Wednesday 25th November 2020 Day 246
8.35 I woke at seven and decided to have half an hour lie in catching up with emails and I have to admit, words games. Unfortunately when I next look at the clock I realise that in fact I had woken at eight not seven and it is now eight thirty five. I suppose it shouldn’t matter because who knows or cares frankly what time I get up in the mornings, I just hate getting up late and it always seems to affect the day ahead.
It being Wednesday, means I am going to cook for my daughter and her family and this week I am going to make Cornish pasties. When we lived in Cornwall, my mother made the best pasties around, so I have something to live up to. I’ll make an extra one for friend Ken who is always on at me to make him a pasty.
The old Cornish pasty has quite a history, originally made for the farming fraternity to take into the fields for their lunch, meat and veg at one end and jam at the other for pudding, the crimping along the top was so they had something to hold it with as their hands would be dirty, to be thrown away afterwards, personally I think the crimped bit is the best part. Obviously nowadays it is meat and veg all through, beef potato onion and swede, although just to complicate matters the Cornish call a swede a turnip. Believe it or not this came to the notice of Brussels, who decreed that the only time you may refer to a swede as a turnip, is when it is in a Cornish pasty…..I mean, see what we are missing by not staying in the EU! And that is your history lesson for today!
11.00 We set out for our walk, up through Duckings and into the fields. We are out for an hour and only see two women walking dogs in all of that time. Audrey seems less interested in putting up pheasants now, there are quite a few around and they fly up in panic anyway even though she is nowhere near them. The last time I ate pheasant was when I was quite a young child and I vowed then that I would never eat pheasant again, not because of the taste but because it was full of lead shot which, if I hadn’t seen it before eating a mouthful, I would crunch down on.
12.30 Time to make the pasties. I remember now why I rarely make them, they take forever to make, first making a large amount of pastry, then preparing all the veg, chopped or minced minutely to make sure it cooks through and then the actual wrapping up and crimping each one. My kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it by the time I finished.
14.45 That baking smell, nothing like it, they are all cooked and cooling on the side waiting to be delivered later. Guess what I am having for dinner?