Garden: the best laid plans and rehab gardening

Earlier this year I became a tad garden crazed.  It helped having a single tomato plant produce 666 individual cherry tomatoes.  I kept a tally of everything I harvested and the long warm autumn encouraged the mass planting of seeds.  I was determined to produce a lot of winter vegetables.

I got sick so at the end of May I planted the biggest seedlings in the garden and left the rest to die.  I planted the garlic very early and figured a few extra weeks couldn't hurt. Three months passed.  The first thing I checked when I got home from the hospital was the state of the garden.  The big storm in June was not kind to many of my plants in the front garden.  There was growth, but it was very small.  As I write most of the stuff that went in my garden in May is only getting close to producing anything now.  The exceptions were bok choi and Chinese cabbage - two vegetables I was specifically told not to eat on discharge!  Ironic.

I've been a bit bored recuperating.  I want to do stuff, but don't have the energy.  I do though have the energy for elaborate garden planning.  I'm on my third draft.  I've also been planting a few seeds.  By a few I mean:

• Sweetcorn
• Black popcorn
• Heritage large tomatoes
• Heritage cherry tomatoes
• Big Red tomatoes
• Sun cherry tomatoes
• Pumpkin
• Jersey Bennie Potatoes
• Courgette
• Apple Cucumber
• Watermelon - Ice Cream and Sun, Moon and Stars.
• Rainbow carrots
• Broccoli Romanesco
• Rockmelon
• Lettuce
• Dwarf Beans
• Red Cabbage
• Lettuce
• Capsicums
• Magenta Spreen
• Zinnias, Larkspurs, pansies, calendula, marigolds
• Coriander and Basil

And since it is too cold outside for most of these seeds I am gardening inside.  My bathroom (very warm room) and the spare room have become a nursery. 

The top of the cupboard is perfect for growing corn.

The bathroom sink is, fortunately, wide.  The left side.

We go through a lot of eggs in this house and I'm finding the containers useful

I'm sure that there will be space for everything (finger's crossed).

I am determined not to plant things out too late this year - a fatal error in previous years.  When I feel sure that we have passed the stage where frosts will come then I will be cheerfully filling in the garden.  My aim is to have one whole week this summer where I do not have to buy any veges or fruit.  The plum tree that I bought for $5 earlier this year is covered in blossom and my blackberry and raspberry canes are looking promising.  We have a huge amount of strawberry plants and this should be the year when we finally get some feijoas. I think a week without buying fruit or vegetables is a real possibility.

Pear Upside Down Cake

I posted this recipe accidentally prior to editing so it was very rough looking!

I've been doing a crazy amount of preserving lately and, after finding a few local pear trees, ended up with a lot of pears.  I'm kind of a nervous preserver - I think all the warnings about sterility and botulism are kind of off-putting.  So I've decided to use the jars of pears as quickly as possible.  You could use fresh pears in this recipe, but I think preserved pears are really delicious.  

I made this recipe the first time when I was sick and needed to fill in the time with my two year old. I figured it had enough ingredients to keep her busy for awhile.  I didn't though feel much like eating, so took out a sliver.  It was a delicious, moist cake with just the perfect amount of ginger.  It feels like an 'adult' cake for me - made for a special morning tea perhaps.

This recipe is also made mainly in a food processor.  If you don't have one you could just use a stick blender.

Pear Upside Down Cake

Topping

40g melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 TBSP Golden Syrup
3 firm ripe pears, peeled, cored and sliced into eighths (I used pears that I had preserved)

Cake mix

2 cups self raising flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup natural yoghurt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup plain oil
2 tsp ground ginger

Pre-heat oven to 170C.  Line a 23cm cake tin with baking paper.  For the topping combine the butter, sugar and syrup.  Spread over the base of the cake tin.  Arrange pear slices over top of the mixture.

In a food processor combine all cake mix ingredients.  When smooth (it may take a couple of minutes) pour over the pears and bake for 45-50 mins or until puffed and golden.  It is important to test the mixture with a skewer as I found appearances were quite deceptive with this recipe.  Rest for ten minutes in the cake tin before inverting onto a serving plate.

