The garden ruin looks biblical to a Catholic so I’m doing reruns of past sins to discover which one is responsible for the crop failure. I’m tossing up between assisting in the theft of a king-sized bar of Caramello chocolate from the Big S supermarket (even though I did follow Father Duggan’s advice and purchase a bar and replace it on the supermarket shelf a week later); and putting on my big sister’s glamorous shoes and dancing up and down the driveway Shirley Temple-style (they had heel and toe plates so the sound they made was hypnotic) despite being told to STAY AWAY FROM HER THINGS AND OUT OF HER ROOM! And if either of these sins was punishable by crop failure then I’ve finally discovered the real reason for the Irish Potato Famine because God only knows how many disobedient children there were in Ireland in 1845.

Saturday night Mr Scott and I returned from a tasty meal out and I don’t know if it was too much wasabi or possibly some MSG sneaked into one of the dishes but I had an unexpected rush of enthusiasm and decided that around midnight is the ideal moment to make tomato relish. As you can see by the recipe at the end of the page one starts by chopping the tomatoes and onions and sprinkling them with salt to draw out the moisture.

I think the operative word here is sprinkle rather than dredge and I’m just warning you in advance that my relish will not get a tick from the Heart Foundation. It’s not the recipe which is to blame as much as my interpretation of it along with a hand rendered less responsive by a couple of wines.

Chopping the tomatoes went well though there were moments when I felt like chucking it all in and heading off to bed not so much through fatigue as boredom. But gosh, don’t things come to life when you start on the onions? December and January the onions were rubbish. They were soft and green inside and smelt like swamp water. Personally, I feel they were picked too early and not left out to harden-the-whatever up but don’t take this as gospel for I’m not one who knows my onions. But I do know that they have improved at last and so it was with a bit of trepidation that I moved to stage two of the recipe … chopping the onions.

I’m no ninja-knife person when it comes to chopping and slicing so my lack of speed meant I was positioned over the onions for longer than was comfortable for my eyes. And I know there are 20 different ways supposed to prevent crying over the onions but I have not found a method which actually works.

Until now.

Blame it on the alcohol if you wish but part way through Onion Number One, with a face covered in tears, I had an epiphany. I went to the bathroom, washed my face and rinsed and dried my eyes then I PUT ON MY SWIMMING GOGGLES! Internet … it works! Absolutely no more eye irritation. And then because I wasn’t having quite enough fun, I put my swimming cap on, too. Finally I finished the onions while softly humming lullabies and thinking about little lambs skipping through sun-filled meadows and all was right with the world.

Next day I drained off the water and continued to make relish.

This tomato relish recipe comes out of the universe and into your kitchens via my very wonderful friend Morag, who made a triumphant batch of relish last summer. I’m sorry my first effort hasn’t quite made the grade but it was all worth it to discover the solution to onion-eye-cry.

So grab your tomatoes, onions, swimming goggles and (optional) cap and get chopping.

TOMATO RELISH

6lb/3kg tomatoes

2lb/1kg onions

2lb/1kg sugar

8 small chillies

2 cups malt vinegar

3-4 tablespoons of cornflour

3 tablespoons of curry powder

2 tablespoons of salt

2 teaspoons mustard powder

METHOD

• Cut up tomatoes and onions, sprinkle with salt and leave overnight.
• Pour off liquid and add the toms/onions to a large pot. Barely cover with vinegar (about 2 cups). Put on heat, add sugar and chillies and boil for half an hour.
• Mix cornflour, curry powder and mustard powder in a little vinegar (or water if your pot mix has become a bit spicy) to a smooth paste.
• After tomatoes have boiled half an hour, add the paste, boil to thicken then bottle in sterilised jars.

WARNINGS

Don’t be too heavy-handed with the salt at number one. Taste the relish before adding any more salt. Actually, I’ve just gone back over my recipe notes and realised there is no place for adding more salt. I think the 2 tablespoons in the ingredients list is for sprinkling over the toms/onions right at the beginning. I got that completely wrong but it was difficult to read through the swimming goggles.

