When a recipe calls for wholefood it reminds me of my mum who went through a phase of being a bit of a wholefood nut. Wholesome, nourishing food that looks brown and had the texture of sawdust. Obviously things in food have come a long way over the years and this is a recipe for Date and Orange Muffins you can take whole food to a new level. Hold onto your apron because you are going to use a whole orange in this recipe. Actually, it’s two whole oranges.
This is my kind of cooking. A true gather, whizz and mix up recipe. The fact that you end up with a mountain of sweet and moist muffins is just a bonus.
When you’re toiling away outside there is nothing more refreshing that a lemon squash drink break. Brought up on Robinson’s Lemon Barley I didn’t think anything could take it’s place. That is until I tasted Lavendersgreen lemon cordial made just over the hill in Featherstone. This marvellous juice is mighty pricey though so I decided we should try and make our own.
Although we don’t grow lemons yet I have plans for cistrus crops when my dream for a glasshouse comes true. I used the Lemon Squash recipe from the River Cottage Handbook on preserves. It takes a bit of time to do but the results are outstanding and every bit as good if not better. Although those in the northern hemisphere reading this blog might think this is a summer drink hold on – this would be wonderful made with hot water with a touch of ginger or honey or a little medicinal whiskey.
Go on, I know you want to give it a go!
The first thing I was taught to cook at school was Shortbread. I remember how mine made a wonderful frizzbee when it was finished it was so hard but beautifully shaped. That experience has always made me slightly reluctant to repeat the experience. I tend to skip over recipes that say shortbread or shortcake as they bring those memories of domestic science disasters crashing back.
But with a growing patch of rhubarb and one last punnet of strawberries in the fridge this was the perfect recipe to try. Even if the mention of “short” in the title did make my palms sweat a little. But how could I resist baking something that is described as “one of the glories of the New Zealand home kitchen”. Let me tell you, this was indeed glorious.
Being a fully fledged Domestic Executive requires a full portfolio of home cooking talents but there are areas of culinary functions I’ve shied away from perfecting. Fear of failure you might think. And, you’d be right. There is nothing more depressing than for things not to turn out as they should.
In the spirit of full disclosure, my first attempts at preserving looked good but tasted, let’s just say hot and a little too spicy for large volumes to be consumed. I am comforted knowing about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 rule but fear it’s going to be a long road to earning my master preserver spurs.
But hey everyone has to start somewhere.
I remember the pain of returning to work after a vacation. The numbness of arriving to my desk and the energy it required to talk to lots of other people. The exhaustion that sets in from mid morning and the overwhelming feeling to lay my head on the desk and hope that no-one would notice if I had 40 winks. So, I know how MT has been feeling as he headed back to the office this week.
The bassets and I have lost our momentum too. Our holiday routine has gone and with it our home companion. I’m not sure if it was this or the cold snap in the weather but it’s been an uphill struggle to the start of this week.
With howling winds and incessant rain this weekend the wintry atmosphere you could be forgiven in thinking that we were heading into a northern rather than a southern hemisphere Christmas. To cheer us up we cooked up a batch of a wonderfully spicy biscuit that has a warming effect. I became a convert to Lebkuchen during the years MT travelled to Nuremberg for work and substituted the traditional toblerone from the airport with tins of these chewy and tangy biscuits instead.
Made of lots of luscious spices but so simple to make I can wholeheartedly recommend then as a Christmas treat.
I’ve traditionally created my own ritual of stir up Sunday for my Christmas Cake baking. This usually involves staying up late on Christmas Eve to take the cake out of the oven, stashing the cake until Boxing Day and then icing it just in time for people to politely refuse cake on the grounds they are fit to burst. This then allows more time for the icing to dry properly. By the time people have the digestive stamina to tackle Christmas Cake my cake is ready and waiting as if it had been prepared well in advance.
For once I managed to stir up on stir up Sunday as it happened in the omnibus edition of The Archers. It is mere detail that we play this episode a week after it was broadcast on account of my fixation to keep to the Sunday morning listening routine. I’m feeling quite chuffed of this achievement since its an improvement of around 18 days over my usual performance.
If there was ever a name to grab my baking attention – Fat Rascals has to be up there at the top of the list. It’s cheeky and fun yet describes perfectly this scone dressed as a cake. How this name came about is a mystery but the cakes have been made famous by Betty’s Tea Rooms in Yorkshire England. Personally I’d give Betty’s a miss over other afternoon tea emporiums but I am intrigued how they came to claim the secret rights to the Fat Rascals recipe.
The best I can find out is that Fat Rascals was Elizabethan slang for scones but has become synonymous with Yorkshire and now evokes that feeling of a naughty but nice edible fancy. We came upon the recipe clipped from an old magazine and it seemed the perfect way to cheers us up after a cold miserable week.
Factory production systems have always fascinated me. How systems and processes work together to create products often at high speed and precision accuracy. Our barn is turning into a plant factory although more of a prototype production line without high levels of technology and precision systems.
My potting bench may be an old kitchen table and a dog crate tray balanced between two chairs but they are serving their purpose well. Such low level of workspace may be giving me back ache from bending over but I see it as a personal workout opportunity to strength my muscles at the same time.
My time pottering in the “greenhouse” is starting to become quite an addictive activity. With new seeds germinating every day there is always something to do to nurture their growth and protect them from the pesky mice which love to play in the pots and scatter soil all over.
Around this time of year we contemplate Christmas Wish Lists. For MT this is never a problem as he always has a long list of books, DVDs and other home entertainment ideas. My greatest wish is that I can Christmas shop for him somewhere other than Amazon.
In the past I have focused on culinary equipment since cooking is something he enjoys but we’re fast getting to the point that we have all the gadgets and gizmos you’d ever want. But it seems that his lordship is not really that comfortable with some of what we have in the kitchen. A little too girly was how our oven gloves were described. Now his aversion to lifting hot things out of the oven can be explained.
