Recipie for Scottish Shortbread Cookies.

There's nothing quite like a few homemade shortbread cookies for Sunday afternoon tea. Today is my mother's birthday and if you were with us, Mom, we would have celebrated by eating these with you today. Well, we'll just have to wait another month for your visit!

The kids love making shortbread cookies. It think it's the part in the recipe that calls for 'rubbing' the flour and butter together in your hands. They squish their (clean) hands through the soft butter, mixing in the foul until it all becomes so wonderfully flaky and crumbly.


I know shortbread is 'supposed' to be served in small rectangle bars but we love them round. We roll the flaky dough into small balls (or marbles as Teddy call's them) and then press them flat with a fork... the tines running this way and then again with the tines running again at 90 degrees to make wonderful little squares. In fact, we think they should be served round as we know that shortbread is Scottish and the criss-cross lines from the tines of the fork (ok, I love the word 'tine' so much and am super excited to have found an opportunity to use it thrice!)... as I was saying, the criss-cross pattern from the fork, reminds us of the pattern of tartan!

Gorgeous tartan throw blanket from Putucos on Etsy

Our little cookies are not too sweet and go wonderfully with afternoon tea.

Another quick look for you before they are all gone, eaten up by hungry children and their mothers and fathers!

Here is our super easy Scottish Shortbread recipe, handed down to us from my Great Grandmother who came from Scotland.

1 and a quarter cup of All-purpose flour.
Half a cup of Butter.
Quarter cup of Sugar.

Put all ingredients in a bowl.
Rub all the ingredients between your clean fingers and thumbs until mixed.
Make a big ball with the almost crumbly dough.

Roll a small bit of dough in your hands to make marble sized balls.

Set dough marbles onto a greased cookie sheet.
Use the tines of a fork to press the dough marbles flat... first with the tines facing this way and then with them at 90 degrees so that each cookie has a wonderful criss-cross pattern to remind you of tartan.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 8-10 minutes.

Let cool. As they cool they crisp up... YUMMMMMMM!

Happy baking,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Guava's.

I was so excited when I first saw the guava tree in our neighbors yard. Guavas make me think of home. My mom and dad were great African adventurers. They were forever setting off on expeditions into the Okavango Swamps the Etosha Salt Pan or other remote African wildernesses. They often left my brothers and I with my Grandmother, Bebe. Bebe lived on a guava farm called Ostrich Spring in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. She had hundreds of guava trees and we would walk, daily, through the orchards. I loved the exotic fragrance of guavas and we'd pick the pink fruit and eat them, still warm from the African sun. I have such fond memories of Bebe and Ostrich Spring. I think of them often, more so at this time of year. The guava tree in my neighbors yard is a prolific bearer and, for the month of October, the gorgeous fragrance of my childhood permeates my whole home. It is utterly wonderful!

My neighbor does not eat guavas. She has given us permission to take as many guavas as we can carry and we fill our little bucket daily.


I wish you could smell this bucket... it is utterly delicious.


There are many ways we eat guavas. We eat them as is or we peal them, sprinkle them with sugar and let them sit in the fridge until it's time for desert. We make guava jelly which is so delicious, especially when it is made by my dad, who won a prize for his guava jelly at the Bathurst Show! Or, we stew them in sugar and eat them warm over ice-cream.

Recipe for Stewed Guavas:
Peal and halve guavas.
In a saucepan, bring 1 cup of water and 1/2 cup of sugar to the boil. Add to this syrup your guavas. Boil for 15 minutes or until syrup thickens. Eat warm over ice-cream.


Next time you see a guava, try one... they are yummy indeed!

Blessings and magic,
Donni

Homemade Mac n' Cheese.

Have you made mac n' cheese from scratch before? Hmmmmm, it's by far the yummiest kind! And, it's so easy too... I think you have guessed by now that my cooking generally hits three targets; easy, quick and nutritious. OK, sometimes I do try more interesting, exotic recipes but not very often. Our 'daily bread' is usually simple, fresh fare and now that it's summer, even better if I can cook our dinner without making the house even hotter than it already is (yup... no aircon in this here house!)

Simple Mac n' Cheese.

Ingredients:

Cheese Sauce:

* 3 T butter

* 3 T flour (white, wholewheat or whatever flour you prefer)

* 1 cup milk

* pinch of salt

* cup of grated cheddar cheese

Method:

Melt butter in saucepan. When melted, add flour and stir until mixed. Keep stirring until it becomes 'frothy' (usually just a few seconds). Add milk and stir to dissolve the butter/flour mixture. Keep stirring until sauce has thickened (if you want it a little lighter, not so thick, add a little more milk). Turn heat off and mix in grated cheese. Let the cheese melt, stir to make sure it's all well mixed - Voila!

