home remedies, away from home

Here I am in Annaghmakerrig (the Tyrone Guthrie centre) for a week of hand and mind work so there will no be baking this week (16 may), no show in Knockvicar, but I may well get home a little heavier with all the lovely cooking here. A fellow inmate, American artist Kathleen Ferguson, who is plotting great work on the Silk Road gave me her home remedy against cholesterol and I thought I’d share it on :

3/4 cup organic apple cider vinegar

3/4 cup honey

7 cloves garlic

blend and leave to sit in a cool place for four days.

Take one tablespoon in warm water every day.

(I read a while back in some newspaper that Ralph Fiennes learnt from his grandmother a magical cure against arthritis, a tablespoon of honeygar [a honey/vinegar mix] every day so with the above concoction we may well be killing the two birds. )

In an old house encyclopedia I also read that using only demineralized water helps with arthritis greatly (did someone ever use this?) you need a dehumidifier plugged in any room if you live in the damp northwest of ireland to get a good supply.

As for me here, I am making very new work with material and rusty metal, I don’t know where this is going but I am amused and excited.

 

above all, follow your own nose

When I was in primary school I decided that I would really really like to have pig tails. My mother refused categorically because she said I would look foolish and people would make fun of me, I insisted and insisted and she gave in, I went to school feeling duly foolish and so people did make fun of me. I came home and said I did not ever want pig tails again, my mother had been right.

I turned forty last year, and I now, with grey hair, often sport pig tails, I perhaps look a little ridiculous, far more than the under-7-me probably did, but no one is announcing my demise as I walk out the door, so I get a lot of amused reactions from the world. I believe that pig tails suit the person that I am, and probably suited me very much then. Out of the car window, on my way home today I spotted one of my contemporaries (who had expressed surprise at my—she thought—childish behaviour a few months ago) with pig tails, quite a compliment.
In her second year of primary school I made this funnny multiple pig tail collection for my daughter, quite a martian hair style, she looked really sweet and really hip, I told her so. In one morning her school-going self turned from a slightly shy girl, the smallest girl in her class, into a confident kooky contender that got included in games. I probably mess up in lots of ways as all parents do but I think I do stand by my children in a way no one ever did for me, so it’s not a curse.

If you are shy or underconfident, I have learned, it is always the safest option to brazen it out.

 

periwinkles for dinner : what to do

Not much time to commit anything to this blog, but this is busy time with the animals (12 chicks, one duckling, and counting) and the plants and the grass and also gone out camping with the children what a wonderful thing to do, we had only forgotten to bring plates so we ate out of the pots from an ancient aluminium (I never touch the stuff normally) camping set I bought for 1 euro at a car boot sale in brittany, but we thought of everything else, water, matches, gas stove, eggs, bread, our own goat cheese, knockvicar cucumbers, tomatoes and salad bag, a jar of organic ravioli, a packet of organic instant mash, and a packet of Polish sausages to tickle the fire with. We even professionally managed a little fire and we brought home the rubbish of the people before us : a disposable barbecue, two plastic bottles (one burnt), two cans (one ripped), plastic bags and more. We had made a neat pile of it when we arrived. That’s how I was brought up, I’d hate somebody to think that it was my rubbish, and we had such a lovely time. Picked periwinkles for the dinner back home.

What to do with periwinkles : rinse well, at best keep them in clean sea water for a couple of days at the bottom of the fridge before rinsing well. Cover in cold water, with a couple of bay leaves, salt pepper and chillies, bring to the boil turn the fire off immediately and let cool in the water. Make your own mayonnaise meanwhile, one egg yolk, whisk in a little apple cider vinegar or half a teaspoon of mustard, then add sunflower oil a dribble at a time whisking energetically, add a little olive oil for taste, salt and pepper and a few drops of lemon juice . Use sharp needles to extract the cool cooked beasts. A delight.

 

eating courgette (zucchini) flowers

Don’t ever forget to remove the reproductive organs first (these are bitterly unpalatable). You can cook the flowers in tempura as described below, but they are also delicious stuffed with a cream cheese, fresh herbs and chili mix and then dipped into whisked eggs, and then into polenta, shallow fried.

 

won’t you tempura while I away ?

Next friday, instead of doing the maison djeribi work, I’ll be heading for Cork to get onto the ferry to Roscoff. I’m already looking forward to looking into rock pools, reading and writing, speaking a lot of French, practicing diabolo and going to our precious little organic market in Tregunc (south finistère) on tuesdays from 4 to 7 p.m. I’ll be back on 12 july with freshly baked loaves (but on that day I will set up stall in the Cleen community hall a few minutes down the road [signposted on the day] for a community benefit day jumble sale and more), in the meantime, while I rest my kneading muscles, see below a 1940s red cross poster : ‘save bread, cut it in very thin slices, and use all crusts in soups’.

