Happy Easter!

Hello Friends,
Just a quick one today to share a few pictures & to welcome in the Spring.

The Easter 'tree' is up & the decomposing white fluffy chick who nearly went in the bin last time has lived to see another year! Despite the terrible weather forecast for Easter weekend, this morning began with promising amounts of blue sky & sunshine, so I had a little walk down the garden to soak up those early signs of spring. So many brimstone butterflies already this year, our old pear tree full of wood pigeons 'getting it on', & judging by the amount of new taddies in the pond, the neighbourhood frogs have been getting it on for some time! The daffodils were blowing brightly, a number of them in my courtyard containers having over-toppled, fetching up in a vase indoors........

......which is when I noticed that all of them are double blooms. I bought a bag of pretty much bog-standard bulbs, so can only assume the garden centre staff had either wrongly labelled them, or a customer had 'helpfully' muddled up the displays. Either way, these are beautiful & have produced 2 & the occasional 3 flowers from each bulb. 

First bluebell buds just popping too.

I've done a bit of baking this morning - just bread, & as my Easter cake was eaten yesterday at our Family Day, I've baked a quick semolina cake filled with home-made raspberry jam, which we've just sampled warm with a fresh cafetiere. Ooooh, simple pleasures! Am intending a day of relaxation & leisure today.......nothing more energetic than reading, knitting & cat-stroking.......
.......talking of which..........

The Big Hairy Half of the Relationship snapped Albert Whiskers enjoying a brief 'Easter moment' this morning:

Eggs & baubles all intact. He is very tired this morning, having had a night on the tiles. There's a new cat on the block......quite a chunky gingernut with a white bib & paws. I spotted him last night trotting past our house, & given the cautious look he gave up our front drive, I am assuming that Ginger Newbie & Albert Whiskers are already acquainted. 
He did raise sufficient energy earlier to enjoy a few 'Dreamies'........

......but apart from that, I am not expecting him to surface until Tummytime.
A very Happy Easter to all our friends & family, whether you are taking part in the Christian festival or celebrating as we do, the return of green & lovely things, we wish you a peaceful & happy time.

C x

Recycled coffee bags

Hello Friends,
Well here we are, second day of Spring, & that glimpse of sun at the weekend has faded back to dismal chilly grey. Plenty of signs of spring in the garden, though, including much amphibious activity in our wildlife pond.

We didn't have any tadpoles last year because a heron fancied a bit of froggy caviar & that was the end of it. All of it! The first tadpoles are just hatching now. The snowdrops have been replaced by narcissus, & I've been busy clearing & replanting my flower borders, making use of all the free self-seeded goodies, such as primroses, foxgloves, aquilegia & verbena bonariensis. 

The veggie plantlets are doing well, but it's still too cold for them in my unheated greenhouse unless they are well wrapped up. I use an old long muslin curtain & plastic bottle cloches to cover them on chilly days, as this lets the light through, but they need an extra layer at night for at least a couple of weeks or so I decided to try making an 'emergency' blanket from recycled coffee bags. I'd heard organic gardener Bob Flowerdew talking about this a while back on Radio 4's gardening programme. Here at the People & Cats Republic, we try to recycle as much as possible, & I do think there is a personal responsibility to think about one's household waste stream, especially for those traditionally non-recyclable materials which are regularly bought & consumed. Ground coffee bags fall into this category. We are both coffee gannets, & unless one buys the more artisan/farmer's market-type coffees, the packaging is usually plasticized film bags which are not accepted in council recycling collections.

OK, plenty of materials. The next job was to turn the bags inside out so that the shiny silver inner is on the outside. Some brands of coffee bag have a much duller grey metallic inner, so I rejected all of those because I wanted this project be reflective for additional heat & light.

This is an emergency blanket 'layer' for baby plants. It doesn't need to win any beauty contests, so all I did next was staple the bags together. I didn't cut them open. I kept the double thickness because even with my limited scientific thinking, it seems that the bag would trap a layer of air & additional insulation. Once I'd constructed a large enough sheet to cover my current batch of seedlings, I tested it out. The seedlings were moved from an upstairs windowsill above a night radiator to our chilly conservatory (unheated when not in use), & covered with their new shiny emergency blanket.

Even cloched as they are with plastic bottles, etc, aubergines, chillies & tomato plantlets can wither in the night-time chill of our conservatory. An early next morning check-in found them still upright & as happy as could be expected. I am now adding coffee bags to this so that I end up with a blanket which will cover the whole of my greenhouse bench. Yes, I could go to the garden centre & buy a big length of horticultural fleece, but there are many things I'd prefer to buy, & there's such a satisfaction in re-purposing rubbish into useful items, both keeping it out of landfill & fulfilling a gardening need. 

