Soup to share

I make no claims on the recipe for this wonderful, hearty soup inspired by the Italian ribollita.

But I’ve been cooking it a lot in this chilly winter weather (well, chilly by Australian standards!) People keep asking me for the recipe so I thought I’d share it here.

It comes from a cookbook by Aussie chef Bill Granger, Bill’s Basics. I have an extensive cookbook collection but this is one of my favorites. Every recipe I’ve made from it has turned out splendidly and they are much in demand from my family. With my background as an editor in food magazines, I can be critical of recipes—I can only praise this collection!

Here it is—a tasty, warming soup.

BAKED BORLOTTI BEAN AND PANCETTA SOUP

Ingredients

• 375 g (2 cups) dried borlotti beans
• 2 red onions, diced
• 100g pancetta, chopped, or a ham hock
• 6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 4 celery sticks, diced
• ½ teaspoons dried chilli flakes plus ½ tsp extra
• 2 teaspoons chopped rosemary
• 1 litre (4 cups) chicken or vegetable stock
• 200g ciabatta bread, crust removed, roughly torn
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 bunch cavolo nero, shredded
• Method

Put the borlotti beans in a large bow, cover with cold water and leave to soak for 8 hours or overnight. Rinse the beans under cold running water, then drain well.

Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Put the beans in a large ovenproof casserole dish with the onion, pancetta or ham hock, garlic, celery, chilli flakes, rosemary, stock and 1 litre (4 cups) water. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Put the lid on the dish and bake in the oven for 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until the beans are tender, adding a little more water if necessary.

When the soup is nearly ready, put the ciabatta on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with the extra chilli flakes and some sea salt. Bake for 10–15 minutes until golden brown.

If you used the ham hock, lift it out now, shred the meat and return to the soup with the cavolo nero. Put the lid back on and leave for a couple of minutes until the cavolo nero is bright green.

Ladle into bowls and top with the toasted ciabatta croutons.

Serves six

Bill’s Basics by Bill Granger, HarperCollins Publishers

I’ve cooked this recipe several times. I’ve found with Bill Granger’s recipes from Bill’s Basics that if you follow the recipe exactly it turns out perfectly.

One time I didn’t have pancetta so used speck. Cavolo nero or tuscan cabbage isn’t always available where I shop – I’ve used kale instead and it tasted just as good.

I serve this soup with shaved parmesan cheese on top.

It’s so worth making the croutons, they taste fantastic and their crispness is a great contrast in texture. I’ve made them with sourdough bread when I haven’t had ciabatta.

I’ve successfully frozen this soup.

NOTE Australian standard measuring cups are used in this recipe. An Australian standard measuring cup is 250ml, an American one is 240ml so there isn’t much difference in a recipe like this.

One Australian metric tablespoon holds 20mls; a tablespoon in the US, the UK and New Zealand holds 15mls.

100 grams is approximately 4 oz

180˚C oven heat is approximately 360˚F

(For an excellent resource in converting baking measures and ingredients from other countries, visit Joy of Baking.)

KANDY SHEPHERD writes fun, feel-good fiction.

Her newest release from Harlequin Romance is The Bridesmaid’s Baby Bump.

 The billionaire bachelor’s baby! 

When party planner Eliza Dunne meets billionaire Jake Marlowe at a wedding, she decides to finally give in to the sparks that have always fizzed between them! 

The connection is so intense that Jake can’t resist Eliza—but with the divorce only just final after his unhappy marriage, he’s not ready for anything serious. But when Eliza tells him her shocking news—she’s pregnant with his baby!—he has one certainty: he wants to be at the center of his new family, as a husband and father…

Visit Kandy at her website

www.kandyshepherd.com

Blissful Bali

There are few places more romantic than the beautiful Indonesian island of Bali. No wonder it was where I chose to celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary last year. Just me and my husband in our own private villa at a gorgeous hotel in Seminyak, on the west coast. A week of utter bliss!

