Tag: static caravan

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Autumn fare

This will be our third autumn in the caravan, although we should be in the house at last before winter sets in and so it will be our last.

The tiny caravan kitchen space and mini oven have certainly been a challenge, but it’s amazing what you can do with a bit of ingenuity and a single cake and roasting tin. If I’d thought we’d be here so long I would have packed more.

As the season turns and the evenings get colder, my thoughts for food turn to more autumnal fare. Sausages, roasted squash, chestnuts, warming soups.. and wherever possible recipes adapted to work in a small space with the minimum of fuss and need for utensils.

One of my favourite ways to cook at this time of the year is a tray bake. Last nights supper was sausage, butternut squash and apple roasted up with onions and garlic and finished with honey and mustard for the last ten minutes in the oven.

If I’d picked blackberries I would have added those in too. Next time.

A supper like this is a meal in itself, both warming and filling, not expensive to produce, and most importantly, leaving very little washing up.

Birthday cake for a friend

September is also the month in which many local friends have their birthdays (as well as my own), so for the last year my one square cake tin will get pressed into action.

Next year my baking tins will be unpacked and I will have a proper oven, and I’ll hardly know myself! But for now my offerings are slightly lopsided, as the caravan is not entirely level, and always the same shape.

I hope that they’re well received regardless, baked as they are with love.

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Storms and the Winter solstice

The winter solstice is nearly upon us. Somehow, this far north, in the long stretch of dark days, this date takes on a special significance.

From the 21st December onwards the days slowly start to get longer. There’s no appreciable difference in the amount of daylight in January, I always think – but by February it’s definitely slightly lighter. It’s good to feel that psychologically at least we’ve turned the corner and that spring is on its way. Much as I love winter.

Skye is definitely a winter island with its snowy peaks and wild winter weather. The year here has taught us to invest well in thermals, warm throws and plenty of blankets! I’ve recently found Vinted, a vintage second hand site that has proved fabulous for spare fleeces and wraps at very little cost. I seem to be building a wee nest of wool in the caravan on these cold days. 😊

I’m watching the clouds scud across the sky in the aftermath of extreme winds last night. It reached around 80mph around midnight, and we got very little sleep in the caravan whilst we were buffeted around like a small boat on an angry sea. Luckily the straps all held and apart from being slightly tired and grumpy we have escaped unscathed.

Breakfast this morning was a bleary-eyed affair with a second mug of hot coffee needed before being alert enough to get moving. We will need a quick spot check for damage.

I have a few more presents to wrap, the Christmas chocolate orangettes to make (the test batch were all distributed, eaten and declared good enough for gifts) and then we are about all set for the festive week. The preliminary air tightness test on the house is happening on Wednesday this week, so another milestone is imminent, and we will be very interested to see how it scores. Husband will then crack on with the wiring.

Stay warm and safe, everyone. Don’t stress in the run up to a Christmas. It will all get done, and if it doesn’t, poo, who cares.

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Christmas thoughts

It’s beginning to look as if we have another uncertain Christmas on our hands with the latest Covid variant running amok globally. I was hoping that this year would be different, but I guess we need to realise that this may be the new normal. Husband and I have our booster shots booked in for next week, and it feels like it’s not a moment too soon.

We may have one of the stepsons with us for Christmas, we may not. His travel plans are a bit up in the air just like everything else in the world at the moment. I’ve ordered supplies as if we have him here, happily eating us out of house and home. Well, caravan and home really.

Last year we cooked a piece of venison in the slow cooker for Christmas lunch. This year we have a piece of local highland beef, and with a year of kitchen juggling experience under my belt, moving things in and out of my tiny caravan oven, I’m hopeful that there will be roast potatoes too.

I only really start to feel as if Christmas is a reality when I see the lights start to go up in the village cottages and I’ve written and posted my Christmas cards. Christmas has always been such a big thing in my life. I’m getting used to a second year of no table, no big gathering, and life in a wee space where the normal arrangements can’t be made. We will definitely be in the house for next Christmas.

