Time for Tea with Lemon Curd Cake

When I was a child we had our main meal in the middle of the day, but this changed when we all started school.  But at the weekends we reverted back - when dinner was at lunchtime and then tea was in the evening. Tea time was always associated with manic baking by my mother as well as doing a hundred other things at the same time.  Now I remember her complaining about the lunacy of doing this especially as I seem to do the exact same thing - often leading to disastrous results.  She used to make a type of wholemeal yeast bread with molasses as well as the traditional soda bread - and for a treat a white soda with dried fruit.  Then she would make fruit scones, apple tart and to finish a cake - coffee, chocolate or even lemon or orange.  This was all after a salad-type start with salad leaves, always butter head (iceberg hadn't made an appearance at this stage), scallions, ham, tomato, boiled egg and cheese probably "air" on the cheddar variety!  Looking back I don't know how we weren't obese but surprisingly none of us were.  During the week we always had pudding which could have been anything from eve's pudding and variations there of - to apple tart or pavlova on a special occasion.  I remember moaning that all our cakes were homemade and we never had "proper" shop-bought cakes like my friends had and which to me were far more desirable!  Occasionally my mother would succombe and buy a Tea Time Express but she would always pronounce it "sawdust"!  As a treat she would buy a coffee log or Bewleys cherry buns as she acknowledged they were "almost" as good as hers!

Another treat was lemon curd as we always had her jam.  I loved lemon curd and often make it myself now I have my own eggs.  I make a Victoria sponge and sandwich it with some of my lemon curd and dust with icing sugar.

The recipe I use for lemon curd comes from a book my aunt bought in a car boot sale in the UK and gave to me, called Cordon Bleu Preserving.  It is a fantastic book and has all sorts of old-fashioned recipes for preserves.

Lemon Curd Recipe
Grated rind and juice of 2 large lemons
75g butter

225g lump sugar (I have no idea what this is I use ordinary sugar)         
3 eggs beaten

Put the lemon rind and juice in a double saucepan (bain marie), add the butter and heat gently, then add the sugar.  Strain the beaten eggs into the pan.  Stir over heat until mixture is thick, then pour into warm, dry jars.  Cover and tie down.

Victoria Sponge
225g softened butter
225g sugar
4 medium eggs
225g white spelt flour or plain wheat flour
1 heaped tsp. baking powder

Cream butter and sugar together until white and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time and continue beating.  Sift in flour and baking powder and fold in with a metal spoon.  Line two sandwich tins and place in a pre-heated oven at gas mark 4 or 180C.  Bake until the centre springs back to a light touch and the cake has shrunk in from the edge of tin.   Cool and sandwich with the lemon curd.  Dust the top with icing sugar and use a lemon zester to make some curly lemon zest decorations and place in centre.  Keep in a cool place if not eaten straight away.

The Fox and The Gander

We first got hens here 14 years ago when my son moved to a new primary school in the next village. There was a craze in the school at that time with many of the kids keeping hens.  It was the usual story - "but mum everyone has them - can I not get some too?"  The hens were just the beginning and were rapidly followed by ducks and geese.   At that time we also had two ponies, my cob, a dog and numerous cats.  The hens, ducks and geese were duly installed into an old wooden playhouse which the kids had outgrown and we built a make-shift run around it.  As with every animal that sets a hoof, paw or a claw here they got the run of the place (excuse the pun). They viewed the make-shift run as jail but for me it was a necessary evil; when I got fed up of having to search a huge garden for their latest favourite place to lay -  usually in the hedge but also in the stable or in the wood shed.

The geese were a magnificent pair and soon produced a gosling much to the delight of the kids especially as it was the gander that took control of the parenting. They were absolutely fascinated that the daddy took such an active role.  The gander was wicked and took great delight in chasing anyone and everyone dumb enough to enter "his" territory.  My mother and my daughter were chased up the field by him.  My mother was terrified and this was a woman who grew up with wicked turkeys and whose best friend was afraid to call for her to walk to school. Unfortunately the gosling met an untimely end under a visiting van.  The gander got some sort of stroke (possibly after a failed fox attack) and lost the use of his legs.  I took him into a very bemused vet who told me I had to try and get him to exercise the legs or he would never regain use of them.  I cut a hole in a toy deck chair and sat him in it everyday and he paddled his legs and got a work out.  He recovered surprisingly well.  The ducks were given an old plastic sandpit converted into a pool and made a huge mess everywhere but were great fun and lovely to look at waddling about.

