A real pea souper

No, not the weather (although it has been pretty horrible today). You know when you decide to defrost the freezer and you then have to have all kinds of strange meals? Mr Marmadaisy and I have been having some very odd combinations lately, but we had pretty much got down to the last item. What does one make with half a bag of frozen peas?



You need:
About 400g frozen peas
About pint and half water
Vegetable stock cube
About 10-12 mint leaves
A small onion
A small potato

Chop the onion and peel and finely chop the potato. Fry in about a tablespoon of your chosen oil (I used corn oil) until soft.
Add the peas and fry for a couple of minutes, without letting them burn. Add about half of the mint leaves, about a pint of water and the stock cube and simmer gently until the potato is cooked through. Add a few more mint leaves.
Wizz in a blender or use a hand blender and blend until smooth (I like to leave a few peas un-blitzed)
Add a little more liquid if you want a thinner soup.
Add salt and pepper to taste, and you should serve with a dollop of creme fraiche but I didn't have any, so mine just has loads of cracked pepper on it.

Marmadaisy cookies

This is the first cookie recipe I have actually made up myself, and I'm quite pleased with them. These are not refined cookies, they are chunky, clumpy and full of bits but they are sooo yummy, and take hardly any time to make.

You will need:

4oz butter
5oz soft brown sugar
6oz plain flour
large tablespoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
Pinch of salt
1 egg
6oz peanut M&Ms (or bits of chocolate, or minstrels, or whatever)

To make them:

Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy.
Mix the egg and vanilla and add slowly.
Sift the dry ingredients and add, mixing slowly, a bit at a time.
Stir in the M&Ms

Put baking paper on a couple of trays and drop dessert spoon lumps onto the paper - leave room for them to spread out.

Bake in a moderately hot oven (I have an Aga, so I can't give exact temps but I would say use about Gas mark 4/5) for 12 or so minutes.

Leave to cool slightly before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Fun things

I just had to post this picture of the delicious purple sprouting broccoli that we have just had out of the garden. I almost gave up on this a few weeks ago - I planted it this time last year and was expecting it to sprout over Christmas. I'm so glad I persevered though. Yum!

Remember this post about the boats? Well, luckily we had our offer accepted and we should be the proud owners mid-week, I will post pictures when we collect it. In the meantime, of course, I needed deck shoes. Here are the ones I picked up locally for the bargain price of £7.


Not very inspiring, although I loved the colour.
This is what they look like now.

When we were at school, my friend Marie and I used to always funk up our shoes with ribbons and such. Funny, I had forgotten all about it until I bought these. (BTW, Get well soon Marie!)

I'm still playing with my new camera so please forgive any wobbly photos.

The most exciting news ...... I'll leave until tomorrow. It's a lot of fun!

Onion Tart

I had to take a picture of this before we ate it! I did cheat a bit as I used frozen pastry - not normally something I would do but we're decorating the larder and kitchen so everything's in a bit of a mess.

Onion Tart:

4 onions (I used 2 red and 2 white)

Shortcrust pastry

1/4 pint milk

1/4 pint single cream

3 eggs

salt and pepper

Cut the onions into eighths, arrange in a baking dish and cover with a tablespoon of olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until starting to turn golden. Leave to cool.

Roll out the pastry and line a greased dish. I don't blind bake because in the aga there's no need, but you might need to if you have a conventional oven.

Prick the bottom a couple of times with a fork and arrange the onion pieces in the pastry case. Cover with the mixed milk, cream and eggs and a sprinkle of cheese if you want.

Bake until golden - about 35 minutes. Sorry I can't give temperatures as the aga doesn't have them!

Serve with home-made coleslaw and lots of salad. A perfect excuse to use the new heart shaped le creuset!

Fruit and Naughty

I'm in love. With Toblerone fruit and nut, have you tried it? My reasoning is that it contains raisins, which are fruit, and therefore must count as one of your "five a day". My guess is you need to eat quite a lot of toblerone to make one portion, which is fine.