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It just wouldn’t be a new week if I didn’t get the chance to write about rats.

Seemed nocturnal-kitchen-rattus was a bit annoyed when, on its return the following evening it discovered the entrance at the top of the rat-ramp was firmly locked.

So it did what all angry rats do and it moved into the ceiling with much of its family and they set about building themselves a resort among the pink batts. To my utter dismay I had to report Rativity to Mr Scott who had returned to Auckland.

In the meantime until Mr Scott’s return, I listened to the rats bringing in the earthmoving machinery and digging a swimming complex complete with perpetual wave machine and kiddy-pool because they’d already completed the nursery and kindergarten and were accepting new entrants. I lay in bed at night thinking not of England but of just how loud I would scream if one of those rats fell asleep at the wheel of its bulldozer and came straight through the ceiling. Right above my head.

Mr Scott arrived armed with traps and peanut butter but it’s the end of the holiday and we’d run out of bacon which clings to a trap hook like a limpet and ensures a successful snare. The first day we tried sausage smeared in lovely organic peanut butter and the clever rodents sent in their special-army-soldier rats who managed to eat the snacks without being caught.

Undeterred Mr Scott and I peered at the diminished refrigerator contents and decided the special rat catching dogs could share their lamb chops. With a bit of raw lamb and a dollop of peanut butter on the trap hooks (I feel a new recipe coming on!) Mr Scott headed back into the ceiling access through the small hole at the top of the wardrobe like some sort of reverse Santa. And all our Christmases came within the next few hours. [Time to look away if you don’t like trapkill].

As all the best copywriting goes … the results speak for themselves.

Strike One!

Strike Two … literally!

Special rat-catching dog gets a few pointers.

Strike Three … OUT!

Apologies for the awful photography but each photo was taken with my eyes wide shut.

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Dad's beans should look like this.

The weather stayed cold for a long while after I planted. And there was a lack of rain. This is the beach garden so it is fairly untended and just has to get on once the planting is done. The beans were slow to start and then remained quite yellow in the leaf department. There didn’t appear to be a lot of nitrogen-fixing going on. Even Mr Scott noticed there was something amiss when one morning he announced: “There’s something amiss with those beans.” But I’m an optimist and felt things would right themselves. By the time I realised the beans weren’t righting themselves, it was a bit late. The yield was down about 80% and I’ve left the remainder to seed.

For I also have scarlet runners.

And they are a triumph!

They, too, were slow to start but suddenly they kicked into overdrive and reached for the sky. Like Jack’s beanstalk they grew and they grew and, goddammit, they were going to find that giant. Along the way they flowered and entertained fat bumble bees and hungry honey bees and were soon producing an overwhelming number of beans. Much of the crop is out of the reach of even the tall Mr Scott so we’re going to hire a helicopter and winch someone down to do the rest of the picking. Gathering a trug-full daily has enabled me to share bean love about the bay (and I won’t even talk about the zucchinis!).

Image of my scarlet runner beans captured
by the Hubble telescope which orbits
366 miles/589 kilometres above Earth. 

Yesterday I spent the morning blanching and freezing beans and to make it sexy, I frenched them first. I performed the usual internet search to make sure I was using the correct process (because it’s just possible blanching involves more than a simmer then an icy plunge) and it was during this search that I discovered you can eat the scarlet runner flowers! Who knew?

Yes, I can hear some of you saying “Daft bint … no flowers, no beans!” but, reader, I have been blessed. I have so many beans I can sacrifice a few flowers to make the world’s most twee salad.

So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to The World’s Most Twee Salad. Sadly it was not a photogenic dish so you’ll just have to believe me that I made it, ate it and it was good.

I cooked up some amaranth, quinoa and lentils (no, I was not jet-propelled on this morning’s run, but thanks for your concern). To this I added cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, feta, red onion, scarlet runner beans (frenched), a few spinach and miscellaneous salad leaves (and probably some weeds because I’m not entirely sure what is what in that part of the garden) and parsley, mint and basil. Drizzle with olive oil and a squirt of lemon juice then GARNISH WITH SCARLET RUNNER FLOWERS!

