I am a domestic goddes I am - no really I am. I AM!

I made a cake to prove it too!

Not that anyone actually wants to eat it (altogether now "ahhhhhhhhhhhh").

Why don't they want to eat it I hear you proclaim, it looks all lovely and risen and moist and yummy and scrummy and all things nice?

Well I'll tell you why no-one wants to eat it (the ungrateful so and so's), it's because it is a courgette cake.

Yes that's right - the scourge of the glut harvest, courgettes rear their ugly heads again.  The courgette bread my family could cope with but they seem to feel that cake is taking it one step beyond.

In fact Brendan went to extremes to declare that courgette cake was just 'wrong' 'wrong' 'wrong' and thrice 'wrong'.

But just in case you feel differently, here's the recipe anyway.

Chocolate and Courgette Cake

350g self raising flour

175g melted cooking chocolate

1 teaspoon mixed spice or cinnamon if you don't have mixed spice

175ml olive oil

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

150g chopped mixed nuts

Melt the chocolate in a pan, grate the courgettes and whisk the eggs and oil together  - obviously if you are a domestic goddess like me you can do all three simultaneously.

Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl with a spatula - no need for electric gadgetry for this if you are a domestic goddess like me.

Grease a springform cake tin or a large loaf tin, pour in the mixture and cook at 180°c for about 40 to 50 minutes - if you are a domestic goddess like me you will know automatically when the cake is ready to take out of the oven, if you are not a domestic goddess like me, stick a metal skewer in it and if it comes out clean the cake is ready.

Busy first day of my holiday - courgette bread recipe

I am sort of on holiday this week.  In actual fact I have only to work for 4 hours, split between Tuesday and Thursday as my other clients are on their holidays or have family coming to visit who will take on their care in the interim.

I celebrated the first day of my holiday by nipping up the road to the local farmers' market and car boot.  In the end I bought the bits and bobs as in the photo and 2 kilos of apricots.

Our new chicks were introduced to the existing flock this morning and no casulaties so far (touch wood), just a bit of pecking order to be sorted out, and the pans I bought above are to be a new set of feeders and drinkers for the housing reshuffle now imminent amongst the rabbits and the quail with the hutches freed by the chicks now.

It was once again a very hot day, so in a burst of insanity I decided to make bread and do some baking - well I do have 2 kilos of apricots now to do something with, as well as a garden full of courgettes.  

So with thanks to the original poster on selfsufficientish.com (here) - I adapted this recipe and baked it in my bread machine on the wholewheat setting.

Courgette bread recipe  

7 tbspns milk
1/2 cup water 
1 1/2 cups grated courgette 
4 cups unbleached bread flour
1 cup wholemeal bread flour
5 tbspns mixed seeds (I used sunflour and sesamen)
1 tspn salt
2 tspn sugar
2 tbsn olive oil
1 1/2 tspn dried yeast

Well at least that is another lot of courgettes used up - while the force was strong in me I continued grating and filled a couple of empty ice cream tubs with grated courgettes for the freezer to use another time.  The courgettes don't seem to add any flavour to the bread, but they do leave what could be a heavy loaf light and moist. 

Very delicious was the verdict all round.

Obviously I did serve it with a side order of courgettes too!

You name it the cats have slept in it today....

Went to hang out the washing, three cats asleep in the washing basket, cleaned the fruit bowl out, Thea's kitten decided it made the best bed, tried to clean the window, kittens asleep over the window sills, you name it and they have been there today.

Very busy morning catching up on my own housework before work, then back at 5 to consider what we are going to have for dinner.

Leftovers again it looks like, but how to make them interesting.

Here is my ultimate VERY LAZY STUFFED MARROW recipe.

1. Be lazy and leave the courgettes in the garden until they grow into marrows.
2. Finally get round to cutting the largest marrow you can find.
3. Dig around in the freezer until you find an unlabelled carton of something that you think is beef stew leftovers.
4. Cut the marrow into rings about 7 cms deep and scoop out the seedy bit in the middle.
5. Place rings in an oven proof dish.
6. Hack at the frozen solid leftovers until you have enough bits small enough to place in the hollowed out marrow.
7. Add a couple of limp carrots chopped into little rings.
8. Pour in enough water to come half way up the marrow, season well.
9. Cover and put in the oven at 200°C for an hour.
10. Eat on your lap in front of the TV.

Busy busy gardening and courgettes as the ulitmate bribery tool.

Yes - there you have it, the ultimate weapon in the parental arsenal. Not so much carrot but stick.

"Do as I tell you or I will make you eat courgettes for dinner - AGAIN!"

Rule number 10 in the handbook of bad parenting - negative enforcement.

