do something with my top crust. If I'm feeling lazy I just lattice it, otherwise I use my cookie cutters. Since this is an English-based pie, I used my Jubilee crown cookie cutters. This leaves the appropriate holes in the top as well.
I did an egg-white wash, then sprinkled with cinnamon demerara sugar. Then my trusty Pie Crust Shield went on for the first half of baking.

In the oven at 350º for 20 minutes, then up to 375º for another 30ish. I haven't quite figured out this oven yet, and while my oven thermometer says it's accurate it seems cool to me (stuff takes longer to cook). Pies are so fickle anyway, though, that I usually just stick my head in around 20 minutes, then at 30 minutes, then every 5 until the majority of the top crust is golden. Then I check the bottom (clear pie plate!) to be sure the bottom crust isn't soggy, although some moist-looking bits are fine as long as it's not predominately moist.  If the top is getting dangerously toasted and the bottom isn't baked, tuck some tin foil over the whole top, crunching at the sides.  If you're doing a more traditional full top crust or latticed, the Pie Shield should probably stay on longer.
Told you I'm rubbish at recipes.

Then I eat it. This pie is perfect, because I can pretend it's a meal: cheese, fruit, bread/crust... YUM!

Keep an eye out at your cheese counter (I hear Costco has it as well around the holidays) and pick up some Wensleydale with cranberries cheese- it's DELICIOUS! Well, unless you're Paul and a spoilsport, but that just means more for me!

Have a great weekend!
I'm off for another slice...

7 A Liberty Christmas

Having a big move right before the holidays isn't easy, although I'm hard-pressed to pick a time of year that would be "easy" to move your entire lives- two humans, two dogs, one cat-dog, five checked bags, four carryons, one anthropomorphized Element named Watson, 10.5 crates of junk crap necessary items (luckily Paul doesn't come around these blog-parts often!- across the ocean.
Anyway, all that was just to say that it's a good thing we're not super-holiday people. We're more likely to take advantage of some days off to either do a bit of traveling or to just have some nice relaxation at home. Paul does enjoy a real Christmas tree, though, so when we first got married I began slowly collecting ornaments. Most of them are souvenirs from trips we've taken, but there are a few other, more traditional ones, that I got at after-Christmas sales. It's made a task I would normally see as a pain- a couple hours' work and some money spent on a mostly disposable thing that requires a lot of clean up- to be a fun time to reminisce and think about our trips and see all these bits that I've hand-selected for us to enjoy.  When we were at Lowe's a few weeks ago, I walked through the Christmas trees all lined up and thought "hmm... Paul's gonna want one this year!" despite his having denied it previously (due to the whole lack of funds thing from the first paragraph. See? It all ties in eventually.). Sure enough, as we were picking out our herb seeds we went there for, he commented that smelling the Douglas firs sure was nice...
So this weekend we're getting a Christmas tree. It'll be a smaller one, and if our stored-for-three-years lights don't work, we won't be purchasing new ones yet, (that said, we didn't bother buying new strings of lights in England and I liked it better...) but we will have a bit of Christmas in our house- even though our Christmas "presents" won't fit under a tree!!

Since December starts tomorrow and in honor of Christmas arriving at our house this weekend, I decided it's a good time to post my pictures (taken October 2) from Liberty's Christmas Shop. After enjoying Bloggers' Afternoon Tea, Selena, Becky, and I strolled over to Liberty- where we ran into several of the other ladies who were at the tea! We all wandered around the building, drooling dreaming over gorgeous fabrics, planning clever crafts, and devising just the right place in our homes for each item.

Displays of ornaments were in every nook and corner.

Despite their being lined up in rows, each one seemed delicately crafted- obviously meant to last for years and years as a cherished decoration.

Of course, Christmas crackers lined some displays!

They're just so lovely all on their own- I'd have a hard time pulling them!

These brightly colored jingle balls were tempting- but thinking of the 2AM "fun" Mia would have with them prompted me to leave with only a picture of them!

I lean towards the more natural ornaments, so these caught my eye.

Colour-schemed tabletops displayed ornaments and baubles like treats and delicacies.