However different and sparse Christmas arrangements might be this year, I am grateful above all that we are all well. Health and happiness are so much more important than any of the other trappings that we associate with this time of the year. I will gather berries and foliage to decorate the caravan, put up some fairy lights, plan trifles and mince pies to take to friends, but mostly just savour the time that we have together.

Wishing you all a stress-free and happy run-up to the holiday period. Remember, it’s about the people that you love, not whether you’ve managed to bag the last turkey in the shop.

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Peachy galette

I’m not the most organised of cooks. I often get a sweet craving come over me and I’ll be tempted to make a dessert, but will have to improvise with what I have in the cupboard or fridge.

Our restricted storage capacity in the caravan fridge is probably what’s keeping me alive and avoiding a massively early death through my over-consumption of sweet things.

Because if I had all possible ingredients to hand I’d probably make a dessert every evening. Which is not good. Note to self: the pantry you’re building may not be such a good idea for the remains of your waistline… Fill it with beans and pickles, woman, if you value your life…

As the clock ticked around to about 4pm today I started thinking about supper, and I really fancied something sweet.

I found a punnet of rather hard peaches and a roll of ready made puff pastry lurking in a dark recess of the fridge. They were behind the bags of kale and chard, which glowed with health and reproachment. I also just happened to have a tub of mascarpone left over from some previous excess. I could make a peach galette!

Peach galette. No judging please..

In the UK, and especially here in Scotland, we don’t have the tradition of peach pies that I often see in the United States. Peaches are a rather exotic, imported fruit here (which I am determined to grow in my polytunnel one day. We must be independent in good fruit. But I digress).

A galette is a rather pretentious name for a slab of pastry, crimped up around the edges of creamy mascarpone egg custard and a pile of sugared, sliced peaches. It sounds so much more exotic than it actually is. It’s raggedy and rustic and delicious.

I couldn’t be bothered with forming a proper pie today anyway. Rough edges and random piles of fruit seemed like a perfect idea. I can do piling and sugaring, I thought.

Nay problem.

The remains..

And so I did. And so we followed a healthy stir fry with a crusty, cinnamon scented, custardy, sweet peach galette.

It gladdened the heart. Which compensates for the expansion of the waistline, I’m almost sure…

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Hot, hot, hot

The weather here on the island has been very hot over the past week. The caravan has suddenly transformed from fridge to oven..

The temperature gauge inside recorded 26 degrees centigrade yesterday, and that’s uncomfortably warm for us. Especially when opening windows to try and catch a breeze results in swarms of midges coming in off the croft…reminder to self, we must get some midge netting fitted to the windows.

The seedlings however are loving it. Uncle Bert’s Kale is growing madly, the potato plants are all greening up nicely and I have my first bean on my borlotti bean plant!

It was too hot to cook indoors yesterday and we were too tired to summon up a BBQ, so we headed down to Camuscross early to try and get a table for a cold drink and some supper. It’s so good to be able to do that again now that lockdown has eased.

There are worse places to be on a hot June evening… This time last year we were in London… I know where I’d rather be.

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Caravan food

The caravan has a tiny kitchen, with three working gas burners and a very small electric oven. It’s lack of storage space has meant that we have no room for electrical appliances like mixers or blenders, making everything a manual process when it comes to food preparation . So, meals have to be simple.

But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be good. We’re working hard on the house and croft, and we need sustenance. An army marches on its stomach!

I’ve looked back at some of the meals that we’ve produced in the caravan with our one baking tin and I’m pleased to see that we’ve actually managed OK.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that we seem to be heavy on the sweet treats! No apologies for that. It’s true to say that this build is being fuelled by cake…

Bakewell tart
Sourdough from the Mallaig bakery with homemade houmous
Strawberry slab cake
Lunch butties with crispy chicken
Turkish bean salad
Chocolate cake
Teatime flapjacks
Cheese and chive scones
Local rope grown mussels
Lentil, garlic & veg soup
Pear pancakes with Greek Yoghurt & Honey
Soy marinated sesame salmon
Cranachan
Lentil dhal
Baklava
Thai salmon ready for baking
Local langoustines
Breakfast of champions
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Easter Bread – Tsoureki

Tsoureki is a sweet, soft, fragrant Greek Easter bread which I first made last year in lockdown, having been unable to get Easter Eggs delivered.

