A day out in the Lakes

DH took a day off on Monday and we took the stinkies up to Windermere for the day. I love the Lake District, and living back in Lancaster means that in under an hour we can be looking at views like this:

Gorgeous! We spent time at that lovely store of all things household-y, Lakeland. I was seriously restrained although necessary purchases did include 24 jam jars in varying sizes and a non-stick jam funnel.  The kids were impressed by the Lakeland building, and particularly by the variable height fountain square out front. Good job there was a fence up to stop the kids from just running through!

We had lunch in the Lakeland cafe, and I just couldn't resist taking a photo of my lunch - it was so pretty! It was a duck leg confit with curry duck sausage, potato rosti and salad. I felt like I was eating something out of Masterchef, it was so pretty!

After lunch, we headed down to the lake for an amble around. Looked at the swans, pottered in to the shopping bit and looked at the Peter Rabbit shop.

We found some really interesting teapots in a shop - ones sculpted of things like golden syrup tins and liquorice allsort boxes! DH took photos of some of the coolest, including a toilet-shaped one (would you really drink tea from a toilet teapot?!) but I think my favourite is the piano.

Even the weather held up for us, what a lovely day we had, and the memory of it will hopefully keep us all peaceful until DH's next holiday which isn't till Christmas.

Dr What?

Today's entertainment has been brought to you courtesy of Button running around the house with the laundry basket on his head, yelling "I am a garlic! I am a garlic!"

Mmm... Hokey Pokey.

I've made hokey pokey today. It's also known as cinder toffee and is a traditional sweetie here for Bonfire Night. It usually costs a pound for a small bag, but I make it for far cheaper. How? Well, you take 100g of granulated or caster sugar and 4 tbsp of golden syrup and stir it together in saucepan. I use my stainless steal saucepan because the mixture gets very sticky to clean out, but if you boil the kettle and pour the boiling water over the used pan, the remains will just melt straight off into the water and you can wash it as normal. Anyway, back to the recipe. Put the stirred sugary mixture on the stove and turn the hob on to a low heat. It's important that you don't stir at all once the mixture is on the heat, or it does something to the sugar that means the hokey pokey doesn't set. After about three minutes, the mixture turns into a bubbling sugar syrup which is a deep dark caramel colour. I should mention here (hopefully you're reading this through before attempting the recipe) that the sugar hokey pokey mixture will be exceedingly hot. DON'T get it on your skin! Turn the heat off and add 1 1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda (also known as baking soda), then whisk the mixture together briskly. It'll puff up into clouds of white/gold sugar. Pour it out immediately onto baking parchment or greaseproof paper and leave it to set - clean the emptied pan straight away. You should be left with a hot hot hot mound of hokey pokey that looks like this:

When it's cold, peel off the paper/parchement backing and bash up to make lumps of golden yumminess!