Tatty old apples

At this time of year I often have an empty fruit bowl. This may sound somewhat alarming but it is because it is soft fruit season and soft fruit doesn't store well in a fruit bowl. My family gorge themselves on the raspberries and strawberries often before they even reach the kitchen so they have little need for a banana shipped halfway across the world. Having an empty fruit bowl does have its downside, however, as when I'm in the middle of something and my girls pester me with a request for food my standard answers "Have a banana" or "Have something from the fruit bowl," cannot be used.

This happened last week and out tripped the world "Have something from the fruit bowl," without my brain even being involved in the task. A moment later they were back again, "There is nothing in the fruit bowl expect 3 horrible apples," my youngest complained. I dragged myself away from whatever I had been doing and in just a few moments had whipped up an impressive soft fruit fruit salad with a dollop of ice-cream. Then I inspected the apples in the fruit bowl and could understand why they had been rejected - wrinkly, is the word for it.

I hate food waste with a passion and although I could have dropped the apples into the compost bin with a clear conscience I decided instead to use them in a cake. So the next day when they informed me they were hungry I cut them each a slice of vanilla apple sponge and neither of them complained that the apples were horrible this time!

Vanilla Apple Sponge

9 oz (250g) unsalted butter, softened
8 oz (225g) caster sugar
4 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
9 oz (250g) self-raising flour
3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 tablespoon demerara sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4. Line a round cake tin. Cream together the butter and sugar then stir in the egg and vanilla. Sift in the flour and mix until a thick batter forms. Dollop into the lined cake tin then push the slices of apple into the mixture. Sprinkle with the demerara and cinnamon. Bake for 1 hour 5 minutes and test with a skewer. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then cool on a wire rack.

Spread a little happiness - make flapjacks!

When I went shopping on Tuesday I came home with a big stack of stuff, mainly meat, that had been either on offer or reduced but which really needed processing in some way before freezing. That meant that most of Wednesday was spent on my feet in the kitchen making pies, sausage rolls and cooking various other dishes. However, the previous night the cake box had become empty so I also needed to refill this. As you will know, I try to keep the cake box stocked so my husband can easily find himself something for afters. To add to the need, my husband was due to be working a long day Thursday (today) and needed to take with him all the food he would need to keep him going. This meant that whatever I made for the cake box also needed to be robust enough to go in a packed lunch/tea the following day.

So, to recap, I needed to make something quick, requiring very little effort and that could go in a lunch box. There really was only one answer - Honey and Vanilla Flapjacks. Dead simple to make, very tasty, always popular and hold together well. So I whipped up a batch of these in between meat processing.

That night, as we watched TV my husband didn't battle hard with will power and ate through 6 flapjacks! So agogged was I that I commented on this feat on my Facebook page. Instantly, several friends commented back wanting to know when they would get a taste! No luck for them, Steve took the remaining 6 flapjacks with him in his lunch box the next morning.

So with the cake box empty and friends disappointed I quickly made another batch of flapjacks and when I went to collect my girls from school later in the day I handed foil wrapped parcels of flapjacks to my friends. And you know what... it really brightened up their day, as did it mine!

Honey and Vanilla Flapjacks

4 oz (110g) butter
4 oz (110g) soft light brown sugar
1 dessert spoon of honey
A few drops of vanilla extract
6 oz (170g) oats

Preheat oven to 150°C (gas 3). In a large saucepan, gently melt the butter with the sugar, honey and vanilla. Add the oats and stir thoroughly until evenly coated. Grease a small baking tray and spoon the mixture onto it. Spread out and press down with wetted fingers. Bake for 25 minutes until gold. Cut into flapjacks whilst still hot then allow it to cool in the tin.

Grandma's Buttons

When I was a child my brother and I used to spend every school holiday at our grandparents' house, either my dad's parents or my mum's parents. Both were happy to have us and used to spend a lot of quality time with us. They would take us out to various places and we would also spend a good deal of time indoors making things. Funnily enough, one of our favourite activities was sorting out my grandma's button collection. She was from the wartime make do and mend generation so not only did she make a lot of her own clothes (and ours!) but she would reuse bits of old clothes wherever possible. This recylcing nature would be highly admired in today's culture. It meant that buttons, zips and other fastenings were snipped off old clothes and stored in an appropriate old margarine or ice-cream tub. As a result of years of this she had accumulated several hundred buttons, some individual, other in matching sets, and all jumbled together in a yellowing ice-cream tub. I don't know how she ever found the button(s) she needed for the clothes she was making!