I hope you are enjoying the tunes I put on. I was quite pleased that after spending most of yesterday afternoon looking for a suitable player, I have been informed today that it *may* be illegal. Now, I'm a good girl (as you know) and don't want to get sued. However, copyright law is a bloomin' mind field and, having spent several hours trying to find out, I cannot for the life of me work out whether you are allowed to stream music on your blog. Is it classed as distribution?

If anyone knows, please let me know. I didn't rip it illegally either, by the way.

Yummy lunch

I've just had the most yummy-scrummy lunch so I thought I'd post the recipe.

It's super easy and one of our favourite Saturday night dinners. It can literally be whipped up in about 10 minutes.

You need:

1 250g bag of frozen (but defrosted) prawns, or fresh prawns. Either cooked or uncooked.
2 sticks of celery (or a 50g bag of watercress, or 5 - 6 spring onions)
3 cloves of garlic
2 dried chillies (or 2 fresh, deseeded, large chillies, or one with seeds)
About 4tbsp olive oil
Spaghetti (I use the measurement of my thumb and middle finger to measure enough for 2)

This makes enough for 2 greedy hungry people.

• Cook the spaghetti in boiling, salted water.


• While that's cooking, fry your chopped celery in about half the oil until soft, then add the finely chopped garlic and chillies. (If using watercress, this only needs to go in at the last second after the prawns).


• Cook for a further 2 minutes, then add the prawns. If using raw prawns, cook them until pink, or just heat through if using ready cooked ones.


• Drain the spaghetti, then add the prawns to the pan, and the rest of the oil and toss.

Serve in warmed pasta bowls. Yum yum!

By the way, don't have this if you have a hot date because you will stink of garlic.

Very cheap therapy

Cheaper than having therapy, and without the nasty hangover of alcohol, making bread is possibly the best stress buster. You get to pummel out all your frustration and then you get the lovely smelly wafts all over the house. And you get brownie points for doing your own baking :)
I've already posted my recipe - this one is pumpkin seed, linseed and sesame seed (1 handful each sesame and linseed, 2 handfuls pumpkin seeds).

Dirty Monkey cake

So called after the ship from our Pirate Murder Mystery game. This is a recipe that I adapted from a wholemeal banana loaf.

8oz plain flour (or 7 oz and 1oz of cocoa)

3tsp baking powder

1tsp salt

1/4tsp nutmeg

4oz butter

5oz brown sugar

2 eggs

3 ripe bananas (good for using your brown ones)

2oz chopped nuts

Sift flour (and cocoa) baking powder salt and nutmeg. Beat together butter and sugar. Whisk egg and fold into butter mixture. Peel and mash bananas and add to above mix (will be sloppy by now). Sift flour again, over the mixture, a little at a time. Add nuts. Bake approx 40 mins - 1 hour on moderate heat (about gas 4) or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 mins before turning out to cool. Store in foil - improves in flavour if left for a day.

I made this in a round cake tin (double quantities) on Thursday to be iced Friday. I used 2 tubs of ready made buttercream (because I was being lazy). I used one tub to fill the cake (split into 3 layers). I added yellow colouring to the second tub and covered the cake in it. I decorated with sugar flowers and a monkey with a tree drink stirrer that we got in Cyprus in a bar - I love to appropriate things! I made the treasure chest out of a bounty bar with the top cut off and half a cocktail stick to hold the lid open. Finally I put on a couple of gold covered chocolate coins.

I was really pleased with how it turned out. The only things was that it was a bit sickly with all the alcohol we had had!

This football is a bit prickly .....

Wow, I'm a blogging whirlwind today!

Last night, I was disturbed during "sex change hospital" (and not for the reasons you might think), when Paddy came running in to tell me something. I followed him and as I got into the kitchen, in ran Wizzle. Paddy went straight out of the backdoor and immediately I heard him fighting with Charlie. What were they fighting over?