It would have been as twee as four Beswick ducks flying up the wall if it weren’t for the ancient grains and lentils which had made the entire creation a bit brown. It’s just my opinion but I think brown food only starts to look good in a photo if it involves chocolate. Anyway, next time you make a salad, go for glory and throw a few scarlet runner flowers over the top and have a very hippy day.

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This probably explains why I am late to the world of BUMPITS. Honestly, when I saw that word I thought they were talking about butt implants or perhaps a way to falsely acquire a cleavage with a cleft like an arse.

I think I was lead astray by incorrectly assuming where the first syllable ended and the next one started. Perhaps the word is not bum-pits after all.

There’s an entire hair volumizing world out there which I’ve never entered. Girls (and lads) it’s time to ditch the GHDs and plump up your do … and the really cool thing is that you get the opportunity to appear as if you have a nasty SYMPATHY-GRABBING ABCESS that needs excising on the top of your head.

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If Andrew has turned 41 today, clearly last year was Andrew’s 40^th birthday and I have to say that it was celebrated with massive imagination and style when Andrew turned his St Heliers suburban home into a tropical island resort complete with faux-palm-fale and enough sand to make the Sahara feel inadequate. Andrew’s wife, Fiona, deserved something between a damehood and beatification for calmly allowing him to run with the idea in the first place. The thought of all that sand being traipsed through my house would really have done my head in.

Midway through that evening nobody was feeling any pain except me, the designated sober driver. The roles reversed the following morning when I was probably the only party attendee not to be in pain and it is at that stage one starts to feel just a little sanctimonious.

This year’s birthday sees Andrew celebrate at a proper beach with its very own native sand and last night, in a moment of CAN’T-STOP-VOLUNTEERING, I offered dessert as well as a dish of homegrown beans.

I awoke this morning with thoughts of my sister’s small but old and perfectly formed rhubarb plant and in the very next cascade of early-morning-brain-stew I remembered the most stunning and simple rhubarb puddy recipe which I’d found on the internet about 18 months ago.

I have it printed out but that precious piece of paper is in the drawer at home in Auckland. So I’ve spent the morning searching high and low all over the net and cannot find the recipe. To be honest I thought it was called rhubarb crisp but the problem with that is there are 98,700 rhubarb crisp recipes (no, really, thank YOU, Mr Google) to read and not one of them the correct one. This is how sad I am. I even remember what I was searching for when I came across the totally fabulous rhubarb recipe in the first place. I was searching for rhubarb cobbler.

I have now come to the end of my tether and Mr Scott will be arriving from Auckland very soon having not seen his mock-wife for a couple of days. Imagine his surprise when he discovers me, face down on the desk with QWERTY permanently impressed across my forehead from banging my head against the keyboard.

I have decided to make rhubarb cobbler  Rhubarb Rumble. And, Mr Google, having used the keywords “Rhubarb Crisp Recipe” in this piece I’ll be expecting to see your search results display 98,701 within 24 hours of this post.

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I was newly out of bed the other morning and, just like the Queen, I was using the toilet (bathroom for our American friends) when Mr Scott calls out: “Did you get up in the night and eat half a peach?”

No, I hadn’t. It’s just not something I would do. “No, I didn’t,” I called back, “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, there’s a half-eaten peach …” etc, etc, and with that we decided to continue the discussion when I vacated the toilet.

I took one look at the peach and the bits of spat-out skin left on the bench and I said: “Rat!”

But Mr Scott had remarkably turned into a rodent dentition expert – à la my sister who became the shark expert – and said that it wasn’t the doings of a rat because the teeth marks were spaced too far apart! If there is any one of you out there who can look at the photo and give a negative to a large Norwegian Brown, please contact me.