So, every now and then, my brother and I would sort the buttons out - usually by colour - inspecting and admiring each of them as we did. We had our favourites, of course. And when the job was done we would put them all back into the ice-cream tub in a big muddle, ready for the next rainy day. After years of doing this, and with the wisdom of age, we decided that once we had sorted them out we ought to keep them sorted. So we tied matching sets together on pieces of thread and we put buttons of each colour into separate plastic bags. And that was that. Never again did the button collection need sorting.

When I was 18 years old my grandma died and one of the things I inherited for her house was a drawer. In the drawer was a lifetime of sewing thread and her button collection, still individually bagged by colour. Since having my own house this drawer has lived on a shelf in my garage and occasionally I use some thread out of it. Then, this weekend I decided to make some sock glove puppets with my children and I knew that I would find the perfect buttons for the job in my grandma's button collection. At first I only brought out one bag of buttons but so intrigued was my eldest daughter by the buttons that she asked me to bring in the whole collection.

She studied the buttons with fascination, just as I had done, holding up some to show me... the same ones that had been my favourites. The smell of my grandma's house still clung to the buttons and added to my memories. As she sorted I emailed my brother to tell him what she was doing. "Awesome," came the reply, "what fun that was!". Then, over the next half hour, the button gradually become more and more muddled up as she opened bag after bag. And then by bedtime the buttons were in a big heap, the plastic bags (mostly with holes in due to age) discarded to one side. I fetched an empty metal biscuit tin from the kitchen and we scooped them all into it. And there they shall remain, in a big muddle, until the next rainy day when two little girls will ask if they can sort out my button collection!

Dealing with duck

As I have said before, duck is my favourite meat but it is expensive. It is also surprisingly lacking in meat when compared to a chicken of the same size. Nonetheless, when I buy duck I like to make the most of it in order to get good value for money. For a start, when Lidl's have them in I buy frozen whole duck from them as this is the cheapest way I have found to buy it. It doesn't come with any cooking instructions but I know by now that from thawed it will take 2 hours as 200°C. Before hand I push some sage, onion, celery and maybe a mushroom or two into the cavity to add to the flavour. It is also brilliant to cook roasted potatoes under a duck because the duck fat is so tasty. The trick here is to have the duck on a rack out of the fat and to allow the potatoes to cook in the fat but to drain the fat off (into a container to keep!) when the duck is taken out to rest. Return the potatoes to the oven for 10 minutes to crisp up.

We usually eat the two breasts with a roast dinner. If you can manage it, try to cut the breasts off whole, rather than slicing them as you would for chicken. A breast each for an adult is great but we have two small children so we usually cut some of each breast off to give to the children so it feeds all four of us. What we'll do when the children are bigger I'm not sure.

So after a roast dinner we still have both legs and wings left. Later this week I striped the meat off the remaining bird and boiled up the carcass and stuffing to make stock, which I jarred and stored for later use. The meat I divided roughly in half. One half of the meat we cooked up as a Chinese-style meal last night for my husband and me. Whilst I prepared vegetables for a stir fry he concocted a sauce to go with it. I don't know exactly what went into the sauce but it was loosely based around oyster sauce. The stir fry contained leek, shallots, carrot, celery, mushrooms and some large slices of root ginger. Then, once the vegetables were just about cooked, we threw in the duck meat and finally added the sauce. This was served with some plain boiled rice.

Earlier that day I had used the other half of the duck meat to make some duck rolls. These are loosely based around duck spring rolls but to be honest I have tried making that pastry spring rolls usually come wrapped in but have never succeeded. I think the problem lies in them needing to be deep fried and I don't own a deep fat frier and I'm too frightened of a fat fire to do it on the hob. I have tried filo pastry too, which is fiddly to use and has a tendency to shatter in the freezer. So now I use puff pastry, which is not only very tasty, but is easy to use and freezes well. To the duck meat I added one large closed cup mushroom, very finely chopped and some grated carrot. I make these for my children so I like to get a few extra vegetables on their plates without them realising! Finally, I added a tablespoon of hoi sin sauce and mixed it all up. Then I rolled out half a block of ready made fresh puff pastry and cut it in half. Then I dolloped the duck mixture all along it. Using milk to stick it together, I rolled the pastry over as if I were making sausage rolls. Finally, more milk was used as a glaze and then they were cut into sausage roll size lengths. This makes about 12 rolls, which will feed my two children 3 times. I froze the lot. They can be cooked from frozen at 200°C for 25 minutes until golden. Last night I served them with some rice, a few noodles and some carrot and cucumber sticks and they were eaten with enthusiasm.

