Saturday 3 June 2017

Ugh! I bought a packet of sweetened soya milk by mistake instead of unsweetened.

The unsweetened variety is lovely on cereal in the morning but it's not nice sweetened!  
I've always felt that if people want to make something sweeter then they can add sugar (honey, syrup, dried fruit, apple juice, whatever) themselves and don't need it added by the manufacturer.
I've used the rogue packet of sweetened soy milk to make a rather nice rice pudding in the slow cooker and here's my recipe:
Image result for soya rice pudding
SOYA RICE PUDDING
900ml sweetened soya milk
6 level tablespoons pudding rice
1 tsp of butter (or vegetarian margarine)
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Cook in slow cooker for a few hours - it's very nice.  Or you could use part soya milk and part creamy milk.


Tuesday 24 May 2016

Instead of making a pizza try this

Pizza Bread Bowl recipe
Pizza Bread Bowl
1 bread boule
1 cup marinara sauce
8 oz fresh mozzarella
6 oz pepperoni
½ onion, sliced
½ cup basil
1 cup cooked sausage
1 green bell pepper, sliced
1 cup white cheddar, shredded

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Slice the top of the bread boule off and remove the insides. 
  3. Spread ½ cup of the marinara on the bottom of the boule, then layer with half of the mozzarella, 5 ounces of the pepperoni, onions, basil, sausage, peppers, the other ½ cup of marinara, the remaining mozzarella, and half of the white cheddar, and place the cap of the bread boule on top.
  4. Wrap the bread bowl in foil, then press with a heavy object for 30 minutes. 
  5. Remove the foil and sprinkle the remaining cheddar and pepperoni on top. 
  6. Bake for 30 minutes, until cheese is golden brown. Cool for 10 minutes, slice, then serve!


https://www.buzzfeed.com/alvinzhou/pizza-bowl?utm_term=.ku30yBjyE#.mmRwb2Yba

Wednesday 27 April 2016

VINEGAR DOESN'T CUT THE MUSTARD WITH HARD-CORD BINDWEED

Image result for helen yemm
Helen Yemm is one of my favourite gardening writers.  Her column, or rather page, appears each weekend in the Sunday Telegraph gardening pages with her sage words of advice.

This week she also added her opinions to the latest news that Bristol Council is spraying its weeds with vinegar as a trial.  

As one local resident observed, the only thing being trialled is local residents' patience as the place absolutely stinks of vinegar.  (See the Bristol Post newspaper: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/council-spraying-vinegar-Bristol-stop-weeds/story-29153503-detail/story.html)

I like vinegar.  A generous dash over the battered fish. Nothing better.  But would I want my local council spraying tanks of the stuff around the streets in an attempt to ward off weeds?  

No.  So I understand the bemusement in Bristol, where the city authorities have sworn off chemical weedkillers in favour of a 'natural' vinegar solution.  Apparently the whole place stinks like a chip shop.


Bindweed
bindweed one of the 'baddies'
Not that there is anything wrong with using vinegar: I use it on moss in my garden, and it burns off annual weeds.  But it won't be as effective as the chemical alternative - glyphosate (more commonly known as Roundup) - which is beloved by many gardeners for tackling notorious bogey species such as ground elder and bindweed.

These are the pests that have brittle, spontaneously regenerating, perennial roots that infuriatingly infest and get entangled in garden plants.

You can see why you might want to avoid chemical weedkiller.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer recently decided that glyphosate is 'probably carcinogenic to humans'.  

But, then, it has given the same designation to coffee, mobile phones, aloe vera extract and - yes really - pickled vegetables.
Since then, the European Food Safety Authority has decided that the stuff is actually  'unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans'.


Image result for horsetail
Horsetail - another baddie
The reality is that this is not a dispute about cancer but about our infatuation with 'natural' products and solutions.  And when we are reduced to spraying condiments on our city streets, I suggest that this infatuation has gone too far.