Mr Scott’s dentition career was brief as we quickly discovered a trail of rat droppings leading to an open window by the water tank. The pipes that run from the house to the water tank beneath this window do so in such a manner as to provide a virtual escalator for any rat who cared to visit.

So there was a rat and it ate half a peach. Big deal, I hear you say. Harden the whatever up!

Well, here’s the rub. The Norwegian Brown entered the house, hopped on to the bench and had a snack, moved the fruit bowl and bench miscellanea around and used the benchtop as a toilet … about 10 metres away from two blissfully unaware dogs WHO FANCY THEMSELVES AS RAT CATCHERS!

Admittedly one now nears the age of 16 and is completely deaf and spends her days in a dream world somewhere between earth and an extraterrestrial paddock of warm juicy lambs so it could be argued that her body may have been 10 metres away but her mind had long since left the building. But Eddie, WAKE UP! Aren’t you the fox terrier mix who just lives for chasing cats, rats, rabbits and stoats?

This next bit is for you, Eddie. We were your third home in the first nine months of your life and we’ve kept you another nine or ten years with little demand on yourself apart from those heartfelt pleas to stop smelling like a billy goat and would you PLEASE STOP THAT BARKING! However, that was a big FAIL on not barking at the rat, Eddie. We know you know how to bark. You bark at people who move at what you consider to be an inappropriate speed; you bark at people up ladders; and sometimes you just bark at people. You bark at all animals, especially cats, and you’ve even been known to bark at the big poster of the cat on the wall at the vet clinic. You’ve been caught barking at your reflection in the window which is a screamingly uncool thing to do. But Eddie, just this once, couldn’t you have barked at an appropriate moment?

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Georgia is 16 years old and I know it’s weird that a teenager would want anything to do with an old aunt but she’s kind of neat that way.

Each day we’d have these hilarious sessions in the ocean. Things were hampered a little by the rather large surf but we were progressing in a manner that meant I wasn’t inhaling nearly as many krill as I was when we started.

One day her mother (we’ll call her Chrissie) ventured to the beach to watch us. She sat up by the dunes, some distance from the tide which was at the end of its ebb.

Georgia and I were splashing our way along the beach when I stopped for a breather and begged her to let us turn around because, quite frankly, I was knackered.

Georgia decided on the return trip that we would try a bit of breaststroke. She gave me some pointers and we set off, she like a dolphin, me like a sack of demented of cats. Through all the racket of my gasping for breath and spitting out water, I heard Georgia shouting “Erin, Erin, Erin” and my first thought was “is my stroke REALLY that bad” because, honestly, she sounded a bit fussed.

I stopped, stood up and Georgia said, in a really good trembly, almost Oscar-winning voice: “There’s a shark following us.” And you know, it really was just like the movies because there a few feet away was a shark … that was, you know, following us. We headed for shore. With haste.

If there are any swimming scouts out there I’ll give you my phone number because with the speed I attained I think I have qualified for the 50m freestyle splash-and-dash at London 2012. And if you put me in the pool with a shadowing shark, I’ll medal for you, New Zealand, that’s a promise.

But running is more my thing so I stood up and went for it. And that’s when I discovered that running in water with a shark close by is just like all those leaden-legged nightmares. I felt as if I was running in a gigantic pool of my mother’s custard (thick, lumpy and hard to get through).

Obviously we made it to shore because I’m telling you this story but here is where things turned a bit weird. Georgia’s MOTHER, my SISTER, the one we call CHRISSIE, was still sitting up by the dunes. She must have been about 100 metres from us. She enquired as to why we were leaving the water in such a hurry. Why were our eyes bugging out of our heads? Why were we wearing primitive fear grins? And was that our hearts she could see going lump-lump-lump in our chests?

We said the word “shark” a lot and here’s the kicker, here’s what Chrissie said … “I know,” she said, “I’ve watched it tracking you right along the beach.”

“And you didn’t TELL US!” we screamed.

