Harvest Ratatouille

As I was doing my grocery shopping at ASDA, I noticed something tucked away in the kitchenware aisle. White ceramic casserole dishes, with lids, for only £1. They're oven, dishwasher, microwave, and freezer safe. Obviously I bought one.

Later that afternoon, I went into the garden and was able pick lots of fresh vegetables. Inspired by the desire to use my new casserole dish, I made a ratatouille inspired dish (this is my version using what I had available from my garden--if you want an authentic French ratatouille, click here). I wanted something that was simple, fresh, seasonal, and flavoursome.

I chopped up one red onion, several small shallots, two cloves of garlic, one aubergine (eggplant), one yellow courgette (zuchinni), one green courgette, and a green bell pepper. I also sliced up a selection of runner and green beans from my garden. I like cooking with green tomatoes, so I added small green tomatoes (and left a group of then to roast on top of the dish). I added a tin of chopped tomatoes, and stirred everything up with a selection of fresh chopped herbs. Then I added a sprig of rosemary to the top. I cooked it with the lid on for about forty-five minutes, until everything seemed well cooked, and then I left it in the oven for a few minutes longer with the lid off.

To try it yourself, feel free to alter it slightly to include whatever you grow in your garden, or have in your fridge that needs using.

Serve with whatever type of carbohydrate takes your fancy. It tastes good served with brown rice, French bread (and a creamy cheese like Camembert), or can be served with pasta or even couscous or quinoa.

This meal is extremely healthy and full of flavour, so enjoy!

Global Warming

I don't want to get too in-depth about this issue because there are so many great sources out there about climate change already. Here are just a few reliable, respected sources: the BBC, the United Nations, and The Environmental Protection Agency.

The thing is, most of us look at this as a huge problem that we can't individually influence, and so don't bother doing the things we can do, and the problem continues to esculate at an alarming rate. WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. If everybody tried to be a little more environmentally friendly at home in their daily lives, it would add up to huge effects that could really help our planet.

Here are a few things that we can all do.

Try to reduce and reuse.
Make items, like clothing, last longer.
Cut back on what we send to landfill by composting and recycling.
Use less electricity and water.
Use less chemicals and more environmentally friendly products.

Everything adds up either for good or bad. Even the little things can make a difference.

Chocolate Cupcakes!

Chocolate Cupcake Recipe

Ingredients:

170g flour

100g cocoa powder

170g sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

120g butter

1 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

1. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together. Mix well.

2. Cream together the sugar and wet ingredients in a seperate bowl.

3. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredient mixture. Add a little at a time and mix well.

4. Bake at 180C/350F for about 15 minutes. I used reusable silicone cupcake cases, but you can use the disposable paper ones as well.

To decorate:

I made a chocolate buttercream icing, but added in marshmellow cream and a generous splash of vanilla extract. Pipe onto the cupcakes. I bought sparkly pink sprinkles and sugar hearts to sprinkle over the top.

Hurray For Lavender

Lavender sugar has been one of my favourite new ingredients this summer. I had never cooked with it before, and now I love experimenting with it. Lavender has such a delicate flavour. It's sweet without being sickly. It makes desserts taste light and refreshing rather than heavy. It tastes like warm summer days lying on your back looking for shapes in the clouds and hearing bumblebees drift from flower to flower.

So, before the summer is completely over and all of the lavender flowers are finished for the year, I needed to include a post about lavender sugar. You can buy it at high-end supermarkets (like Waitrose) or specialty shops. Or you could get a lavender plant and make your own.

When it's in bloom, snip off the blossoms and dry. I used a dehydrator, but you can also do it in the oven, or even in the sun if the weather cooperates. It helps if you dry them still on the stems as the flowers are quite small. Once they are completely dried out, put the flowers (not stalks) in an airtight glass jar, and then add sugar. You can use regular white sugar, but I prefer using the finer caster sugar. The flowers are completely edible, and will flavour the sugar. You need about a teaspoon of dried flowers per cup of sugar, but that's only a guideline.

As long as the jar is kept free of moisture, it will last for a very long time.

Cow & Gate Vouchers

So I don't know if I have any readers in the Republic of Ireland. If any of you are Irish, I don't know if you have kids. Here's the thing. I have 5 vouchers for Cow and Gate Growing Up Milk Powder worth 2 Euros each. That's 10 Euros that somebody can save. I hate to throw them away just because I'm not in Ireland.

Cow and Gate makes really high quality baby food and baby formula. Growing Up Milk is designed for babies from their first birthdays, and provides a transition for toddlers between breastmilk or formula and cow's milk. Growing Up Milk is nutritionally balanced for toddlers.

If you're interested in these vouchers, let me know and I am happy to mail them to you.

Lavender and Blackberry Birthday Cake

Today was my sister-in-law's birthday. When I told my daughters that we were going over for her birthday party, my three-year-old informed me that we needed to make a birthday cake. So we decided to make a light, seasonal birthday cake. My girls had a great time helping me to measure, stir, and taste-test.

Lavender has been one of my favourite ingredients this sugar (look for a separate blog post about lavender sugar). Blackberries are in season right now and delicious. I love how they seem to grow everywhere and you can just pick a few and eat them still warm from the sun. I decided to combine these two seasonal flavours and make a blackberry and lavender cake.

I made two thin round cakes in sandwich tins. The cake itself was lavender flavoured. For the basic cake recipe, click here. To make the cake extra fluffy, I used half plain flour and half self-raising flour. After making the dough, I folded in fresh blackberries (about a cup picked fresh from the garden).

When the cakes were baked and cooled, I spread a layer of blackberry and lavender compote in the middle and then sandwiched the cakes together. I had made the blackberry and lavender compote previously, but you could make it while the cakes are baking. I didn't follow an exact recipe because I was making it up as I went, but basically I cooked down blackberries with a little water. When the fruit was soft, I added some lavender sugar and a little caster sugar, as well as a few drops of vanilla. I'm not giving exact amounts because I didn't measure anything. Just taste it as you go. It should taste predominantly of fruit with a just a hint of floral sweetness. Cook until it is compote consistency--not as set as jam, but not too liquidy either. I like to have pieces of fruit still in mine, but you can mush it down if you want a smoother compote.

Then I made a frosting (a mixture of buttercream and cream cheese frosting with some red and blue food colouring added) and covered the cake.

Decorating this cake was really fun. As it was a blackberry cake, I decided to use blackberries in the decorating. I picked some berries--including some still on the branch with the leaves attached. I stuck the leaves into the cake, and then piled the extra berries around the base. As my sister-in-law often goes by 'Bea' and so likes anything with bees, I added a cute little bumblebee to it. To make him, I painted with yellow and black food colouring on edible wafer paper, and then cut out around him. Finally, I wrote 'Happy Birthday' on with green icing.

The cake turned out to be a big hit. She loved the bumblebee theme, and everybody enjoyed eating it. The end cake was light, fluffy, fruity, and completely seasonal.

Corn Chowder

Sweetcorn is coming into season! If you garden, you're probably watching the ears of sweetcorn with anticipation. Even if you buy them, you can take advantage of corn being in season. When I have lots of corn, I love making corn chowder. I made up this recipe for it a few years ago when we had a huge crop of corn from our garden, and it's since become a family favourite. My corn chowder is vegetarian, and has brie in it for an extra rich flavour. The cheese and corn really compliment each other.

For my corn chowder recipe, click here.

Serve hot with a thick slice of fresh bread and enjoy.