A new tunic top

 My Big girl just turned 7 and for her birthday I wanted to make her something spacial.  I was given this very lovely, soft fabric from liberty which I used to make her a tunic.  I wanted to keep it as a surprise, this meant I could not measure her without her getting suspicious.  So instead I used one of her tops to get the measurements and made it a little bigger, just to be sure. Luckily it fitted and she is very happy with it.  

Chocolate Chip Cookies

  The other day I discovered how easy it is to make really delicious chocolate chip cookies.  I looked on the internet and found lots of different ways to make them, most of them had a bit too much chocolate in them.  So I have adapted the recipe to be more child friendly by putting a bit less chocolate and sugar in and adding some nuts.  
Ingredients: 
Makes 12 cookies 
125g soft butter 
100g sugar
100g chocolate chips
50g hazelnuts
50g ground almonds 
150g spelt flour
1 egg

I first creamed the butter and the sugar then added the chocolate and the nuts. 


The girls help with the mixing and when it was all nicely mixed together we added the flour and the ground almonds then a nice cold egg from the fridge. We used an ice-cream scoop to make bolls of cookie dough on the baking paper.  When we had 12, we baked them in the oven for 20 minutes until they were golden brown.    


They came out of the oven felt and round looking just like the cookies you can buy and testing even better.    

They were so good that we have made then 3 times in a week.  We didn't eat them all though, we gave some of them away.

Summer

 Today the sun was not shining and we were feeling a little cold.  I am starting to wonder where the summer has gone.  So we decided to bring a bit of our own sunshine into the yurt today by picking some beautiful sunflowers.  They always help to cheer up a grey day.
  I hope the sun comes back to shine for us soon because we are not ready for autumn just yet. 

Chocolate orange sticks

 I have made chocolate orange sticks a few times now and they never fail to taste great.  They have a pungent bitter sweet taste that I just can't get enough of. They take some time to make but it is so worth the effort.  


Ingredients:
3-4 orange(peel only), peeled and cut into sticks. 
200g of sugar
200g plain dark chocolate
The orange peel needs to be cooked and softened but if they are boiled too long in the same water they become very bitter. Put the peel sticks in a pan, cover them with water and bring them to boil. As soon as the water begins to boil, pour it out and add new water. Repeat this twice. The third time add the sugar and simmer for 30 minutes or until the peel is soft. In one of my recipes it says to leave the peel over night in the sugar water, but I have never done this because I am not patient enough.  but I think leaving them over night or at least for a few hour will help to soften and sweeten them even more.  
 Pour out the excess water and place the orange peel sticks on a wire rack to cool and dry.

 When they have dried, melt the chocolate and dip all the orange peel sticks in one by one and place them on baking paper to cool.  When they are cool put them in the fridge for an hour or so to harden.  They melt very quickly so it is best to leave them in the fridge until they get eaten.  
I also had lots of strawberries so I dipped some of them in the left over chocolate.  Together they both made a very nice little treat to go with the coffee at our sewing group.    

Pickled Radishes

  A few weeks ago we were eating in a very good restaurant in Tallinn, Estonia, it's focus was in making local food using local ingredients.  We ate some really delicious food and one of the many things that  impressed me was the homemade pickled radishes.  When I got home I was inspired to make some using some of the many radishes over growing in our greenhouse. I looked in all my preserves books for a recipe but didn't find one, so I tried the internet and eventually found a few really simple recipes.  

Nettle Soup

 To most people stinging nettles are a very annoying weed that grows at the end of the garden and stings every time you try to get rid of it. However stinging nettles are also a very nutritious plant full of vitamins and minerals, especially iron. They also contain more protein then any other native plant.

 My girls have been ill for a few weeks now with coughs and colds, so I have made them some very delicious nettle soup to fill them up with goodness.

 Using gloves I picked the tops of some young nettles. I then fried some onion and added a few potatoes and some celery. I added some frozen chicken stock I had made a while ago. After everything was cooked, I added the nettles and let it simmer for a few more minutes.  I used a soup blender to blended it all, this is necessary as the nettles are quite fibrous.  This soup has a really delicious and earthy taste.  You can just taste the goodness as you eat and best of all the girls really love it.   

Granola

Now that the weather is warmer my girls are not so keen on eating porridge for  breakfast anymore but I have lots of oats waiting to be eaten. They want to eat muesli again, so I got the idea to try and make some granola using the leftover oats.  I found lots of different recipes using different ingredients and I came to the conclusion that granola can be made with anything you fancy.  I made it using whatever I could fined in the cupboard. 

A Peg Bag

The other day I finely had a bit of creative inspiration, so I  dusted off the sowing machine and got busy.  The last few weeks have been warm and sunny, the perfect weather for drying the washing outside. But after the winter I found that most of my pegs were lost or broken because I always leave them on the washing line.  So I have bought myself some nice new pegs and I made made myself and nice new peg bag. 

I bought some oil cloth fabric so that if I leave it out in the rain (which I am sure I will) it will still keep its shape and hopefully the pegs dry. 
I used a child's size coat hanger and cut around it to get the shape of the bag.  



I then cut a whole and hemmed the edge of it.  Then I sewed the bag together turned it the right way around and put my coat hanger in. And then most importantly, I hung the washing out.  ;-)