Well, one of them had found a hedgehog! It's the first one I've seen here in the four, nearly five, years of living here. Amazing! The dogs all wanted to play with it - especially as it had rolled itself into a fun-looking ball. Having no idea what to do with the poor thing I put on some gloves and picked it up. It was breathing but I couldn't tell if it was injured. There was no blood but quite a lot of sloppy dog spit. Anyway, I decided the best thing would be to put him somewhere out of doggy reach and let it sort itself out, so I put it in the field (whether I put it on it's feet, face or arse I have no way of knowing!) It had gone 10 minutes later.

I've never picked up a hedgehog before. By the way, they STINK.

Possibly one of the more bizarre late night encounters I've had ....

Cock-a-doodle-don't

Cockerels crow in the morning, right? Wrong! This one (aptly named Animal) crows all day long, all night, and starts again at 4am. Lovely.
He's a great boy, maran x, and was saved from ending up on someone's Sunday dinner. To show his gratitude he launches himself at anyone who goes near the coop and has also been known to take on the dogs.
But he's great :) I just need to arm myself with a broom at feeding time.

The great (guinea pig) escape

[Tiggy]

The thing I have learned about guinea pigs is that they are little buggers.

You build them a lovely cosy hutch, and make a nice big run in the garden, and what do they do? Tunnel out and make a bid for freedom! We have now foiled three such escape attempts. Little shits.

Day 1 In Guinea Pig Village

Well, someone told me the other day that most blogs don't get updated after the first month. That's probably true - but I think that's because people begin by blogging everything and then decide it's not such a good look and knock it back a bit. Then probably forget their password.
Anyway, I haven't had anything "blog worthy" to report which just goes to show how uneventful my life actually is.
On the up-side ... Ant has spent his birthday holiday week building an amazing Guinea pig mansion for me which we have named "Plas Tan y Coed" (house under the trees) because it's in the orchard. They have a lovely two storied affair with a massive outdoor run and a tunnel entrance. I really must take pictures.
Anyway, we are now the proud parents of two little cavies - Beatrice and Emily. We had to go all the way to Llandudno to get them but as I had the hutch already I was bloody well getting Guinea pigs this week! Bangor has more in on Monday so we'll pick up another couple then and I'll post pictures. Assuming, that is, that the little buggers actually leave their house and venture into their run!

Bread

I love making bread. Anthony would say I don't make it often enough and to be honest that is true. I think people think it takes ages to make bread. Although it is time consuming it's actually mostly the proving that takes the time.

After spending all morning painting the downstairs toilet I decided to make a lovely nutty loaf, and here is the recipe. Bear in mind, I use an aga so it's a bit tricky to give temperatures and timings - you'll have to play about.

In a large bowl put 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon sugar and 1 1/2 lbs of strong bread flour. Give it a little mix then add whatever nuts/ seeds you want. I use 1 handful each of sesame, linseed, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Mix them in then add a 6g sachet of easy blend yeast. Make a well and add about 1 tblsp olive oil and then mix in about 450-500 ml of warm water (not hot!). Add the water slowly and keep mixing until you get the right consistency - it should still be quite dry but pliable.

Then you need to get messy. Knead on a floured surface for about 10 minutes. Lightly flour the bowl and put the ball of dough in, cover with a tea towel and leave somewhere warm to rise for about 30 minutes or until double in size (I use the top of the aga). Make sure your dalmatian does not eat the entire lot as it will cause quite nasty bloating and smelly gas - we know this from experience!

When the dough is doubled in size, line a 2lb loaf tin with greaseproof paper and roughly shape the dough to fit (this will knock a lot of air out of the dough). Squash it down into the tin, brush with egg/milk mix and sprinkle a few more seeds on top. Leave to prove again until doubled again in size.

Bake in a hot-ish oven (about gm 5) for about 30 minutes or until the top is golden and it sounds hollow when you tap the bottom of the loaf.

If you want a nice crust, take the bread out of the tin and put back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

Yummy!