Five Scents of Spring

Instead of taking the car this afternoon I walked to where I had to go. (Trying to do more of this walking lark as I realise that, despite now living in the country, where I thought I would walk much more than in London, the reverse is true and I am much too sedentary.)

The English Spring sun was very bright and strong and made the whole landscape give up a beautiful bouquet of Spring scents. Here are five of them:

1 The green, sappy smell of young nettles - strong, deep, aromatic and astringently assertive;

2 The honeyed smell of white blackthorn blossom - intensely, warmly sweet, envelopingly heady and bee-glad;

3 The elusive smell of white violets in a bank - fragile and fleeting, fragrantly reminiscent of a bygone age;

4 The imperceptible scent of deep pink cherry blossom - faint, almost indiscernible as if, with such beautiful, frothy, ballet-skirt flowers, scent is not needed to attract pollinating insects;

5 The pale, sunshine smell of celandines - another green scent but lighter more polleny than the strong, verdant note of the nettles;

Go out and choose five yourself in your part of the world? 

Post them and let me know your favourites!

Teenage Birthdays

H is fourteen today and like all parents on their children's birthdays, I find it hard to believe that so much time has gone by. Good time, really good time, but so much of it... where has it all gone?!

But some things don't change over the years despite all the things that do change. Today I am still making the same birthday cake I made for H when he was three!

And, let me tell you, this is not because no alternative choice has been offered down the years! It's not in the shape of a number or Thomas the Tank Engine any more, with wheels and coupling rods cut out from gold card, or even one year, heaven help me, a Eurostar - goodness knows what all that deep blue icing did to one's insides! But it's still the same Chocolate and Orange Cake from Lady MacDonald's Chocolate book. And I have to say H's judgement on this is faultless. The cake is easy to make especially if you have a food processor, into which basically you bung everything and whizz. And its fudgy texture is ...  well, rather good. It does of course need the fudgy icing on top which is not difficult either, although the bit about sieving the icing sugar and cocoa is not an optional extra because if you omit it, like someone here did in a hurry last time she made the cake, fortunately not for H's birthday, the icing went horribly lumpy. Ahem!

Of course, these days, being no longer A-Small-Person, but a Heading-for-Adulthood-Teenager, H is very clear what he wants for his birthday and Apple and Sony products often figure prominently on the wish-list but this year he also wanted something that I had seriously to break out of my comfort zone to make because it involved ...

... knitting.

I do not knit.

The history of knit-sticks and me is a sorry one. At school, along with the rest of the class I managed to knit a strip of squares that were sewn together into blankets to be given away to a nursing home without too many problems and a lurid green teddy bear in garter stitch, with a squeaker from a cracker fitted to its intestines, followed, again without too much trauma, but the following year we were supposed to knit something to wear and choose a Proper Pattern. It was in the seventies when those tank tops, which have now made a bit of a come-back, were coming in the first time around and I started off fairly enthusiastically on one of these, in a rather pretty cherry red wool.

Something unidentifiable went seriously wrong with the ribbing very early on, resulting in my long-suffering mother, to whose lot fell the unhappy task of knitting the other side of this awful garment, after I had given up, having to try and replicate my mistake so that the two sides matched. She needn't have worried, the tension was so woefully out that I don't think I ever wore the thing more than once or twice. It turned out as wide as a bus and you could have fitted half my class at school into it without stretching it! Disappointing to say the least and the memory of the headache of trying to undo rows and pick up stitches again has not been erased with the years. Nor the disbelief that it could really have turned out so gigantic!

But H has started rowing this term and you are Not Allowed On The Water Without A Hat. Could I knit one? "Couldn't I crochet it?" "No. Hats are knitted not crocheted." (None so conservative as your average ground-breaking teenager on certain fronts!) There were some detailed, prescriptive instructions that followed up the initial request (because you never know what, without guidance, Mrs T might come up with!): nothing colourful, no patterns other than restrained and austere stripes, preferably black and I was certainly not to include the school accent colour which is a slightly surprising, but beautiful, magenta. It had to be made from a really soft yarn and bigger than the existing hat left over from a skiing trip a few years ago which he has been wearing hitherto. And above all else it was "Not To Be Embarrassing". Eeek! No pressure then, Mrs T!