A private pool just for two – so romantic!

It was one of those vacations that I couldn’t fault. The weather was perfect, the resort* divine and the Balinese people as charming and hospitable as we remembered from our first visit to the tropical island fourteen years previously.

Lush tropical growth everywhere

No wonder I chose Bali as the setting for my fourth book for Harlequin Romance, From Paradise to…Pregnant!— released in print and e-book on June 02 in North America, the UK and Australia and New Zealand. How could I resist such a perfect place for a romance?

Sunset on the  beach at Seminyak is spectacular

My heroine Zoe and hero Mitch knew each other at high school—he the jock, she the nerd—but their friendship didn’t end well. When an earth tremor hits Bali, they meet again as they’re both staying at the same hotel. (Yes,  I was inspired by the area where we stayed. No, we didn’t experience an earth tremor when we were in Bali!)

The frangipani tree in Zoe’s hotel courtyard is significent

And the sweetly scented frangipani flowers…

As they comfort each other after the shock of the earthquake, a private villa with its own pool became the perfect place for Zoe and Mitch to make amends for the past and become aware of their intense attraction to each other.

Afternoon tea – Balinese style. Beware the fiery green chili hiding in that pastry!

We loved the food in Bali, so of course I had to have the newly reunited couple share a meal. I wish I could recreate some of the delicious dishes we had there. I’ve looked up recipes online but they don’t taste the same. Next time I go to Bali, I’ll do a cooking course!

Fresh pineapple juice by the pool – perfect!

Of course, as is the way of romance novels, a lot happens between Zoe and Mitch’s reunion and the end of the book where they have a happy-ever-after ending. They leave Bali behind them as they travel home to different ends of the world — but the memories stay with them.

The memories have stayed with me too —  I can’t wait to go back to Bali.

From Paradise to…Pregnant!  has two covers, one for the North American market with the same image used for the Australian cover, and one for the UK. I think both reflect the feel of falling in love in a tropical paradise. The first one could be in that very pool in the villa in Bali and the second one on the beach.

 

North American cover

 

UK cover

 

From Paradise to…Pregnant! is available where Harlequin books are sold and at onlinebook retailers.

 

*We stayed at The Elysian in Seminyak and can highly recommend it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soundtrack to summer

THE RELENTLESS CHORUS of cicadas has been the soundtrack to summer in my part of Down Under: so blaringly loud at times we’ve had to shout at each other to be heard over it.

Apparently, breeding conditions were perfect back in 2007 and we’ve been graced with record numbers of cicadas this year. An early, hot summer has also helped.

To me, it’s a happy sound, reminiscent of the long, hot summer days of childhood. One distinct memory of my Sydney suburban childhood is of walking to church for Christmas midnight mass with the cicadas singing as loudly at night as they did during the day. In our fanciful minds, we thought they were rejoicing along with us.

We seem to have had a lot of Black Prince cicadas at our place this summer

My brothers used to climb trees to catch cicadas  and keep them in boxes—with strict parental instructions to release them back to the trees at the end of the day (which they did).

The different varieties were prized and even traded: green grocer, cherry nose, floury baker, black prince, yellow Monday, double drummer. The collecting of cicadas seemed more a boy thing than a girl thing, though we were all both fascinated and squeamish when those poor captive creatures proceeded to do what all the frantic singing was about and mated.

According to the wonderfully titled article in The Sydney Morning Herald, Suicide song: cicada sex racket risks death for chance at love: “Cicadas are the suicidal lovers of the insect world, risking death for several weeks of singing and sex.”

Only male cicadas sing and they do so to attract a mate—the louder and more vigorously he sings, the more he advertises himself as a worthy, virile mate for a female. The downside of this blatant self-promotion is he also attracts predators such as birds and wasps that like to snack on cicadas.