Garden harvest 2013 (January)

Somewhere along the way I've become a gardening nerd.  In the seven years that I have lived in this house I have indifferently gardened.  While we were still renters we did very little and then four years ago I started adding a bag of compost and mulch to the garden each year.  I've focused on growing vegetables but my desire to get a lot of variety means that I would grow too little of one thing.

This year I was organised.  I ordered the King's seed catalogue and planned in advance.  I even drew a little plan on the back of an envelope.  When the trees were harvested at the rear of our property it revealed new sunlight opportunities - we can now grow vegetables and fruit that require extra sunlight hours.  I dug two new gardens at the front of our house.  I read a lot, mostly anything by Linda Hallinan.

On holiday earlier this month I managed to get through about eighteen months worth of NZ Gardener magazines.  I'm ready!

I've planted the basics: lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries and carrots but also heritage varieties of peas, Picton Sno and Capucijners.  I learned how to get the best out of the indifferent berry bushes we have - and produced two raspberries and have about thirty blackberries ripening.  On the recommendation of a neighbour I planted courgettes and enjoy getting a new courgette to eat every three or four days.  I'm starting to get results from my rhubarb.  I've planted complimentary flowers to attract bees and have even started seed saving. I tend to take twice daily looks at the garden (this is how I know that I am obsessive).  I love ripping laterals from tomato plants.  I love that I know what laterals are.  And I love that tomato laterals will just sprout roots if you stick them in the ground.

Tomatoes ready for dehydrating and eventual freezing.

My children are starting to enjoy the garden.  Digging for jersey bennie potatoes with the children was a lot of fun - they enjoyed the treasure hunt and the youngest loved washing them in a bucket of water.  I produced a lot of strawberries - but the youngest loves them, as well as my three year old neighbour so they became experts at looking for and eating warm, ripe berries.  I barely rescued enough for a pot of jam. This evening they helped me to pull up carrots.  We brought them inside and rinsed them, then sliced them thinly for eating.  My oldest had hers on a cruskit cracker of all things. 

I'm loving making meals of the food from the garden.  Tonight we had the last of the jersey bennies and a salad including lettuce and carrots from the garden with our meal.  In the next couple of months I should be harvesting cucumbers for pickling, miniature red cabbages, bok choi and a lot of tomatoes.  A serious amount.

In a previous post I mentioned a concern about garden costs.  I'm keeping a running total of expenditure and I'll try and see how that balances out at the end of the year.

January:

• Courgettes = 7
• Strawberries = 6
• Tomaccio tomatoes = 17
• Lettuce = harvested leaves three times
• Blackberries = scrumped 30 cups worth
• Carrots = 20
• Rhubarb = 3 cups worth, stewed
• Garlic Bulb = 1 (not an awesome amount but 100% better than previous year)
• Herbs = I've harvested parsley and thyme three times.

Tomaccio - it is hard to see but there are about 185 tomatoes on here!

Delicious blackberry curd and blackberry barbeque sauce

The first batch of blackberry recipes has been quite popular and by the time I wrote it all up I needed to add a couple more recipes. There is no end to blackberrying - and my husband is suggesting doing some more blackberry picking once the girls are in bed tonight!

For the first time today we encountered competition!   My husband spotted a new blackberry patch while out jogging (when your partner takes up exercising there are benefits for the whole family) and we visited there after visiting the beach this afternoon. We took our gumboots, sheet of cardboard and the hockey stick.  The girls helped pick the low berries and my husband and I worked together to get the trickier ones (me lying on the cardboard across a large thorny branch while my husband used the hockey stick to pull a prolific branch closer.  After we had half a smallish bucket we noticed a Mum and her son further along.  A small creek bubbled along and while we were on the bank the mother and son were in the creek.  We were very envious (and look forward to the day we can send our children into creeks to assist with berrying). I asked about their berry recipes (blackberry muffins with fresh blackberries mixed with cream cheese for icing) and we respected our various spots.

