Well, I wasn't waiting for anyone this weekend (apart from, perhaps, Hogwarts to finally realise that they forgot to send my letter all those years ago. Better late than never, I suppose...). After a bit of a quiet Saturday, having felt horrendous (maybe food poisoning? And not from my own food I might add), we were invited by one of Levi's colleagues to join in a new staff outing to the Turf Lock Hotel, between Exminster and Starcross.
We had a good pint of Otter Bitter and they had a very reasonably priced barbecue, with nice apple and pork burgers with thick slabs of cheese and sweet onions, and a big plate of salad, roasted vegetables and cous cous. The regular menu looked fab too, with offerings including locally reared Powderham Lamb and scallop and chorizo potato salad. For more details, please see: http://www.turfpub.net/food_drink.php
Sadly, we missed the ferry back over to Topsham, so we're forced to walk the eight miles home our side of the river. Boo hoo! Yet, every cloud has a silver lining, and in this case it was walnuts! I forgot to mention, that last weekend when we were out with Matthias and Ronni, we came across some in the graveyard. I only took a couple, but was fascinated. Could there really be a nut in these green fruits? I did some reading on the matter and donned some rubber gloves and got to work...
Why the gloves? Well I'm sure many of you know this already (and I don't mean to teach grannies to suck eggs) but the green outer coating contains a chemical which dyes things brown. I mean really brown. I found this blog post here about how you can dye your hair with walnut husks... http://almostexactlyblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/natural-hair-dye-with-black-walnuts/
I'd actually already become aware of this fact a few years back, when Mrs Pole in an episode of Return to Cranford (BBC, 2009) says that the rather exotic Signor Brunoni, the magician, must be the real thing, because she got up close and didn't smell any walnut oil. Got to love Mrs Pole.
Then today, on our long weary trip home, we stopped at the Double Locks for a swift half of Waggle Dance and to my joy, next to the pub was another walnut tree. The green outer casings were split and with a quick shake of one of the branches, five lovely walnuts fell onto the footpath.
But what to do with such a stash? It was only little, after all. Nonetheless, I decided to make myself a little starter for dinner tonight: Olive oil crostinis, with blue cheese and poached pear. All very well, but how the hell to get into these things? Luckily, I'm good at getting creative and wedging each nut between my bread board and chopping board, I whacked the top board with my hammer and was able to prise the nut (mostly whole) from its shell. The resulting dish was delicious and as Levi doesn't like blue cheese, I didn't have to share. Bonus.
In other news, I've made myself some apricot jam (sadly not foraged) as I was too tempted by Tesco's cheap fruit offers last week and had over bought. It does taste delicious though. And that's about it, I'm afraid this week, a quiet one, but feeling much better all ready in time for work. Well that's ok then.
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