Blog
Taking Time to Live Well
DJ: Frances Ambler
Image: Shutterstock
To accompany our new April issue JAUNT, we couldn’t resist putting together a playlist of jaunty tunes. So, pop it on and put a spring in your step…
You can take a listen here
Or have a browse of all our playlists
Our April JAUNT issue will be on sale from 26 March.
Image: istock
DJ: Frances Ambler
Never let rain stop play. Our latest playlist celebrates all kinds of weather, whether sunshine or showers.
Take a listen on Spotify here.
Photography by Alice Tatham
Here’s our April nature table from our back cover. If you’re foraging for wild garlic or picking a small posy from your garden, do take a picture of the spoils of your own nature table and share it with us. The nature table photograph above is by Alice Tatham, of The Wildwood Moth, who runs workshops on seasonal photography and publishes seasonal journal stories from Dorset.
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Studded with juicy currants and scattered with caster sugar, these biscuits would make an alternative sweet treat when chocolate eggs are beginning to cloy. Who says you can’t eat the Easter bunny?
MAKES 14
120g unsalted butter, softened
80g golden caster sugar, plus more to sprinkle
1 egg, separated
200g plain flour, plus more to dust
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1⁄2 tsp mixed spice
Pinch of salt
80g currants
1 tbsp whole milk
TOOLS
10cm rabbit cutter, or other shape
1 Line two baking trays with baking parchment. Using a food mixer or a large bowl with hand-held electric whisk or wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar together and beat in the egg yolk. Sift in the flour, spices and salt. Stir in the currants and milk to make a pliable dough. Do not over-mix, or the biscuits will become tough. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan 170/375F.
2 Lightly flour a work top and a rolling pin and roll the dough out to 5-6mm thick. Cut biscuits out quite close together. You need to press down hard to cut through the currants! Re-roll the dough and cut out the
biscuits until all the dough is used. (At this point, you can freeze the cut-out biscuits.) Place on the baking trays and bake in the preheated oven for about 10 mins.
3 Remove from the oven, brush each biscuit with a little ofthe egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar. Return to the oven for 5–7 mins, until golden. If you’ve used a smaller cutter, bear in mind that the baking time will be slightly less than for these 10cm-long rabbits,
so keep an eye on them.
4 Leave on the tray for a few mins to harden a bit, then carefully remove to cool on a wire rack. These will keep well in an airtight container for a few days.
Recipe taken from Seasonal Baking by Fiona Cairns (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £17). This recipe was originally published in The Simple Things for Easter 2015.
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Photography by Stocksy
Who was that mysterious man in the puddle?
April is known for its showers of rain, but it doesn’t stop us occasionally forgetting and getting caught out with no umbrella. One man who got very much caught out by the April weather was Dr Foster, of nursery rhyme fame, who went to Gloucester in a shower of rain, stepped in a puddle right up to his middle and never went there again.
But did you know the tale of Dr Foster was not just a nursery rhyme but an actual historical event? Well, ‘event’ might be a bit strong. Perhaps a historical anecdote.
Dr Foster was likely to have actually been the Plantagenat king , Edward I. He was apparently on his way to Wales, passing through Gloucester, when he fell into a a large, muddy puddle (or got stuck on his horse in a stream and had to be hauled out). Either way, it was a humiliating moment and as a result he never set foot in the town again. It must have been quite a puddle to have come up to his middle, too, because Edward was fondly known as ‘Longshanks’ and stood 6 foot 2 inches tall, quite a height for that period.
So if you must go to Gloucester this April, take a brolly and some wellies and don’t go puddle-jumping.
If you’d like to know more about April showers, read Right as Rain in our April issue, which is all about the words for rain we use in various parts of the UK. Learn to tell your ‘dinge’ from your ‘henting’ from page 22.
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Make somebody’s Easter with a box of handmade dark chocolate and vanilla truffles. No hidden ingredients or mysterious methods in this simple but delicious recipe.
Makes about 20 truffles
For the ganache:
125ml fresh double cream
2 whole vanilla pods
250g dark chocolate, finely chopped
For the shell:
200g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
200g dark chocolate, grated 50g unsweetened cocoa powder
1. Place the cream in a heavy- based pan and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, run a very sharp knife along the vanilla pods to open one side, add them to the cream and continue to simmer for 5 mins.
2. Take the pan off the heat and remove the pods. Using your thumbnail, gently push out the seeds from the pods into the cream. Cover with a cloth for a further 5 mins.
3. Put the chocolate in a bowl, pour over the still-hot cream and stir until fully blended. This is your vanilla ganache. Put in the fridge.