Another car drove slowly by.  They pulled in behind our car and I instantly knew what they were considering.  They continued on, I guess noticing that the area was well covered and likely picked bare.  They drove off and I didn't think about them until a couple of minutes later, when I realised that they had gone on to the private driveway above the creek and were picking from there.  As we left, two members of their group circled back to check out the patch we had just covered!  They were not going to find any!

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 A friend asked what I do with all the caterpillars on the blackberries I picked and it occurred to me to write a few blackberrying facts:

Blackberries and caterpillars:

• Just about every blackberry will have a tiny caterpillar on the inside.  I found spreading them on a tray while fresh and picking them off every time I walk by the most effective method of removal.
• If you soak the berries it can drown the caterpillars.  I suspect though that many caterpillars drown still inside the berry.
• If you freeze them the caterpillar remains inside the berry.
• Inadvertently eating tiny caterpillars is an inevitable fact of cooking with blackberries.

Picking blackberries:

• Keep your eye out for blackberry patches every time you are out driving.  They love creek beds and overgrown bush.  
• Blackberry bushes are thorny - wear running shoes or gumboots and old clothes.  Expect scratches and thorns stuck in your fingers.  Wearing gloves makes it hard to pull off the berries.
• Take along a hockey stick - it can help you reach high up branches
• A bucket looped over your arm makes picking easier.
• Consider how likely it is that the berries have been sprayed.  You will need to wash them well if they have been sprayed (add a small drop of detergent to the washing water, then rinse with clean water)
• Children get very bored with picking berries quite quickly and are likely to stop after the first prickle.  We took a lot of snacks to keep them amused.
• Manage your expectations for the amount of berries you are likely to get.  Altogether we have picked about 40 cups of berries....but probably spent about ten hours altogether doing this over many trips.  Picking berries for up to an hour is fun, picking for much longer a chore.
• Take a first aid kit with plasters, splinter probes and tweezers.  Insect repellent is also a good idea.  My legs look like I've been subject to a vicious cat attack, interlaced with red shiny mosquito bites.  Attractive.

Storing blackberries:

• Rinse them straight before using them, not when you get home.  If the berries are kept dry and cool they are much less likely to go mouldy. Even refrigerated, washed berries are likely to get mouldy overnight.

Blackberry curd is a brilliant use of eggs and blackberries.  You can use the curd as you would lemon curd (e.g. to make lemon meringue pie) and to flavour home made ice cream (just add a generous scoop or two of the curd).  Blackberry curd is better than blackberry jam for making ice cream as the jam tends to result in more ice crystals throughout the ice cream. 

Blackberry curd:

500 grams blackberries
300 grams caster sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten.
90 grams butter

Take 500grams of blackberries and quarter a cup of water and heat together in a pot until boiling.  Once boiling reduce to a simmer and cook for about twenty minutes.  Squish the berries while cooking.  Place a sieve over a bowl and press the mixture through using a wooden spoon.  This will take about five-ten minutes - you want to end up with nothing but a dry, seedy mixture left in the sieve.

Most people use a double boiler arrangement to cook sweet curds but I do not have the patience.  You need to know that you will be able to pay full attention to the curd while cooking if you do it in a pan.  Heat the berry juice in the pot on a medium low heat.  Add 300 grams of caster sugar and stir until dissolved.  Beat four room temperature eggs lightly, then temper by adding a spoonful of the berry juice to the eggs and stirring.  Repeat tempering a few times (otherwise you will scramble the eggs when you tip them into the pot).  Slowly add eggs to the pot, stirring constantly.  Add 90 grams of butter and keep stirring.

Bring the heat up slightly to medium, but never enough where the mixture starts bubbling.  When a very thick ribbon forms (this happens quickly) take off the element and pour into sterilised jars.  The mixture should last about two weeks in the fridge.