I was planning to take a new up-to-date photo of Albert Whiskers today, to include in this blog post, but he's disappeared! He went off in a huff  about an hour ago, because he accidentally gobbled some some of the meat he's been wilfully refusing to eat for the last two days & I think he's really mad with himself. I'd already re-chopped it (fellow cat-owners will know about this) & mashed it up with a spoonful of water in case it was getting dry. No luck. I then tried the often successful 'Dreamies' method: 1) Human shakes the 'Dreamies'. 2) Cat comes running. 3) Two 'Dreamies' are implanted vertically deep into the offending meat. 4) Cat eats 'Dreamies' & meat. 

Well, at first, he wasn't going for it. He studied his bowl in forensic detail before managing to extract one 'Dreamie' while barely touching the meat. Pleased with his ability to see through my cunning plan, he went for the 2nd 'Dreamie' a little too quickly, had a tiny taste of meat, & before he knew it, he'd gobbled half the bowl. Oh yes, Me - 1, Albert Whiskers - Nil. He stomped off through the catflap shortly afterwards & hasn't been seen since. I suspect he is restoring his sense of self-worth by marauding some of the smaller neighbouring cats. So no new photo to share.......

........but here's an old one which never fails to make me smile. 

Hope we see some sunshine soon. Happy gardening......if that's your thing. 

Until Easter,

C x

Yay! Spring rhubarb time!

Hello Friends,
Ha! You thought you were going to make it through this month without me boring you with rhubarb, didn't you? Wrong! The mild winter really put a rocket under the spring rhubarb here. I covered the tiniest signs of pink with the forcing crock back in January, & by the end of February, the stems were forcing up the lid to push their leaves through. It took all of 5 seconds to pop the crock in place - so worth it for some early fresh fruit from the garden. There is nothing like that burst of shocking pink, topped with lime green leaves, on lifting the crock while most of the veggie garden is still cold, bare earth.

Over a kilo of stems, which wasn't bad going considering that I forced it twice last year & also pulled a lot of mature summer stems too, mostly for the freezer. The spring crop has a more delicate flavour & it's a bit of a waste to stew it - not that I don't like stewed rhubarb, it's nice on yoghurt, muesli, for crumbles, etc, but it can loose a lot of its colour & look a bit sludgy. I sliced & baked mine, a la Delia. I just cut the stems into chunks, put them in a large flat dish - I use my lasagne dish - squeeze over the juice of a small orange or satsuma, (I grated over a bit of the zest too), half a tsp of ground ginger, then sprinkle with about 75g sugar. The important thing is not to add any water, so that it cooks in its own juices.

You can see how it goes into the oven, looking really pink. It needs about 40 mins at Gas 4. When it comes out, do you see a dish of brown string? No! It will have kept its gorgeous pinkmongous hues & you will be instantly looking around for a spoon!

You can see from the juices that there is no need for added water. I divided mine up into little pots & froze for desserts, for topping porridge, etc. I only baked the chunky stems. There were a few weedier ones, so in the spirit of our zero food-waste policy here at the People & Cats Republic, I chopped those & made a quick batch of rhubarb & ginger mini-muffins. A dollop of lemon icing on the top & they were good to go......most of them into the freezer, for nice home-baked low-fat little additions to packed lunches, picnics or just for those 'I really, really need cake, but not the 400 calories that come with it' moments!
So yes, I've been playing with rhubarb. The forcing crock has been stood down now until next January, & the rhubarb crown has already started putting out maincrop stems. We have only one crown & it provides ample rhubarb for two people for no expense or effort whatsoever. It gets a few spades of our garden compost chucked over it around November & a can or two of home-brewed comfrey stink during the growing season, & that's it.

Oh, & I've been knitting more socks............

......which have absolutely nothing to do with rhubarb!

Have a good week all,
C x

Cappucino mousse, anyone?

Hello Friends,
I've been meaning to share this recipe since St. Valentine's Day, but somehow the last couple of weeks seem to have vanished in a time-warp of knitting cats, rhubarb, seed-sowing & meetings. 

I love to collect recipes & experiment with cooking new things, but I'm also a great re-visitor of my more 'vintage' recipes - those dishes I used to make frequently in the past, but have fallen out of my immediate repertoire. For Valentine's Day, the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship, no stranger to the kitchen himself, announced that he was cooking a meal & that all I would need to 'bring' was myself & dessert. This seemed a good time to resurrect my cappucino mousses.....a dessert I clearly hadn't made for at least 17 years, as the BHHOTR rather sniffily informed me that he'd never had the opportunity to try one!

