Recent Food Finds

Hi folks, as sometimes happens I have a backlog of food pictures building up on the hard drive so I need to post them on the blog just to kind of 'get them off my chest', so to speak. Here goes...

I'll start with these. I found a tea-towel lying around at work with some Christmas recipes printed thereon. So since the festive season is just around the corner, here's some pics of said item.

In late September The Woolpack Hotel in town had a food festival, and Laura, Rosie and myself went along for a little nom nom time.

A little Old Dairy Red Top and Green Hop ales, along with Chapel Down wines and Curious Brew.

The roast pork bap.

Lemon sole grilling on the flat-top.

2 pieces of lemon sole, home made mayo and tartare sauce, a little salad, whole wheat roll - heavenly.

Recently went to eat at the White Lion Hotel's restaurant with Amy. This was the night before it closed for renovations, and we are anxiously awaiting the reopening on Nov. 15th.

Salmon Niçoise.

Some lovely nachos.

Burger with fat chips.

And finally here is our trip to Maidstone's Wimpy burger joint. The food is still as good as ever, but the place itself needs a bit of a makeover. Just sayin'.

Eton Mess ice cream sundae.

The Brown Derby!

Windfall Apple Crumble

The other day we went out for a walk and a forage. We picked a few blackberries but we found a load of windfall apples in a local disused orchard. To me, it's criminal that this orchard with its hundreds of trees is not being looked after - we have fewer and fewer orchards in this country and when they aren't even picking the apples for use as cider apples, it breaks my heart. Still, I am going to keep using it for a source of apples until such time as they either use it again or pull it out and build on it (which is likely what will happen).

Here is my Apple Crumble photo essay...

Some of the apples we found.

Peeled, chopped, sprinkled with cinnamon and mixed spice and some vanilla sugar.

Vanilla sugar is easy. When you get a hold of vanilla pods and use them, put the discarded pods into a container of sugar and leave it there. The sugar will absorb the vanilla scent and taste incredible.

2 cups flour, 1 cup vanilla sugar, mixed spice.

With margarine added and blended with the fingers to the consistency of breadcrumbs.

Had some of this left, so...

I crushed it up....

and put it in the crumble mixture.

After topping the apples, baking on 190 C for about 45 minutes, this is what it looked like.

Mm mm mm...