But if your teenage son actually asks you to make something for him to wear, you do not lightly dismiss the request. It may not come around again very quickly, if ever!

So I got Janet, who can knit for Britain with her eyes closed, at my Needles and Natter group to start me off - which was just as well as it turned out I didn't even know how to cast on properly. The pattern is an Erika Knight Men's Knit one and is nice and simple, which is all that Mrs T felt she could tackle. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran which seemed to meet the requirement to be "really soft".

And the result actually looks like a hat and not a tent for ten people to share! I had a slight problem with the shaping when I misread one line of the pattern and the air was virulently blue for a nasty, few moments when I thought I couldn't pick up the stitches that had had to be undone  - Eeeeeek! (This is not what Mrs T said, but it's the only printable version!!)  - but I think I've managed it. Don't, whatever you do, zoom in on the pic, or I am sure you talented and serious knitters out there will spot all sorts of things that are Not Quite Right but the miracle is a) it fits, b) H loves it c) I made it all by myself with only a little bit of help when I thought I couldn't knit anything. Now it's off the needles they feel a bit bare actually....!!

The crocheted turtle is another product of my Needles and Natter group as somebody there had made a lovely, soft, brown one and kindly gave me the pattern. I made it, just for fun and H fell in love with it - happily nobody, male or female, even when they are that oldest of ages that is teenage, is ever too old for a cute, crocheted turtle on their birthday! Happy Days!

Happy Birthday H! 

Spring Apron Winners and Easy Peasy Lemon Ice Cream

Thank you so very much to all of you who responded so kindly and enthusiastically to my little Spring Apron give-away post. I loved reading all your comments and am so happy to be sending these aprons to happy homes and hope they will be Useful as well as cheery and Spring-like in your kitchens.

It was such fun to read what people thought the aprons might accompany. Mine has already been pressed into service, (as you can see), to accompany making my simnel cake. Needs to be made ahead of Easter, as I like to doctor it with a shot or two of Cointreau over the next few weeks, before it gets its  hat of home-made marzipan. I have a thing about home-made marzipan. Although it's a bit of a hassle to make, I always feel that commercially produced blocks of marzipan taste more of play-doh than almonds if you know what I mean! Not that I make a habit of tasting play-doh!

You will see from the photos why I make my aprons this shape and size - I get dangerously up close and personal with my cake mixture. I have my pride though and felt I really couldn't have pics of flowery aprons enhanced by cake mixture streaks. The photographer was told to "be quick or else"!!

Anyway I have managed to do battle with the random number generator website and asked it nicely to come up with a list of winners. The winners are (in the order they came up) :

Ellie of feltabulous
Milly
Helen of belmont yarns
Lucy of Attic24
Angela of collected yarns

Using the email address under the Contact Me tab at the top of this page, please can you email me your full postal addresses and I will send your aprons out pronto? They are all wrapped up and ready to go as you can see in the pic at the top. Hopefully to get to you in time for some Easter baking / crafting! And just because it's Easter, there is a little surprise pressie in the pocket of each one.

Thank you again for all your lovely comments and for wanting to participate in this little Spring foray.

And whether or not you won one of my Spring aprons, here is my recipe for Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy Ice Cream. It sings of Spring, is easy as pie, (a lot easier than any pie actually) and I hope may be a nice addition to your Spring recipe repertoire.

The good news is that this ice cream doesn't need to go in an ice cream churner or even need to be stirred by hand, at intervals, during the freezing process. You don't need any special equipment other than a whisk - either an electric or a hand operated one. If you've never made ice cream before, then, although I say it myself, this is a great place to start.

You Will Need An Apron however - it's inclined to be a bit spattery when you get whisking!

