It's been a while!

I must apologise to those who read my blog that I have been remiss over the past few months and not kept up with my postings. The truth is, this has been a very busy spring term at the chalk face and time has been very short. However, things have calmed down a bit in Corner Cottage and I find myself with a little time to write.
Over the past few months I have felt the need to push aganst modern food trends. Modern "fine dining" has at its core a desire to put as many different ingredients on a plate as possible. One only has to look at the dishes produced on the last season of Masterchef to see that a tiny bit of everything on a plate is now considered the way forward. The only alternative is to cook one ingredient in 25 different ways.
Those of you who have read my blog before will know that I like learning how to provide the basic foods. I have often written about the joys (yes I do mean joys) of making bread. Recently I have been making my own butter.
So it was with a spring in my step that I headed off to Orchard View Farm in March (www.orcharviewfarm.co.uk) to take part in a sausage making course. I cannot tell you how much fun this was. Our instructor, Jim Mackeller, was a brilliant teacher, dealing with questions and mini disasters with humour and a sense of practicality which was refreshing and enlightening. We made two batches of sausages to take home and tasted our first batch at lunch! The beautiful wife and I have been working our way through a freezer full of sausages since! I have mentioned Orchard View before, it may well be one of the finest places in the UK to take breakfast . Their Black Pudding is quite the best I have ever tasted.
The otherbit of news from Corner Cottage is that I am now making my own Beer. So far I have produced beer from kits but I hope to move on to more basic production soon!