This is the kind of debate that always pits homespun remedies (good) against chemicals (bad).  Just the mention of a word like glyphosate is enough to have yogurt eaters (me!) hissing as they would a pantomime villain.  No doubt they also favour herbal poultices and the application of leeches over a course of antibiotics.  But some chemicals are great.  


Image result for couchgrass
Couchgrass, another pernicious weed
Glyphosate kills any undesirable perennial greenery on contact without rendering the ground unusable for weeks afterwards.  It saves gardeners many hours of back-breaking forking around.

These benefits, however, have not been enough to prevent Waitrose from being pressured into removing glyphosate products from its shelves.  This despite the fact that traces of the chemical are apparently present in the bread it sells (because the chemical is also used by farmers as a pre-harvest desiccant to increase yields).

This is all the wrong way round.  If we want to ban chemical weedkiller, we should restrict its use in agriculture, so it doesn't get into our food.  But don't punish us innocent gardeners by proscribing one of our most effective 'little helpers'.

Our beloved activity keeps us fit and gives us a great feeling of well-bing.  In an age where just about everything else we do is deemed 'dangerous' (don't get me started on the health and safety lots), it should be heartily encouraged. And though we may enjoy a glass or two after the pruning is done, we gardeners are a pretty responsible bunch.

Image result for helen hemm composting
Most of us proudly, consciously, do our bit recycling and composting.  We don't want to drench the place in weedkiller, but we want to have recourse to a little squirt here and there.  It's a modern convenience.  

What's wrong with that?  They'll be forcing us to mow the lawn with a scythe next.


See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/how-to-grow/roundup-ban-vinegar-just-doesnt-cut-the-mustard-with-hard-core-b/

and see Helen Yemm on twitter @helenYemm.

When I was growing up in deepest darkest Cornwall, back in the 1950s, an old lady who lived near to use used to pour her boiling vegetable water onto weeds to kill them.  Instead of straining the down the sink she used to strain the veg straight onto the front cobbles of her garden.

Of course it is possible to repeatedly dig up the worst weeds, every ten or so days and probably for years.  But glyphosate seems to be the only other way ........... For other opinions of how to tackle those bad weeds: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/killing-weeds-gardening-1092615.html
and
http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/problems/weeds/ground-elder/469.html

Monday 25 April 2016

Image result for blackberries
I've been lucky in the past two autumns to be able to pick lots and lots of blackberries.  
Their natural accompaniment is apples, as in apple and blackberry pie, apple and blackberry crumble which we could eat for ever.  
However, I've just found another recipe using blackberries*, which look interesting.


BLACKBERRY PUDDING
25g caster sugar
Image result for waitrose blackberries pudding2 tsp ground cinnamon
450g blackberries, washed
8 thin-cut slices of day-old, quality white bread
50g unsalted butter, at room temperature
grated zest of 1 large lemon
300ml milk
142ml pot double cream
2 large eggs, beaten well
25g demerara sugar


  1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4.
  2. Mix caster sugar with 1 tsp of cinnamon and sprinkle half of this mixture into the base of a deep 1.5 litre ovenproof dish.
  3. Speread bread on one side with butter and cut each slice into two triangles, leaving crusts on.
  4. Arrange half the bread in overlapping slices over the blckberries and press down to squash the fruit slightly.
  5. Add remaining blackberries then sprinkle the rest of the sugar/cinnamon mixture, along with the lemon zest, over the top.
  6. Add remaining layer of bread and press down.
  7. use a fork to lightly whisk together the milk, cream and beaten eggs, then carefully pour the mixture evenly over the bread.
  8. Mix remaining cinnamon with demerara sugar and scatter over the top.
  9. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the crust is golden and crisp and the fruit is bubbling.
  10. Serve with fresh pouring cream.
this can be made in advance and kept covered in the fridge.  sprinkle demerara topping on just before cooking.  could also use raspberries instead of the blackberries.  could substitute candied peel for the cinnamon.



* many thanks for Waitrose