Recipe inspiration:  From Stephanie Alexander's A Cooks' Companion and Cream Until Fluffy

Blackberry BBQ Sauce

500grams blackberries
4-5 plums
4-5 apricots
1 cup tomato sauce
2 cloves of garlic
Dash of hot sauce (or a finely diced red chili)
Half a cup brown sugar.
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper


Put the berries and fruit in a pot and simmer for about thirty minutes (I simmered for nearly an hour, but had dashed to the shop and forgot that I left the pot going, thankfully my husband was still here!  Push the sauce through a sieve to remove berry seeds and fruit stones.  Be aggressive with sieving, keep going until the leftover seeds are a dry thick paste.  Add garlic, tomato sauce, hot sauce and sugar.  Season. Simmer for about twenty minutes for taste.  I found the original mixture too heavy on the vinegar so I added 2 TBSP of the blackberry cordial I made earlier.  You can just add extra sugar if too acidic.  If too sweet you can add more sugar.  Use a stick blender to make sure the garlic is incorporated and then pour into sterilised bottles.

Preserving madness: Blackberries

I've been working very hard on making my vegetable garden productive over the last few months and have been rewarded this summer with lots of courgettes, heritage peas, lettuce, jersey bennie potatoes and tomatoes.  It is very satisfying sitting down for a meal that you grew.

But, getting something for nothing is also satisfying.

I received three kilogrammes of plums which kicked off the preserving.  We ate a few, then I rapidly made plum jam (I think plum jam is my all-time favourite jam) and then plum sauce using the Edmond's recipe.  Two large jars of jam, three bottles of sauce.  All good.


Then it occurred to me that it was probably blackberry time.  My husband enjoyed fruit picking as a child and so I suggested that we go and try for some blackberries. Our first expedition, to a local river, involved my youngest throwing stones in the river while we collected berries.  It took quite awhile, and produced two small jars of jam.  We returned without the toddler and had better success....but felt that it was a lot of work for little reward.  Then we lucked upon a roadside batch.  I yelled 'bezzies' (not that mature but that it what the youngest calls berries and it has caught on) and we stopped.  Since we have young children we always have lunchboxes of snacks with us and we rapidly filled the lunchboxes.  Blackberry and Apple jelly was the result (four medium sized jars).

Representatives of all the varieties of household blackberry products.

We then got serious.  More trips, more berries.  The last two nights my husband and I have taken turns going out for some light 'bezzying.' I estimate that we have picked about thirty-five cups worth of berries from a variety of locations (I am good at finding random patches of berries while out driving).  Blackberry vinegar, Blackberry relish, Blackberry ice-cream and a lot more jam came next.  We have about four cups of frozen berries for general dessert use later in the year.

There is a critical oversupply of preserves in our household.  I feel strongly though that since they now live in our storage shed (three shelves being seen to be an indecent amount of preserve storage in the lounge) that it counts towards our emergency food supplies.  I'll also be giving some away as gifts.

Blackberry season will soon be over and attention will return to my garden.  I'm keeping track of expenditure and production this year because I don't want to discover that I've produced a  $64 tomato.

All the blackberry recipes in one place!

Blackberry vinegar.

In a clean jar put clean washed blackberries and our over vinegar to just cover.  After three days strain the mixture through a muslin into a sterilised bottle.  You can save the vinegared berries for the relish below.

Blackberry relish.

I followed the River Cottage recipe with a couple of changes.  I didn't use powdered mace because mace is hard to find (I do know that you can find it at Moore Wilson's).  Also after cooking I didn't strain the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds.  It is impossible to sieve for seeds when the mixture contains onions and apples.  If you don't want the seeds you can can cook the berries first until pulpy then sieve and cook with the other ingredients.  You may wish to retain the apple peel and cores for Apple and Blackberry jelly.

Blackberry jam.

