How would you spend your perfect day?  

I would spend it foraging in the woods, Theo would spend it playing with sticks, Georgia would be drinking hot cocoa and Mac the Labradoodle would be either chasing pheasants or rolling in their...well, you know dogs. 

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a grove of trees, not 100m from the house, full of hazelnuts and apples. The day before, I had been lamenting about the lack of good nut trees near us and then a wander into the woods, chasing certain dog, brought me to these. Silly I hadn't noticed them before as they are along a main path that we walk frequently.

I couldn't believe our luck. Hazelnuts are my favourite and I immediately began concocting various plans of how I would eat ALL THE NUTS (and not just in homemade nutella, I'll have you know...though that was my first plan). 

Though we don't have grey squirrels to fight over the nuts (and any red squirrels would be welcome to as many nuts as they like), the spot is well known to locals, so I decided that yesterday was the day to go out and gather all that I could carry before they were gone.

And so a happy hour was spent doing our favourite things;  me, foraging, Georgia, drinking, Theo, beating things with sticks and Mac, chasing and rolling. To top it off I got 10lbs of nuts out of it.

Perfect. 

I've got a Pinterest board for all things Hazelnut here, if you, like me, are slightly obsessed: