Nostalgia and mince pies

When I was talking to a work colleague recently I mentioned that I was planning to make my mince meat the following weekend.  The reaction I got was almost the attitude of why bother when you can buy it easily enough.  

I'm used to people thinking that cooking from scratch or making anything is too much effort.  Each year I make my own mincemeat, Christmas pudding and Christmas cake and I love doing it. 

It is part of the seasonal way we like to live our lives.  In January we often make marmalade out of traditional Seville oranges, in summer I often make jam out of raspberries we grow in the garden, and in autumn we forage for berries and nuts and make things out of them.  Part of it is loving growing things, cooking things and being creative, part of it is a form of nostalgia - a love of the past and the way things were done in the past. 

 

Part of the reason I got into blogging was that there is a lovely online community (or lots of communities actually) where others are making things from scratch, loving reading and living in the past.  Blogs are generally gentle, entertaining and wonderful places where likeminded people can congregate.  I started reading Fading Grace's blog some years ago, and whilst Sophie has moved on to different projects I guess, she was very influential on me at the time and I miss her blogs.   I've found a wonderful world of people who love many of the same things as me.  Some of the current blogs and pages I'm loving are:

http://historyusherette.blogspot.co.uk/    Sarah Miller Walters fab blog on old films
http://prettynostalgic.co.uk/    A great project by Nicole who has published magazines, books and runs a society called the Nostalgianeers

Luckily I'm of an age where I don't really care whether everyone shares my interests - but I do think a lot of people do miss out by just living a very limited modern life where they miss out on very creative and interesting things because they are afraid to admit they enjoy it.

My first try at making mincemeat...

I mentioned in an earlier post that we had decided to make our own mincemeat this year, so I wanted to post the during and after pictures.  I used Delia Smith's recipe which was pretty simple to follow, I just adjusted it to add hazelnuts instead of almonds as we have a glut of hazels.   If anyone has any interesting ideas of what to do with hazelnuts, do let me know!

Here is the mincemeat before it was cooked:

And here it is after being bottled:

I had to do a quick taste test and it tasted rather good, so here's hoping it is splendid by the time we make our pies at Christmas.

Michelmas madness

During the past week was the day of Michaelmas, the Feast of St Michael and traditionally the beginning of Autumn. The "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" according to Keats, although he may have had second thoughts if he'd been around this Michaelmas. 23C at Hazel Cottage (that's 73F in old money) and bright blue skies!  

Venturing forth into the garden at this time of year you run the risk of walking smack bang into one of the dozens of spider webs that the crab spiders spend each night spinning across our gateways, paths and hedges. We've taken to keeping a stick by the back door so we can clear a path.

In the veg garden we pulled the last few beetroots and carrots. The beetroot has been a great success despite a dose of beet leaf miner early in the season. We've several jars of lightly pickled ones in the store cupboard and the rest went into chocolate and beetroot cakes. Cabbages, onions, squashes and the unending supply of silver beet are still providing colour and even the courgette is making the most of the late warmth to provide a few more fruits.

Making mincemeat on an record-breakingly warm October day is quite a surreal experience.  All around us are piles of apples and pears and the japonica quinces and hazelnuts have taken over the spare bed to ripen.  As we chopped nuts and mixed spices into the glistening mincemeat, the sun was beating fiercely upon the window and it felt like mid summer.  Although its lovely to see people enjoying the sun, we can't help but yearn for more seasonal autumn weather.