4. Next, prepare the shell. The tempering process is tricky for beginners, so this is our easy version. It takes about 10 mins; time it so the ganache has had 30 mins in the fridge by the time the tempering is complete.
5. Melt two-thirds of the roughly- chopped chocolate and leave for 5 mins. Now add the remaining pieces and stir with a spatula until they are smooth and melted. Test by putting a spot on your lip - when it feels neither hot nor cold it is ready for coating the ganache balls.
6. Remove ganache from fridge and scoop out small amounts for hand-rolling into balls. Do this quickly so it doesn’t soften too much in your hands. Use a fork to dip them into the shell chocolate and then roll in the chocolate gratings, or leave them to harden at room temperature and roll in cocoa powder.
7. Leave the balls to set.
This was first puclished in our April 2015 issue. The recipe is from Montezuma’s Chocolate Cookbook by Simon and Helen Pattinson
(Kyle Books, £16.99.)
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Make Good Friday the best Friday ever with these seasonal buns that are just a bit different from an ordinary HCB
Makes 12
2 duck eggs or 3 large chicken eggs
90ml buttermilk
185g butter
Zest of 1 orange
185g self-raising flour
1⁄2 tsp baking powder
70g ground almonds
185g light brown sugar
2 tsp mixed spice
120g sultanas
1 tbsp apricot jam or marmalade
for the icing
60g cream cheese
40g butter
60g icing sugar
Zest of 1⁄2 an orange equipment
Cupcake tin
12 cupcake cases Piping bag and nozzle
1 Preheat oven to 180C/Fan 160C/350F. Beat the eggs in a bowl and then add the buttermilk. Melt the butter, add it to the bowl and mix well. Stir in the orange zest.
2 In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar and mixed spice, and stir in the ground almonds. Then fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Stir in the sultanas.
3 Spoon the cake batter into the cake cases, about three-quarters full, and bake for 18–20 mins until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for a few mins before transferring cakes in their cases to a cooling rack.
4 Meanwhile, heat the apricot jam or marmalade in a saucepan with a dash of water until it becomes liquid. Using a pastry brush, glaze the cakes while they are still warm and then allow to cool.
5 Mix all the icing ingredients together. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a small, plain nozzle and pipe a cross onto the top of each cake.
Recipe from Love, Aimee x by Aimee Twigger (Murdoch Books)
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Go to work on an egg cup... On page 60 of April's The Simple Things, Frances Ambler meets the arty couple on an egg cup making challenge.
Alex Brady is a printmaker and illustrator. Her partner Dave Briggs is a filmmaker and artist. The 12 Dozen Eggcups project evolved from a creative couple's desire to try out a new skill together. Their blog about their plan to make 144 different egg cups is at www.12dozeneggcups.com.
As it's Easter Sunday, we've found an easy origami egg holder that you can fashion in no time. Just get hold of some paper, watch this YouTube tutorial, and start making.
Or try your hand at an origami chicken:
How about a warren of festive rabbits?
If you've mastered those, you could give these 3D origami eggs a go. Not for the faint-hearted...
Photography: Catherine Frawley
Zingy pink lemonade to brighten every spring lunch, with just three ingredients
A jug of this refreshing pink lemonade will cheer any outdoor spring lunch table. It’s part of our outdoor menu in our April issue, which includes a Picnic Pie, homemade scotch eggs and peanut salad jars, and is so simple to make.
Makes 1 litre
Juice of 6 pink lemons (about 100ml). Buy British if in season, otherwise Italian pink lemons are available most of the year
60g caster sugar
800ml hot water
1 Juice your pink lemons. Retain the skins to zest later - they look really pretty topping cupcakes or other desserts. Put the pink lemon juice in a large lipped bowl.
2 Add the sugar, pour on the hot water and stir until sugar has dissolved.
3 Let cool completely then pour into re-sealable bottles and store in the fridge until you’re ready to serve.
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Now’s the time to gather treasures from the hedgerows. And then head home and into the kitchen to make this nettle soda bread.
Good handful of young nettle leaves and/or wild garlic
½ pint buttermilk
6oz self raising flour (wholemeal or brown)
3oz plain flour
3oz seed & grain bread flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Gather your nettle tips (with gloves on) before they flower. Strip off the stems until you have enough for one large handful of leaves.
Heat oven to 200C/Fan 180/400F
In a blender or large jug, add leaves and buttermilk. Blend until smooth.
Put flour, salt and soda into a mixing bowl. Form a well in the middle and pour in the nettle buttermilk. Quickly mix together with a fork until a soft dough is formed.