Blackberry jam is quick and easy to make. Cook your blackberries on a low heat with a very small amount of water until the berries begin to bleed juice.  Once there is a lot of juice coming out increase the heat until the berries are boiling.  You can choose to squish the berries with a potato masher at this point if you wish.  You may also choose at this point to let the berries cool and push the mixture through a sieve to get rid of the seeds.  I don't bother.  Once the berries have boiled for a couple of minutes add some kind of acid.  For a large amount of berries (more than four cups) I'll add one teaspoon of citric acid.  For a small amount I'll add half a teaspoon.  The exact amount isn't too important and doesn't impact on taste.  Add the sugar.  I used one cup of sugar for each cup of boiled berry slush.  Boil together for about four or five minutes.  Bottle in sterilised jars.  This jam sets a little more over time so if I doesn't look well set straight away it should look a lot better the next day.

Blackberry and Apple jelly.

Grab some sour/ tart apples (like Granny Smiths) and roughly chop.  Put all parts of the apple (including pips) into a pot with a little water.  Simmer the apples until they start looking soft.  Add the berries and cook further until the berries are pulpy.  Give the mix a good squish with the potato masher and cook a little bit longer. Allow to cool slightly then drain through a jelly bag.  Measure the mixture and for every cup of juice allow 3/4 cup of caster sugar.  Bring juice and sugar to the boil.  Boil for 10-15mins or until setting point is reached.  Bottle in sterilised jars.

The cool thing about this recipe is that you don't exact amounts of berries or apples - the measuring comes once you have the juice.  If I have hardly any berries then I will be extra generous with the apples.  If I have heaps of berries then I will dial back the apples.  The two most recent batches I made highlight this beautifully:  one jar of crimson clear jelly, the other the colour of red wine.

Blackberry cordial 1

Blackberry cordial is straightforward to make:  the first batch I made is perfect as a hot drink in the evenings.  Without the spices it would make a refreshing summer drink on a hot day.  Your choice!  My version is adapted from this one:

Grab as many berries as you can get your hands on and put them in a pot with enough water to nearly cover them.  Add a cinnamon stick. Warm to a simmer.  Let the berries get very pulpy and soft (approx 20 mins). You want to squish all the juice out of the berries so squish them down with a potato masher.

Remove from the heat and strain through a jelly bag. While still warm, for every four cups of liquid add a cup of brown sugar and stir until dissolved.  Bottle in a sterilised bottle or jar.

If you are making the drink for refreshing cordial (instead of a hot winter drink) I'd omit the cinnamon.

Blackberry cordial 2

My first batch of cordial wasn't sweet enough for the rest of the family and they mostly didn't like the cinnamon I added above.  I had another go at making cordial.  I'm not really sure that it is a classic cordial recipe, but it works for us!  I've made this cordial mostly without any kind of measurement, so play around with it a little and see what you like!

Three cups of blackberries
Three cups of sugar syrup (sugar syrup is one cup of sugar to a cup of water, with the mixture heated until the sugar dissolves).

While the sugar syrup is still warm (but not boiling) add the berries.  Leave to infuse for a few hours, or overnight.  Pour the mixture through a sieve, squishing the berries through.  Using a piece of muslin or cheesecloth, strain into a sterilised bottle. 

This is really refreshing diluted 1:4.  The used berries can be either discarded or eaten with ice cream or yoghurt.

Purple pizza and parties

I've been making a lot of pizza lately.  My toddler loves baking and making pizza dough in the morning helps to get some of the 'need to bake' out of her system, with the advantage that we can all pretty much have whatever flavour pizza we feel like later in the day.

Last week I got out the mixer and, at the same time, decided to prepare some beetroot relish.  Grating three beetroot produces a lot of purple staining splashes and I got a drop in the dough.  My toddler thought that this was hilarious and asked for more.  So I squeezed out the juice from the next few handfuls and added it to the dough.

Looks like boysenberry ice cream!

 I'm not going to pretend that it is the most palatable colour for adults...

 ...and in fact the colour would have been more even if I'd added it to the liquid at the start.  But I feel that the swirls are quite attractive!

When baked the purple turned rather pink.  It was a huge hit with both my five year old and two year old.  I'm not going to pretend that there were any particular health benefit - I doubt that there is a huge amount of extra nutrition from a tablespoon of beetroot juice.  There was absolutely no taste difference.