We loved it, and it seems to have stuck as a tradition.

Of course, last year I had a proper kitchen, and a kitchen machine with a dough hook to take the strain. It needs a good fifteen minutes of kneading! This year was rather different.

I think that this was the most challenging thing I’ve tried to make in our tiny caravan kitchen so far, but it worked well, and we feasted on it for breakfast yesterday morning with enough left over for today too.

Rich with eggs, orange zest and mahlep, a spice made from ground cherry stones, it’s sweet, fragrant, soft and delicious. And all the more enjoyable for being a time consuming thing to make, and a once-a-year-treat.

Husband enjoyed his straight with no embellishments, washed down with a cup of coffee. I decided to Northern Up my slice with butter and rhubarb jam, Yorkshire style. Which was unutterably delicious. No judgements, now!

Here’s a link to the recipe I used if anyone wants to try it.
Tsoureki https://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/tsoureki-recipe-traditional-greek-easter-bread/

Happy Easter to you all!

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Slow days

Everything has dipped this week. I’ve noticed both husband and I gradually losing energy and becoming slower and more reluctant to do things.

I don’t know if it’s the short, cold days, the effect of this prolonged lockdown, or a combination of both, but we are drooping a bit.

Problems with the build and trying to find ways to correct the problems (thank you builders), the prospect of further supply delays and scarcity of materials, and costs going up steeply with new import taxes (thank you Brexit) have probably contributed to our general malaise and lack of energy.

We will get through this. It’s just a few slow days.

All I can do is keep morale up as much as I can for both of us.

I know that pear pancakes and lemon drizzle cake with tea later in the day won’t solve anything, but they’re sweet and comforting and do make us feel a little better.

So that’s what we’ve been doing this week. In between jobs we wrap up in blankets, drink tea and eat cake.

My way of getting through the dark days.

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Snow on the croft

We awoke this morning to a white blanket of snow over everything again. The temperatures had fallen overnight and it had snowed for several hours.

Getting up and started is the hardest thing when it’s cold like this.

Breakfast was taken by the fire with both of us wrapped up in a blanket, bobble hats and fingerless gloves until the fire gradually warmed the room.

We watched as the light changed constantly around us, the skies moving from thunderous grey to bright blue and back again as the storm fronts raced across the sky.

The snow is properly deep now, and the access track to the croft is icy and compacted and probably impassable for the moment, unless it was an emergency.

This would of course happen as I was about to replenish food stores with my regular shop, but we have plenty of stores, and bread flour and yeast to make rolls. The small oven here would struggle with a big loaf but it manages rolls and smaller breads just fine.

I’ve been baking every day, and making soup, curries and stews to make sure that we stay warm.

I know that this would send some people absolutely stir crazy, but I quite like it. It’s quiet and cosy. We have the work on the house, our books, cooking and seed planning and planting to keep us busy.

Contentment.

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Frozen pipes

We’ve had several nights of temperatures well below freezing, and although these have brought clear, beautiful winter days, they’ve also brought frozen pipes.

We run the water supply to the caravan overground from the house. It’s a temporary measure – we don’t want to have to dig the pipes in under the drive as the caravan won’t be here once the house build is complete.

However, this leaves them very exposed to the weather.

Waking up to a cold caravan, sometimes with ice on the inside of the windows is one thing, but switching on the tap to fill the kettle for coffee and realising that there is no water coming through is an altogether different level of morning discomfort.

On a couple of occasions in the last few weeks we’ve woken to this and husband has had to head out in jumper, dressing gown and wellies to try and thaw them out.

Insulation for the pipe has now been ordered and will be installed as soon as the weather permits..

In the meatime we now store large canisters of water in the caravan so that when this happens next, as it will with the worst of the winter months still to get through, we can at least have a mug of hot coffee before heading out to attempt the defrosting process..