Turn out mixture onto a floured surface, lightly need for 2 minutes then form into a round shape.
Put on a floured baking tray. Flatten the top of the dough and score the top in a cross.
Cook for 30 minutes until the dough sounds hollow. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
N.B. You can substitute nettles for ramsons or crow garlic. For a seed top, before baking rub a little buttermilk over the top and add some sedge seeds (found in autumn) or sunflower seeds also work nicely.
In this month’s Blossom issue, we have a beautiful feature we think you’ll love by Lia Leendertz, in which she looks at cooking and enjoying some of the season’s bounty. Nature’s Table is the first in a new series. Do tell us what you think! This soda bread recipe with photography by Kirstie Young, was first published in our March 2016 issue but it tastes just as good (if not better) four years on.
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Photography: Maja Smend
Ramsons, or wild garlic, makes for easy foraging. Around now, damp woodland becomes carpeted in bright green leaves, the air heavy with its savoury aroma. If you can’t find any wild garlic, you can replace it with watercress, young nettles (wear gloves when harvesting – the sting will go when cooked!), spinach, kale or chard.
25g butter
2 potatoes, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
2 large handfuls of wild garlic leaves, washed and roughly chopped
110ml regular or double cream
Crusty bread, to serve
1 Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. When foaming, add the potatoes and onion, and toss in the butter until well coated, then season with salt and pepper. Turn the heat down, cover the pan and cook for 10 mins or until vegetables are soft, stirring regularly so that the vegetables don’t stick and burn.
2 Next, add stock and bring to a rolling boil, then add the wild garlic leaves and cook for 2 mins or until the leaves have wilted. Don’t overcook or it will lose its fresh green colour and flavour.
3 Immediately pour into a blender and blitz until smooth, then return to the clean pan, stir in the cream and taste for seasoning.
4 Serve hot with crusty bread.
COOK’S NOTE: Harvest garlic leaves between March and May before the plant flowers. Be mindful and pick a little here and there. Wild garlic looks similar to the poisonous lily of the valley so always crush the leaves and check for the smell of garlic before picking.
Recipe from Recipes From My Mother by Rachel Allen (Harper Collins).
If you’ve got a lust for something green and pungent after that you won’t want to miss the start of our new foraging series, Finders Keepers, by Lia Leendertz (first part in our April issue, in shops now). Foraged crops are free, abundant and flavourful. All you need do is get yourself to a good spot at the right time, basket and secateurs in hand, and you have some of the best crops available. Through the foraging seasons of spring, summer and autumn, we’ll show you where to find these crops, how to pick them, and ways to turn them into delicious dishes. This month’s pages include a fabulous recipe for wild garlic, nettle and broad bean frittata that has already gone in our best recipes notebook.
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Photography: Holly Jolliffe
This is our island in the sun(shine, turning cloudy through the afternoon)
You can take your Canaries and your private Caribbean islands; they’re nice if you just want sun sea and sand. And much as we love some wild wilderness, you can keep your Hebrides and your Orkneys; lovely for a bit of alone time and drama, but a bit, well, unfestive for a jolly holiday.
But the Isle of Wight is hard to beat. As a holiday resort, he island has come in for some criticism in recent years. Perhaps poshos indulge it for Cowes Week, but its seaside proms, amusements and crazy golf courses might be seen as a little infra dig in some circles. We say hurrah to that - more jolly Isle of Wight fun for us, and they’re missing the best of the island.
There can’t be many places that you can visit as a child and return 30-odd years later to find nothing has changed - in a good way. But the island is one of them. In some of the chocolate box villages, you could be walking into the 1950s. It also has some of the best of the UK’s beaches, rolling countryside and top-notch eateries. And the best thing about it is that wherever you happen to visit that morning, if you tire of it you can simply jump in the car - or on the wonderful train line serviced by ex-London Underground cars dating back to 1938, and rocket across the island to a different venue. No, wait - the very best thing about it is that you get to go on a ferry ride, making it feel like you are truly leaving real life behind and jetting off to foreign climes… and yet it only takes about 45 minutes.
In our April issue our ‘My Neighbourhood’ feature takes us on a tour of the Isle of Wight and it had us all just itching to jump onto a Red Funnel ferry immediately and be pouring coloured sand into glass lighthouses and eating fish and chips by an open fire by lunchtime. So we’ve been thinking about famous fictitious journeys to the Isle of Wight. Here’s our round-up of our favourites.
The couple in ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ by The Beatles.