Eucalypt trees like this are full of cicadas singing so loudly their song is deafening

This season, apparently, there are so many cicadas around that their predators are sick of them. The birds are weary of cicada on the menu—leaving those males free to sing and attract females and start the cycle all over again. (Seems to me, the birds then head for my fruit trees for dessert.)

After she’s chosen a mate, the female cicada lays her eggs in the bark of a tree. When the nymphs hatch they drop to the ground where they burrow deep and stay there for a number of years.  They emerge and shed their skins, leaving a dry, brown endoskeleton.

There are cicada “shells” like this all over our place, attached to fences, walls and trees

Another enduring childhood memory is of watching in awe as a cicada emerged from its humble brown skin as a magnificent greengrocer, its gauzy, emerald-veined wings crumpled at first and then drying in the sun before it flew away.

This year I’ve enjoyed the letters pages of our daily newspapers as excited readers report sightings of their various favorites. I suspect they, too, were enjoying the same nostalgic blast from childhoods when the long Aussie summer school holidays were spent roaming suburban streets and bush-land without parental supervision. The soundtrack to this freedom? The relentless sound of cicadas.

There’s one thing that puzzles me about that sound. I’m no entomologist, and wonder at the way these insects communicate. One moment the volume of their song is full blast then, at the seeming snap of some cicalian finger, they’re silent. All at once. Thousands of them.  How does that happen?

I’ll be sad when the season ends and the sound of cicadas fades into the memory of another summer. I just hope enough of them have successfully mated, so I have another bumper cicada summer to look forward to in seven or so years time.

Kandy Shepherd writes fun, feel-good fiction.

The Summer They Never Forgot, her first release from Harlequin Romance is all about celebrating summer, first love and second chances.

Visit Kandy at her website

www.kandyshepherd.com

A collection of covers

My first book with Harlequin is published today—The Summer They Never Forgot is available in print and e-book from wherever Harlequin series books are sold. It’s a deeply emotional, heart-warming story of rekindled love.

Sometime last century I submitted my first romance to Harlequin Mills & Boon in London. Needless to say it was promptly rejected but later efforts had encouraging replies. I got sidetracked into other writing ventures but never gave up the dream to be published by Harlequin. So I was thrilled when the manuscript for The Summer They Never Forgot was accepted. And can I say that working with the editors at the London office is an absolute pleasure! Well worth the long wait…

My kitty Ivy seems to be urging me to unpack the books and give her the box!

Waiting to see what cover the publisher gives your book can be a tense moment for an author. How did the cover designer interpret my characters? Did they get my setting right? How does the title look on the page?

I’m pleased to report the Harlequin designers got everything right! The water setting, the dock where some pivotal scenes are played out, the carefree summer atmosphere. Most important, the heroine and hero, Sandy and Ben, fit my mental image of them. “He’s hot!” was my daughter’s reaction to Ben—you can’t get much better than that.

Oh, and I’m a big sucker for pink on covers and I love the pink on the Harlequin Romance covers.

The Mills & Boon hardcover and e-book cover in the UK

As this is my first book for Harlequin, I didn’t realize there would be several other covers for the book.

The Mills & Boon Sweet e-book cover in Australia

And I like them too!

Then there are paperback covers for two-in-one editions.

The Australian mass market paperback Mills & Boon Sweet with Sophie Pemberton’s Heiress on the Run

The UK mass market paperback Mills & Boon Cherish with Liz Talley’s His Forever Girl

I believe if foreign editions are sold, they might have different covers again. I look forward to that!

Here’s the cover blurb for The Summer They Never Forgot:

“It started with a summer kiss…

Sandy Adams is on her way to an interview, but when she sees a signpost for Dolphin Bay she decides to take a detour down memory lane….

Ben Morgan has had his share of heartache. But when a ghost from his youth catches his eye memories of their last summer together come flooding back.

Everything has changed in the past twelve years, and still they’re right back where they started, facing a second chance they deserve…together.”

Kandy Shepherd writes fun, feel-good fiction.

