Passing on

To me, kiwi's seem to be a bit out of season. But I got a bag of small kiwi's from my mom. She had gotten them from a friend of hers, who had already made more kiwi-jam than she could eat. This friend got the kiwi's from someone who obviously had a greenhouse full of these green vitamin bombs. By the time they arrived at our place the kiwi's were almost overripe and I had to make jam right away. And I passed on the jam again. Two jars back to my parents, one to my friend for loaning me some kitchen-utensils and one to mrs Lightbluegrey when we went there for a visit. The last one stays with us.

For health and happiness

We had half a cauliflower left. Almost too far gone. But the choice between throwing away or cook a quick pan of soup is easy. Especially since this book is mine (thanks QEC!). 'Magic soups' is full of simple and tasty recipes. This cauliflower soup (in Dutch) with dukkah was truly delicious.

Breakfast all-day

Lucky me, I won this cookbook. Since I really like breakfast and lunch thingy's, I put in some extra effort for the entry. I quickly aquarelled a Danish breakfast I once enjoyed (had to be your favourite breakfast ever) and sent a copy by mail. Bingo! Simple, basic recipes, with another twist. Today I prepared a delicious and healthy, green is spinach, smoothy for the kids from the book. The green wasn't inviting to them, but the ladies both drank it till the last drop. Loved it. The writer, Denise Kortlever, has a lovely site too. You could either order a signed copy of the book there or try to win one here.

Diy Nutella

The bowl of hazelnuts had been looking at me for quite some time. Waiting to be cracked. I had to come across a recipe for choco-hazelnut paste in 'koken zonder pakjes en zakjes 2' to get me going. Lasted 45 minutes to get 150 gr of peeled hazelnuts. Well worth the effort though. This pure paste is so much better than the store-bought ones! Here is a collection of diy nut-butter. Have to try some of those too.

Star apples

My uncle gave us a large bag of fallen apples. They needed to be processed quickly. Apple sauce (peel, core, cook and freeze) is the easiest way, but we don't need that much apples sauce. Baking a classic Dutch apple pie is another option, but not every day. Lots of butter, quite some sugar. The cake above is a good alternative. The spices nicely disguise the lack of sugar. The girls loved it. Or this moist cake. It's sweeter than the other one. Looking for apple-recipes I also found a recipe for making apple cider vinegar. A good way to use the peels from the apples for the cake. I like the idea of using every part. We'll have to wait six weeks before we can try and see how good it is. Do you have another good apple-recipe?

Family cookbook

So excited! Had the plan for years. Worked on it for over a year (on and off). Had to wait for the right discount-offer (still not cheap, because of the many pages, but all worth it). And now finally we have our own personal cookbook in the kitchen! Not seriously published, but ordered as regular photo-books at Hema. We filled it with all our favourite recipes and matching pictures. Very practical to have them all in one book, to quickly look up the right quantities of ingredients. But actually it is made for the girls, to remember the tastes of their youth, later when they are all grown up.

Elderberry time

Two years ago I had a very bad fever, probably pneumonia. After a treatment with antibiotics, the fever went away but not the ill feeling. Nothing helped me to feel better. Until a friend from a friend gave me a bottle of elderberry syrup. After more than two months I finally started recovering. Now I have made some bottles of the miracle mixture myself. The recipe came from this very nice book, Wildplukkertjes, which the girls got from their grandparents. Here's a a similar recipe, but with more spices (am going to try this one for the next batch).

Remembering Italy

In spring my father in law grows many tomato plants in his small green house. We always get plants of various sorts from him. This year the harvest is extremely rich. See what has grown in our pour neglected vegetable garden! Time for a panzanella salad, which shows off the beautiful colours of the tomatoes. Very tasty too.

Bye bye summer holiday

Yesterday we celebrated the end of a very nice summer holiday by having a nice dinner in the garden. Talking about all the fun things we experienced and places we visited. For the occasion I made honey-ginger ale. I saw Yvette van Boven preparing it in this episode of her tv-series. Extremely easy to make. The result is pretty strong, I'd probably mix it with something next time, but I love this gingery taste!

Patience

It is hard to see what this is. It's large jar filled with black currants and wodka. There were not enough black currants to make jam, so I'm trying something else. We'll make creme de cassis. This is simple, but takes time. Five months to be exact. Our own liqueur will be ready to serve in a kir royale for Christmas or to celebrate the new year.

