Happiness Day.

                          Gill and Billy, great cooks, good company and dear friends!

I mentioned my friend Gill yesterday as I had spent the day with her and her husband Billy at their beautiful home 'Lapstone Farmhouse'. Both Gill and Billy are excellent cooks and being in their cottage kitchen surrounded by the aromas of baking bread, cakes and buns is always reminiscent of a by gone era-of unhurried times. I feel as if I have partaken in an Enid Blyton picnic: "ginger cake, ripe plums, crisp lettuces, crusty bread, great slabs of butter and a jug of creamy milk."

As well as cooking for themselves family and friends, Gill and Billy bake for their local country market:www.bwcountrymarket.co.uk/ they also buy lots of delicious ingredients from the market including seasonal fruit and veg, homemade jams, chutneys and marmalade and local free range eggs. I get to sample all these lovely wares when I visit and invariably go home with a freshly baked loaf or as I did yesterday a slab of fruit cake.

Gill is a seasoned cook who always makes the most of her ingredients, stretching them further, and using bits up. Like myself Gill wastes nothing, she used stale bread to make breadcrumbs to coat some turkey breasts, and some over ripe Tomatoes were transformed into a delicious relish. Dessert was fruit jooshed up with Cointreau and a cheeky chunk of Toblerone, as always another great mealtime memory!

                Flavoursome crunchy coating with moist turkey, a delicious combination!

Turkey escalopes

Recipe
4 turkey breasts
150g bread made into breadcrumbs (this can be odds and ends of different stale bread, Gill even used a pretzel)
4 teaspoons dried oregano
25g parmesan
1 egg
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Combine flour, oregano, parmesan, salt and pepper
Dip the turkey breasts first in four, then in egg and finally coat in breadcrumbs

Heat oil in a pan, when hot add escalopes

Cook escalopes over a medium heat for 20 minutes, turning halfway through cooking
Remove from pan and place on kitchen towel

Gill served the escalopes with a delicious but simple potato salad and fresh green beans, I shall be posting the potato salad recipe tomorrow

I'll also post Gill's jooshed up fruit dessert..........don't miss it!

                                                   One very happy girl!

'No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today......enjoy it and thank god for it.'
-Henry Ward Beecher.

See you tomorrow
Love Donna xxxxxxx