Watch out for her The Summer They Never Forgot, her first release from Harlequin Romance in February 2014 in North America, the UK and Australia.

Her contemporary women’s fiction e-book, Reinventing Rose, is available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and other e-book retailers.

Kandy’s romances include the Amazon bestseller The Castaway Bride, Something About Joe, and the award-winners Love is a Four-Legged Word and Home Is Where the Bark Is.

Visit Kandy at her website

www.kandyshepherd.com

My favorite lemon cake

I’ve been baking cakes since I was ten years old and, as you can imagine, have amassed quite a collection of recipes.

I made this Lemon Sour Cream Cake for the first time just last year—but it has already become one of my very favorites. (And my family and friends like it, too!)

 

Lemon Sour Cream Cake – my new favorite cake

 

It’s a fabulous cake with a wonderful texture and flavor. I just love pine nuts, but before baking this cake I’d only ever used them in savory dishes.

I serve the cake with vanilla-bean yogurt and blueberries—though it tastes great just on its own.

This is quite a big cake and I usually freeze half of it for later. It freezes beautifully, with or without the honey drizzled on top.

 

Fresh from the oven

 

The recipe is from a marvelous Australian cookbook: Bake: Celebrating the time-Honoured Tradition of Home Baking by The Australian Women’s Weekly, published by ACP Books.

My well-used copy of BAKE

I spoke to the publisher, Pamela Clark, who is one of the doyennes of cooking in Australia, about this cake. She advised me to follow the recipe exactly, use the correct size cake pan, not to be tempted to use a higher oven temperature, and to leave the cake in the oven for the full hour.

Her advice was spot on because the cake has turned out perfectly every time I’ve baked it!

Here’s the recipe.

LEMON SOUR CREAM CAKE

Preparation time 15 minutes

Cooking time  1 hour (plus cooling time)

Serves 16

250g butter, softened

1 tablespoon finely grated lemon rind

2 cups (440g) caster sugar

6 eggs

¾ cup (180g) sour cream

2 cups (300g) plain flour

¼ cup (35g) self-raising flour

½ cup (80g) pine nuts

1 tablespoon demerara sugar

¼ cup (90g) honey

1 Preheat oven to 170˚/150˚ fan-forced. Grease deep 23-cm square cake pan; line base and sides with baking paper, extending paper 5cm over sides.

2 Beat butter, rind and caster sugar in medium bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in sour cream and sifted flours, in two batches. Spread mixture into pan; bake 15 minutes.

3 Meanwhile, combine pine nuts and demerara sugar in small bowl.

4 Carefully remove cake from oven; working quickly, sprinkle evenly with nut mixture, pressing gently into cake. Return cake to oven; bake further 45 minutes. Stand cake in pan 5 minutes; turn, top-side up, onto wire rack.

5 Heat honey in small saucepan; drizzle hot honey evenly over hot cake. Cool.

BAKING TIPS

NOTE Australian standard measuring cups are used in this recipe. An Australian standard measuring cup is 250ml, an American one is 240ml so there isn’t much difference in a recipe like this.

One Australian metric tablespoon holds 20mls; a tablespoon in the US, the UK and New Zealand holds 15mls.

100 grams is approximately 4 oz

170 degrees C oven heat is approximately  340 degrees F

• You can use light brown sugar instead of demerara sugar  • Caster sugar is also known as superfine sugar  • Regular rather than light sour cream works best  • Plain flour is also known as all-purpose flour  • Self-raising flour can be made by mixing  1 cup of plain/all-purpose flour with 2 teaspoons of baking powder  • Baking paper is also known as parchment paper  • A metric sized 23-cm square cake pan is equivalent to a 9-inch square pan.

For an excellent resource in converting baking measures and ingredients from other countries, visit Joy of Baking.

MY NEW RELEASE ON SALE!

Reinventing Rose is an e-book special at Amazon for the bargain price of just $US0.99 until May 31.