Enough for half a year

My dad has been helping us out a lot recently. Making our new fence and renovate our bathroom after we had leakage. So when he mentioned that the red, white and black currants needed to be picked we gladly volunteered. They are beautiful and abundant this year. Many hands make light work, we started early and in little time we had picked them all. And some strawberries as well. A well-spent morning, completed by a lovely family lunch in the garden. Afterwards we bought packs of half-sweet jam sugar at the supermarket and I cooked jams and jellies into the evening. The next day most of the jars went back to dad, who eats jam on his bread every day. I love the minimalistic labels, easy to wash off later.

Simple success

It is becoming a tradition to make raspberry vinegar each year. It makes every dressing more special.  Just two small bottles this time. There's not many berries left, because our eldest is addicted. She went to our vegetable garden every day to eat them right from the bush. And now, because it was so warm and dry, the last berries have dried out.

Cordials

It's that time of year. Elder blossom is everywhere. We bottled the delicious smell in syrup again.  The stamp used for the labels was one of the first hand carved stamps I've made. Obvious when you look closely. It doesn't fit these adhesives, but half the stamp still looks pretty ok. Unfortunately my kids don't like sweet drinks, so it's up to others to finish all those bottles of syrup. I searched for elder flower cocktails on Pinterest. Lot's of lovely drinks came up. Look!

Classic

Only a few weeks of school to go for the girls. Feels like summer holiday is almost there. N has had her last violin lesson, Janne only has two cello lesons to go. Also hockey trainings have stopped already. Yay! Traditionally all the players take something tasty to the last training. Janne brought these chocolate strawberries. Two of her favourites combined. And very easy to make. Just melt dark chocolate in the microwave and dip in the berries. Lay them on a sheet of fat free paper and cool the strawberries in the fridge.

With or without alcohol

Probably my last rhubarb post for this spring. For the first time we turned rhubarb into syrup. a simple process. The leftover pulp can be used for a rhubarb crumble. The syrup is a lovely ingredient for several cocktails.

Catching spring in a jar

Within three weeks it will be end of rhubarb season. Of course you can freeze rhubarb for later use, but since I try to get my big freezer empty for cleaning I chose to make more jars of jam. Rhubarb-rosemary and rhubarb-orange-ginger jam. I like the second best. Fortunately the others are more into the one with rosemary.

Fresh oxalic acidity

Yeah, gardening season has started again. And our rhubarb bush is very generous. We're all rhubarb lovers over here. First I tried this French rhubarb cake. Divided the batter into two parts, one small cake to try and one to give away. We're going to make this one more often, because it was delicious. Another trial was the rhubarb ketchup. I cooked from this Dutch recipe, but when you google on 'Rhubarb ketchup' you'll find many recipes in English. I tastes more like barbecues sauce, but very good. Would add less sugar next time though.

Piment d'Espelette

Our favourite aubergine recipe, became even better. The recipe calls for espelette pepper, but since we couldn't find it here we used regular black pepper. On his last trip to France my husband found this special Bask pepper in a supermarket over there. Not cheap though. But it sure added something extra. The taste lies somewhere between paprika and chili, I think. You really should try this vegetable dish! Black pepper is also pretty ok, when you happen to have no espelette in your kitchen.

Worth repeating

When I see recipes with dandelions I almost get demotivated immediately by the amount of flowers you need to pick. But last week I saw so many healthy yellow dandelions in the field next to our vegetable garden that I finally gave it a try. In 15 minutes I picked enough flowers for the Dandelion jelly. So, no need to hesitate next time. In the bowl, it didn't look that tasty. But after filtering we had a lovely yellow fluid. With half the sugar (gelei suiker extra) we cooked a delicious tangy jelly.

Magnolia moment

Someone told me that you can make vinegar from magnolia flowers. Just in time, because in a few days the magnolia in our neighbourhood will start dropping it's petals. I dissolved a bit of sugar in white wine vinegar, like we do for our raspberry vinegar, and poured it over a jar full of magnolia petals. I think, the small amount of sugar will deepen the natural taste and smell of the flowers. We'll have to wait a few weeks, to taste whether that is true.