Hi all, had such a busy day today so I'm just flaking out on the sofa with my candles lit and the fire going...Bliss!  Made a super delicious steak and ale pie for tea; at this time of year stews, pies and casseroles are the order of the day, hearty comfort food is just the ticket when it's so cold outside.  If you fancy making your own here is my mum's tried and tested recipe: 1 1/2 lbs lean diced steak, three handfuls of mushrooms roughly chopped (any will do but porcini are particularly delicious),plain flour, salt and pepper,1 bottle of 'old speckled hen' ale or similar, 2 or 3 beef stock cubes according to taste,2 strong white onions and 2 cloves of garlic, dash of worcester sauce,1 dessertspoon english mustard. Dessertspoon of cornflour.
For the pastry: 8 oz plain flour, 6 oz butter, 150ml cold water.
Method:  season the flour and toss the steak in it. Brown off the steak in a little oil in a heavy casserole pan. Add the onions, garlic and mushrooms and cook for a few minutes until golden and softened. Add your ale and stock cubes. Bring to a steady simmer...not a boil...and cover. This can simmer for a minimum of 2 hours on the hob. While the filling cooks, make your pastry. This is an easy puff pastry so not too much mixing or kneading required. Cube your butter and add to your flour, mix with a knife till the butter is covered. Gradually add your cold water and mix with the knife to form a soft but not sticky dough. Roll dough out on work surface till you have a rectangle that is twice as long as it is wide. Fold the two shortest sides into the centre, turn and roll again. Repeat the process a minimum of three times. Wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge until needed. When your pie filling has stewed nicely for a couple of hours, mix your cornflour with a little cold water and add to the mix gradually, stirring constantly. Finally add your mustard and transfer to a deep pie dish. Roll out your pastry and drape over your pie dish. Pierce the top several times and place in the oven at 200 °c until the top of your pie is golden brown. I would love to show you a picture of the pie but unfortunately it did not last long enough to get the camera out! You will have to make do with the one remaining slice...

There is just something about the autumn that I absolutely adore, the crispness of the days, the golden quality of the light, the beautiful rusty colours in the trees and the feeling that there is no place like home.  It really does warm the old cockles to set up camp next to the fire with a glass of mulled wine by candlelight and curl up in an enormous comfy chair with a good book and a favourite blanket. My favourite snuggly quilt that I like to snuggle up with of an evening is homemade and holds many memories for me on account of it being made out of my children's old pram blankets and cot quilt. I just couldn't bring myself to give away these precious items that my babies were once wrapped in for nighttime feeding, sofa snuggling and wintery walks, so I decided that a patchwork made from all these things would be a lovely keepsake and a way to feel close to my girls as they grow up and become more independent from mum. I have never done a patchwork before so mine is really the most basic bit of sewing you could possibly come across, but the finished article is still very lovely. I basically cut out the blankets into equal sized squares. I then laid them out on the floor to decide on a pattern I liked. I decided the simplest way to make the quilt would be to have a large rectangle in the centre and use the patches as a sort of border around the edge. I started to piece the quilt together by sewing all the patches in a long row wrong sides together that would fit along the long edges of the rectangle. I then did the same for the short edges. When I had four lengths of patchwork to fit around the rectangle, I pinned them in place around it and sewed them on wrong sides together. I now had an extra large rectangle with patchwork edges. I then did the same again, creating long lengths of patchwork to fit around the edges of the rectangle and sewing them in place. I finished with an applique heart in the corner of the patchwork. I had a small cot quilt which obviously was too small to be of any use in a normal sized bed, so I used this as the centre padding for my quilt. I also had an old cream coloured heavy cotton throw that had a couple of stains in the corner, so I cut out the clean part and used this as the back of my quilt. I sewed the throw to the patchwork piece wrong sides together leaving part of the short edge open. I turned the resulting 'envelope' right side out and stuffed it with the cot quilt. I hand stitched the opening closed. To hold the quilt in place inside the cover I sewed around the whole thing about an inch in from the edge.  I am so thrilled with the result and I definitely intend to try doing a bit more patchwork as it just looks so pretty and is a really great way to upcycle any pretty fabrics of sentimental value. You could even use precious items of clothing. I'm certainly not the only one in the family who loves the quilt! Have a great evening everyone xxx