Scrambled eggs on toast with garden herbs – a reminder of what real, good food is

Sometimes it takes the simplest of meals to remind you what real, good food actually is.  I had this revelation last night as I tucked into my dinner for one of scrambled eggs on toast.

Mr Rigg was away for the night and my dinner choice was based on the fact that I really couldn’t be arsed to make anything more just for myself.  We have a lovely farm up the road who produce organic eggs, so I always have a large tray of their eggs on hand for quick meals.

This time I had treated myself to some of their white Leghorn eggs, which I scrambled in my own sweet fashion – melt a healthy amount of raw butter in a saucepan, crack the eggs directly into the hot butter without whisking prior (I had two whole eggs and an extra yolk).  Next I turn the heat down and let the eggs cook a little in the butter without touching them, then I use a spoon to break them up.  This way you end up a mixture of quite distinct ‘white’ and ‘yolk’ but also some standard pale yellow scramble as well.

I considered skimming some cream off the top of our raw milk to add to the pan of eggs, cream in scrambled eggs is divine – don’t bother with milk! Anyway, that seemed like too much effort, so I just seasoned with salt and pepper and added generous amounts of snipped mint and chives from the garden, plus some pretty purple chive flowers.

Food memories: Greece (Part 4) – exploring Athens and a guided food tour

So, here we are in the final instalment of my ‘food memories’ of Greece.  If you’ve not read the previous posts, you can read part 1 about our beautiful hotel Kinsterna, part 2 about our day trip to the island of Elafonisos, and part 3 our journey exploring the Mani Peninsula.

Now, on to Athens.

The journey back to Athens from the Peloponnese was much the same as the journey out, but this time with a brief stop off for lunch at what can only be described as one of the world’s quietest motorway services.

I remember driving on motorways in Sweden was pretty pleasant because there were so few cars on the road, but where in the UK you stop a services and hear constant traffic whizzing past, here we stopped and it was silent. Eerily silent.  Then once or twice you’d hear a car pass.  And then more silence.

I’d like to be the kind of traveller who only goes off the main roads to find lunch from a local eatery, enjoying their lunch in some scenic spot – maybe one day I will.  But for now we still stop of motorway services, even abroad, and eat bog standard sandwiches.

A few days in the sun

We British are always talking about the weather, it seems we are unable to have a conversation with anyone without mentioning it.  So here I am, talking about the weather – but what incredible weather it has been this past week!

Mr Rigg is convinced this is our summer, last year March was stonking hot, this year maybe it’s May.  I do hope this isn’t the end of hot, sunny weather for the rest of the year, just a few more occasional weeks like this would satisfy me.

Like everyone I’m sure, we’ve been out in the garden, down on the allotment, cooking and eating outside, and quickly getting in a tan in case this really is our one and only week of warm, cloudless skies.

Some of our many meals eaten outside (and some even cooked outside!) have included this new favourite pasta dish of prawns, rocket and sundried tomato paste…

A rather scrummy and also new favourite omelette with colourful cherry tomatoes from our local farmer’s market, crispy Serrano ham, shavings of sheep’s cheese and snipped chives from the garden…

Our family menagerie is growing…a new addition is on the way!

I have been dying to tell you this friends for so many weeks now, but finally it has felt like the right time.  Our little menagerie is growing – this time to include a tiny person rather than a furry animal friend.  I am 21 weeks pregnant!

As you can see from the picture above taken on the weekend, I only have a tiny bump so I’ve placed my hands in that typical pregnancy photo way so you can actually see there’s something there – honestly, I’m not just fat from eating too much clotted cream and butter

I am just so pleased that I can openly mention being pregnant here and also share some of my experiences (yes friends who read regularly I am drinking raw milk and pregnant, please don’t be alarmed I’ve read all the pro’s and con’s and made an educated decision that’s right for me).

It is such an exciting time and for the past couple of week’s I’ve been feeling it move around and I receive daily reminders it’s there and growing in the form of punches/kicks.  It would be lovely to hear from anyone else expecting their first baby.

This is our first baby and so quite an experience and journey for both myself and Mr Rigg (who know’s what Buddy and the bunnies will make of this small new creature once it arrives!), and I’m looking forward to sharing little tidbits of this next adventure with you all.

A recipe for homemade soaked granola with flaked grains, nuts, seeds and dried fruit

Recently I’ve been trying to wean us off cereals – by wean, I mean I’ve just stopped buying it, which for poor Mr Rigg has meant going cold turkey on cereals at breakfast.

If you’re interested why I’m keen to steer away from cereals it’s because I’ve come to realise that there isn’t much good in them, despite what they like to tell us on their TV adverts.