Serve over your choice of cooked noodles. We love these small o ones as they take so much of the yummy sauce... it get stuck in the middle of the o's, it coats them... ooooh, yum!

Mac n' Cheese is Kitty's favorite...

However, A Good Man is a "meat" man... he can't imagine himself satisfied if his plate doesn't contain at least a little symbol of meat. So, when it's Mac n' Cheese night for the kids, it's Cheese Carbonara for the parents.

I saute some onion, add a couple of cloves of garlic and a handful of shredded ham.

Add to our portion of the Mac n' Cheese and YUM! Of course, you can get fancy on me... you can add all sorts of veggies and meat to your Mac n' Cheese... one of my friends favorite favorites is to add diced cherry tomatoes and avocado. I have tried this and must add that it is a MUST try!

Enjoy!

Don't forget to enter the Fairy Garden Competition. It ends on August 15, so you still have a week to make your very own magical Fairy Garden with your kids to be in to win all of those fabulous prizes... Click on the button for more details.

Blessings and magic,

Donni

Make a Bean Teepee.

Time for a little honesty here... the truth is my kids struggle to eat vegetables. Let me tell you, we are a relatively health conscious family... I have offered sweet carrots, delicious corn and even frozen peas from the time my children were mere babies and yet, would you know, they often refuse to eat anything green, orange or yellow. The old adage of offering a food option 20 times before it is accepted has been surpassed long ago in our house... try 978 times! Still, healthy greens are rejected in favor of other, less healthy, foods. But, and it's a BIG but, my children will eat anything we grow in our garden... green, yellow, red and even purple! If only we lived on a huge farm where I could grow all the food we needed to survive... my children would be the healthiest kids on the block!

Alas, we don't... we live in the middle of one of the busiest metropolises in the world and my 'vegetable growing' land is very minimal. So, when my friend suggested that we concentrate on growing easy and prolifically producing vegetables, I wondered why I had tried to grow exotic and unusual vegetables for all these years? Why not grow the things I know my children will eat straight from the bush?

So, tomatoes and green beans it is!

Beans need to climb which is great if you don't have much horizontal space... onto the tools we got to make a bean teepee.

We needed;

* Bamboo sticks,

* Bendy wire (galvanized so as not to rust)

* Pliers (or, if you are like me and cant find yours, old garden scissors will do)

* Bean plants

*A nice big pot

*Soil

Place the bamboo sticks in a teepee shape and fix by wrapping a length of wire around them.

Cut another length of wire, larger this time, and fix a loop around the teepee frame for the climbing bean plants to attach to.

Repeat until you have 3 or 4 wrungs on your bean teepee.

Sink the bottom of the teepee into the soil - an old whiskey barrel in our case.

Plant bean plants and water profusely. Beans are very hardy... these particular plants were pulled out and replanted several times by an overenthusiastic little garden helper (Mr T has found a new passion to add to his love of playing his pink guitar, fishing in the fountain and riding his sisters scooter).

Look at our bean plants now, a few weeks later...

I wonder if we'll ever get to eat them at dinnertime as a bean is picked each and every time someone from my family walks past this lush-looking planter. They are super delicious - who says you have to eat your vegetables at suppertime??

Happy planting!

Blessing and magic,

Donni

May I have S'more!!

To all of my American friends... I bet you can't believe that the first time I ever tried a S'more was a few years ago on our first American camping trip. I'm totally serious... I'd never even heard of a S'more before then. Yes, we grew up roasting marshmallows over the coals, but a S'more, nope, never had!

So, for all my friends who aren't American and have, perhaps, never had a S'more, you are in for a culinary treat! This, my darlings, is a S'more!


It is quite the yummiest thing you'll ever have.

This is how it's made...

Marshmallows, chocolate and biscuits (called Gram Crackers in America, kind of like a digestive)


First, scour the countryside to find the most perfect marshmallow-roasting stick. Your stick needs to be sturdy, smooth and long. K found a beauty...


If you can't find the perfect stick for yourself, niggle your sister until she gives you hers and then 'Whoop' in triumph at your prize...


Insert your stick into one end of your marshmallow and roast it over the coals until it becomes golden and delicious.


If you can't wait for your marshmallow to roast, eat it, by all means and try again...


But if you are patient and choose a lovely glowing ember to cook it over, your marshmallow roasts wonderfully.


While your roasted marshmallow is still hot, place a piece of chocolate on a biscuit. Cover the chocolate with the hot roasted marshmallow and top with another biscuit. You now have a S'more!

