Stotties, good blogs and hygge

I read somewhere that dogs don't like the smell of citrus and since Buster's current hobby is chewing everything except his chew toys, I thought I'd test the theory using the power of lemons.

Dog v Lemon

Dog 0 - Lemon 1

I think I may have found the way to save our entire house. We will live in a lemon scented non-chewed world. But enough of dogs. Many of my interests follow the seasons, so in spring it's sewing and needle felting, in summer it's camping, in autumn it's baking, baking and baking. As we move into winter and Christmas, it's everything! I love this time of year and without realising there was a word for it, I have been practising Hygge most of my life. Pronounced "hooga", it's a Danish word and concept which translates roughly as cosiness and is what the Danes credit with getting them though the dark winter months. Hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good, simple things in life so the warm glow of candlelight is hygge. Sharing coffee and cake with friends and family is hygge, as is curling up on the sofa under a blanket to read through a good blog. I'd been catching up with Madaboutmacarons.com having just bought Jill's latest book....

...and got distracted by some links and landed at a wonderful foody website with a recipe for stotties, a bread from north east England I'd enjoyed many years ago while working in that area. This fabby bread only needs to prove once and is simply rolled flat before being baked for 15 mins. Then turn the oven off, let the bread sit in the cooling oven for about 30 mins and it's ready to munch. The recipe is courtesy of lavenderandlovage.com and both the bread and blog are well worth trying. I split the dough in two and we ate them warm from the oven with some butter. That's hygge!

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