What you need (as well as an apron and a whisk!):






























2 large beautiful lemons like the ones in the pic
6 oz  / 175 g icing sugar
500 ml full fat natural yoghurt - I use home made because that's what I have to hand usually but any plain full fat yoghurt will be fine
250 g tub of mascarpone
3 generous dsps of runny honey - the flavour of the honey comes through in the finished ice so while not going overboard, choose a good quality honey distinguished by its flower source, not an anonymous blended one. Pending my bees producing some honey from the garden, (fingers crossed, they look all set to do so, for the first time, this year), I use Waitrose's Orange Blossom honey.

What you do:

Squeeze the juice from the lemons and put in a large bowl. Add the icing sugar, yoghurt, mascarpone and honey.

Whisk everything thoroughly together.

Pour the mixture onto a scrupulously clean plastic box - everything needs to be scrupulously clean with ice cream making - cover, label and freeze.

That's it! Unbelievably easy isn't it? You may just need to wipe a few splatters off the surroundings though!!

It will need a good few hours in the freezer to freeze firm enough to scoop and serve and once it's really frozen solid you will need to take it out a good half an hour before serving to "ripen" ie become soft enough to scoop. There's nothing worse than trying to scoop out ice cream that's frozen like granite and might respond to a hammer and chisel or a pick axe but laughs scornfully in the face of your average ice cream scoop, feebly scraping away at the unyielding surface!

The texture of this ice cream is not as 100% perfect as a custard-based, churned one, if one is going to be perfectionist about it, but it's pretty good nonetheless (I think, anyway) and better than it has any business to be considering how easy it is!!!

It's delicious on its own or with a few raspberries, strawberries, blueberries or blackberries.

Laying Astray and Other Birdy Doings

The egg production from the bantams has not been quite as high as I would have expected over the last little while. But Patsy, (so called because it's more or less an anagram of one of her favourite foods, cold, cooked pasta), who is the usual culprit for laying astray, has been seemingly behaving impeccably and apparently laying in the nestbox.

I say "seemingly" and "apparently" because yesterday she went broody and was not in the nest box at bedtime. When she was found - under the climbing hydrangea again, - we found her with 22 eggs and a partner in crime, No-Tail, (so called because she was without one for a while) whom Patsy has led into Bad Ways.

Miscreant No 1 - Patsy removed from her nest 

Miscreant No 2 - No-Tail still on the nest

Egg stash - busted! (Not literally!)

No wonder the egg yield in the nest box seemed a bit low!

The eggs are all very fresh though; I tested them in a bowl of cold water. So they must be eggs from both miscreants laid in tandem over the last week or so. I am glad I made the pockets on my aprons so big - getting 22 eggs in was quite an "ask" even so!

Scrambled egg, sponge cake and ice cream anyone?!

While we are on a birdy theme, I managed to lean out of the landing window and take this video at 5.30 am this morning. I am afraid the visuals are very poor and wobbly - very difficult to hold the camera steady while leaning out of the window in your pyjamas - but the point is not what you see but what you hear - the dawn chorus in the English countryside at this time of year has something very lovely about it I think. The birds are full of energy and sing at their most creatively now. Come the summer, tired from feeding their hungry nestlings, they are quieter and sing with less energy, without the peculiarly beautiful intensity they have in the Spring.

You can hear the pheasant who has adopted our garden as his own and clearly sees himself as an honorary bantam, even though he's twice their size, croaking a contribution and also the cockerel down the lane adding his mite. I am not expert enough to identify all the singers but all the usual English suspects are there, I guess - blackbirds, robins, thrushes, wood pigeons etc. As I say, I do apologise for the poor pic quality but close your eyes and have a listen!

 

Egg Blowing

I've always wanted to have a go at blowing eggs but I've never got round to it. Partly it's because I was sceptical as to whether the whole blowing-out-of-the-contents thing, through teensy holes in the top and bottom of the egg, would really work but also because the artistic canvas of an ordinary egg has always seemed a bit on the small side and then there's the issue of how to display the finished egg. Nice to hang up as a display from a twig or hook but how to thread it up, without the knot pulling through the fragile hole area and sending one's artistic efforts tumbling off the wall to smithereens, like Humpty Dumpty?

