August - Summer's Swansong

Overlooking Aberaeron, Ceredigion

August is traditionally the high point of summer.  The school holidays are in full swing, and the annual summer getaway imminent.  Sadly, in recent years August seems to have been one of the wettest months of summer, a bitter blow for staycationers. 

The annual blackberry harvest is a daily occurrence now.  With other soft fruits and berries they make a lovely compote; or they can be stockpiled in the freezer for some much-needed comforting crumbles once autumn hits.  My neighbour freezes them as she picks them and then makes batches of jam once she has enough. 

This is the best time to make chutneys, with the fruits at their prime and weather conducive to having every door and window flung open to try and minimise the smell of cooking vinegar in the house!  From my experience, it still takes two or three days to get rid of the smell, but it’s so worth it when you open that first jar and are reminded of the happy summer harvesting. 

August food is usually quickly assembled salads, quick cook pasta dishes and picnic food for beach visits or to take to whichever cottage we’ve rented for our holiday.  I don’t travel lightly where food is concerned – never knowingly under-catered is my motto!  One of my favourite picnic pies, aside from good old Corned Beef Pie, is a nice sausagemeat and chicken pie, with an added layer of sage and onion stuffing this is a lovely treat.  I usually make it with whatever bits and pieces of leftover cooked chicken and stuffing I have stashed in the freezer.  Its a very filling pie so all it needs is a bit of salad on the side.

One of my often-repeated summery pasta dishes is linguini with bacon, garlic oil and chilli.  I make it year-round, but somehow it seems so much nicer in the summer months – doesn’t everything though!  It’s not quite an assembly-job, but only needs a bit of bacon cooking while the pasta boils so it’s a very low-effort meal. 

At the homestead, it’s really little more than a tidying and sorting month.  Organising clothes, food and other essentials for the holiday, organising my jars and ingredients for the great chutney-off! 

By the end of this month it’ll all be done and dusted and we’ll have come full circle to autumn and it all starts over again!

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/linguine-with-bacon-parsley-and-garlic.html 

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sausage-and-chicken-pie-with-sage-and.html

July - High Summer

Summer time, and the living is easy!  It really is easy since I’ve practically moved outside permanently now!  It offends me to be stuck indoors when the weather’s nice.  Drifting outside with a cup of tea turns into taking meals outside, which turn into endless hours spent pottering in the garden, drifting around pulling the odd weed, dead-heading roses and fuschias, monitoring bees ....  The responsibilities are endless!

My windows are permanently flung wide open, ditto the front and back doors to maximise airflow in an attempt to cool my house.  July can often be unbearably hot and humid, which makes sleeping a near impossibility since it only really cools down in the early hours of the morning.  Poor Holly struggles so badly in this weather and is a very droopy companion.  Our walks are severely truncated affairs now, a 10 minute sniff, meet and greet twice a day is about all we manage, unless we can hit the beach or find a nice river to cool her off in.

Tapenade Stuffed Chicken

In the kitchen, July eating is pretty much a succession of barbecues and salads, with the odd bit of ‘proper’ cooking thrown in when the weather permits.  A perennial favourite is tapenade stuffed chicken.  The tapenade itself is a fantastic standby and can be slathered onto bread or dollopped into cooked linguini for a speedy meal.

Another old favourite is barely classed as cooking – you simply need to boil a pan of pasta

Linguini with parma ham, rocket & chilli

for 10 minutes while you prepare the rest of the ingredients!  Linguini with parma ham, rocket and chilli.  This is absolutely delicious enjoyed in a sunny garden after an unbearably long day deskbound!  Sometimes gratification is pretty much instant.

As July progresses my thoughts start to turn to preserving – jams and chutneys.  I start scouring the hedgerows on walks for signs of the early blackberries ready to swoop as soon as they ripen.  I’m often found gazing up at threes on walks too, watching for the cobnuts so that I can start gathering them as soon as they ripen at the end of August/beginning of September – assuming that I can get to them before the squirrels do!

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/sun-dried-tomato-tapenade-stuffed.html

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/linguine-with-parma-ham-rocket-and.html

June - Glorious, Flaming June!

We’ve made it!  The dark and the cold have all given way to glorious summer, and very soon the summer solstice will remind us that it’s a temporary gift as the sun crosses the equator again!

