Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been a fan of Pick Your Own. I remember summers growing up in England spent  filling up buckets and buckets of apples from the local orchard, and as soon as I passed my driving test I was puttering up the road in the car to the strawberry patches to pick my own. What did it matter that I was supposed to be revising for my exams at the time?! One summer a few years ago I picked so many raspberries that we ended up eating home made raspberry jam every day for the next three months. Yes, I’m a big fan of PYO. So imagine my joy last week when I decided to try out a new road to drive to the local town here in California and came upon field after field after FIELD of U-Pick! Orchards and orchards of cherries, peaches, plums, berries, apricots and all sorts of other fruity goodness. Resistance was futile. Besides it would save me a trip to Safeway later that night. HOW COULD I RESIST?? There was even a sweet kitty which made it all the more better. (Sidenote: the U-picks and farm stands around here are actually cheaper than the grocery store… not to mention fresher! I shall definitely be going there again.)

The next morning I made a fresh fruit pavlova (strawberries, apricots and peaches) and a cherry, peach and apricot pie that oozed sweet, fruity juices all over the bottom of my AGA. Yummy.  I seriously have not made bakey treats that tasted so good. Maybe next time I’ll remember to take some photos before all the goodness ends up in my tummy, tee hee!

*edited to add*
I really wanted to get hold of some sour cherries too, but they told me that they wouldn’t be ready for another 10 days. That was a week ago, which means by Monday…… EEEPS!

I hope you all had wonderful days.
I had tea and banana bread
xo

I just spent half an hour going through my cupboards and measuring all my cookware to see if it would fit inside… and it does, EEEKS. Even my big Le Creuset casserole does (thank goodness I got the oval one so I can rotate it slightly to fit- these AGAs are slightly shallower in depth than standard US ovens).

Unfortunately as of this morning the mortgage underwriters are now working on a 48 hour schedule (end of week rush), so we might have to wait until Monday to find out if we’re all systems go, and there’s no way I’m going to buy anything until the house sale is bulletproof. *Sigh*. But maybe over the course of the weekend it might get even more discounted…. DrMr is going to call in again on his way home and attempt to find out.

They’re so purty…. I think I’ve about 80% made my decision. Maybe.

PS I suggest you click on the two pictures above to get an even better experience of AGA loveliness

Well so far so good, it looks like everything is going to plan and the mortgage should be getting underwritten as I type with a 99.9% certainty that it will be approved (I hope I haven’t jinxed it by writing that). So, naturally, I’m starting to move in mentally which starts with planning the kitchen as  it’s rather spartan in the appliance department. Actually except for a dishwasher we have no appliances whatsoever. It’s annoying for our finances, but on the upside it means that I don’t have to cook inside someone else’s smelly old oven so I don’t mind that hugely.

This (hopefully) is our kitchen-to-be. The granite countertops are new, but the cupboards are all original from the 1980s and they’re all perfectly clean and well functioning, but (important point coming up) they’re probably something we will want to ultimately replace in due time. You can see clearly the big spaces that need to be filled: the smaller (30 inch) gap on the left is where the cooker is supposed to go with a microwave above it, and the larger (38 inch) on the right is for the fridge/freezer. A-ha, I thought, I will do some research on these, which I did, and came up with this sort of thing: a nice modern-looking stainless steel dual fuel range with convection oven (good for baking), and a nice big double-doored fridge freezer (and we’d probably put another chest freezer in the garage as I’m a bit of a freakazoid with food storage, and tend to freeze EV-ER-Y-THING we buy).

Ahh, pretty and shiney and new. We want to try to get the best stuff that we can so that when it comes to selling the house again the kitchen will look good and be a nice selling point.

BUT

It turns out that not too far away from us is a rather large home-improvement chain that is having a rather large liquidation sale. Promises of 40% discounts were definitely something to be investigated, so DrMrNin called in after work. And when he did, he only went and found THIS:

An AGA.

This very one to be exact, a brick red 36 inch dual fuel Legacy. Ho. My. Good. Ness. It’s not the original oil/wood-fired one which can heat your whole house, but a modernised version of it which is perfect for California where you don’t really need to turn the heat on. PLUS, this type you don’t have to install permanently in the kitchen, so you can take it with you when you move (this would be a life-long friend).

If you haven’t heard about AGAs before, you can find out more here, but all you need to know is that I’ve wanted one since I was about six years old which just about says it all. THESE ARE THE MOST SUPERB OVENS IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD AND THEY ARE ENGLISH TOO. They are like what Dualit is to toasters, and Hunter is to wellies.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Now obviously there is a catch, it’s 36 inches wide, 6 inches too big for the space currently allocated for the oven. But, but, but, at 36 inches it would fit PERFECTLY into the 38 inch space currently allocated to the big fridge freezer, and what we could do is get a SMALLER fridge freezer to fit where the oven is supposed to go (about the same size as we have in the apartment, and the price of the smaller unit would help to offset the extra cost of the AGA too). Obviously we would have to re-plumb the utilities slightly but that would be fairly straightforward (the gas isn’t even plumbed into the kitchen yet but we’re told it can be done) and it would be easy enough to rearrange the vent through the other cupboard.

