An intruder calls

The days are getting shorter as we edge towards winter. I find it almost impossible to go out in the garden when I get home from work. Soon my opportunities will be restricted to the weekends when we put the clocks back (or is it forward? And do we get another hour in bed or an hour less? You know, that twice-yearly argument).

Carrying out an inspection this morning, before the rain came on, I discovered three or four holes in the vegetable patch. One was quite deep. Susan says it will have been squirrels as they like burying things. This squirrel neither buried anything or covered it up. What was the point?

The red cabbage I pickled has proved to be delicious and I shall make some more soon. Continuing my new regime, I shall be knocking up a Christmas cake this afternoon with ingredients all sourced from the shop. It's a recipe by Stephen Jackson, owner of the Weavers Shed restaurant in Golcar, Huddersfield, and it just struck me, 'This is something I could do'. A good thing about it is that it involves beer and there should be a decent amount left over.

A strange odour fills the kitchen

I've taken the pickling idea a stage further - and actually done it. Two big jars of pickled onions and two small ones of pickled red cabbage are on their way. The kitchen has a certain pungency to it and our dog and cat seem to want to go out all the time.

It was a lot harder than we both thought to get pickling onions, the first three shops not having any. Not only that, but they didn't seem to have had any (at least not on that day). Maybe it's a tad too early for them, I don't know. We finally got lucky in the fourth shop we visited. It was evident there had been a run on them so perhaps shops that don't stock pickling onions are missing a trick or two.

The recipe I used for the onions came originally from Susan's great-grandmother, so it's authentic Derbyshire stuff. The recipe for the red cabbage is from a book put together by the Halifax Courier and was one sent in by a reader, c1960. The old ways are best.

There's been a lot of talk on the news today about share prices plunging, banks in trouble and the whole country of Iceland going belly up in the economic crisis. I'm pulling up my imaginary drawbridge, comfortable in the knowledge that I have pickled onions and cabbage to keep us going.