Valmas chocolate pudding

I like old fashioned recipes. Ones that come from old cookbooks that use simple ingredients, nothing too fancy. 

I have a couple that I go to quite often, a local pony club cookbook and a centenary cookbook put out by a local school, both from the eighties and both scavenged from garage sales. 

Fair enough though that they are from an era when food was a bit 'boring'. Remember seeing or eating a prawn cocktail of the early eighties? But all the recipes that are within are tried and tested family favourites, that I am sure, at the time, Mums and kids were bursting with pride and excitement to share, as their respective names appeared at the bottom of each recipe.

I love myself a good self saucing pudding, I made this one last week. Most self saucing pudding require a water bath, this one doesn't and there is no separating eggs and whipping egg whites.

 It's a recipe provided by Valma Clark, from the Beachport Pony Club family favourites cookbook, circa mid 1980s I think. For all I know Valma may well be long gone, but her recipe lives on :)

I you're into experimenting, a cherry spin on this recipe would be great for Christmas :)

1 cup SR flour
2 teaspoons cocoa
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons margarine
1 egg
1/2 cup milk

Sauce:
1/2 cup brown sugar(if you don't have it use white)
1 dessertspoon cocoa
300 mls boiling water

Sift flour, cocoa and add sugar. Stir melted margarine into flour mixture.
Add beaten egg and milk. Mix and pour into pie dish.

Combine brown sugar and cocoa, sprinkle on top of pudding mix in dish. Pour boiling water gently over this.
Bake in a 200 degree oven for 30 minutes.
Serve with cream or icecream.

Have you ever added your own family recipe to a book?

Don't you think a Christmas recipe book would be a great end of year fundraiser for a club or school?

Garden goings on

All the grass is dead now. I put a heap of compost from the pile in the driveway, on top of the dead grass. Izzy helped with the rake, she's a keen gardener. On a recent trip to some open garden's Mum saw her interest in flowers and gardens and commented that she will be a gardener, just like her mum and nanna.

The pile of good compost. This is thanks really to my cheeky neighbour who dumps his stuff there. I used up the 'free' compost on my new grden beds, uncovered and fixed my sprinklers that were there and chucked some plants in! Reclaimed it.

I painted a couple of signs on old bits of metal I scrounged from dad's scrap pile.

"Take a photo of me and Summer Mum". "Summer come here and hold my hand". "Muuuum, take a photo of me and Summer!".

Mum sells plants she has grown herself out the front of her place in an old cart. I went round and scabbed a few, and divided a few of my own to get a few plants into the new patch. I had to use a pick axe to dig holes through the dead Kikuyu roots. It will be much easier when they break down to plant stuff.

'Sally Holmes' rose I got off Mum, she grew from a cutting. I have my eye on a 'Slim Dusty' rose at Plants Plus too ;)

The blue Nigella 'love in a mist' comes up every year from dropped seed. It looks lovely with the pink 'apple blossom' carpet rose flowering amongst it.

I don't let the chooks out for a wander as often as I used too, they eat all my lettuce!

The other new patch on the other side of the house. I dug up and divided some irises to put in the new patches, the leaves are all over the lawn.

Linking up with Susan at Jacana

Spring rolls into Summer

The weather over the weekend was great as Spring rolled into Summer. It's taken a while for the sun to warm our skin down south.

On Saturday Glen street was blocked off, as hometown girl, Ellie Lovegrove from XFactor fame, entertained us. It was good to see her back in town after she'd moved to Adelaide.

Sunday was a bit more overcast, but warm enough  for the kids to have a dip at our local swimming lake. We ate chips and sauce from the lake shop for lunch, with about 30 friendly seagulls trying to help us.

Can't beet a root #openslather

Boggy is known for his 'dad joke' sayings. 'You can't beet-a-root', is one of those. It's said when the fact that beetroot is on the dinner plate, comes up in conversation at the table. Probably not appropriate in front of posh company.

Izzy has confidently come out with it at our tea time in a matter-of-fact way, being quite pleased with herself. Little dag.

With the onset of warmer weather, a can of beetroot is always in the pantry. I serve it up with salads, we all love it except for Izzy, so in her case you CAN beet a root(vegetable that is)! Even Summer has a go at it.

I've tried to grow them before with not much success. I'm having another go with some heirloom beetroot seedlings I got from my brother in law. I think they are different colours to the normal beetroot. If nothing else goes right, at least I can use the leaves in salads.

If you're into companion planting they grow well with onions, silverbeet, lettuce, cabbage and dwarf beans, but not well with taller beans.

I have mine growing in a wine barrel with a cherry tomato, well see how they go.

I got some off Mum that she's just pulled up and put them in jars.

Bake for two hours at 180 degrees in a tray covered with foil. Put the bigger ones around the outsides of the tray and the smaller ones in the middle. Let cool in the tray.

With gloves on, peel and slice or quarter, however you like them.

Put the slices into cold sterilised jars. To sterilise jars I put them in a 150 degree oven for about 15 minutes. Always put cold into cold jars and hot into hot jars, you might crack or shatter the glass otherwise.

Take a cup of liquid, use any juice from the pan, if any, with water.
Mix with one cup of vinegar.
Pour this into the jar to cover the beetroot.
I chucked a bay leaf in each jar with two peppercorns as well. 

You may have to make more depending on how much you have to jar.

Keep the jars in the fridge.

Are you a beetroot fan? How do you love to eat yours?