So from a whole duck costing approximately £8, we had a roast dinner for 4, two adult Chinese-style meals, 12 duck rolls, a tubs of duck fat and several jars of stock. OK, a chicken would have been cheaper but I don't think that is too bad for the money.

Cranberry Flapjacks

Next month the soft fruit will be ready for harvesting again and that means a return to jam making season. So this month I need to try to clear my backlog of homemade jams and preserves.

There is only so much jam you can eat on toast during any given week so I do try to find ingenious ways to incorporate jam into recipes. With this in mind, I managed to invent a cranberry flapjack using up stocks of homemade cranberry sauce. Brilliantly simple because the sauce is both a fruity flavouring and a source of sugar so no need to add extra.

Cranberry Flapjacks

4¾ oz (135g) margarine or unsalted butter
4 oz (110g) cranberry sauce
2 oz (55g) golden syrup
8 oz (225g) oats
¾ oz (20g) sunflower seeds
1¾ oz (50g) raisins

Preheat oven to 190° C (gas 5). In a large saucepan, gently melt the margarine or butter with the sauce and syrup. Removed from the heat then add the remaining ingredients. Spoon the mixture onto a small baking tray and press down with wetted fingers. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Mark out the flapjacks before allowing it to cool in the tin.

Tiffin

If there was ever a good way to make use of leftovers then tiffin has got to be it. Take some stale biscuits, add a few stock cupboard ingredients and a bar of chocolate and hey-presto you have transformed something inedible into something delicious! It is very rich so not so great in terms of nutrition but brilliant in terms of food waste, especially as it keeps for ages. Horrah! Let's eat tiffin and save the planet!

Tiffin

8 oz (225g) stale biscuits

4 oz (110g) butter

1 good tablespoon golden syrup

8 oz mixed dried fruit

2 oz glace cherries, chopped

200g milk chocolate

Place the biscuits in a bag and bash with a rolling pin until crumbed. Melt together the butter and syrup in a pan over a low heat. Combine the biscuit, butter mix and fruit and stir well. Grease a suitable tin and press the mixture into it and level. Refrigerate for at least half an hour until solid. Melt the chocolate over a pan of hot water then spread over the biscuit base, level out and return to the fridge. Once solid, cut the tiffin into small squares and transfer to an airtight container. Keeps well.

A friend's visit

The lemon and sultana cake lasted impressively until Tuesday, by which point it was on the verge of being stale anyway. Now my husband has started measuring his waistline once a week and he's been getting more out of his gym membership for the past fortnight! So last night when confronted with a box of carrot and orange muffins he tried very hard to limit himself to just one. He nearly managed it too but succumbed to another later in the evening. Maybe eating them a couple of hours apart helps to lessen their effect!

Today a friend of mine came over to buy a few jars of homemade jam from me. Whilst here I offered her a drink and a muffin, which she accepted. The drink she chose happened to be a glass of homemade blackcurrant cordial. She enjoyed both her drink and her muffin and went home with 4 jars of jam too! It doesn't often work out like that but it was nice to have my homemade products appreciated!

Carrot and Orange Muffins (makes 10)

4 oz (110g) light muscovado sugar
5 fl oz (125ml) sunflower oil
2 eggs
7 oz (200g) plain flour
2 oz (55g) wholemeal flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 orange
6 oz (170g) carrot
4 oz (110g) sultanas

Preheat oven to 200°C, gas mark 6. Mix the oil and the sugar together then beat in the eggs. Sieve the dry ingredients into the oil mix. Grate the peel off the orange and add that to the bowl then squeeze the juice from the orange and add that. Grate the carrot and fold that into the mix, along with the sultanas. Spoon into cases in a muffin tin. Cook for 20 minutes and test with a skewer. Cool on a wire rack.