So again here is the kitchen:

But this time it would be with these appliances:

Do you think that would work? The obvious downside is that it might look a bit weird having the fridge in the middle instead of at the end, but as I mentioned, we’re probably going to re-do the kitchen at some point anyway so we could always change the arrangement back to normal at that point and get a bigger fridge then too (and I’d put in a big corner pantry at the end where the ‘G’ is, and I’d put this smaller fridge-freezer in the garage and use it for drinks and more freezer space as you can *never* have enough freezer space, hehe).

Ho. My. Good. Ness. So here’s the decision: normal-looking, practically-aranged kitchen with small range and big fridge-freezer, or a (temporary) more unusual kitchen arrangement with a smaller fridge-freezer BUT WITH AN AGA??

(Incidentally I was planning a sand-coloured and cranberry colour-scheme throughout the house, so the AGA would happen to match perfectly).

HELP! WHICH ONE DO I CHOOSE?

****

PS Here’s what it would look like against wooden cabinets…

*VERY* chilly weathers are currently icing things up here in the Home Counties- the perfect sort of weather for scrumptious apple pie from the Lime Tree Pantry.

Why have the hassle of baking when you can already buy perfection? And that leaves more time to eat it too…

Yummy.

PS Marks and Spencer do quite a nice one as well.

PPS Apologies to non-British residents

A couple of days ago it was my birthday, hooray! We usually always have a special outing planned and this year was no exception. And I allowed myself to open one of my presents before we went

Squee! A DOLLY

We then jumped in the car and drove to Highclere Castle in Hampshire. Of course I had to take the new girl with me please meet Avril LaBean.

It was a wet day for the most part, but I think that added to the atmosphere of the place. I think this is the best weather that Summer can muster this year. Here’s how Highclere looked for most of the afternoon. Grey skied, but rather nice in an imposing sort of way.

It might remind you of the Houses of Parliament in London (where Big Ben is), but that’s because it was designed by the same person. Highclere is the ancestral country home of the Earls of Carnarvon, the 5th Earl being the same Earl of Carnarvon who purloined unearthed the contents of Tutankamun’s tomb, and various other ancient Egyptian artefacts (that’s the british spelling, btw).

There’s actually a small museum in the basement ‘proudly’ displaying various relics from other shrines and lesser tombs including a sarcophagus that was discovered by the man, having been undisturbed for thousands of years complete with wreaths of cornflowers surrounding it in situ in the tomb in Egypt. Not only does the specially built tomb now lie empty, with the cornflower wreaths no longer there either, but the coffin was opened, and the poor mummy inside was unwrapped completely and the bands of cloth that carefully wrapped her up for all that time are now draped next to the coffin. As for the poor girl herself, there was a photograph of her next to  the sarcophagus and she’s now probably in a drawer somewhere. So much for a ritual burial.

Outside the weather cleared for a bit and we were able to enjoy the pretty gardens. The lavendar was out. I love lavendar, it’s one of my favourites, I’m going to plant it all around the garden when DrMr and I have a place of our own. I like how when you brush past it it manages to fill the air.

All the pretty summer flowers were out too….dripping in the rain, alas, but again it added to the charm.

But then the rain came down and we had to run under a tree for shelter. It was a good opportunity to all squeeze together for a family portrait though. This is definitely one for the memory album.

All in all, a lovely day out. And my birthday girl enjoyed herself too. We actually timed our journey home well, as the rain got heavier as we drove back. By the end of the trip it was POURING outside.

And my poor little bean *really* didn’t want to get out of the car.

But I managed to talk her around in the end. Besides, she wanted to meet the contents of the other birthday parcels.

More dollies   Meet Clemency and Winona.

And then we had cake. Following the ‘events‘ of my girly pink cake with fluffy pink buttercream frosting, I decided to avoid doing a sandwich, so I played it safe and made a traybake instead, a yummy wholemeal cake with fluffy yellow vanilla buttercream frosting and white chocolate buttons on the top.

Why wholemeal? Well it’s healthy of course, and when something is healthy, it means that you can eat LOTS of it without feeling guilty

I’m actually rather partial to wholemeal cake in general, as it has a lot more substance and bite to it, and isn’t so sweet. It really is delicious. It’s possibly one of my favourite cakes. Wholemeal flour is great for coffee cake too. A real savoury treat.

All in all a very lovely and delicious birthday celebration:D

(Hopefully tomorrow night there will be another cause for celebration too – it’s already too late, so I’ll catch up with my 365 then too…)

*******

PS A lot of people come to Peachy Hollow looking for a buttercream frosting recipe, so here is how I make it, it is actually very simple to make, with very simple ingredients:

Take 6 oz soft butter and 12 oz icing sugar (that’s about enough for a single layer 8-9″ round cake, so adjust accordingly in those proportions), and beat together with a hand mixer until very light and fluffy. The longer you whip it, the fluffier it becomes, and the fluffier it gets, the less sickly sweet it tastes. You can also add a splash of vanilla essence or lemon juice to zazzle it up a bit too if you like.

See? Easy! Enjoy, and happy baking!!
xo