Meh Monday

I am feeling completely meh so here are some random ramblings.

After dropping bear off at school I noticed that there were a lot of large apples on the grass under the trees alongside the main road.  I was surprised because I didn't remember seeing apple trees there.  I looked up and the trees all had a fine crop of crab apples so the large, juicy, only slightly bruised apples had not come from there.  I looked around through the driving rain and there weren't any other apple trees near, but there were dozens of these large apples.  I found this picture on Wiki Commons that is the nearest - they were a substantial size but didn't look like they had been in a supermarket.

Image from Wiki Commons, taken by Glysiak and used under the Creative Commons Agreement

I left them where they were.

On a slightly related note, I have an oversupply of potatoes and I was looking for desserts I could make with them.  I dipped into a book called Good Things in England by a very brave lady called Florence White.  She was incredibly brave as she included recipes not just from England, but also from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man.  I wonder just how many times afterwards she was visited by someone with an atlas, a list of definitions and a very angry expression.

I may dip into it, and I will share if I do, but one of the recipes I saw looked interesting except the individual cakes had to be baked on sycamore leaves.  I have two reservations about this.  My first concern is that is it safe?  This is the only reference to sycamore used in cookery that I have found and I would have thought if it was safe then there would be more made of it.  I had a quick google and found that Dr Google was non committal about sycamore leaves but the seeds are toxic to horses.  I'll give them a miss.  My second reservation is that all the sycamore leaves local to me are blotchy and probably diseased.  I'll use baking paper.