No, she didn’t think to warn us because apparently it was just a basking shark. We weren’t in any danger, she said, because if it was going to attack us it would have swum at us very fast, and this one was just idly swimming alongside us. Presumably, the moment it turned to begin its “very fast” swim at us she was going to stand up and give us some sort of warning wave with her sarong. We may even have had a chance to notice the warning as the shark was taking us in half through the torso.

Isn’t my sister amazing? Such modesty! All these years she’s hidden from us the fact that not only is she a shark-identification expert, who can, at a good 100-metre distance, tell the difference between a basking shark and a hungry bronze whaler, but she’s a shark-behaviour expert, too. At that same distance she can also distinguish between a shark that’s about to attack and one that’s out for a lazy afternoon swim. Who knew?

The U.S. Bureau of Fisheries recommends shark … for eating!

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It’s hard to convince New Zealanders that cornbread is a top idea in the first place. It’s harder to make them believe in the dish on an evening when the temperature was up in the mid-20s, humidity and mosquitoes had that swamp thing going on and all you really felt like was something chilled … like beer, and maybe a crisp salad. But hey, Internet, I promised you I’d make the cornbread and make it I did.

It was simple to make, once I’d arrived beyond the point where I gagged like crazy when adding the buttermilk (it’s the plop-plop-plop of lumpy milky that gets me going). And I was pleased to be doing something useful with that can of Watties creamed corn that had once again made its way to the front of the pantry.

I have to be honest and tell you that after placing the skillet in the oven I prayed fervently that, when cooked, the cornbread would reveal in its top crust the image of President Barack Obama himself. At the least I was going to sell it on eBay, but at the most my little old oven with its Morris Minor 1000 switch arrangement, circa 1970, would become a place of pilgrimage for all the President’s supporters.

I’m thinking a lot about cornbread with an image that WEEPS WHEN YOU PLAY STEVIE WONDER ON THE STEREO.

I’m thinking about merchandise and fame. President Obama has many fans. Do the math! I’m a guest at the White House and I’m doing Oprah. 

You know what’s coming, don’t you?

I opened the oven. In fact, I opened it a couple of times during cooking and therein may lie the problem. But I was so sure there was a face happening on the top of that cornbread that I was doing jigs and reels alone in the kitchen until cooking time was up and I could officially open that oven door. I did, and then I closed it again.

There was a face on the top of the cornbread all right. But it was the image of Joseph Carey Merrick, the Englishman who became known as THE ELEPHANT MAN.

Deflated just doesn’t do justice to the way I was feeling when I had to confess to Mr Scott that 2009 wasn’t going to be the year I made us rich with Weeping Cornbread and Obama Sightings but we’re thinking of renaming the recipe Elephant Bread and using it for a zoo fundraiser.

The taste test, you ask? Pretend that my mother made you a scone and for some reason she not only chose to put creamed sweetcorn in it but she waited a day before giving it to you. It needs beer.

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A couple of years ago I decided that when you have a lemon glut you should make limoncello. But not for me the old cheat’s way of simply throwing a bit of lemon skin into a bottle of vodka and letting it sit for two weeks. No, I trawled the interweb and found what I felt to be the most authentic limoncello recipe available.

Basically it started with ROCKET FUEL FROM A SECRET SOURCE and went from there, for months. Months of turning and scooping and filtering and attracting swarms of bees when it came time to add the syrup.

At its first tasting it drew comments like: “Gawwwdd, it’s like paint stripper.” Even diluted it had that hint-of-Meremere-dragstrip tang that grabbed you by the throat and squeezed so hard your eyes popped, your ears smoked and your nose bled intermittently for the next five days. The most fervent of my boozy friends would do that quick hand-over-glass gesture when I came around with the bottle to top them up. When everyone had left I found shot glasses, still full, hidden behind pot plants.

