Frost on the car!

Oh so cold last night, we had the first cold snap of winter, woke up to only 2.5 degrees outside, and when I went into Cadiar at 10am it was still only 0! The house was still lovely and warm though from the wood burners, but outside we had ice on the windscreen and on the grass edges of the pista. Just been to check the strawberries and sweet potato cuttings and all is well. Only 1 plant looks a bit sad and that's the basil, most of which I have cut and dried, just left enough in case we needed fresh for something. Not so fresh looking now, a bit wilted round the edges!

We had a trial run of figgy pudding last night, I found a recipe in the summer when we started to dry figs and thought we'd better try it out before Christmas day in case it wasn't nice but it was scrummy. Sort of like a white Xmas pudding, but not as rich. I only made up half the recipe and that was large enough for 4 to 6 portions. So if anyone has lots of dried figs and wants a recommendation go to

http://www.cooksrecipes.com/dessert/figgy-pudding-with-custard-sauce-recipe.html

Instead of cooking in the oven as it says, we did 20mins steaming and 50mins on low pressure in the pressure cooker and it was fine. We did have custard with it but I think probably brandy butter and/or cream for Christmas :)

We'll look like figs soon as we are drinking fig wine as well! Last night's bottle was labelled MWF - mostly white fig - as it had some black figs in as well and produced a very deep rose colour.