Kandy Shepherd writes fun, feel-good fiction. Her new release is the contemporary women’s fiction (aka chicklit!) Reinventing Rose, where the characters don’t get much of a chance to eat cake let alone bake it…

Kandy’s romances include The Castaway Bride, Something About Joe, Love is a Four-Legged Word and Home Is Where the Bark Is

Two kitties and a guitar case

My teenage daughter foolishly left her soft guitar case open on the floor in our hallway. Before long, her tortoiseshell kitty, Tabitha, came across it. With a few circles and kneading of paws she took possession, purring loudly at the pleasure of such a find.

Tabitha makes the discovery

It wasn’t long before Ancient Albert, our precious nearly twenty-two-year-old boy ambled past on his aged and unsteady legs. Tabby hissed defensively, as thirteen-year-old torties are prone to do, but to no avail. Soon there were two cats in the guitar case. There wasn’t a lot of room for two cats to sleep comfortably.

Not quite enough room for two cats

The inevitable happened—Albert evicted Tabitha and had it all to himself. I’ve noticed my female cats inevitably concede to the males when it comes to possession of comfy sleeping spots and desirable food.

Albert has the guitar case all to himself

Eventually Tabby gracefully admitted defeat gracefully and went and found herself a box of paper—printouts of my work-in-progress.

Tabby squeezes into a box

Albert enjoyed sole possession of the guitar case until he wandered off and found himself an even better bed—my daughter’s large velvet-lined guitar case. Much more spacious and comfortable!

Albert finds himself an even better guitar case

When daughter complained about cat fur in her guitar case did I have pity on her? A little. I know I should have removed the kitties, rather than laughing and taking snaps with my iPhone. But since then neither I—nor the cats—have noticed any guitar cases left lying around the house!

MY NEW RELEASE ON SALE!

Reinventing Rose is on special at Amazon for just $US0.99 from 1 through 5 May, 2013 as part of the Book Lovers Buffet. There are loads of other wonderful books across all romance genres on sale, too.

http://bookloversbuffetdotcom.wordpress.com/contemporary/

Kandy Shepherd writes fun, feel-good fiction. Her new release is the contemporary women’s fiction (aka chicklit!) Reinventing Rose, where there are two kitty characters.

Kandy’s romances include The Castaway Bride, Something About Joe, Love is a Four-Legged Word and Home Is Where the Bark Is.

Reinventing Rose—my new story

I don’t know when “chicklit” became a no-no word. “Contemporary women’s fiction” is now the description of choice for contemporary, sometimes humorous novels about a young (or not-so-young) woman’s journey to that may or may not include romance but usually includes friendship, family and career.

I’m putting my hand up to say I love reading chicklit, however you label it. And I like writing it, too!

My new release Reinventing Rose falls under the chicklit banner. When 28-year-old Californian schoolteacher Rose Butler flies to Sydney, Australia, to meet an internet lover, the reunion doesn’t go quite to plan. Rose finds herself alone in a foreign country, too embarrassed to tell the folks back home what happened. Rose decides to stay and reinvent herself with a total “me makeover.”

Three new female roommates turn out to be the perfect people to aid and abet her—one is a beauty editor on a womens magazine with access to all sorts of image-changing freebies. But Rose discovers real change doesn’t come from new hair and makeup. As she throws herself headlong into her new life, she gets tripped up by a painful family secret and unresolved problems from her past. She’s forced to question her beliefs about love and loyalty, old mistakes and new choices, and the bonds of both family and friendship.

3 QUICK QUESTIONS

Q. You’re published in romance—why write womens fiction/chicklit?

A. I love writing romance where the focus is on two people falling in love against the odds. But I also like writing about the other aspects of my characters’ lives—family, friends, career challenges—and womens fiction gives me that opportunity. I enjoyed creating the secondary characters of Sasha, Carla and Kelly in Reinventing Rose. Female friendship is so important in my life—and I give Rose three amazing new friends. Of course Rose meets men, the sexy, bad-boy photographer Elliot and the handsome doctor Luke. Which of those gorgeous guys will she end up with?