In this whimsical imagining of how a relationship would pan out years from the present, the singer hopes: ‘Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear… We shall scrimp and save.’ Well. Don’t go in Cowes Week, but off peak, you should be fine. Vera, Chuck and Dave (the grandchildren on their knee) might have to stay behind if it’s school term time, though.
Sadly, The Fab Four never actually crossed the Solent together to play, but we think of the Isle of Wight as a very Beatles place to have a jolly still.
Martha in Julian Barnes’s England England
In the second part of this tripartite novel, Martha is employed by Sir Jack Pitman who wants to turn the Isle of Wight into a huge theme park called England England, which replicates all of the country’s best known historical buildings, sites and people, to save tourists the bother of traipsing around the whole of England itself. Genius.
The films Mrs Brown and Victoria and Abdul
Both were filmed at Osborne House on the island. Perhaps no great surprise since Osborne House was summer home to Queen Victoria for the last 50 years of her reign. But she had a lovely time apparently. Loved the crazy gold at Shanklin.
Day of the Triffids
Saving our favourite IOW appearance for last… Day of the Triffids. In the John Wyndham 1950s Sci-Fi novel, the characters flee the mainland and set up a new colony on the island, safe from the ravages of the giant man-eating plants. The island is actually a real-life safe haven for unusual flora and fauna today, from the red squirrel and Granville Fritillary butterfly to narrow-leaved lungwort and Early Gentian. Just don’t pick the flowers - they might bite back!
For more on the Isle of Wight buy our April issue, in shops now.
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DJ: Clare Gogerty Illustration: Anneliese Klos
Listen at thesimplethings.com/blog/makemesmileplaylist
Project & photography: NATMADY/HACKNEYHERBAL
A soothing cuppa is in the bag, when you make your own. The appeal of this project goes beyond having something nice to sip: the touch and smell of choosing your herbs, even before the tastebuds kick in, make it a real sensory experience – something to savour.
You will need:
Unbleached muslin fabric (try souschef.co.uk or johnlewis.com), or you could buy readymade self-fill tea bags from dotboutique.store)
Cotton thread
1 tsp of dried herbs
1 Cut unbleached muslin fabric into squares roughly measuring 10x10cm.
2 Choose between 2 to 4 dried herbs to mix and place in the middle of the square. You need about a teaspoon in total.
3 Gather the corners of the square together and tie the teabag up using cotton thread.
4 Infuse in hot water for five minutes and drink. You can empty out the spent herbs and re-use the muslin again after rinsing it.
SOME BLENDS TO TRY
Rosemary, peppermint & nettle An uplifting blend to aid focus and concentration.
Echinacea, yarrow & sage A restorative blend to sip when you have a sore throat or cold.
Lemon verbena, rose & skullcap A relaxing combination to enjoy before bed.
With delicate, nodding blooms, lily of the valley is a popular choice for brides. Which doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t enjoy them in the house. Their ephemeral nature means they won’t last long as cut flowers, however.
“Keep them out of sunlight in a miniature mixed posy or as a single bloom in a votive holder,” says Ellie Marlow, florist at Catkin & Pussywillow. “Or dig up and display with roots intact in a slim, glass, bud vase.”
There's much more to boredom than watching paint dry, says aficionado of the dull, James Ward
Boringness is easy to embrace. Slow down. Read Species of Spaces by George Perec. Go for a walk without a destination. Write things down. Don’t start with an end goal in mind, just see where things take you. Once you’ve landed on something, go and read the Wikipedia page about it. Then look at what else the people who edited that page also edited and read those, and so on. Before you know it, it’s three weeks later and you’re obsessed with something you didn’t even know existed at the start of the month.
When you’re on train or a bus, everyone is in a cocoon staring at their phone. I’m loath to be judgmental about people’s relationship with technology. Someone could be playing Sudoku, the person next to them could be reading the New York Times, or a new novel. Someone might be listening to a podcast about wooden palettes or emailing their best friend on the other side of the world. What we do need sometimes is time out from the constant updates and notifications. This is what stops you exploring. Having a day off from that is good.
I always say about Boring, that “nothing of any importance will be discussed”. The conference is a day away from people’s hot takes, where things are just a little bit smaller.
Turn to page 92 of April's The Simple Things for more from James Ward and his Boring Conference.
Illustration: Kavel Rafferty
Reusing old or damaged bins for container gardening is a wheelie good idea
ALL YOU NEED:
An old wheelie bin
Stones or gravel
Seeds: this works with growing (or beginning growing) almost anything
Soil
1 Drill four large holes in the bottom of the bin for drainage.
2 Add stones and gravel to the bottom of the bin, how much you need will depend on what you’re planting and how much soil they’ll need.