The eggs were a bonus despite all the hassle particularly the goose eggs which made the most amazing deep yellow sponges. For a number of years we had a plentiful supply of the freshest, tastiest eggs but gradually a bit of laziness and work and other commitments meant we were not as dutiful as we should have been in locking them in at night and Mr. Fox was quick to take advantage.  Little by little he reduced my stock until finally he finished off the gander (by this stage he had got the goose).  It was easier not to bother replacing them but I really missed the eggs.  If I ever saw a sign advertising eggs for sale and it was obvious the hens producing them were free to roam then I was first in line to buy them.

A few years ago I decided I missed "real" eggs so decided to get hens and ducks again.  Last summer a fox (vixen as I later found out) made several attacks in broad daylight.  She got a couple of ducks and another time ran across in full view of my kitchen window snapping at the tail feathers of my rooster.  She managed to get a hen another time.  Poultry are a nuisance despite what people say as the fox is an ever present threat.  You need to organise someone to lock them in if you are not going to be home soon after dark, they need a decent amount of space to roam and plenty of grass and vegetation.  They are extremely dirty and they are a menace in a newly planted garden casually scratching new plants to one side in order to root out bugs.  However, the up side of this is they are great slug busters and chicken poo makes great manure.  The eggs are really amazing and there is not a shop bought egg - free range or organic that comes close to the flavour, colour or freshness.

My Cuckoo Maran rooster

Why I Don't Want to Eat GMO

Do I actually know anything about GMO foods?  For that matter does anyone?  We all just assume that the boffins (as known as scientists) have our best interests at heart - but do they?  First off I had to look up a definition of GMO foods.  I had a vague notion that the process involves transferring genes from one organism to another to produce desirable qualities in the resulting genetically modified plant.  These desirable qualities can be, among others, resistance to a particular disease for example, meaning that the yield of the crop would be increased.  A brief search yielded the following link http://biotech.about.com/od/faq/f/GMOs.htm.

Modern agriculture has for decades concentrated on growing small numbers of plant varieties that are primarily high yielding.  Selective breeding has been carried out so that many old varieties of crops have been cast aside.  Seed Savers have done some amazing work to try to reintroduce and save these old varieties.  The problem with mass-growing of specially selected, high-yielding crops is that should a new pest or disease get hold the losses can be devastating.  For this reason the crops need to be sprayed with a cocktail of pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilisers.  The pro GMO lobby will tell you that the new genetically modified varieties will need less spraying and so will be better for you and for the environment.  However, many of the varieties of plants discarded have better flavour, taste and in some cases are even more resistant to disease but are not high yielding. 

The natural environment is a very finely balanced ecosystem and if disrupted, the consequences can be serious.  I don't believe that there has been enough research carried out on ensuring introduction of genetically modified crops will have minimum impact on the environment or the delicate balance of the ecosystem.  What impact these crops will have on the animals they are fed to or in turn what impact will they have on us - the end consumer?  After all BSE was caused by feeding animal remains to animals that were natural herbivores.

Apparently Teagasc are about to start trials on GM potatoes to increase late blight resistance.  This is unbelievable especially with the recent furore over the raw milk debacle.  The reason the department of agriculture gave me for wanting to ban raw milk was to prevent any damage to the image of Ireland as a clean, green and tuberculosis-free producer of milk especially to our export market. It would make a lot more sense to promote our image as a GMO-free producer of food.

On balance, I made a decision a long time ago that I did not want to be a guinea pig for the biotech industries' trials on GM foods.  I avoid all soya as over 60% is genetically modified and it is virtually impossible to guarantee that any source is completely GM free.  Maize apparently is also genetically modified.  I heard years ago that tomato puree is made with GM tomatoes.  But far more difficult to avoid is eating meat from animals fed genetically modified cereals in meal.  For now there is not enough public demand for such meat or even if there was there are not enough producers.  One thing for sure though, is if the demand were to increase, the industry should want to zealously guard the image of Ireland as a clean green GMO free producer of food!