Eggs and lemons

The girls are in full laying mode at the moment, and six chickens are giving us between four and six eggs a day at the moment.

Also, here in NZ it is citrus season, so we have plenty of oranges, mandarins, limes and lemons. The lime tree is quite big, but as you can see below, the lemon tree is really small and yet has had a huge crop this year for it's size....

So when life gives you lots of eggs and lemons, what to do? Why, make lemon curd of course!

I use Delia Smith's recipe, and it is so easy. 

Lemon curd ingredients

3oz (75g) caster sugar

2oz (50g) unsalted butter

2 large beaten eggs

One large lemon

Put the caster sugar in a bowl, then the unsalted butter chopped in pieces, and 2 large beaten eggs, and the finely grated rind and juice of one large lemon. 

Put the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water....

After twenty minutes of stirring, it should look like this....

Can you believe how yummy yellow it is! I never seem to get that colour with bought eggs, even free range ones. The recipe says stir frequently, but I've made this recipe loads of times and I recommend that you stir it constantly for the full twenty minutes, getting right round the sides and the bottom. If you don't, you can end up with eggy lumps that look like bits of lard. They taste ok, but don't look good. Also, make sure the water is just barely simmering, not boiling. 

After twenty minutes, take it off the heat to cool down for a few minutes, before pouring into a clean jar.  Once it's cooled down, put in the fridge. Don't worry if it looks a bit runny, it will firm up. The recipe says eat within a week, but it should be ok for a few weeks - it never lasts that long in our house though!

I love my curd spread thickly on toast, but it's also nice in tarts. Just make some pastry shells, then fill with the warm curd. Put in the fridge to set. 

Yum yum!

Xx

Weekend washout

What a surprise - last weekend was a Bank Holiday weekend and it was raining!

Overcast, miserable, the odd rumble of thunder now and again. 

And to make matters worse, Monday was the first day of winter :-(

Bang went our idea of returning to the cycle trail with OH and a picnic.

Looking at this photo below, I really must take more care when I am spraying. I could do with a weed killer that comes out a different colour so I can see how much I've sprayed. That's it, I will design a Cath Kidston colour weed killer! You can get paint that goes on a different colour can't you, so you can tell where you have painted, or am I just dreaming that one?

We have a lot of kikuyu grass here, which I believe originated in East Africa, and it is a pain in the behind as it spreads it's long green tentacles everywhere you don't want it. I call it the cancer of the grasses. Mind you it is good to have some in the paddocks for stock, as it carries on growing in the colder weather when other grasses slow down. 

The picture above shows one of our water tanks (we have two 20,000 litre tanks). We were quite appalled when we first moved over here, that we would be drinking rain water from the roof! There is a filter it goes through before it gets to the tap, but still, it's not quite as refined a system as we are used to! Being newbies to it, we also didn't realise we had to replace the filter sponge regularly, and it was a few years before we undid it to take a look. If you have ever kept fish in a tank, you'll know what a dirty sponge looks like - a brown, slimy mess. At least our house is quite open, so we don't get the bird poo, possum poo, leaves etc that lots of people have to cope with ending up on their roof. 

This banana plant takes a bit of a beating in the bad weather too. Shame as the huge paddle like leaves are amazing when they are intact. We planted this behind the water tank to try and protect it, but it hasn't worked. I was quite excited when I stepped out of the back door the other day and noticed it had produced what looks like a flower (if you zoom in you can see it in the middle of the leaves). I was told this was an ornamental banana, so would it flower if it doesn't produce fruit?

Our 'proper' banana is around the other side of the house. It still amazes me that I now live somewhere where I can grow my own bananas! See the tiny bananas above the flower? It gradually grows more and more until there is a whole bunch hanging there. They aren't like the bananas we get from the supermarket, I think these are called Ladies Fingers, much smaller. 

The chickens don't seemed bothered by the bad weather. They are quite happy bimbling around, tidying up any windfall fruit. There are still loads of unpicked fruit on this tree. It is supposed to be an 'eater' (as opposed to a 'cooker'), but it seems quite sharp. I'll have to dig the name of it out, and see if anyone knows anything about it. 

I had to pop into town to do some shopping, and caught some fab rainbows on camera. The child in me is still amazed by rainbows, it's fascinating isn't it that a bit of rain and sun mixed together creates such a beautiful sight!

Well after all those gloomy, dull photos I'll end on a brighter note - a lovely sunflower in the veg garden, snapped last summer!

Take care, whatever the weather!

Xxxxxxxx