There's a delightful kitschness to these, with their sprinkled snowy-swirled tops & little spoons in the saucers (sorry, I went a bit 'Nigella' there, for a moment.....), as they are served in coffee cups. The original recipe suggested using demi-tasse cups, which is essential if you need to serve 6 people, but if you are serving 4, or feel like making a pig of yourself, then standard cups are fine.

I've seen various mousse recipes over the years which seem to involve more la-di-dah fancypants preparation than I usually want to be bothered with. Not this one. Even people who say they 'can't cook' need not feel threatened, as the culinary skills set is so basic. Can you make a cup of instant coffee? Melt chocolate? Use an electric whisk? There's really no more to it than that.

Cappucino Mousses
175g dark chocolate (I use Waitrose or Co-op own-brand (fairtrade), though the well-known alleged tax-avoiding variety also works well. Avoid the very high-cocoa content premium brands for this, as I sometimes find they don't work as well in old recipes compiled before these brands became common-place)
1 tbsp good quality instant coffee granules
3 tbsp boiling water
2 egg yolks
5 egg whites 
60g caster sugar
5 tbsp double cream
142ml (ish) extra double cream to decorate
1 tsp cocoa powder

Break the chocolate into pieces & put in a heatproof bowl with the sugar. Dissolve the coffee in the 3 tbsp boiling water & add it to the chocolate. Now melt the coffee, chocolate & sugar together in the bowl set over a small pan of simmering water. 
While that's going on, separate the eggs & eat the leftover chocolate. You're doing the work making the dessert aren't you? Chef's anti-oxidants. Put the egg whites in a large bowl & the egg yolks in a mug. Check how the chocolate's getting on. 
When the chocolate has melted, remove the bowl from the heat, & stir in the egg yolks. The chocolate is unlikely to be hot enough to scramble the yolks, but stir them in well, just in case. Put this mixture aside to cool for 10 mins.
Meanwhile, use an electric whisk to whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. If you can turn the bowl upside down over your head without them moving, they are probably stiff enough. Rinse the beaters & in a small bowl, whisk the 5tbsp of cream until stiff, & fold it into the chocolate mixture. 
Next take as big a blob of the egg whites as you can fit on a tablespoon without being silly about it, & fold it into the chocolate mixture. Now using a spatula, carefully scrape the contents of the chocolate bowl into the big egg white bowl & fold together gently until everything is nicely combined.
Spoon the mixture into 6 demi-tasse or 4 standard size coffee cups & leave to set in the fridge overnight. 

Next day - At some point before you want to eat them, whisk the rest of the cream until stiff, then pipe a swirl on top of each cup. Dust with a titchy bit of cocoa powder before serving. Pop each cup on a saucer with a teaspoon & let your guests think you have spent ages making something complicated.

Two useful things about this recipe - I like things which can be made the day before so I can get ahead. It leaves more time for a glass or two of wine when, with less foresight, you could have been running out of time. Technically, this should set in a few hours, but overnight is the really reliable option. Secondly, if you have any mousses leftover (i.e you have invited hairshirt-wearing dessert phillistines to your house), they will be fine in the fridge for another day. You might have had a really crap day at work by then, or or spent all day trying to avoid self-servative bozos on the telly, so a little treatypoo in the fridge awaiting the arrival of your frazzled self might be just what you need!
So there we have it - a slightly retro, very lovely dessert that I wish I'd re-discovered earlier. 
Did it go down well with the BHHOTR? It really did (until I suggested that I might serve it in our tiny espresso cups next time!)

Well, for Albert Whiskers fans, this has been his level of industry for pretty much all of today. It's been an all-day mixture of rain, sleet & sunshine, so he managed to blag the sunny end of the sofa & inspected the back of his eyelids for a few hours. However, he's now gone off to continue a Very Important Mission - to try & find the robbing gobbler who snuck through his catflap last night when everyone was immersed in watching the finale of 'Shetland' & stole his biscuits! He has taken an extremely dim view of this, has been over every centimetre of the interloper's route in, & I can only imagine what a pasting he (because it was probably Splodgy) or she (because it could just have been Champers) is going to get when he catches up with them! You'd think the smaller cats would avoid our house by now, as we always adopt these older ex-street cats, but they don't seem to learn.
Oh well, it feels like time to light the fire & put the kettle one.
Have a good weekend, everyone,
C x