That is how I got Thea to help me do some weeding in the garden today. In fact we acheived quite a bit, removed some of the 2 metre high red weed so that the cucumbers could get some light, picked two bags of broccoli heads ready for the freezer, a whole crate of the dreaded courgettes and our first patty pan squash.

From 10 seeds last year I only had 1 germinate and that plant produced only 1 squash. Instead of eating it I have been carefully nurturing the squash all winter and in spring I cut out the seeds and planted them out. I had three plants develop and these have been out in the garden for a while, all three have lots of flowers and now the first fruit. I am too excited to acutally eat it, I am just saving it to look at for little bit.

With the courgettes hanging like the sword of Damacles over her head I got some good weeding out of Thea, we made our way up the pumpkins through the beetroots, around the caulis, back down the onions and out again through the broccoli. I now have 2 rows ready to plant out our winter animal fodder crop of turnips.

And what was for dinner I hear you cry?................................

........................... well courgettes of course!

More courgettes and preserving under oil.

Having had our fill of courgette recipes over the last few days, I picked the rest from the plants and spent an hour preparing them for freezing ready to use throughout the winter.

Each plant has at least one large marrow sized courgette still on it - ready to be made up into stuffed marrows, and more baby courgettes on the way, they just need a couple more days to warrant picking.

I freeze them in either baby courgette thin slices, thicker courgette chunks or larger thicker skinned courgettes, peeled and sliced, ready for whatever a recipe may demand, use from frozen otherwise they go all limp and mushy.

While feeling inspired to get preserving, I found a couple of sweet peppers mouldering away in my veggie basket and rather than waste them or even worse, they go off and I have to bin them, I thought I would preserve them under oil.

I do this whenever we get a glut of things in the garden and as an alternative to freezing stuff all the time.  I like the flavoured oils I get at the end too.

So - with some jars sterilised in the oven, (at a high heat for 20-30 minutes), I chopped the peppers quite thinly, so they are ready to use straight from the jar, sliced up a couple of rich ripe plum tomatoes, and peeled a whole head of garlic.

Stuff the peppers into the jar, about half way add a few slices of tomato then keep stuffing with peppers, as a finishing touch wedge a couple of cloves of garlic in, I do this with the jars piping hot direct from the oven.  Then pour over your oil of choice.  Because I want a flavoured oil at the end, and olive oil has too rich a taste of its own to take on the delicate flavours of peppers and tomato, I use grape seed oil instead.  It is also much lighter in colour so you see a lovely mix of colours from the veg themselves.

Invasion of the courgettes

You turn your back on them for one day and they have taken over. The invasion of the courgettes has begun.

 Time to once again delve deeply into the recipe searches to find something interesting to do with them.

Today's courgette recipe idea is courtesy of the Smitten Kitchen website.  I found this by following a link from a link from a link, a chain that started by clicking on the 'next blog' button on the taskbar - a sure fire way to get lost in space for a couple of hours.

I am making an adaptation of her ratatouille tart.

Courgette Tart


On this occasion I am in complete agreement with the smitten kitchen, summer is too short for making pastry, so I am using ready rolled feuillette pastry - a type of puff pastry readily available in the chiller cabinet here in France.

Roll out over a baking tray, and smear on a fine layer of tomato puree.

Then layer on thin slices of aubergine and courgette.

Add a sliced ripe and and juicy tomato, then drizzle with a little garlic infused olive oil, and some freshly ground black pepper.

Just before baking, add some mozzarella roughly torn into chunks and a generous spinkle of dried or fresh basil leaves.

°

Bake at 180°C for 30 minutes.

Serve warm or cold for a summery lunch or as we are tonight, as a side dish for some barbequed pork chops.

Reasons to be cheerful - 1.. 2.. 3..

1. Another bright and sunny day, at 25°c by 10.00 am this morning, washing on the line, greenhouse watered, freshly cut wild flowers and mint decorating the house in huge fragrant bunches.

2. Garden finally growing well - stopped worrying about the things that are obviously not going to germinate and grow, just going to sit back and relax and enjoy what we have, and today looks like a harvest of radish seed pods, the first courgettes are ready to eat too and an abundance of coriander in bloom.

3. Chicks have grown up well, all 10 have survived and have just moved into their new home this morning (what used to be the piglet rearing room, now with the door blocked off with a big dog cage), and in full view of the rest of the chickens so should be able to integrate them soon.

Here is Mama Hog paying the first visit just to see what food they may have, they are about the size of our bantam cockerel now, but I will feel happier letting them out when I think they can stand up to the other larger cockerel and not get bossed about too much by the Queen of the yard, Edith.