Ice-cream weather (finally!)

A neighbour gave me some spearmint for the garden, just after we moved here (nearly four years ago, now - doesn't seem possible!). It's been fairly well behaved until now, but this year it has lived up to its invasive reputation. I spent some time today pulling a fair proportion of it up. But it seemed a shame to throw it on the compost heap, and the summer weather has arrived at last, so I thought I'd use it to make mint choc chip ice cream.

I found a recipe online from the ever-reliable David Lebovitz (well, in ice-cream matters, anyway, I can't speak for his personal life). It called for 80 grams of mint leaves, which is pretty much exactly what I had pulled from the garden. You steep the mint with hot cream, milk and sugar for an hour, after which time it looks like this:

You can see how the milk is turning a pale greenish colour. After an hour of steeping you squeeze the mint leaves dry, extacting every possible drop of colour and flavour. What's left of the leaves makes a very compact ball!

The infused milk is then used to make a custard with eggs, in the usual way. Because our chickens' egg yolks are so orange, the resulting colour of the custard is more yellowy-green than you'd think of for mint ice cream. Chartreuse, even:

The mixture is then frozen in an ice-cream maker and melted dark chocolate stirred into it. By the time it's been churned, the green tinge has pretty much gone and it could be just vanilla. It hasn't lost the mintiness, though. Oh, no.

Now I've never really liked mint choc chip ice-cream. But this one, I feel differently about. It's really fresh: a perfect way to welcome summer.

Tree news

We obtained a dozen very small white pine seedlings from Quinte Conservation in early May at the sidewalk sale in Deseronto. Mike and I planted them on the 8th of the month in an area of young ash and cedar trees on the east side of the hayfield. The soil was very wet at the time and we've left them alone since, although I have been vaguely worrying about whether they'd drowned in all the rain we've been having. Today I checked on them and was pleased to see that most of them are still alive and the majority are showing signs of new growth:

We've planted a few trees since we've been here, and have had varying degrees of success. We've lost about five of the 20 orchard trees we planted in 2008 and two out of the three sugar maples which we put in last year. I hope these will have better luck!

Plot progress

The potato bed was at last dry enough for me to risk sowing the seeds, yesterday. There was room in the bed for most of my tomato plants, too:

This area was previously two separate beds, but we combined them into one last year, to save Mike some of the effort of keeping the grass strimmed in the summer. We added the autumn-made chicken manure to this bed at the end of the season last year, so the potatoes and tomatoes should find plenty of richness in this soil.

I also sowed carrots, peas and greens in one of the other beds in this area. I don't expect the peas to work - they nearly always get eaten by rodents before they germinate, but hope has triumphed over experience again. One of our neighbours has given us a load of tomato cages, which I hope will work as pea supports. They're too small, in my opinion, to function well as supports for tomatoes - I prefer to stake those, as you can see in the photo.

In the orchard, the fruit trees are flowering at a more sensible time of year than they did in 2010 - two weeks earlier than this.

And up in the woods, the ash trees' leaves are bursting into growth. Everything is looking super-lush as a result of all the rain we've had this Spring.

Postcard from Cambridge, MA

I'm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a meeting. I haven't had a lot of time to explore, but I did take a few pictures as I walked around the city last night and on my way to the meeting this morning.

Some interesting old buildings:

A truly hideous lamp for sale (if you can see it past the reflection):

And, perhaps most worrying of all, a risk of zombie chickens:

Soggy...

It warmed up a bit last week and there was sunshine. I didn't always need a coat on when I went outside and I started planting out onions, corn and my brassica plants.

This weekend has been mainly wet.

The lower vegetable garden still has its winter pond in the centre. We've done a good job of lifting the beds out of the water, but they're still too cold and wet to sow anything in. The big bed on the right is supposed to be for potatoes. Luckily, it's been cold in Alberta, too, so the seed potatoes weren't shipped as early as they usually would be. They haven't got here yet, although Canada Post informs me that they have now reached Ontario, so they should be here this week.

On the far left are the brassica plants I put in on Thursday evening. The soil was really too wet, but they were getting too big in their greenhouse nursery bed, so I took a chance and put them in the ground. I should have left them where they were.

Even the dandelions have closed their flowers in purse-lipped disgust:

About the only living things that look to be appreciating all the rain are the toadstools it's brought forth:

Could do better

I don't want to be ungrateful. I mean, she clearly put some work into it. But you'd have to have quite a tiny appetite to be satisfied with that egg for breakfast.

Nettles for lunch

I thought I'd test out this recipe when the children weren't home, as I can just imagine their faces if I suggested a dish featuring nettles. Well, actually I don't have to imagine it, as the expression on their father's when I told him what was for lunch today was probably a fair representation.

But I persevered, anyway, adapting a recipe from the Fat of the Land blog for stinging nettle ravioli and sage butter. I simplified the filling, using just some soft goat cheese rather than ricotta, egg and parmesan. The trick with nettles is to blanch them for a minute, to neutralise the sting. After that, you squeeze out the water and can cut them up as you would spinach and mash them with the cheese and seasoning.

