Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Monogram M with floral circlet (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

A glorious morning in the Chilterns. Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken, like the first bird. The words are those of children’s writer Eleanor Farjeon who I always think of as thoroughly Victorian but who only died in 1965, well within my living memory. Eleanor mixed in elevated literary and theatrical circles, including people like D.H.Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost as well as Edward Thomas and his wife but it was to her own childhood that she always returned to for inspiration.

Monnogram F with floral circle (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

When she and her family settled in Sussex during WWI the genius loci and local traditions and customs  combined with memories of family holidays in France and tales of troubadours came together in her most famous book ‘Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard’, about a wandering minstrel – the chalk cliffs of the Sussex coast and the Long Man of Wilmington rather than the landscape of France providing the setting. Like the best fairy tales, the 6 stories in this book speak to an adult reader on a different level and in fact she didn’t write them with children in mind but quite specifically for a young soldier friend of Edward Thomas. Her themes of loss, betrayal and unrequited love suggest she said in print what she perhaps couldn’t in a more direct way.

Hand embroidered M (by Mary Addison)

Hand embroidered F (by Mary Addison)

My introduction to Eleanor came when my own children were little with tapes of her short stories. Daughter No 1 slept through the night almost from birth. Daughter No 2 didn’t. I don’t blame her. This was just how she was. Son and daughter No 3 were quite good sleepers but if No 2 was awake they would usually be awake too.

M monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

M monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

Being awake we decided (well, I say decided, rather meandered or blundered to the conclusion) was fine if nothing else could be done to get them to sleep, but we tried to enforce the line that they should be in a bedroom, with blinds down in summer and soft light in winter and be as calm as possible. For a year or so they were all in the same room but I don’t ever recall the fact that they weren’t later on as being a problem, but no doubt bodies were distributed to their various beds later on. Clean and warm after their nightly baths we settled down and one or the other of us read to them (often for an hour or two). When we could read no more, we’d listen to story tapes, by which time the adults would be lying on the floor, often asleep. Creeping out when the last child was sufficiently dozy became a fine art.

M monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

M monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

Some nights we read from 7 – 9.30 pm and now that they are all very grown up they look back and say how much they loved it. I think in 5 years we went out 3 times – or was it in 3 years we went out 5 times. It doesn’t matter, with 4 children 6 and under it went like greased lightning. And it probably turns out that these extended reading sessions were some of the best things we did for them – a successful routine bred of desperation and resignation, not dogma or targets.

F monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

F monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

The Little Bookroom was Eleanor Farjeon’s best known collection of stories and it was made even more loveable with Edward Ardizzone’s inimitable watercolours. I’ve just rushed upstairs to find the what tapes we had and am slightly sad that I can only find one set of 2 cassettes and one of these is missing. Read by Michael Hordern, I shall just have to put it on for my next sewing session. Now that cassette players are no longer made, I have suggested to Daughter No1 that she finds one of those old ugly ochre and brown Fisher Price children’s cassette players while they’re still available on ebay. We had one that lasted many years and it was pretty indestructible. Although my grandson is as yet a vey good sleeper, there may come a time when he isn’t … and it would be nice to think of him listening to the same stories his mother did, read by the same voice. (And I have squirrelled away about 50 wonderful cassettes of children’s stories – I only kept the ones we loved. Long car journeys, Wet half term weekdays,  hours stuck in bed with a cold – all were made bearable with a good story well read to keep us happy. Added bonus – with hands free, I could do patchwork too!)

F monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

F monogram: detail of hand embroidered & appliquéd flowers

Well, that’s how sidetracked a beautiful morning can get you. To accompany a glorious show of blue skies and sun I have a couple of initials I embroidered for my husband’s granddaughters – twins. I began and almost finished the first years ago and got as far as the initial in the second one. Things then stalled. Their birthday was in the first week of February so I had hoped to get them finished for then. It didn’t happen. I wanted them to be similar but different and for a long time I couldn’t fix upon a companion design. This is no good I thought and just got on with what I wasn’t sure was quite right. It was. Sometimes you just have to fling yourself into something you’re not quite committed to and make it work and that’s what happened here. The great thing with embroidery is that you can always undo bits and add other bits somewhere else. I’m now quite happy with it (and, whisper it, may even prefer it to the first one. No, no, you can’t go round saying things like that in today’s world, suffice it to say I like them in their different ways.)