3 Fill with compost to just over halfway.
4 Create holes in soil for your seeds, spacing dependent on seed package instructions..
5 Keep it well watered, and add fertiliser regularly.
Illustration: Kavel Rafferty
Seek immediate medical attention if the individual is wheezing, not getting enough oxygen or has signs of cyanosis: bluish lips and nail beds, pale colour. While you wait for medical attention:
FOLLOW THE DOCTOR’S INSTRUCTIONS.
Administer any medication that was prescribed by the individual’s doctor.
HAVE THEM SIT UP STRAIGHT IN A CHAIR.
Ask them to lean forward and rest their forearms on a table, elbows pointing away from the body.
OFFER A BEVERAGE.
Coffee, black tea or a hot liquid like clear tea can help dilate the airway. If available, lobelia tea (1⁄4 tsp of herbs or 5 to 10 drops of tincture to 1 cup warm water) may help.
APPLY A COLD-WATER COMPRESS TO THE CHEST.
In some cases, it may stop the attack.
Adapted from The Natural First Aid Handbook by Brigitte Mars (Storey Publishing).
Fashion photography: Ellie Smith
When life gives you lemons, put them to use on a pretty top
YOU WILL NEED
An top in need of a spruce
Appliqué fabric (try a mediumweight woven cotton – this is a good project for using up scraps)
Double-sided iron-on transfer adhesive, such as Bondaweb or a washable fabric Gluestick to hold the motif in place before stitching
Iron
Sewing machine (you can do this by hand, it’ll just take longer)
1 Choose the areas of the appliqué fabric that you want to add to your top and cut a large rectangle around them. Give the fabric a press to smooth out any wrinkles.
2 Cut the transfer adhesive to the same shape and size as the appliqué fabric and place the shiny side against the wrong side of the fabric (you may need to peel off a backing sheet, check the packet instructions). Hold a hot, dry iron on top for a few seconds to fuse the adhesive to the fabric. Be careful not to get adhesive on your iron or ironing board – it can leave
a mess! You could place a pressing cloth – a piece of lightweight fabric or even a tea towel – between the motif and your iron to avoid the adhesive sticking to it.
3 Cut around the motifs, leaving a little space around the sides for the stitching allowance. It’ll be easier to stitch around the motifs if you cut them out without too many tight curves.
4 Once you’ve decided where you want the motifs to sit on your top, peel off the backing paper and carefully lay them, adhesive side down, onto the right side of the garment fabric, making sure they sit nice and flat with no bubbles. Hold a hot, dry iron on top for a few seconds to fuse them in place.
5 Now you can stitch the motifs in place. Practise on a scrap first. Try a short and wide zigzag stitch, 1mm long by 4–5mm wide. Position the project so most of the zigzag is falling on the appliqué piece, with one side of the zigzag overlapping the edge just a teeny bit. Take your time to carefully navigate the curves and pivot the fabric with the needle down where needed. When you need to wash your appliquéd top, it’s best to do so by hand.
Adapted from Tilly and the Buttons: Stretch! By Tilly Walnes (Quadrille).
Turn to page 111 for more clothing customisation ideas.
There are certain things in your home that are like old friends: they always cheer you up. This month we feel the love for a lovely window - turn to page 115 of April's The Simple Things.
This month's home quandary:
My kitchen is at the front of the house, which means that as I cook or stand by the sink, I am visible to anyone walking along the street. Can you suggest a neat and clean way of obscuring the view of passersby? I don’t want to hang net curtains, as they’ll get grubby and are old- fashioned. And I am not a fan of blinds as I would have to have them down the whole time, which would be gloomy indeed.
Answer in brief: disregard fabric options and go for a frosted pane.
Is your window double-glazed? If it isn’t and you are thinking of making it so, choose frosted glass. This will screen your activities without blocking the light. If replacing a pane of glass is unnecessary or too costly, window film is your friend. These days it comes in many different different patterns from plain frosted to elaborate designs (left, Saplings by MissPrint, windowfilm.co.uk). It’s easy to clean and has a smart industrial look about it. Anyone strolling past will still be able to see shadowy outlines within, but your anonymity will be protected.
We celebrate slowing down, enjoying what you have, making the most of where you live, enjoying the company of of friends and family, and feeding them well. We like to grow some of our own vegetables, visit local markets, rummage for vintage finds, and decorate our home with the plunder. We love being outdoors and enjoy the satisfaction that comes with a job well done.