I used some lasagne strips that I made with the pasta machine the other night. They're very narrow for lasagne, but seemed to be a good size for ravioli. The machine came with four little ravioli cutters, so it was just a case of piling the filling in small heaps on one strip of pasta, then wetting its matching strip, lining it up and pressing out the ravioli shapes with the cutter.

The resulting ravioli are a bit rustic-looking, but that doesn't bother me. They only take a minute or two to cook, and the simple sage butter sauce takes hardly any time. The nettles didn't have a strong flavour at all: the goat cheese was the main taste. I'm still not sure that the children would eat them, but I may have made a convert of their dad!

Making pasta (the lazy way)

Had our annual outing to the Deseronto Sidewalk Sale yesterday, where Child#2 and I sold a fair quantity of tomato and pepper plants. For once, the weather was decent (the last two occasions were wet and cold, making for few customers) and our stall outside the library did well. I'm glad I sowed the seeds earlier than usual - the spring has been so cold that they needed the extra two weeks to reach a reasonable size.

The stall next to ours was the Friends of the Library's one. In amongst the usual yard sale fare was an electric pasta machine. I don't usually buy anything from yard sales - figuring that I've got enough objects in my life and don't need to add to the number by buying other people's cast-offs. But I've always hankered after a pasta maker and, in the end, couldn't resist the purchase. I met the original owners later in the day, who admitted that they'd only used the machine once. So I'm hoping there's quite a bit of life left in it, even though it must be around 20 years old!

Making pasta is something I've been interested in doing for a while, but the traditional manual method of rolling pasta by hand always seemed too hard. I could buy a pasta attachment for my food mixer, but $180 seems a lot to shell* out for such a thing. I didn't even know that you could buy a dedicated pasta machine that would do the mixing and extrusion processes.

The original owners had lost the instructions, but that wonderful Internet thing provided both the manual and the original instructional video, so I was able to swot up on how it worked. The video was surprisingly entertaining, for its genre.

The video suggests extruding the pasta immediately after mixing the flour, eggs and water. But the more traditional methods stipulate that the dough be allowed to rest, so I left it in the machine for half an hour before starting the extrusion process. We all stood around watching in fascination as the first strands of linguine began to emerge:

Yeah, this is what passes for entertainment round here...

And here's the finished pasta. Which I think looks pretty fantastic for a first attempt. I am definitely going to be using this machine more than once!

The first asparagus spears were ready for picking, so I served the linguine (well, half of it - there's a bit too much for one meal there) with asparagus and Parmesan for lunch.

*Sorry.

Difficult subjects

I noticed a cocoon of spider eggs in the corner of one of the greenhouse raised beds the other day. This morning the spiders had hatched and were building out from their original web.

As they are so tiny and the web has some depth to it, it's quite hard to take a photo of them that's in focus!

Escapees

These dill seedlings shouldn't be here, really. Behind them are the beetroot seedlings which I did sow in this greenhouse bed. But the dill is so beautiful with the morning dew on it that I'm letting them stay for now.

I've also got a lot of self-seeded flat-leaved parsley in the greenhouse. Another handsome plant that I'm loath to pull up.

I was startled to find these four chickens out of place yesterday. The barrier at the back of the orchard had blown down in Thursday's high winds. Most of the chickens stayed put, but these intrepid few decided to go exploring. I found another pair by the greenhouse later in the day. When we first got the chickens, we spent a lot of time chasing them back into the orchard - it's interesting that now most of them are happy to stay within its bounds, even when one of them has been removed.

Feaster

The older I get, the more I've come to realise how it is the food of the major festivals that matters to me more than anything else. It's one reason that I heartily approve of the North American Thanksgiving, which is pretty much just about food.

Easter is older than Christianity, of course, being a celebration of the beginning of the growing year, life reborn and all that. We had a combined St. George's Day/Easter celebration this afternoon.

There were some traditional British Easter foods in there - hot cross buns (can't imagine Easter without those) and Simnel Cake (which I haven't ever made before).

The almond paste balls represent the apostles. There are only 11, because Judas isn't invited to this particular feast. I was intending to make 12 (I always feel rather sorry for Judas), but ran out of paste. So he got left out again. Ah well, there's no fighting with tradition, it seems.

Slow Spring

I think I was a bit spoilt by last April, when the lowest temperature in the whole month was 0.8°C/33°F. This month there have been eight days when it has been below freezing and the same number of days when the mercury has dragged itself above 10°C/50°F.

Of course the warm April last year turned out to be disastrous for the apples, plums and pears, so perhaps I shouldn't be complaining. But it would be nice not to have to be wrapping up in hat, scarf and gloves every time I go out...

Blowdown

Our path to the pond was comprehensively blocked this morning by a fallen ash tree. A closer look at the stump explains why the weekend's high winds had this effect:

Blowdown is a word I learnt only yesterday (I'm reading Bad Ground by W. Dale Cramer). I wasn't expecting to get to use it quite so quickly!

Almond macaroons

I associate macaroons with Enid Blyton books and they're not something I've ever made before. But today I had two leftover egg whites and went hunting on the Internet for inspiration. David Lebovitz came to my rescue. I'm already a fan of his, thanks to his ice cream book The Perfect Scoop. He suggested macaroons as one way of using them up. I've always thought macaroons were made with desiccated coconut, which I don't much like, but a bit more hunting around brought up recipes for an almond variety, which sounded preferable.