It was the turn of Ipsden Church to hold the Ash Wednesday service this year and as people from the other parishes in the team attend, I thought I’d bake a couple of different biscuits. As to numbers –  people or biscuits – you never really know so, thinking that I could probably freeze some, I made loads. No freezing necessary partly because children – who having checked there was no chocolate in the biscuits (yes, you guessed it, given up for Lent) – felt uninhibited about coming back for more.

Honey biscuits (from Miranda Gore Browne’s ‘Biscuit’ (Ebury, 2012)

Honey biscuits

(from Miranda Gore Browne’ Biscuit (Ebury, 2006)

These honey biscuits were especially popular. They were also easy and fun to make. I love it when recipes surprise you and adding the bicarb of sofa to hot honey and milk was satisfyingly different. It will also be a great recipe for innovation – a ginger variation with bits of crystallised ginger would work especially well, I think (ah, yes, Miranda mentions this too, now I look at the recipe again).

Ingredients

2 heaped tbsp honey

1 tbsp milk

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

100 g unsalted butter, softened

75 g soft light brown sugar

175 g plain flour

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C/ 160 degrees C for a fan oven/Gas Mark 4 and line several baking trays  with baking parchment.

The amounts above gives you 24 good sized biscuits.  I doubled the amounts and made almost 50.

Put the honey and milk into a small microwaveable bowl and warm in the microwave on High for 30 seconds. (If no microwave, put them in a small pan and warm gently on the hob, stirring all the time but making sure it doesn’t boil.) When the honey mixture is hot add the bicarbonate of soda and whisk with a fork until the mixture looks creamy and frothy.

Cream together butter and sugar, add the honey mixture and beat again. Then add the honey mixture and beat again. Finally add the flour and mix until just combined.

Roll  little walnut-sized chunks of the dough into balls, place them on the prepared baking trays and then flatten them slightly. (I then pressed them with a fork.) Bake for about 10 minutes – they will puff up and become beautifully golden. Set the tray to one side and allow them to cool for about 10 minutes. When they have firmed up, transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

A great success. These biscuits looked unusually soft and pillowy in a way that was inviting and irresistible.

Spanish almond biscuits (from 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & other tempting treats: ed Susanna Tee; Paragon Books, 2009)

Spanish almond cookies

(from 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & other tempting treats: ed Susanna Tee; Paragon Books, 2009)

75 g unsalted butter softened (+ extra for greasing)

55 g blanched flaked almonds

75 g caster sugar

quarter of a teasp almond essence (optional)

55 g plain flour

2 large egg whites

Makes 15-20 depending on how generous you are

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C/ 160 degrees fan oven/350 degrees F/ Gas Mark 4

Grease about 3 good sized baking sheets with butter.

Put the almonds into a little sandwich bag and bash them with a rolling pin until they are broken up into little bits about the size of the head of the pearl on a pearl headed pin.

Beat together butter and sugar until light an fluffy. Add the almond extract, flour and chopped nuts and stir these in until incorporated.

Whisk the egg whites in a large blow until the soft peak stage. Fold these into the almond mixture. Place teaspoonfuls of the mixture on to the baking trays.

Bake in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until they are just turning golden around the edges. let them firm up on the baking tray and then after 2-3  minutes transfer to a cooling rack.

May be, to make these more Spanish, a little orange juice and rind might work. They were vey nice but not so very different from other almond based biscuits.

Recently I’ve been following some of Lindsey Bareham’s dinner recipes (v. good, often simple but with an interesting twist) in The Times and in one of her recipes for a quick fish pie she suggests enriching the mashed potato topping with an egg yolk which helps the potato crisp up and also makes it creamier (and two egg yolks is even better).  That’s good as I now have another use – omelettes being my usual fall back – for those egg yolks that can take up residence in the fridge and look accusingly at you every time you open the door.