We all know about James and the Giant Peach. Here is a different take !! I have grown this big fat lemon ! I just had to get out the tape measure. I wish I had weighed it as well. It's circumference was 31 cms. I gave it to a friend this morning so I am waiting to hear what it looked like when cut open. Often enormous fruits and vegies are all quantity with quality being on the scant side so hopefully it was nice and juicy and not too dry and pithy.
My youngest daughter, brave and beautiful, has set of to see the world. She has a 3 month au pair contract with a family living in Genoa, Italy. She has settled in now and made friends with other au pairs and is venturing out to see the sights. Today she took a train and a cut lunch to hike some of the Cinque Terre and adored every second, even swimming in turquoise waters and loving every mouthful of this lemon gelati served in a lemon !!
After buying a big bag of quinoa, I am experimenting a bit with this new ingredient. I have cooked it and served it with pasta sauce, eaten it with yoghurt and put it in a lemon cake. It vanished into the batter in the cake but when served in the other dishes it does have a definite earthy type of flavour, sort of nutty, sort of brown, sort of healthy. I know it sounds weird for a food to taste like a colour but it does seem to. Now I have come across an alternative that apparently alters and removes the earthy type of flavour. Quinoa must be rinsed really well too so the bitterish starch is washed off. After washing, then it goes into a pan and then is dry fried or "toasted". It turns a golden colour and actually "pops". It can the be stored in a container till needed then is cooked/boiled for 15 minutes in water and you can serve as desired. This week I intend to do a quinoa salad or curried quinoa. Wish me luck !!
Ooey and gooey with fudge on top ! Who could not succumb to these Mocha Fudge Brownies ?
Pasta is a mainstay in our family, probably like most families because it is quick, healthy if you forego creamy sauces and filling. Plus the variations are endless. Sometimes it is nice to go plain like I did last night and sometimes our sauce is more exotic. I do meatless sauces on the whole and try to use homegrown vegies. Last night I thought I cooked risoni only to discover once cooked it was pasta in the shape of letters of the alphabet. I just added cheese to this so it was real nursery food.
I know it is not really winter by the calendar yet but it feels like it on a daily basis to me and the sky looks wintry and we are all rugging up. It has come early, so for all intents and purposes it is winter already and now, in my book. Time for soup and puddings and big heating bills and hopping into bed early. And I am already needing cheering up because it is going to be a horrible long haul till spring. So my neighbours mauve flowers give me a lift every time I head out to the car. I think it is a tree dahlia. It has grown enormous as they do and these flowers are high in the air and lovely to see.
I have my own darling buds of May in the front yard, lots and lots of them just waiting to burst into flower. Once again my magnolia tree is covered in masses of plump buds and is set to be a sight to behold and will be hopefully at its' peak in time for the auction. The actual BBC series The Darling Buds of May is one of my favourites. If you don't know it, you should try to download it, borrow it or at least read the book. It starred a very young and beautiful Catherine Zeta Jones.
There are some perks to having a family member working in the hotel industry and sometimes I am lucky enough to be on the receiving end of samples from the student chefs like these delicious petits fours. I think very highly of anyone who can create such delicacies with their perfect and precise shape, their faultless texture and five star taste. I don't even aspire to such dizzy heights as if it can't be made in one bowl or the food processor then it's off limits for me.
I am talking about lemons - my tree is laden, more than laden ! So a lemon cake was compulsory baking today, compulsory eating too as it turned out. My inspiration came from here but I replaced the cornmeal with quinoa. I am a bit of an experimentalist once given a blue print. Patti's cake looked fantastic so there was no way I could replicate that type of perfection so I did a bit of doctoring and made 2 smaller cakes plus made the whole thing in the food processor and then frosted one. Patti will probably be aghast at what I have done but she provided a marvellous jumping off point.
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