Summer rolling into Autumn

I haven't taken many photos this week as mainly what I've been doing is cooking and eating potatoes, however I will say that my book of reproduction rationing-era recipe pamphlets has been super helpful, and if you want ideas on how to make something out of nothing, this is your book. as an example, behold, mashed potato flan (which actually is lovely and the kids are mad about it)

The girls were super helpful and enjoyed learning to make pastry. I'm trying to make more of an effort to get them involved as I used to - I've slipped into impatience and hurrying about, which ends up just excluding them from the workings of the house and what I'm up to... and then I expect them to want to help when it suits me. Not good.

I got a bee in my bonnet this week about the fridges. When we had the kitchen redone I said to Will I wanted to hang onto the old fridge and freezer as it would probably be useful to have the extra space. And it kind of is. While they're there I use them. The freezer is full and the fridge often has something in it at least. The problem is that because they're not in the kitchen, and they're extra to our main fridge and freezer, I just forget what's in there. It's excessive, nobody needs that much food storage and it's taking up space in the laundry room and just turning it into an overcrowded room of requirement. So anyway, I emptied out the fridge and sold that for a token £20 (I did try giving it away on freecyle first - it's hard to give stuff away for nothing, people mess you about!)

I will work on emptying the freezer over the next couple of weeks. I did pull out bags and bags of de-seeded apples which I had intended for wine making and didn't get around to yet. It's basically apple season again now, so I made these into kilos of apple butter, which is now clogging up our main fridge! I've managed to give some away, but there will be many apple cakes on the horizon. 

Once the freezer is out of here as well I'll be able to put the tumble on the floor, and then we can lay a bit of spare counter leftover from the kitchen to make a nice workspace for laundry business. 

 I'm finally on the mend from my rotten cold. It's been such a strain this summer, between work, visitors, colds and bad weather, it hasn't really felt like a holiday. I hope I can do some nice things with the girls next week to make up for it.