So, after the gardening mentalness on Sunday, I couldn’t bend down on Monday, so went for a bank holiday cook-a-thon, which involves a lot less bending down than doing over the veggie patch did.
So, I’m left with a big pile of rhubarb.
I only have one jar of R&Ginger jam left, and I’ve started that one. The last time I had toast with R&G jam on it, Steve tasted some and immediately made his own so it seems like we need a bit more.
Here (again) is my fool-proof recipe:
Chop up some rhubarb into a large pan. Weigh it.
Add some sugar. I think I went for about 20% sugar to 80% rhubarb. I’m not sure.
Pay no heed to the large number of plastic beakers your daughter and her friend are taking outside: they are taking them outside: mess is more easily cleared up outside.
Chop the really old ginger your Dad gave you before he went away into iddy-biddy pieces using the yellow knife that always makes you feel more cheerful – and not just because it’s a sunny yellow, because it’s really nice & new & SHARP!
Put the ginger in the pan with the rhubarb & the sugar.
Boil it up for ages. Stir occasionally. Remember to put saucer in fridge for testing set-ness of jam. Forget to take a picture of boiled-up jam for The Blog.
Under no circumstances open the bathroom door to see what daghter and friend are making in there. The floor is tiled. Mess is harder to clean up in the bathroom than in the garden, but it’s still not actually hard.
Heat up the jars. Pour the mixture into the jars. Take arty photos of the jars.
…having forgotten to move undelivered pile of election leaflets from the background.
Look at the large amount of rhubarb you still have left. Remember that you were thinking you might try the muffin recipe again, only this time trying to make it tasty.
Cook-a-thon Part II: Rhubarb & Custard Muffins.
This sounds great, but even I am aware that actual custard in muffins is unlikely to a) work on any level, or b) be tasty.
So I’m going to *call* them rhubarb and custard, but they’re actually going to be rhubarb & vanilla.
The basic recipe is for date & apple muffins, from “The Fat Free Cookbook”. I’d get up and look at who wrote it, give ISBN and an amazon link*, but I wouldn’t honestly recommend it. The only recipe I’ve followed with any success is the fruit cake, and that mainly benefits from my generosity when it comes to alcohol in cooking (ask my family about brandy sauce at Christmas. They get drunk just thinking about it). Honestly, every time I’ve done this recipe and used the proper ingredients, the outcome hasn’t been tasty. And I’m not even counting the time I forgot to put sugar in, leading me to write SUGAR in big, big letters next to where it says “oh and by the way, if you like, add the sugar at this point”.
*OK, I got up to take the picture of the page, so I thought I might as well follow through…
Be aware as daughter whizzes through kitchen en route to getting perfume to make the mixture smell nice. Restrict them to 2 sprays of the cheaper stuff.
So, use your favourite muffin recipe. Add loads of vanilla essence (by “loads” I mean about 2-3 teaspoons, not the whole bottle. That would make for pricey muffins). Don’t forget to add the sugar. Also add some yellow food colouring.
Unfortunately, this helped to reveal what had been going on in the bathroom. Lily & J were looking for new ingredients for their experiment. They thought food colouring was an excellent plan.
Mix the mixture together only until it’s mixed. Don’t over-mix it. Put it in muffin cases.
Put the muffins in the oven. A be-wellied Joel has now joined the fun in the bathroom. Moments later, he emerges with a (lidless) cup of yellow liquid and asks for 2 bits of kitchen towel.
It might be time to put a stop to the experimentation in the bathroom. Our downstairs bathroom is a style symphony in pink porcelain/enamel and I’m not keen to be googling “how to get food colouring off enamel”. Much crying from Joel when his cup of food colouring is confiscated.
However, ta-daa! Muffins:
They’re very tasty, too. There were none left by Friday.
We watched the experiment show afterwards. It involved many leaves and much mixing, but sadly not much smoke or exploding.