Bantam eggs, being almost half the size of hens' eggs, offer even less of a canvas, although last year I did manage to outmaneouvre "all the king's horses and all the king's men" and "put Humpty together again" for a dozen, well and truly broken, bantam eggshells. But you have no idea how fiddly it is trying to reconstruct a dozen eggs from pieces already discarded pell mell into the compost bucket because this brilliant wheeze only struck after they had been ditched and not before! A three dimensional jigsaw nightmare, let me tell you! And before you ask, yes, I did wash the shell pieces thoroughly, after their sojourn among the apple and potato peelings!

Anyway I digress. Move aside bantam eggs and indeed larger hens' eggs, enter goose eggs! Now we are talking! Goose eggs* being about 4 inches tall and a couple of inches wide offer a much roomier space to play with in terms of a canvas for design and what is more, the shells are considerably tougher than bantams' or hens' eggs, which diminishes the risk of your beautifully painted egg suddenly caving in under the pressure of being held while you paint. And being larger, the egg won't need to be hung up to be displayed nicely - it can sit in a basket with a few other Easter goodies and look pretty without any precarious balancing from a thread like some kind of Easter "Sword of Damocles".
*(Unless you happen to keep geese, these have to be obtained from a farm shop; they are not currently available at Waitrose, Sainsbury's or Tesco's, I am afraid, more's the pity.)

Bantam egg on the left, goose egg on the right - no contest!

Now to make the holes in the top and bottom of the egg. Not as easy as you might think. The goose egg shell is nice and robust for holding and painting and also nice and robust to resist having a hole made in it. In the end I pinched D's mini drill set and starting with a very fine bit, carefully drilled a tiny hole that I then enlarged with a larger bit. The holes need to be big enough to blow out the egg reasonably easily, but not so big as to be too noticeable and you need to be careful that as you make the hole, you don't cause too much collateral crazing. Ahem! My holes are about 4mm across, a bit more at the bottom where I did get a fracture, which resulted in a fragment becoming detached, but as the bottom hole is the critical exit hole for the egg contents to emerge, that was OK.

Hole at the top - quite neat.

Hole at the bottom - not quite so neat.

Now for the blowing! I am thrilled to report that this really does work! First it's helpful to insert a thin skewer carefully through the holes and puncture the yolk and inner membranes so that the egg contents can flow out easily. Then you start to blow and despite my scepticism, lo and behold, as I blew at the top end, out at the bottom end, came both yolk and white! You can help it through a bit, once it's got started, with your fingers (clean ones of course!).

The resulting egg contents were made into the most glorious golden scrambled eggs you have ever seen. No pic because they were eaten too quickly by my goose-egg-loving son!

I submerged the empty shell in some warm soapy water and swished it about a bit to wash out any remaining egg residue but the egg seemed to have come out very cleanly. I then left it to dry on its supporting glass before pencilling on my design.

I am not good at fiddly designs and wanted something fairly simple so opted for a handful of violets and their heart-shaped leaves. The goose eggshell is very good tempered and strong enough for you to rub out any errors in your pencil drawing without difficulty if, like me, it takes several attempts to get your drawing to look how you want it.

Now for the painting! I used water-based acrylic paints which give a good coverage. The background only needed one coat although I felt the flowers needed two, as did the leaves, which came out a bit virulent initially and needed another coat of a slightly subtler green.

Once fully painted  - the trick with these things is always knowing when to Leave Well Alone - the question of to varnish or not to varnish arose. I could have gone the easy route and painted the egg with a coat of PVA glue which dries nice and glossy, but I wanted something a bit more permanent so that, if my egg was going to cosy up to cakes and sticky buns etc. it would be wipeable with a damp cloth. PVA doesn't really give that so I had to raid the Aladdin's cave of the model railway construction department for a can of spray acrylic varnish (permanent and waterproof according to the can) and a thin piece of flexible wire with which to suspend the egg during spraying.

I am a bit lethal with spray paints etc - the patio is still wearing a light dusting of white after my twig spraying some weeks ago! Varnish is at least mercifully colourless! Having, I think ingeniously, suspended the egg from the pear tree I sprayed on several coats of the quick-drying glossy stuff. The surroundings seem OK and not too much shinier than usual! And the egg is beautifully and evenly glossy.