The hot marshmallow melts the chocolate into the biscuit and it's so super delicious that one is definitely not enough.


You'll soon be asking for S'more!

Blessings and magic.

Birthday Honey Cupcakes.

In a Waldorf Kindergarten, a child's Birthday Celebration is a magical experience. The 6th birthday is a momentous milestone... the child is thought to transition from their Heavenly Being into their Earthly Being. They settle into themselves and find their footing among the earthly aspects of our world.

Today, we celebrated K's 6th Birthday at school. A Good Man and I were invited into their warm and loving circle as K's wonderful teacher and her sweet friends paid homage to this milestone. They sang songs to her and gave her their handmade gifts. And then The Birthday Story was told. We had furnished K's teacher with little snippets from K's life and she wove this history into the most wonderfully magical story of how K's spirit chose us to be her parents. I admit that both of K's parents shed a few tears as we heard our memories narrated in such a special way.

And then we sat down to a birthday feast of Birthday Honey Cupcakes and whipped cream. They were so delicious, and nutritious, and K and I had so much fun making them this morning that I want to share the recipe with you.

Birthday Honey Cupcakes

(makes 24 cupcakes)

4 cups of whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

Half a cup oil

1 cup honey or real maple syrup

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

1 cup apple juice

1 cup apple sauce

Oil the muffin tins. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Sift and set aside dry ingredients. Combine oil, honey and vanilla. Beat eggs and add to oil mixture. Add apple sauce and apple juice. Add dry ingredients alternately with the wet ingredients and stir until just mixed. Spoon into muffin tins three-quarters full. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Let cool.

Recipe from 'The Sugarless Baking Book' by Patricia Mayo, Shambala Publications, 1979.

Sift...

Add...
Stir...
Spoon...
Bake...

Let me tell you, they were yum, yum, yum!!

Happy baking,

Blessings and magic.

Lemonade.

We made lemonade today.

We squished two lemons, not letting their skins break,  so that they released their juice inside.

Then we cut them in half and tried to see who could squeeze THE MOST lemon juice into the bowl. 

We strained the juice into our jug.

We added half a cup of boiling water to three quarters of a cup of sugar and stirred until the sugar was dissolved. 

We added the cooled sugar water to our jug and then added water to taste. And then ice, of course!

Voila... cool lemonade.

The verdict... Delicious!!

Mr T enjoyed it SO much that he drank...
And he drank... and at last, issued a resounding, 'NUM!'

I can imagine a lovely cool glass of our lemonade would go very nicely in these settings.

Blessings and magic.

Pancakes for Supper.

When I asked K what she wanted for breakfast this morning, she answered, 'Pancakes'. 

'OK', I replied. 

'Yay!' she beamed. 

Alas, when I went to get the eggs from the fridge... NO eggs. 

'That's no problem', she said, 'I'll ask our neighbor!' 

'OK' I replied sceptically... it was 5.45 AM! 

But then, alas, no milk either (bad mother, I know!)

'Sorry, K. It just doesn't look like pancakes are going to work this morning.' I told her, nervously.

'Oh, Mommy,' she lamented, 'Pleeeeaaaasssssseee! I waaaaaant pancakes!' 

'Sorry, baby' I said, bracing myself for an almighty eruption, 'You can have toast, a bagel...?'

To my utter surprise, she said, 'Oh well, can we have pancakes for supper then?' 

You could have knocked me over with a feather... 'Yes! What a great idea!' I replied hastily.

So, for dinner tonight, we made pancakes!

This is my favorite crepe recipe. Very quick and easy AND I (usually!) have the ingredients on hand.

1 cup flour

2 eggs

Half a cup milk

Half a cup water

Quarter teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons melted butter

Beat eggs.

Mix together the wet ingredients.

Sift in the flour and salt.

Whisk until smooth.

Makes 5 large crepes.

If the urge arises, play 'snowstorm' with the flour before mixing into the wet ingredients.

The batter will be the consistency of cream.

Heat your pan. Douse with butter. Cover bottom of pan with batter. When top starts to 'pock' turn it over to cook the underside.

Yum!

A Good Man's favorite 'left-over' dinner is to heat left-overs with a little cream. Spread creamy, savory, goo over one side of pancake. Top with Sweet Chili Sauce. Sprinkle cheese. Cover with other side of pancake... it is delicious!

K and T like their pancakes sprinkled with a little sugar.

My favorite is sugar, a tiny pinch of cinnamon and a good dousing of fresh lemon. 

Pancakes for supper turned out to be an all-round winner! Perhaps it'll become a weekly tradition.

Blessings and magic.