Secrets and lies

Monday 14th December. A new dawn. The first morning for weeks, maybe months, that I have not risen early to pack orders before work. A gentle start. An extra coffee. A look out of the window at hammering rain. We skip the morning dog walk but by the time I come home from work, the clouds are gone and the sky is clear. We saunter along the stream, down a little from the pheasant-filled woods. I stop every hundred metres or so and take deep, cleansing breaths of the cold, sharp air. 

I look up and stare at the stars. It is as if I have been elsewhere for a time. As if I have come home.

Tuesday 15th December. The first of the cheese boxes arrives. Christmas is synonymous with cheese in this cottage. We get through a lot of Stilton in an everyday sort of way and I do adore making a pot of goats cheese, but Camembert and the like only comes out at Christmas. I dig leeks from the garden and cook them ever so slowly in butter with a sprinkle of thyme. Leeks go so beautifully with any cheese. The chard is harvested, washed and baked in cream and grain mustard, topped with sourdough and hazelnuts. The Kitchen Garden is certainly providing me with my five a day, but I cannot pretend that these are healthy recipes. If you have any space at all, can I suggest you get yourself a bay plant? Bay really does come into its own at Christmas. I have been known to put a few leaves in a pan of mulled cider. 

I shared my favourite mulled cider recipe last Christmas and I have had a few messages to ask for it again. This truly is the best one I have found and is from the utterly exquisite Ethicurean. It goes without saying that I either use cider instead of apple juice, or I put a slug of cider apple brandy in at the end.

Mulled apple juice

Serves 4
2 cloves
2 star anise 
6 crushed cardamom pods
A shard of cinnamon
10 juniper berries
4 black peppercorns
750ml apple juice
Peel of 1 orange minus the pith, plus an extra spiral of peel to garnish
400ml water
50g sugar

1 Heat all the spices in a large pan until they begin to caramelise. When they do, empty the bottle of juice into the pan along with the orange peel. Take a deep breath of all the sweet vapours.

2 Add the water and sugar, then bring to a gentle simmer. Keep the juice at a constant temperature of 60C/140F.

Wednesday 16th December. I mentioned the other week that I had used a day of rainbows as an omen that I should be bold. We tried to buy the cottage next door. (If you know me well; no, not that one.) It didn't work and new neighbours move in today. I don't think they know that we were the mysterious other buyers putting pressure on them because that would be really awkward but it feels emotional nevertheless. These walls, this thatch, is so precious to me. I try and judge on first sight if they will love our cottages like I do. They have a Jack Russell. I break it to Hugo gently.

Thursday 17th December. I have always fancied being on Gardeners' Question Time, on the condition that I could have Google open in front of me to cheat on the tricky questions obviously. I open up questions on Instagram. How do I grow ammi? What am I having for Christmas dinner? How do I stop the dogs from wrecking the garden? What do I mulch with? Enough questions to fuel a blog for the next year or so. I promise I will answer all the questions asked but the biggest one (how do I juggle a full time job and this crazy little business of mine?) is answered here. You can tell I am still not quite in Christmas mode because I am twirling a pen throughout. 

Friday 18th December. Secret santa at work. It's the little things. My contribution is an oversized wreath for Jon, and a panettone wrapped in coffee-dyed linen for Giulia. I feel uncomfortably aware that I have bought myself more Christmas presents this year than anyone else and I open my first parcel which contains a copy of Gill Meller's root stem leaf flower today. If I cook other people meals from this utterly glorious book, then that makes it ok to buy myself doesn't it? There is a perfect recipe for red cabbage and pear salad which will solve the problem of the huge bowl full of pears that we scrumped from The Mill when we were looking for walnuts for the dye pot. I cannot claim to have grown the red cabbage. I do have them in the kitchen garden but they are barely the size of a tennis ball and are going to be no use at all for Christmas dinner.

Saturday 19th December. The Piper's Farm cheese box arrives. I booked it ages ago when I still imagined that the 19th December would be the moment that Christmas started. I'm not sure the full festive cheer has quite arrived yet but I am foraging for my very own wreath today, and that sort of helps. The other Dr A was asked at work if we had the tree up yet. He replied with a choking laugh that it was unlikely that we would have a tree, but that some sort of 'installation' was more probable. He was right, and there is a steel bar and a bubble of chicken wire awaiting larch boughs and conifer cut offs. There will, of course, be fairy lights but horizontal rather than vertical. 

Sunday 20th December. I do not want you to lose trust in me, I truly don't. Writing this newsletter is often a matter of treading a fine line between what is right and what is true. The truth is that the little paper bags of the Isle of Wight Garlic Farm cloves that I bought for autumn planting have been sitting in a box down the back of the sofa since I don't know when. I think I may have told you that I planted them when I put my tulips in. This was in the spirit of being helpful about what you should be doing, but it wasn't quite what I was doing. And so, between the showers and in the moments of sunshine, I get my garlic in today. I tell you what though, an hour or so with a hoe, and the Kitchen Garden is utterly transformed. There is truly nothing like a bit of weeding to make you feel like life might not be totally overwhelming after all. 

The next newsletter will come after the big day has been and gone, so I wish you and yours a very merry Christmas.