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My oldest daughter is now six.  In my head she is still a baby, but I am rudely confronted by the reality that she is becoming quite an autonomous little human and her birthday confirmed this.

We had a talk about inclusive birthday themes and came up with a weather theme.  Rainbows were a sub-theme.  Because the party was over lunchtime I really wanted to make a lot of food, and not all of it junk food.  The final menu was:

• Fruit kebabs
• Popcorn
• Smoked chicken and cream cheese sandwiches (dinosaur shaped for fun)
• Fairy bread (sparkly sprinkles on cream cheese - a little more popular than the chicken)!
• A cloud shaped biscuit
• A pack of Japanese novelty shape puffed crackers (goldfish, stars, sharks, moon).  These were love/ hate with the packs being either consumed frantically or tried and left to one side.
• Rainbow jelly - I found great clear containers at Moore Wilson's that came with lids.

Cool kebab sticks.  Unfortunately more than one child had to be reminded not to eat the decorative balls!

The major attraction was the cake.  The children were all very impressed by the size of it and there were a few gasps when my husband cut the cake and they saw what was inside!  This was a very popular cake and so easy. I have three cake tins the same size.  I made one batch of cake mix and divided it between three pans.  I then added the colouring to each pan.  I used quite a moist cake mixture, but given that you need to ice between the layers a dry cake would also be suitable.

My daughter is a self-proclaimed scientist and a bit of a purist when it comes to the rainbow.  I had to explain that I could not find purple gel for a seventh layer.  She thought about this quite seriously and conceded that six layers would be fine!

Like most birthdays the day passed in a blur.  I was worried that the party would be too long, and we would have lots of bored children.  In the end we had a few hungry children who had left the sky show early and could see the food.   I let them start eating a couple of minutes before the other children came back.

I decided not to go with the hell and torment of pass the parcel.  I had an extra craft activity available (colouring in masks) and had brought along equipment for an egg and spoon race.  I tried playing Chinese whispers with the children waiting out the sky show - it was hilarious.  Try it with five year olds - you wont regret it. I was very surprised to see that we had ten more minutes of party time left after singing 'Happy Birthday' (or the 'to you' song as my toddler calls it) and cutting of the cake.  The children all ran around the exhibits at the highest noise levels possible before disappearing with their respective parents.  Silence, then the long walk back to the car and home.

Apricot and cardamom jam/ Wellington Jam-Off

The Great Wellington Jam-Off is being held on Sunday at the City Market.  I've seen a lot of comments coming through Facebook and Twitter about the Jam-Off and I'm happy to be a jam-petitor.  It is so hard to know which one jam to submit though.  I think that my best jam of the season is Blackberry and Apple - I got the recipe off the Jam-Off website though so thought it poor form to submit that! I really wanted to submit the Apple Butter I made last winter but thought that it wouldn't meet the definition of jam.

I had been wanting to make preserved apricots with cardamon for a while.  I figured a cardamon pod in every jar of preserved apricots would be delicious, making them a little bit more special when we came to open them in winter (if they lasted that long).  But then the jam-off came and I figured that it would make an equally delicious flavour of jam.

It is pretty good - so long as you are very economical with the cardamon.  I made a batch of apricot jam largely following the recipe in the Edmond's cookbook.  For that recipe (which makes ten jars from 2.75kgs of apricots) I added six cardamon pods.  I tied them into a muslin, along with the apricot kernels and removed after ten minutes of boiling.

The result is pretty good actually.  The star of the show is the apricot - quite an aggressively apricot flavour and the cardamon just adds a warmth to the apricot, almost a depth to the flavour rather than a change to it, that lingers long after the jam has been eaten!


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Fruit and vege box

Twice now I've purchased half price boxes of fruit and veges from Riverside Orchard via one of those daily deal sites.   The first box was stone fruit and my husband and I worked mightily to eat the ripe fruit before it turned mouldy.   The second box arrived last Friday.  This one was a more standard box - perhaps exactly what a family of four could get through in a week - giant broccoli and cauliflower, a huge lettuce, three kilogrammes each of potatoes, apples and pears and a big bag of ripe peaches to top it all off.  The peaches have been worked on steadily through the weekend and we have one left.

