Salaric Cooking

Me and my four year old made this pink cake train jointly for Fathers Day and for mine and my husbands 6th wedding anniversary. The theme for the anniversary was Sugar. We made it using our train cake tin – it is a basic sponge cake – the main issue we had was that I swapped cow butter for goat and it doesn’t appear to be as greasy which mean we had a hard time getting the cakes out of the tin 🙁

We made pink butter icing to coat the tray and to glue cake toppers and marshmallows and the like onto the train. We then used some pink and white mottled sugared almonds to draw a number six in the icing. My little girl used edible glitter and hearts to decorate the pink icing the train was sitting on!

Not the best looking cake ever but it did taste nice 🙂

We have been getting fruit and veg boxes from Cotswold Dairy delivered. We get them once a month because other wise we really do not get through all the veg (swedes and things like that – remember we grow alot of veg anyway). These have been working out great as there are things in them we wouldn’t normally by so it is varying our diets in a good way and making our home cooking a bit more structured than it was.

I do however have two slight concerns – the first is that on two occasions some of the fruit has been moldy on arrival – which the diary where very good about and secondly it is not as locally sourced as I would like 🙁 I would prefer to see them group up with say ByLocal or Primrose Vale Farm Shop rather than getting Spanish fruit that the farm shop grows :/

I can only hope that the fact that it reduces the number of shopping trips we have to do means it reduces our carbon footprint anyway!

Over all I think the fruit and veg boxes are definatly a good idea and we’ll be keeping on with ours 🙂

I got a dinosaur sandwitch cutter which I used on Jean’s cheese sandwitch – it wastes the crusts but then she doesn’t eat those anyway! I then made a landscape for the dinosaurs out of carrots which I cut into sticks, I made the ground out of ransom leaves (wild garlic) and some ice berg lettuce, then I got some sweet cisily leaves to represent trees along with the carrots.

Jean loves these dino landscapes for lunch and it has stopped alot of ‘Oh no not sandwitches :/

Well I tend to get up at 7 in summer and winter and find the time taken up with getting a small person off to school personally so there is no time for breakfast roll dough making etc :/ And this is with me and my husband both pitching in.

IF, AS WE HAVE SAID, THE QUALITY OF EARLY RISING be of the first importance to the mistress, what must it be to the servant! Let it, therefore, be taken as a long-proved truism, that without it, in every domestic, the effect of all things else, so far as work is concerned, may, in a great measure, be neutralized. In a cook, this quality is most essential; for an hour lost in the morning, will keep her toiling, absolutely toiling, all day, to overtake that which might otherwise have been achieved with ease. In large establishments, six is a good hour to rise in the summer, and seven in the winter.

HER FIRST DUTY, in large establishments and where it is requisite, should be to set her dough for the breakfast rolls, provided this has not been done on the previous night, and then to engage herself with those numerous little preliminary occupations which may not inappropriately be termed laying out her duties for the day. This will bring in the breakfast hour of eight, after which, directions must be given, and preparations made, for the different dinners of the household and family.