Q. Doesn’t chicklit concentrate on shoes and shopping?

A. There’s a fun pair of shoes in Reinventing Rose but wearing them leads Rose somewhere she really shouldn’t have gone! Chicklit also deals with deeper issues and as Rose’s story unfurls she experiences them, too—eating disorders, divorce, miscarriage are all touched on. The tone is sassy but the subject matter is sometimes serious.

Q. What inspired you to write Reinventing Rose?

A. When I was working as an editor in womens magazines, I particularly enjoyed working on reader makeovers—coordinating with hairdressers, makeup artists, fashion stylists and photographers to transform everyday women into their look-best selves. I had the idea for a chick-lit type story about a young woman who decides a makeover will solve all her problems. Of course it doesn’t, and Rose has quite a journey before she realizes that. I had such fun taking Rose into the studio for her makeover—a location so familiar to me.

P.S.  There aren’t any dogs in Reinventing Rose—there was a gorgeous Border Collie in an earlier version but the chapter he appeared in was slashed in the editing process. There are two cats, though, a tuxedo kitty named Socks who stays off-stage but very much in the heroine Rose’s thoughts, and a beautiful brown Burmese named Nina who is modeled on one of my own cats (sadly departed.)

Reinventing Rose is available as a e-book (print coming soon) from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords and other on line e-retailers.

Kandy Shepherd writes fun, feel-good fiction. Her new release is the contemporary women’s fiction (aka chicklit!) Reinventing Rose. Her romances include The Castaway Bride, Something About Joe, Love is a Four-Legged Word and Home Is Where the Bark Is.

 

 

Sharing Butterscotch self-saucing pudding

When I posted a photo on Facebook after I made this wonderful Butterscotch Self-saucing Pudding, people asked me for the recipe.

It’s from the Winter issue of Coles Magazine, a free magazine from the major Australian supermarket chain Coles. My “day job” is editor of the magazine, and I get the privilege of tasting the wonderful recipes as they are developed and tested. This pudding is so delicious, I’ve made it twice. Once with walnuts, as in the recipe, and once with pecans instead. Just writing about it is making me want to make it a third time!

Australian readers can pick up a copy of the Coles Magazine in store right now. Or the recipe is on the Coles website.

BUTTERSCOTCH SELF-SAUCING PUDDING

COOK TIME 35-40 minutes

SERVES 6-8

1 and 1/3 cups Self-raising Flour

1/3 cup Brown Sugar

100 g Butter, melted and cooled

1 Egg

1/2 cup Milk

1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste

1/3 cup Walnuts, chopped

Cream or Vanilla Ice Cream, to serve

Sauce Mixture:

1/4 cup Brown Sugar

1/4 cup Golden Syrup

40 g Butter, chopped

1 and 1/2 cups Boiling Water

 

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C or 160°C fan and grease a 6-cup capacity ovenproof dish. Sift flour and sugar into a mixing bowl and make a well in the centre.

2. Whisk together butter, egg, milk and vanilla with a fork and pour into the dry ingredients. With a wooden spoon, fold together until evenly combined, then fold through the walnuts. Spoon into prepared dish and smooth the surface.

3. For the Sauce Mixture, combine brown sugar, golden syrup, butter and boiling water in a jug. Slowly and carefully pour over the back of a spoon evenly onto the batter. Bake for 35-40 mins, until the pudding has risen, browned and is firm to touch in the centre (it will move a little due to the sauce underneath). Serve immediately with cream or ice cream.

NOTE: Australian standard measuring cups are used in this recipe. An Australian standard measuring cup is 250ml, an American one is 240ml so there isn’t much difference in a recipe like this.