The pears were on the hard side.  I decided to preserve them as a straightforward way of softening them up.  Did you know if you don't tell your suddenly fussy five year old that you made them yourself she will assume that you found a nicer brand of tinned pears??!!  Sigh.






Given we are still harvesting jersey bennie potatoes from our garden I was a little unsure of what to do with so many potatoes.  But then I remembered my husband's signature potato dish: potato gratin.  We like it garlicky, full of pepper and nutmeg and NO CHEESE!!  This is beautiful, rich and very much a meal to make for good friends.  We have no planned guests tonight, so I think we will have a couple of days of delicious potato side dish.






I'm going to keep an eye out for these deals.  I love being able to get such fresh fruit and veges, at a great price and delivered on a day of my choosing.  The freshness of the produce has been a real inspiration, enough at least for me to produce an entire colander of pear and potato skins for the worm farm today!

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Location:Mansfield St,Wellington,New Zealand

Dear Nigella: thanks for pomegranate ice cream.

I was reading cookbooks while eating breakfast this morning.  Every now and then I need a bit of inspiration so I go back to the books and take a look at what is around.  With many of Nigella Lawson's recipes I've found that more of some of her more exotic ingredients are now available where I live.  When I came across pomegranate ice cream I knew that I had a good project for the day.

Nigella's No Churn Pomegranate Ice-Cream is perhaps the dreamiest recipe that I've made in awhile.  It has four ingredients and as long as you can get hold of two pomegranates then you are in luck.  I found some in my local supermarket this morning and quite cheerfully added two of the overpriced fruit to my trolley.

After getting home I put the baby to sleep in the pram and my daughter and I got out my mixer and tapped out the pomegranates, measured the icing sugar, squeezed the lime and then added a bottle of cream.  Some poor memorising of the recipe meant that I purchased a 300ml bottle of cream instead of 500ml.  The mixture tastes amazing anyway, and my only regret is getting too small a bottle as it has reduced the amount of ice cream available for the family!  The resulting creamy mixture is fragrant, marshmallow-creamy and a perfect pink.  My daughter and I cannot wait the four hours required - we have scooped some into a tiny container that is already half frozen an hour later.

I think that this would form the basis of a rather amazing Eton mess:  add crushed meringues, some macerated fruit salad to the unfrozen mixture and you would have a very elegant and delicious dessert.
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My happy place/ Boysenberry jam.

When someone offers you 2kg of freshly picked boysenberries in exchange for an airport pick up you throw the kids in the car with a sandwich and a toy each and drive.  My kitchen smells amazing, and the dark purple jars on my windowsill are showing off my spoils to the neighbourhood.




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Eta: changed blackberries to boysenberries!

More baby food! The constipation breaker! Pear, brocolli and pea

Lots of traditional baby foods (bananas, baby rice) can make babies constipated.  So a handy meal to balance this out is good to have.  I decided to use a fruit vege combo of the foods that would be most conducive to constipation relief!  Broccoli and peas work well with my daughter, and pears are also a classic!

I got some great free pears from my husband's workplace -  a huge gorgeous pear tree with heaps of ripe pears going to waste.  I peeled and cored them, then cooked them up with a little water (could use stock as well).  Once the pear was soft and easy to mash I added in the brocolli (messily chopped into little pieces) and the peas.  The ratio was about one cup of pear mash, half a cup of brocolli and a quarter a cup of peas.  I kept cooking until most of the liquid was gone and the peas and brocolli were also soft.  I used the stick mixer to make sure all the peas were chopped up (they don't mash well) and froze them in little ice cubes.  The pear smells delicious, and the peas give the food a great colour.  There is also a bonus of a good texture from all the different foods: smooth from the pear, lumpy dots of brocolli and tiny chunks of peas.