Across the Pondlife

Mmmm, my kitchen smells lush today!




I was meant to be working down my list of things to do today, which included going to John Lewis fabric department after I'd been to a meeting I'd got scheduled. However, best laid plans and all, and let's be honest, a visit to JL, would have only increased my increasing stash of fabric for which I never have enough time to do all the projects I want to do anyway!

Master Beehive the younger came out of school yesterday looking a whiter shade of pale, which for us in the Beehive before we've seen much sun tends to make him look rather like a translucent zombie with all his veins and black shadows leaping off his face!

So he's now pee'd in his bottle to go to the lab as it looks like he might have a UTI! Hurrah!

We're now making banana muffins and banana, ginger and walnut loaf and some beanburgers for dinner tonight.
Sometimes the bananas in my house are eaten as if I've birthed three chimpanzees, other times they are apparently the spawn of the devil - the bananas, not the chimps btw!
So, with an excess or rapidly browning bananas and a houseful of hungry boys, teenagers (I always seem to have an extra teen at the moment!) and a small rugrat that just is "hungreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" all the time - Banana muffins will go down better than a browning fruit that I'm desperately trying to sell as apetising!


I think when this time of year comes around I seem to pull out all the books on preserving, pickling and making the most of gluts of fruit and veg, so the house turns into a small cottage industry.

This week I've made my dress and a fleece for LMB, although the sleeves need removing and wider ones need making as for some reason the sleeves came up ridiculously narrow!

I've made some strawberry icecream and four jars of jam, one of which will be for my friend's birthday next week along with a loaf of sour dough bread from the starter that is just started on the windowsill (of course, this is if it all works!) and a raw cheesecake from the gazillion strawberries that LMB and I picked on Saturday after the beach.

So here are some photos and some recipes for you:

Enjoy:Dress!


Hooded fleece for LMB that needs a bit of a re-touch!

Pretty buttons that asked me to buy them the other day along with some fun fabric that I might line some cord trousers with for a baby boy - who's baby boy is another question though.

RECIPES:

Banana, ginger and walnut bread:

8 oz SR flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs (large)
4 oz soft brown sugar
dash of milk
4 oz butter and a dash of oil
3 mashed bananas
1 handful of walnut pieces
1 tsp ginger

Cream the sugar and fat
Add the eggs
Sieve and add the flour, ginger and baking powder
add the banana and stir in the walnuts

Greased loaf tin - I line mine, but it's up to you.
Oven at 185, pour the batter into the loaf tin and let it bake for around 40 minutes.
You know I am the "throw it in and hope" cook, so watch it go brown (if you smell it then you're nearly done) and bring it out and check with a knife or skewer for it to be clean when you draw it out.

Raw Strawberry Cheesecake

Dead easy this one:
Base:
1 pack of hobnobs (or digestives - but hob nobs are nicer!)
Around 4oz butter

Topping:
1 large tub of marscarpone cheese
Around 600g strawberries - leave two or three to decorate the top
Icing sugar to taste

Melt your butter in a pan
Bash the hob nobs in a bag using a rolling pin so they become weeny crumbs.
Once the butter is melted pour the crumbs into the butter and ensure all the crumbs get coated with the butter.
Tip this buttered base into a shallow dish and press down hard - you have to do this with your hands really as it just sticks to spoons. Then refridgerate it for around 2 hours.

For the topping:
Puree the strawberries in the blender, then I add the icing sugar and whizz up with that in the blender. You can then taste it and add more icing sugar if you want.

Then you're going to pour the puree in with the cheese and stir it up well with a wooden spoon.

Bring your now solid and cooled base out of the fridge and spread the topping on, decorate with your strawberries and put it back in the fridge!

Yum!