I have an idea…
I was leafing through David Lebovitz’ “Ready for Dessert” today, thinking how much I would like to make absolutely everything in it. And then I was thinking how much more fun it would be if, once a month, we all made the same recipe from the book, and compared notes, and took pictures, and shared [...]
Salted Caramel Ice Cream
When I was 13, my mum took me and my brother to France on holiday. We spent a few days in Paris, and then jumped on an overnight train and woke up in Nice. We stayed in this pink hotel with a pool and a tennis court. There was an American family staying there, with [...]
Feelin’ Peachy
Today, I had the most fantastic stroke of luck ever: our friends who were going out of town gave us their CSA box for the week, and in it were mostly nectarines. All of this the day after I had picked up about 5 lb of peaches at the farmers’ market. Peach jackpot!! We [...]
Prunus Persica: Peach
The simple peach tree can provide a wealth of medicine– the flowers, the pits, the leaves, and the twigs are all useful, and good things to have on hand for you and your family. Common name: Peach (or nectarine– it’s a recessive gene that makes the peach non-fuzzy, but contrary to popular belief that it’s [...]
A cake and a cup of tea
I’m a huge fan of every day cakes. The non-fancy cake. The cup-of-tea-in-the-afternoon cake. I come from such a big family, and our house was always the house where everyone hung out–we usually had 10-15 people over on weekends– so we always had sweet delicious things out. There’s something lovely and homey about having something [...]
Make your own medicinal herbal honeys and elixirs.
Making your own herbal medicines is ridiculously easy, and a nice little pharmacopeia can usually be put together from plants that you can find around where you live. A few of my favourite gentle herbs to make medicines with are the following: Cherry: Blossoms and bark. Use the most fragrant ones you can find– [...]
Disaster zone
It’s not all about happy endings and pretty pictures. There was the time when I dropped the roasting pan down my legs and got 2nd degree burns. And the time when my fava beans were so tough and mealy that I felt a bit sorry for the guests who had to put on smiley faces [...]
Flan
After my parents divorced, my dad sold his business and moved to Spain. You could hardly blame him– being a sailor in England is a distinctly depressing occupation, and I have many memories of sitting on his boat on the river Crouch, staring at the brown mud around us, and the grey rain drizzling down, [...]
Berry yumm
I’ve already told you about jam. How my whole family used to go to a pick-your-own farm, and gather bucket loads of strawberries and raspberries, and go back to my grandma’s house, where she and my mum would make jam. I’d sit on her kitchen floor and listen to them potter around and chat, and [...]
Two for tuesday: Compound butter and a roast chicken that will blow your socks off.
This blog is a [belated] part of the two-for-tuesday blog carnival. I’m into local herbs. I mean, I’m sure you’re gathering that from my poetical waxings about what’s in bloom, and the pictures I take of the herbs in my garden, and stuff like that. It’s more than a trendy thing, or an ethical thing, [...]