I'm definitely drawn to blue ornaments, and these turquoise ones had just the sparkle!

Next week I'll show you the two ornaments I did pick up as last-minute souvenirs of our time in England, as well as some of my other favorites as I pull them out to decorate our tree!

Have you started your holiday festivities already, or is this weekend the big kick-off for your house as well?

Edit: Selena posted her pictures from Liberty today as well! Check them out here.

5 Scotland Getaway- Tomich Holidays

 I've got hundreds of pictures left to sort through from our last few Great Britain and European trips, so I'm afraid there's going to be a bit of darting back and forth across the Atlantic in my posts for a while. Hopefully my pictures will make up for the bit of non-linear confusion!

So you might remember that between our packing out, getting our move sorted, and finalizing our bits in England, I decided we needed one last "goodbye week" up in the Highlands. My love affair with Northern Scotland only grows each time we get up there, and how better to solidify Paul's commitment to my "Buy a cottage in Moray someday" fund than to have some of our last memories of living in GB made in the heart of Glen Affric?

Yep- that's a Target bag. I brought some stuff back in it after my last trip back to the States!

We packed up the car, including all of our remaining food, got both dogs in the back, and set out. While they weren't too keen on the eight-hour drive, we knew they'd be pleased with the destination!

As I googled around for dog-friendly self-catered holiday cottages, I kept coming back to Tomich Holidays. The location was perfect, the individual cottages seemed cosy for our week of getting away from everything, and the estate was dog-friendly.
The property is a working farm and is nestled cosily in a small valley with a tiny little village a short walk down the lane. It's about 25 minutes to Drumnadrochit, the main village on Loch Ness, and 45ish minutes into Inverness. There is a bus that goes into Tomich, but I don't think you'd get the full benefit of the location without having a vehicle.

We whiled away our 6 days taking walks around the property, in Glen Affric, going up to Loch Ness, and further into Inverness a couple of times. We went the whole way over to Cawdor Castle once, but didn't spend any more time in Moray, to my chagrin! Actually, as much as I'd have loved a seaside cottage in Moray there weren't any dog friendly ones that fit our budget, and in retrospect I'm grateful for that. I had a chance to fall in love with Moray two years ago, and getting to know another area of the Highlands was just fantastic!

These woods are along one of the farm roads on the property. It rained quite a bit during our stay, so we headed out with the dogs anytime there was a lull.

Of course, we got caught out in the rain a few times- but my dogwalking bag is waterproof for a reason! This gorgeous double-rainbow framed Tomich Holidays' main building perfectly!

The building to the left is the Victorian Dairy- it was my first choice of cottages, but was booked for part of the time we were able to go, so we stayed in one of the Woodland Cottages.  The setup was perfect, with a small living room, kitchen with all the bits we needed, 3 bedrooms (2 up, 1 down) and 1.5 baths (1 down, 1/2 up). We of course didn't need all those bedrooms, but the downstairs space was great for Max! I don't have any pictures of our cottage specifically, but the website has some great ones if you're curious.

Driving out of Tomich village. This view NEVER got old in our three years of living in sheep country!

Loch Ness, just after another rainstorm.

 I'd recommend Tomich Holidays to anyone looking for a Highland retreat, or just wanting to get away for a bit- it was exactly what we all needed to recharge before getting back to moving!
(Poor Mia didn't get to come along, although she didn't seem to mind the cattery!)

*This was not a sponsored post in anyway. I found it by googling, we paid for it fully, and the opinions are all mine and all positive regardless!

6 Lemon Scones

Yesterday I told you about making cranberry-pomegranate sauce to go with my fried brie- but after I snarfed up enjoyed the brie in a ladylike fashion, I had a good amount of the sauce leftover. Clearly I needed to make something else worthy of it!
Lemon and cranberry is one of my favorite flavor combinations, and lemon scones popped into mind. (See? My always-have-lemons policy pays off!) I've never made scones before, so I pulled out several of my British cookbooks and paged through to the scone recipes. I found fruit scones, cream scones, brown scones... but none that suggested exactly how to balance the recipe with the addition of lemon juice.
(I modify and change around recipes frequently, but when I'm tackling a new product I like to have a few recipes to compare and to see what's indispensable to the dough, and adding lemon juice can alter a lot in a recipe. It not only increases the moisture content, but turns any milk or cream to buttermilk or sour cream.)
I didn't want cream scones, but that set me on the path to buttermilk scones, so I hit Google. I found this recipe for lemon scones on Farmgirl Fare, and it was exactly the recipe I was seeking! Once again, I'll tell you my modifications, but out of respect to Farmgirl I'm gonna ask you to click over for the full recipe.

