Southerly gales ..... of laughter!

One of the reasons we moved to Scotland was for a better way of life, an escape from the hurly-burly of urban living - and, I suspect rather typically of new country dwellers, we have entered into the whole "Good Life" thing with gusto - to the extent that some of our friends in the south have started referring to us as Tom and Barbara! So I thought this photograph would give them a good laugh! These are puffballs collected this afternoon from under a bed of nettles - I'm sure a professional mushroom hunter would be quite used to finding them this size but we were amazed!

I was lucky enough to have inherited an Aga with the house and one of the very best things about it is that we can put mushrooms and other fungi on the warming plate at night and have delicious dried mushrooms by the morning. Last year we managed to dry enough to last until this autumn and this year I think we will beat that and be able to give some as presents at Christmas. The smaller puffballs are really good if you fry them in oil and butter and add a bit of garlic and whatever other herbs you have around - it's a bit like tofu which means that it laps up other flavours that you put with it. I don't think we'll be attempting to eat the ones in the photo though - at little long in the tooth probably.

From a Twice point of view, doesn't the Mug Candle look great!? They will soon be available at www.thetwiceshop.com in our For The Home section.

Best wishes
Caroline