Slow cooking.

Today I did something I have never really had time to do before - real slow cooking. I bought some pork belly and prepared rillettes, which can be made from more or less any sort of meat cooked very slowly in a warm oven - pork, duck, goose in particular is good. It makes a sort of pate to be eaten with some good crusty bread or toast and with chutney or little gherkins to counteract the richness. Delicious.

At the same time, I put some tomatoes in to slow cook which I have now put into a kilner jar with plenty olive oil and basil - should keep for a good couple of months: how cheerful it looks.

When the children came home, Romy wanted to make some chocolates so I set her off making some milk chocolate cat's tongues and then thought I would make some dark chocolates at the same time. Her cat's tongues got eaten before I could get my camera out (Jenny's camera!) but I took a picture of some of my snails resting on a leaf.  I swirl some gold lustre colour into the moulds to start with; then these snails are dark chocolate with a little piece of honeycomb set in the middle.

I also made some really rummy raisin truffles. Rather than making the truffle mix into rounded shapes, I broke the thin slabs of truffle into rough shapes before dipping into the chocolate - they look a bit like jigsaw pieces and taste pretty good.

Today is the first day I have really felt that I no longer go to work. I think I like it. There are so many things to do though! I have been doing a bit of gardening as well - am covered in scratches up my arm from tackling a very woody lavender bush in the front of the house. I can only do about 20 minutes at a time and then I get bored but I am doing more and more 20 minute slots and am beginning to understand how the gardening bug can take a grip. 
However, this garden has a long way to go for it to be anything to write about, though if we are still in this house in the summer, perhaps for the first time, it will looked as though we cared for it just a bit!