There seem to be as many variations on the recipe online as there are recipes: oven temperature, method, quantities all seemed to be different in each version I read.

In the end I settled for an amalgam of several: as usual, opting for the most simple method and ingredients.

Ingredients

2 egg whites
1 cup ground almonds
¾ cup sugar
½ tsp almond extract (optional, I just happened to have some)

Whisk the egg whites to the soft peak stage. Gently fold in the almonds, sugar and almond extract (if using). Spoon the mixture into mounds onto a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet and bake at 400°F/200°C for 15 minutes. This quantity made 12 macaroons.

My end result wasn't the classic smooth, domed macaroon you'd get if you piped the mixture. But the taste and chewy texture are wonderful. And you don't leave half the mixture behind in the piping bag.

My Internet browsing brought up the fact that macaroons have become a traditional Passover treat, which wasn't something I knew (and which I'm finding hard to reconcile with the Enid Blyton association I had before, if I'm honest). They're certainly very quick to make - so a perfect food for Passover (or any time - I'll definitely be making these again).

I'm glad the macaroons turned out well, because I used the yolks of the same eggs to make a hollandaise sauce. Which was a complete failure. Ho hum.

Froggie wooing

It's frog season, all of a sudden. I was startled when this leopard frog leapt out at me in the greenhouse this evening. Walking up to the pond shortly afterwards, I was even more surprised to hear the frog chorus that was going on up there.

This is our fourth spring here, but this is the first time that I've heard Spring Peeper frogs in full song. It is deafening, especially when you consider that these frogs are less than an inch in length.

And while I'm on the subject of aquatic creatures,a new one has taken up residence in the ditch at the front of our property. It took us a while to work out what it was (it's very camera-shy), but we finally realised that the medium-sized furry beast lurking there is a muskrat. You can just see it in the bottom right corner of the picture below - but, like I said, it doesn't like having its photo taken!

Unexpected lettuce

I remember sowing the blood-veined sorrel on the left in one of the greenhouse raised beds, towards the end of the growing season in 2010. But all that lettuce that's coming up on the right? I don't have any recollection of sowing that. In fact, I'm fairly sure I didn't. The even more weird thing is that exactly the same surprise appearance of lettuce happened last spring, in the same bed. Not that I'm complaining - it's a welcome sight!

Lemon Polenta Cake

I know, I know: I don't post for a week and then two posts in one day. But I couldn't pass up sharing this find. It's from Nigella Lawson's latest book, Kitchen, which up until now hasn't really given me a lot of inspiration. I was flicking through it this morning, looking for ideas for a Sunday-lunch dessert and came across this cake. I love anything lemony and am also very fond of cakes containing almonds. This (recipe here) has both, so had to be a winner.

Judging by the way it disappeared, I'm not the only one who thought it was wonderful.

Now the only problem is, who's going to get a third taste? It's the cook's prerogative, right?

Snakes alive

It's warming up a bit, and all the snow has gone, at last. One sure sign of warmer weather is when we start to see garter snakes basking on the path and in the border at the front of the house. Yesterday there was a whole heap of them enjoying the sunshine just in front of our garage door:

I've never seen quite so many together at one time!

I got everyone working outside yesterday morning. Child#1 tidied up the front border, while Child#2, my mother-in-law and I worked together in a small production line, potting on the tomato plants. It was lovely and warm in the greenhouse. The plant labels are another good bit of recycling: the children have a bit of a lollipop/popsicle habit, so I keep the sticks, boil them to sterilise them and then re-use them as labels for the plants. They look better than plastic labels, I think, and are easy to write on (as long as they're dry) with a sharp pencil.

It's not warm when she's away

A bit of an understatement, that: it's been blooming freezing here in my absence. There's still some ice on the lake and a few patches of snow on the ground.

In the greenhouse, many of the seedlings look exactly the same as they did when I left, with the exception of the peas, which seem to have put on at least a bit of growth.

I sowed the tomatoes earlier than usual, knowing that I'd be away, and they've germinated and are looking good.

So, now I'm back, it would be quite nice if things could heat up a bit outside, please.

Country walk

One thing I do miss about living in England is the enormous number of public rights of way and country paths between towns and villages. Where we live in Canada there are lots of trails, but they haven't evolved over centuries in the same way that the paths in England have: they tend to be limited to parks and nature conservation areas.

One of our favourite activities when we lived in England was to go off on a country walk somewhere. And if the walk was circular and had a pub at some point, then all the better. We quite often used to get lost, but that was part of the fun.

I had a day without meetings today, so went off for a walk with my dad at lunchtime. We hiked along part of the Greensand Ridge Walk, ending up at the Globe Inn beside the Grand Union Canal.

A couple of swans were on patrol:

We got slightly lost a couple of times, as is traditional. On the way back, we came through Knolls Wood, which has an amazing avenue of Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria araucana trees. I'm not very fond of these trees, as a rule, but the sight of so many, all in one place, was quite striking.