I now have an Easter accessory to plant in a basket of hot cross buns or among a plateful of Easter cup cakes! Choices, choices! I know, I know - tiny things please tiny minds but this little project has been hugely satisfying and quick to complete in little odd spaces of time. I recommend it! Obviously you can use an ordinary hen's egg but if you can get hold of a lovely large goose egg, go for it! Of course better still would have been a nice ostrich egg, like this one S brought back from South Africa for H:

Already blown too! Temptation.....! But not mine to play with and it's so beautiful as it is, it would be a shame to gild the lily ... I suppose ...

... Yes, it would, Mrs T! Put your Paws In The Air and Step Away From The Egg!!! 

Moving on quickly, before temptation gets the better of me ... here is my finished creation, perched slightly precariously in an egg cup! What do you think? Despite its imperfections and my somewhat simplistic painting skills, I like my kitchen table art! You can expect it to reappear in sundry photos over the next few weeks!

Have a go yourself over the weekend? 

Why not?!

Olives

One of the bizarre tastes my son developed as a two year-old was for olives. Initially I thought it was just curiosity rather than that he genuinely liked them, but I was wrong. It rather shook my preconceptions since I didn't enjoy olives until I was in my twenties and they certainly don't figure in your average list of finger foods for toddlers. Nearly twelve years on, they are still one of his favourite foods and we get through a lot of them. For preference, those big Mediterranean green "queen olives" are top of the list but big black ones go down a treat too. Pitted, or with the stones still in situ - makes no difference. H likes them stuffed with pimento, but I am afraid I don't. I am not so keen on those very concentrated-tasting, small ones either which are just a bit too acridly intense, for my taste anyway.

They get eaten just as they are, drained of their brine or oil, or I regularly add ladlefuls of them to chicken or lamb casseroles. But last year a friend gave me the following recipe for marinaded olives and for special occasions this is the way we like to have them. I must own up to Deep Suspicion about this recipe initially - it contains three things I think I Really Don't Like or which I Don't Eat.

Raw garlic for one.
                               Raw chillies for two.
                                                                Coriander leaves for three.

But despite the simplicity of the recipe, some kind of alchemy goes on and the individually suspect ingredients seem to lose their assertive identity. If you like olives, I guarantee you will like these and the shouty raw garlic, chillies and coriander do no more than whisper gently in a harmonious symphony. Think Strauss or Mozart not Janacek or Bartok! Apologies to you musicians out there but you know what I mean!

H and I made these together on Sunday afternoon - double quantities - although there was some "discussion" as to whether we needed to double up all the flavouring ingredients for a double quantity of olives! I am afraid I baulked at 8 cloves of raw garlic and 4 raw chillies! Call me chicken if you like, but there are limits!

The marinaded olives accompany a glass of wine, especially a chilled white wine, like a marriage made in heaven and you can mop up some of the flavoured oil, after (according to me), or before and after, (according to H), the olives have been eaten, with some good white bread. On Sunday there was still a bit of the Essex Huffer I made according to Anne's beautiful recipe here which was perfect for absorbing the greeny-gold oil and its dark central pool of balsamic vinegar. You may not need supper after these as pre-dinner nibbles though!

I say H and I made them together but this is not strictly true. H made them and I took pics! H's style of cooking is totally different from mine. He is flamboyant and doesn't like to weigh things out. He tastes as he goes and regards measurements as annoying limitations generally to be exceeded or at least departed from rather than respected. He refuses point blank to wear an apron even for the messiest jobs (I think it's a man thing) and generally approaches things in a more gung ho way than me. It makes for an entertaining and sparky time in the kitchen! Also a creative one because we balance one another out. Well, that's the theory!

What you need:

olives in brine either black or green ones, the bigger, the better, one 400g jar or two, well-drained
2 limes
4 cloves of garlic (not 8 cloves-and-counting as H tried to persuade me!)
2 red chillies
a bunch of fresh coriander leaves (cilantro I think in US terms)
some good quality green extra-virgin olive oil
some good quality thick balsamic vinegar
freshly ground black pepper

What you do:

Peel the garlic and chop finely.