100 grams is approximately 4 oz

40 grams is approximately 1 and 1/2 oz

If golden syrup (a thick sugar syrup) isn’t available, I think  maple syrup or corn syrup could work as a substitute,  though I haven’t tried it myself.

160 degrees C oven heat  is approximately  325 degrees F

180 degrees C oven heat is approximately 350 degrees F

For an excellent resource in converting baking measures and ingredients from other countries, visit Joy of Baking  

Writing (and shopping) retreat

My friend, author Cathleen Ross, and I had the farmhouse to ourselves for the weekend—peace and quiet to write, write, write. We wrote, we read, and we… I was going to confess we ate the chocolate Easter eggs we bought for our families but maybe I might deny that.

To take a break, we went shopping at some of the not-too-far-away shops and a market that has several floors of antiques, bric-a-bric and gadgets. We had a fire at the farmhouse last year and nearly everything was destroyed by flame or smoke.  What an excuse to scoop up a few replacement bargains!

First up was this gorgeous jug. Who could leave it sitting there with its $5-reduced-from-$20 label? It would have been downright mean to reject it.

And then there was this pre-loved silver-plated spaghetti server. At $7, I felt it would add a touch of luxury to the simple pasta meals we share around the farmhouse table. (Must beg Cathleen to make me some of the awesome spaghetti sauce she learned to make from her Italian father-in-law. It’s truly deserving of a silver server!)

I don’t know what these beautiful candle sticks are made from, some kind of enamel possibly, but I fell in love with them and was happy to pay $16 for the pair. Practical as well as pretty—we often lose power when storms rage through our valley and it’s reassuring to have candles to hand when it suddenly goes dark.

Sweeping the floor is never much fun, but I rather think I’ll enjoy it more with this cheerful $6 dustpan and broom. Those extended handles should make the chore not so backbreaking.

And then there was this print on canvas, my most expensive buy of the day for $18. I love botanical prints and while this certainly isn’t the real deal, that didn’t stop me from taking it home!

We spent a while hunting through shelves and shelves of secondhand paperbacks and Cathleen found a wonderful selection of favorite out-of-print romances.

Then we went home and wrote again. And I came up with some creative explanations for my husband for just why we needed a silver spaghetti server!

In praise of plums

Our plums on the tree

One of the very special things about an old house is the garden that comes with it.  Our farmhouse is graced with wonderful fruit trees—some of them more than fifty years old, our neighbors tell us. The star is a gnarled old plum tree that each year bears an abundance of superb plums—more than enough for us and for the flocks of birds that also appreciate its fruit. The windfalls are enjoyed by our chickens, horses and little bulls.

Never happier than when picking his birthday plums

A cool, gray wet summer this year meant we didn’t get much bounty from the other fruit trees or the vegetable garden. But the plum tree more than made up for that by giving us hundreds of perfect fruits. My husband has a particular love for the plum tree, it bears fruit around about his birthday in January and he sees the crop as a gift just for him. He’s very possessive of them!

Happy harvest!

Over the last few years, I’ve learned how to save the plums as jams and preserved in jars (though nothing like the perfect preserves I admire made by the experts). I freeze them too, but our electricity supply can be erratic when storms rage through our valley so I don’t like to risk too many in the freezer!

Stewed with vanilla and cinnamon

The family favorite is plums stewed with sugar, a vanilla pod and a cinnamon quill. “Make enough for the whole year, please,” demands my daughter who likes to eat them with muesli and yogurt for breakfast.

Stacked ready to freeze

I did my best to fill her order, with hubby helping to wash and stone and cut (and snack!).  But in spite of our best efforts, work and writing and everything else got in the way and I didn’t quite manage a year’s supply this time. Preserving fruit is hot, hard, time-consuming work! However there is a still a satisfying number of containers stored away in pantry and freezer. And, yes, I confess, I’m guilty of holding open the cupboard doors and gloating over them!

Plum upside down cake - yum!

We have no idea what variety our plums are—we just enjoy them and hope we’ll be enjoying them for years to come…