We had this lovely recipe for granola that we used to make, which was delicious both with milk and yoghurt.  The only problem is that I’ve also developed an interest in how grains were traditionally prepared, and how they used to be soaked before drying.

This is because things like grains and nuts and seeds have enzyme inhibitors in them, which unless soaked first, prevent us from absorbing all the goodness in them like vitamins and minerals.

Food memories: Greece (Part 3) – a journey around the Mani Peninsula and a visit to the walled city of Monemvasia

I am on a roll with sharing our Greek holiday (just a few months late!) and by the end of the week I’ll have shared it all.  I’ve told you about our lovely hotel Kinsterna and our visit to the island of Elafonisos, today we’re off to the Mani Peninsula…

When I was doing my pre-holiday research I was already intrigued by the Mani just because of it’s name, which seemed to have an air of mystery to it.  The Mani Peninsula is a bit of the Peloponnese which is apparently distinguishable both geographically and culturally.  On doing my research prior to our Greek holiday (you can reads part 1 and part 2 here) I loved the sound of this bit of the Peloponnese because it was described as being rugged, rural, and inaccessible.

Food memories: Greece (Part 2) – the island of Elafonisos

I’ve finally embarked on sharing my holiday memories from our Greek trip last autumn, if you didn’t read the first part about our beautiful hotel Kinsterna and the Peloponnese just click the link.  Today we’re off to the island of Elafonisos, right down at the tip of the Peloponnese.

Like most people I like to do some research once a holiday is booked, and with the wonder of the internet you can find all manner of gorgeous looking places to visit near to where you are staying.  I like to do things visually, so I used Google Images and Pinterest to do my research, and made a list of places we could go to based on pretty pictures.  Ah, girls.

One of those places was the island of Elafonisos.  Do a quick Google search and you’ll see why it was on my list – those fabulous beaches and crystal clear water.  Who wouldn’t want to visit somewhere like this.  So a few days into our holiday we set off in our little hire car to the ferry port at Neapoli Vion.

A quiet weekend working on the allotment and cooking good food

From the beauty of Greece yesterday, to the slightly drearier shores of the UK today.  This past weekend we actually got down to our allotment and planted four rows of Charlotte potatoes.  We always seem a little behind on planting our potatoes, but were reassured when our local farmer told us he was only just getting his in the ground.

In the process of uncovering the soil Mr Rigg came across a frog.  First he thought it was dead, turns out it was just enjoying the heat beneath the plastic that had been covering the ground (at least I think that’s what it was doing).

After an attempt to pick it up it leaped down a hole and disappeared.  It made me realise there were a series of ‘tunnels’ that had been created in the soil and I wondered if this was the frog who had made them?  Anyone know?

There was also a bit of time for sitting and reading – Buddy was busy on bee patrol…

Food memories: Greece (Part 1) – Kinsterna hotel and the Peloponnese

Wow, this is really overdue and I’m looking forward to reliving this holiday with you all.  Last October Mr Rigg and I set off for 10 days in Greece.  Mr Rigg had done a sailing holiday with friends around some of the islands when he was back in his teens, but for me it was my first visit to this beautiful country.

He’ll probably not be very impressed with me sharing this piece of information with you, but last year Mr Rigg reached that grand old age of 30.  To celebrate his mum kindly gave us a very generous budget for a holiday – a decision which was incredibly difficult for us because it was a budget that we could have gone almost anywhere on.  Should we spend most of it on flights to the other side of the world with meagre accommodation?  Or should we spend most of it on staying somewhere really special?

In the end, we opted for the latter – we decided that we should spend the majority of the gift on staying in the kind of place we’d never ever be able to afford normally.  I’m not sure how other people plan their holidays, but I like to find somewhere I want to stay, I fall in love with it, and then we attempt to figure out how we’re going to get there and what there is to do around it. Perhaps not the best way to plan a holiday, but it’s my way.

Last summer I fell in love with this goat farm in the Dordogne and it was quite a palaver figuring out flights there, so it can be a bit of a pain.  Mr Rigg set me off looking on the Mr & Mrs Smith website (oh my gosh there are some stunning places!) and this is where I came across and fell in love with Kinsterna.

Mushroom pasta with a cream cheese sauce and cress

I am a huge mushroom fan in all their shapes and sizes.  I have found a way to cook them that I just love – I’ve had too many of those soggy watery mushrooms that I was determined to find a way to make them taste how I like them.

I cook them over a really high heat in a big knob of butter until they release all their juices.  Then I continue to cook them until all the juices disappear, then they start to brown and caramelise a little around the edges.  This is how I like my mushrooms.  Once their like this they are delicious and you can then do all kinds of things to them (aside from eating them just like this) to make different meals.