Using disposable rubber gloves to protect your hands from the neat fiery juice and seeds, slit open the chillies, remove the seeds and chop the flesh finely. I did win the disposable rubber glove battle because last time my advice was airily dismissed as "unnecessary and only for wimps" only to find that in fact it had been timely and the burning of chilli seeds can be painful, especially if you put your fingers anywhere near your eyes. Did I say, "I told you so!"?! Only sotto voce!

Put the chopped garlic and chilli into a big bowl. Snip up the coriander leaves and add.

Squeeze both the limes and add the juice to the bowl along with about 4 tbsps of olive oil and two of balsamic vinegar. You may need to add more depending on the amount of olives you are using.

Stir all the ingredients together to amalgamate and add some black pepper. Not Too Much because there is already heat from the chillies.....  This fell on deaf ears on Sunday!

Add the olives and stir to coat them in the flavourings. If you have time, leave the flavours to develop for an hour or so but they are mighty fine to eat straightaway.

Transfer some of the olives for immediate consumption to a small bowl and the rest to a bowl with a tight-fitting lid to keep in the fridge. If the lid doesn't fit tightly enough you will find quite a lot of other things in your fridge taste of garlic, chilli and coriander. Those aromatic oils are volatile and frisky and go visiting! 

The olive bowl in the pic was also made by H in his ceramics class and allows for extra oil and balsamic vinegar to be added through the hole in the handle to flow down and mingle with the olives once the initial quota of oil has been absorbed by your bread. Thinks of everything, that boy! I have to say that they were absolutely delicious. Chill your white wine and try them! 

Mothering Sunday - A Few Thoughts and Some Happy Cooking

Mothering Sunday is one of those funny days which carries the potential both for such happy celebration and such wistful poignancy. I can't help but be happy today because I cherish my only child so very much - though I still can't quite believe he is now teenage - and I have good memories of my own childhood relationship with my mother as well as current ones.

But there are many for whom today is shadowed for one reason or another, because of bereavement, broken relationship, loss or unfulfilled expectations. There is no easy solution that makes the dichotomy between sunshine and shadows meet happily. It would be wrong not to be happy for what is good but I feel it would also be wrong not to share the shadows in a moment or two's reflection, in which there are no words to be said, only a silent solidarity of attempted understanding.

If you are reading this, I don't know where you stand and sometimes of course, we stand in both the sunshine and the shadows because life is like that.

If you are happy today, I wholeheartedly echo that - I have been happy too, chatting at length to my mother on the phone even though I haven't been able to be with her today and making rose-flavoured ice cream, pink swirly meringues and marinated olives this afternoon with my thirteen year old son and watching a film. (We love cooking together - keep out of the kitchen, everybody else! - and we love eating the results curled up on the sofa watching a good film together.)

If you are wistful or sad, I send you a hug. Not because I can pretend to know exactly how you feel but because, however imperfectly, I have an inkling and I want you to know that I am thinking of you this evening.

Cup cakes made according to Gillian's recommended Hummingbird Bakery recipe here
which is a dream - all my cup cakes from now on will be this recipe - thank you so much Gillian!

I had to make two dozen of these cup cakes at crack of dawn today for a bunch of small children to ice and decorate as gifts for their mothers for Mothering Sunday and I made a few extra for a birthday present for a friend which are what are in the pic. My icing efforts are rather less lurid and less top heavy with decoration than the children's but if there was more icing than cake, and more sugar sprinkles than either icing or cake, on some of their creations, so what?! - they had Serious Fun!

Pink swirly meringue mixture! 

... just out of the oven

Remember those pink swirly meringues I saw in Villandry? Here's a plateful of the final result
of the homemade version that H and I came up with today!

Rosewater-flavoured ice cream
 - needed to use up the egg yolks after the whites went into the meringues
and as you can tell, I am in a pink mood today - for a change!

Pudding on the sofa - yummilicious!