We practically live outside now, and thanks to the fantastic Man-Aga (our gas barbecue), the oven gets a good clean and can be retired until the autumn.  From now on, all cooking takes place on the hob or on the Barbie.  My summer world revolves around beach visits, picnics, afternoons in the garden and evenings sitting outside with a cheeky glass of Pimms and my book while my faithful companion monitors the bird and squirrel population.  Housework is relegated to a quick morning flick and vac or a rainy day pastime!

Pesto Stuffed Chicken

As the heat starts building our dog-walking routine has a radical make-over, we take our longest walk in the morning while the day is still relatively cool, lunchtime walks are little more than a walk over to the lake while I sit and soak up the rays and she potters around checking on the ducks.

This is the best time of year food-wise.  Beautiful baby new potatoes, peas in the pod, broad   If winter eating is all about comfort food, summer eating must surely be all about lightness, fresh flavours and clean-tasting dishes.  I love this time of year best of all – as I write this, the sunlight is streaming in through the patio door and Holly is lying with her nose on the doorstep, lapping up the rays!

beans, kidney beans, fresh salads, glorious strawberries, apricots and nectarines.

Griddled Asparagus Salad

One of my favourite summer dishes is Pesto stuffed chicken.  Made with the lovely fresh basil that I often grow in the garden, this is a real flavour-packed treat.  I usually make my own pesto, the shop-bought stuff rarely compares to the real deal.  Delia’s recipe is the one I always turn to and is an absolute doddle to make.  This is a lovely assemble-ahead dish if you’re cooking for company.  You can butterfly, stuff and wrap the chickens the day before and leave them in the fridge.  Pop them into a shallow casserole or tin though as they tend to ooze basil oil everywhere!

Another one of my lunchtime favourites is griddled asparagus over salami or parma ham on a bed of lettuce.  Topped with a softly poached egg this is an absolute treat – especially if you scatter an avalanche of parmesan cheese over the top!  Sometimes you need a blow out!

Trifle

Puddings in summer are really nothing more than a little Greek yoghurt drizzled with honey – something Holly always enjoys too!  A light fruit salad or a fruit compote is a nice treat too.  I just pop an assortment of fresh fruit into an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with a tiny bit of sugar and stew it in the oven until it all collapses, add berries at the last minute to collapse in the heat of the dish.  A trifle is a nice treat too,

so many happy occasions are marked with the arrival of a trifle in my family – my Dad used to love it!

 

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/salami-salad-with-griddled-asparagus.html

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/pesto-chicken.html

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May - On the Cusp of Summer

Llangrannog Beach

Welcome May!

Normally our world is warming up nicely now and we’ve really started to live outside.  By now the flannel sheets and thick winter duvet have been exchanged for their summer counterparts.  This year is still quite cool, if not cold on times so I’m hanging on a little longer.  The quilt was only changed last weekend – almost unheard of!

While May can still be a chilly month as it warms up our summer eating regime kicks in and the barbeque season starts.  We treated ourselves to a gas barbecue last summer and it’s been a revolution – we often grilled gammon stakes, bacon and sausages for a lunch-time treat, as well as full-on barbies!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

On cold days I still like a warming bowl of soup.  This chicken tortilla soup fits the bill perfectly, warming and soupy to ward off the cold, light and full of flavour because it is late spring now! 

Risotto primavera

This is a lovely month food-wise.  The home grown asparagus is at its best, and a risotto primavera is a lovely way to make use of it.  Risottos bridge the gap between cold to warm weather eating nicely.  They’re comforting enough for cooler days and Mediterranean enough to remind us that better times are coming!

As the weather improves and we take off for beach days I find a corned beef pie (always a stand-by in my kitchen) invaluable.  Sometimes I make them in small patty tins (mince pie tins) and freeze them, defrosting as needed to take along on picnics.  A plate pie is nice to have too, useful to come home to after away days.

Corned Beef Pie

The trees are in full leaf now, my garden has a lovely canopy of green at the bottom, and my summer seclusion is restored!  With significantly longer evenings now I’ll be pretty much moving outside permanently – Holly carrying out regular boundary inspections (!) while I’m buried in my book!  On warmer evenings I’ll have a glass of wine or a G&T to hand, a cuppa and a cardigan on cooler evenings!

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/chicken-tortilla-soup-with-avocado.html

http://thehappyhousewife12.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/risotto-primavera-springtime-risotto.html

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