I didn't have Meyer lemons but I did have some nice big ones I picked up at Whole Foods. One thing I'll suggest if you're wanting to keep lemons on hand but not immediately use them- pick the firmest ones you find with very bright peels- those will last longer than soft ones. Keep them in the crisper of your fridge, but don't touch courgettes (zucchini), broccoli, or other leafy greens to them- they tend to soften the vegetables faster. I'm not entirely sure why, but I assume it is the citric acid. I just make sure my lemons are only next to other fruit or carrots (but remember, carrots are best stored fresh out of the ground with the dirt on them, wrapped in a brown paper bag in a dark, cool place- only put them in the fridge if they've been washed).  If your lemons are starting to soften before you've used them, just make some fresh lemonade! That's always a good plan to me!

Anyway, back to the recipe.

I zested way more than 2 tsp- probably closer to 1/3 cup, but I love lemon flavor.

The dry mixture on the left, no changes other than the increased amount of zest. The wet mixture on the right, and here we go: I juiced two lemons and didn't measure it- but it looked to be just over 1/2 cup. I used skim milk, because that's what I drink (I have high cholesterol). I also used 3 egg whites instead of 2 whole eggs, once again because of my high cholesterol. I rarely use egg yolks, and have developed a fairly good substitution for whites-to-whole in recipes- 1.5:1 for large eggs (there are accepted weights you can measure out if you're more particular about following recipes, though). If I'm making cookies that I want to stay soft I do 2:1; the extra white makes all the difference in soft 3-day old cookies!  Anyway- the plain yogurt I have on hand is Greek and I wasn't sure if that'd be too thick, so I used a Stonyfield french vanilla yogurt.  Cut the butter into the dry mixture like you're making pastry dough, then fold in the wet mixture as described by Farmgirl.

Top row: patting out the dough; the cut scones
Bottom row: after the egg wash, my impatient peek in the oven

I knew I wanted to cut circle scones rather than wedge-shaped ones, so I patted out my dough to be 1" thick as described, but then went to my cookie cutter drawer. I couldn't find my biscuit (American version) cutter easily and I didn't want to sort through things with my floury hands, but I did find a large pumpkin cutter so I used it instead. That's why my scones have little tails :)  Once again my egg-wash only had egg whites and skim milk.

Scones! YUM!

This was my leftover dough after I'd cut out enough pumpkins to fill my baking sheet. I balled it up and set it in the egg wash, then rolled it around and popped in on a little tray in the toaster oven, also at 400ºF. I ate it first, and the crispy edge all over it was absolutely amazing. I'm tempted to do this to all of them next time!

The regular scones were very delicious on their own- I have no complaints! I got twelve total out of the recipe, and just polished off the last three today. (Yes, I'm a piggy. It's why I started baking my own goods.)

And as for being a good match for the cranberry-pomegranate sauce? PERFECT! A dab of clotted cream would have added to the flavor, but I didn't want to whip that up as well since I knew I wouldn't want the amount that the cream I have would make, and you have to use the whole carton in 5 days.  I'm saving that for Eton mess, winter edition!

I've got just a bit of the cranberry-pomegranate sauce left now, and am debating just using it on regular toast or making an angel food cake... I generally err on the side of angel food cake, though!
Any other ideas for me? What's your favorite flavor combination? (Other than lemon-cranberry, I can't resist chocolate-hazelnut!)

Note: I got the results on Sloan's lumps' histopaths yesterday- all three were benign!! Now we just have to make it through her staple removal and we'll all have a celebration at an off-leash nature park!