Willothewisp

Posts Tagged ‘Wife’

I love autumn time and not just because of the colours and all that, but because of Judith’s cooking. Don’t get me wrong, she is a great cook at any time of the year. Spring, summer, autumn and winter she feeds us with great, seasonal foods from our garden or one of the organic farms near us, but come the autumn she really excels herself as she engages in a frenzy of cooking and baking.

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Carrots, shallots, broad beans, French beans, liguns, and pulses all appear at meal times in the most amazing combinations. The apples and pears from the trees in our garden are transformed into Vlaai (flans) to accompany afternoon coffee. Blackberries and apples are turned into hot apple and berry crumbles, an English desert dish that is the perfect end to any cold autumn day. Every fruit and every vegetables seems to find it’s way into something delicious and absolutely nothing comes out of a packet or box.

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Take yesterday as an example;

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At six am on the breakfast table was Muesli with hot, home made almond milk. For those not familiar with this cereal it is made from oats, malt flakes, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, hazelnuts, almonds, dried cranberries, sultanas, rice bran, oat bran energy modulator and stevia herb to sweeten it, all done to Judith’s own special mix. This gives us the long slow energy release all through the morning that prevents us from feeling like eating again before lunch. This was followed by a breakfast bread baked the previous evening made from wholemeal granary flour and hazelnut flour with poppy seeds, flax seeds and sunflower seeds. The bread is lightly toasted and spread with hot honey, a combination that gives the more immediate energy that early mornings need. Breakfast like this on a cold, autumn mornings fuel the body and feed the mind.

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As a midwife my hours are very unpredictable and it is all to easy to eat badly just to get something inside one’s self. I can find myself away from home for up to thirty to thirty six hours at a time so Judith fills a little cool pack each morning with enough supplies to fuel me for the entire period. At lunch I opened my pack to find a Cassole. It was (organic) chicken with pancetta bacon, button mushrooms, baby onions, split yellow peas and red pepper an diced potato all in a crème frische’ and white wine sauce. All I had to do was heat it and eat it. The problem I have is that when I am in one of our clinics and heating whatever Judith has provided I tend to find myself surrounded by hungry colleagues who have been drawn by the mouth water odours from my lunch.

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Come tea time I was still busy making home visits so some where between Valeknsward and Reormond I pulled over and took out the next container. All I needed to heat the soup that it contained was the little boiling plate that plugged into the car’s socket. The soup was a thick vegetable soup made with the vegetable stock she makes over an entire day, simmer long and slow. It’s a wonderful mix of textures with the chunks of carrot, swede and parsnip providing the soft bulk and the pulses of butter beans and toasted pine nuts adding the slight crunch. The whole ensemble is so delicately seasoned with herbs that you find yourself trying to work out which herbs, but it always eluding me as they seem just out of reach on your tongue. While the soup was heating I explored the remaining containers and found what I figured would be there. One of the delights of soup in our household are the very special croutons that Judith makes to go with it. Most people would buy croutons in a packet from the store, a few would make them from any old bread they have in the house so how many people would make them themselves from sesame seeds ? Not many I am betting. Seasame seeds are incredibly good for your body so Judith makes them up into this little cubes of flavour. There are roast garlic and onion ones, honey and sunflower (perfect with leek and potato soup) and then there are chestnut croutons which I found included for this meal.

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Around midnight all my visits were complete and none of my clients were in labor or having any other issues so I headed home. Waiting for me was what I consider the perfect light snack end to the day treat for an icy cold autumn night. A small bowl of hot apple and blackberry crumble, all topped with a drizzle of hot toffee sauce. Now before any of you start demanding to know what I was doing eating such an indulgent snack that late at night I should point out that there was not one grain of sugar in the dish. All sweetness was provided via Argave nectar and Stevia which do nothing to one’s blood sugar (in fact Stevia stabilises it). The delicious crumble topping is made not with those dreadful refined white flours but with coconut flour, high in fibre and very good for you. The only naughty thing in the whole dish was butter, but even that is organic butter!

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Could there have been any better end to a day than this ? Actually yes.

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Putting my licked clean bowl into the sink I slipped upstairs to enjoy one more delicious dish, one currently warming on a gentle heat between the soft cotton sheets and faux furs of our big bed. A dish that I know from my previous enjoyment of it to be deliciously succulent and always very satisfying.

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Yes I love these autumn days and nights, and find myself wishing for more extreme weather because it seems to drive Judith to cook even more deliciously mouth watering dishes. So for my part here is hoping that this winter is going to be a cold, windy, snow bound horror because I am already drooling at the prospect.

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Nina van der Roos

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