I can find only one person – an American friend who had other Americans staying for a summer holiday – who actually admitted finishing the entire bottle I had gifted them before their road trip around the South Island. Granted they were trapped in the middle of nowhere, and the moon was full. Granted also, my friend had told a small porky about limoncello being the traditional bevvie of the tangata whenua so that the tourists would have felt churlish to have refused a tipple. You could blame it on the scenery and solitude, but they finished their bottle, then I believe they took their clothes off and painted each other with volcanic mud. At other friends’ houses, the less loyal of those I know, I see the gifted limoncello lurking in the back of their booze cupboards. They’re too frightened for their pipes to even tip it down the sink.

I’m sure all would have been well, or at least a bit better, had I left the recipe alone. But, like Colonel Sanders, I had to keep adding those herbs and spices. I do swear, though, that I DID NOT PUT HABANERO CHILLIES in it.

A couple of years on and the brew has matured. I still have several bottles of the golden elixir just begging to be used so I made a limoncello-and-blueberry trifle the other day that was honestly a triumph. I shall make it again, soon, and this time I’ll take a great big photo and pop it up on Foghorn so you can drool into your keyboard and lick your monitor when your colleagues aren’t watching.

That’s a quarter of a litre gone and just a few litres left.

And, finally, we arrive at the point of the story: the dried-fruit-and-booze part.

I was talking to my sister, who’s not shy around the bottle (a family trait). We were mulling over the idea of soaking something in the limoncello and she thought figs. I’m only telling you this so that when tasting time comes and guests start spitting figs into the garden we’ll all remember who’s to blame. Last night I did a jar of Figs-in-Limoncello and they sit in the fridge like a Hunterian exhibit of dehydrated goats’ gonads aged in formaldehyde, but I’m sure they’ll taste better (or bitter).

The figs may become a sensation but what I’d really like is something special for Mr Scott. Some years ago he used to enjoy one of those special desserts that “wasn’t on the menu” at a local restaurant. I believe they called it something like Fainting Maidens (or not) and it featured apricots soaked in vodka. Before I go tossing dried fruit willy-nilly into jars of booze I have a few questions which I’m hoping someone out there can answer.

1. Is it OK to use ordinary dried fruit which is full of sulphur dioxide when soaking it in booze?
2. Do you have to add sugar? I know you do when making a Rumtopf (with fresh fruit and booze), but does dried fruit need the added sugar? If so, how much?
3. Any tried and true (or completely mad) ideas for fruit/booze combinations?

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This means we have had to be sensible about presents. Either that or we will finish up in debtors prison. Each year we take a letter (working with the ones which comprise the family name) and each person buys one present starting with that letter. All the presents get loaded under the tree at the celebration venue and when we’ve tortured the children for long enough with comments that weren’t even funny the first time they were said (like: “Oh, we’ve decided not to hand out the presents this year. We thought we’d give them all to the missions … ha, ha, ha, ha”), we gather around the tree.

Things proceed quickly and loudly from this point. Out comes the video camera. A “Santa” is nominated. We shout a lot because we’re noisy and we order each other around. As gifts are dished out chronologically by age of recipient we oooh and we aaaah over the cleverness of collectively being able to come up with a fine array of unique goods all beginning with an obscure letter (yes, it’s hell when your family name is Zqjzqj).

Unique that is, apart from the year when the letter was G and nearly everyone went home with a gnome, proving it’s not only the great minds that think alike.

Appropriately for Christmas, this year we have a virgin venue. A family branch has gone all chicken-coop-and-gumboots and taken themselves off to live in the country. There’ll be no dashing up to the corner dairy for the forgotten pint of cream this Christmas so, in the absence of a house cow, we’ll have to be supremely well organised. Organisation hasn’t really occurred since Mother was alive, and even she consistently managed to leave some vital part of the lunch menu in the oven warming drawer or at the back of the fridge. Usually it was a bizarre dish of ham and asparagus in a thick sauce. I’m not even going to try to describe it because no written version of the recipe has ever been uncovered and that is a GOOD thing.

We’re going for the letter Y this year. All Y gift ideas will be gratefully received.

Yoghurt-maker

Yoyo

20 great Yodelling hits CD

Yashmak

Yacht (just a toy one, probably)

Yoga mat

Yellow …

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