Knockvicar community organic garden is open every day in my absence, check out the baby cucumbers and make some tempura batter for courgette flowers (mix one egg yolk with 175 ml of water, add 120g of flour [I use hildegard white spelt flour, sifted] and add those little plastic ice cubes that were pretty cool in the seventies allowing you to chill out the mix without diluting it, dip and throw into very hot oil, I used a pan but I am led to believe that a lot of you own a deep fat fryer, for dessert we tempura-ed some banananana, see the smile on our contented faces, but I would recommend sprigs of flat-leaf parsley and also spring onions, let me know how you get on).

If you have more than a minute, check out one great French food blog, do ignore the ads on the left-hand side, though. http://chocolateandzucchini.com

 

Inside and Outside (or what to do with good eggs and leftover bread)

Two recipes for this beautiful bright sunny day, one for the inside and one for the outside.

first ‘French Toast’, or ‘Pain Perdu’, which is certainly a lovely thing to do with mid-week bread, and that I promised Elaine I would put into the blog millions of days ago.

My tip is to mix the ingredients below at night before going to bed, pour the batter into a flat dish and put in your slices of bread to soak, turn them once upside down and leave overnight. Put the dish in the fridge or in a cool place with a cloth over it.

4 large good eggs (not battery)

1/2 cup of milk

2 tablespoons unrefined cane sugar

a large pinch of salt

half a teaspoon of cinnamon

By the time you wake up, the bread will have soaked up nicely and will be more than ready to be fried in butter. You can pour some Maple or Agave syrup in your plate, or enjoy it just like that.

and then My Favourite Shampoo,

My grandfather who died when his youngest grand-child—me—was three months old, was apparently completely grey-haired at the age of 25. I duly started going grey at 17 and the process was rushed along the way obviously by becoming a parent and losing my mother : I was pretty much grey in my thirties (and I am 41 now so I am a professional). Apart from a one year-long string of unsatisfactory chemical experiments with supposedly environmentally friendly liquids and powders, which ended with my chopping all hair off three years ago, I have accepted the colour. Going with nature is always less tiring. I knew from day one that I would never have the patience or the will to attend to my hair as required if I wanted to fake it and I think it is better to go grey early (I just wish more people would do it, but that has a lot to do with the funny world we are in right now). You do become completely invisible, but you can be loud. What I found more difficult to accept, though, is that my hair tends to be rather dry now—not as dry as when I used henna or colour I must add. Even the mildest shampoo electrifies it further, so here is the shampoo that I use now which comes straight from the 1970s when life away from pretrochemicals and drug companies was all the rage (too bad we took a wrong turn along the way, there will be another turn off shortly). I do not know where my mother had read about this, we used it for a while then and then it transited in my head until I was ready to pull all my grey electrified hair out. And yes I even use this when I am travelling. We use the leftover shampoo bottles in the house to make blowing bubbles (I have a good recipe for that too, ask me)

1 good large egg (not battery)

1 tablespoon of rhum

10 drops of organic essential oil of lemon

a squirt of grapefruit seed extract (citricidal)

1 drop of tea tree oil

mix with a fork with a little water, apply on hair, shampoo gently but be warned it will not foam, and leave for a few minutes. Rinse with luke warm water (if like me you do not want strands of cooked egg in your hair) it’s better for your hair never to use water that is too warm anyway. I sometimes still have to use a little oil or friendly body lotion when it is very clean, but the condition is pretty amazing.

 

comfort foods

how to make real hot chocolate before the spring really starts : grate or cut very dark (fair trade and organic) chocolate finely (I would of course recommend amnesty international extra dark 85% chocolate, I use 3 little squares of this for an expresso cup of milk) rinse pot and do not wipe, heat milk to near boiling point, take off the stove and add chocolate, stir in and then stir slowly over a very slow fire. Create a satisfying foamy mousse by rolling the handle of the whisk between your two hands held very flat. Sweeten with a little honey, agave syrup or cane sugar.

Better still add the hot milk to the chocolate that has been melted over boiling water (boil water, turn off, suspend pot with chocolate in above level of water) and then stir in and etc. as above.

how to make bechamel sauce and never fail : melt 50g of butter over medium heat, add 50g of flour (I use white spelt flour) and cook while stirring briskly with wooden spoon for a few minutes. The flour must cook at this stage, the mix will dry a little. Do not worry about overdoing this, this is the crucial cooking stage. Add 500ml of hot milk or broth in one go, yes, this will be fine because the flour is cooked thoroughly. Reduce heat and cook until the whole mix is like goo and all lumps have disappeared, this will take a couple of minutes. To this you add parsley for a parsley sauce, cheese and mustard and macaroni to make macaroni cheese, steamed chard or cauliflower, leftover meat, sweetcorn and peas to make good use of leftovers. It is said that no one commits suicide on a full stomach and in states of low mood carbohydrates are your best friends, don’t rush to readymades, choose your friends well. Grate some dried up bread over this, dot with a few knobs of butter and bake in the oven. The ratio of ingredients is magical, you will never forget it : 50, 50, 500, double it, halve it, triple it, to suit.