Sweet Little Buttercup

Not a country meadow but a corner of what I laughingly call 'my lawn'.

The buttercups are enjoying a spectacular year.

When the sun shines on them they positively incandesce.

My roses are dismal but I don't mind when I have golden buttercups.

Macarooned

A superfluity of egg whites in my freezer led me coconut macaroons. Not to be confused with the annoyingly pretty French macaron. I cannot be doing with anything that has to be perfect. I want simple and tasty.

I used this recipe and tripled it -I had a lot of egg whites. I found they needed an extra 10 minutes in the oven but this may have been because I made them pretty big (about the diameter of a digestive).

Moist and delicious with chewy edges. Definitely one for my recipe box.

By the way I feel macaroon must be said with a Scottish accent if that's ok with Scots. We're all macarooooned.

Comment box news

Yes, I have been messing about with the comment box again. It seems that Blogger's word verification has recently become much easier to decipher.

 Currently you are presented with a two words one of which is an actual word and very easy to read, the other is a wobbly nonsense word but its individual letters are fairly easy to identify.

 I have therefore decided to enable word verification on my blog and to open comments to anonymous commenters again.

I will see how it goes for a few weeks and whether any spam gets through before making a final decision.

To whoever leaves genuine comments -thank you! I appreciate them all. Truly.

Scraggy Magpies, Crumby Fish and Random Activity

Charlie is tracking ships.
George is watching Amélie because he has an exam on it tomorrow.
Katie is making a Janoskians birthday card for her friend's birthday.

Tom is not revising for his maths exam tomorrow.

I am feeding the scraggy magpie.

Feathers only a mother could love.
The other magpies attack it. I think they are responsible for the raw patch on its back. I suspect a cat is responsible for his lack of tail.
He's got a gammy (oh shut up spellcheck) leg too.
I gave him a crust of bread but the pigeons nabbed most of it.

I used the rest of the bread to make some tasty crumbs to go on top of some cod.
Into the food processor with a chunk of Parmesan, some sun-dried tomatoes and a little of their oil.
Spread some mayonnaise on the fish (keeps it lovely and moist) and top with the crumbs .
Into a hot oven for 20 minutes.

Yumminess Everywhere

Spellcheck says that yumminess is not a word and that what I really mean is gumminess, crumminess or chumminess. Well I don't, I mean yumminess, or rather Tom does as 'yumminess everywhere' was what he said after supper this evening.

I slow-roasted two small pork shoulder joints.

I pulled off the crackling and broke it into pieces. I shredded the meat with two forks. This is a bit like pulled pork which is popular in the US. I didn't consult a recipe so it is in no way authentic.

We ate it stuffed into rolls with coleslaw and barbecue sauce. Crackling on the side.

Then we moved on to ice cream yumminess. Malteser ice cream.

Malteser Ice Cream
This is a doddle to make as it involves no cooking. I adapted it slightly from the basic ice cream recipe in  Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book .

In a large jug* beat 2 eggs adding 6oz  (170g) sugar (I used vanilla sugar) a little at a time until well blended -about 2 mins.
Add a 600ml carton of double cream and 5 fl oz (145 ml) of milk. Blend well and refrigerate for several hours so that it is really cold before you pour it into an ice cream maker.
Churn the ice cream for 30-40 minutes. Just before it is ready pour in a 135g packet of Maltesers which you have crushed.
I transfer the ice cream to a plastic container and freeze for a couple of hours as I like my ice cream quite firm.
* Using a jug makes it easier to pour the mixture into the ice cream maker.

Crushed Crunchie bars and Dime bars are also on my list of things to add to ice cream.
I wonder if there is enough left for me to have a sneaky scoop later...