Feeding Two Birds with One Lemonade Scone

When I was given this recipe for Lemonade Scones a month or so back, I was quite excited at making them.  I had assumed wrongly that the Lemonade scones would be more prominent in lemonade flavour, but that was not the case.  The lemonade fizz just adds oomf and lightness, rather than imparting lemony taste.  Still it was a pleasant scone. 

The recipe is really simple and one I didn't even have to jot down when it was dictated to me: 375g self raising flour, sifted then gently stir in 170ml double (heavy)cream  and 170ml lemonade. Once combined to a dough, cut into triangle scones, transfer to a baking tray and bake at gas mark 4/180oc for 15 - 20 minutes or until golden.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.  

For those of your interested, I came across the expression feeding two birds with one scone really recently as I've always loathed using the expression 'kill two birds with one stone'.  I like the birds, I watch them, I feed them, they give me joy and amusement.  This kinder expression of 'feeding two birds with one scone' comes from  here.  Its simply about becoming more more mindful, the way some of us have stopped using old racist, sexist and homophobic terms and this common courtesy and respect being extended to other sentient beings. 

Anyway, onto a lighter subject here is some real 'bird action' in my garden. Not the best pictures, but you can see them tucking in to whatever we can offer, including scones, pastry, bread, Yorkshire puddings and sometimes they get really lucky when I can be bothered to make homemade bird food. Treats, but its nothing compared to the joy they give us with their birdie ways. 

I am sharing these Lemonade Scones with International Scone Week 10 - 16 August hosted by Lavender & Lime and Fig Jam and Lime Cordial; and as they were made with double cream that had passed its use by date by one day with Waste Not Food Challenge hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary.  Not only was the double cream (heavy cream) used in the making of these Lemonade scones, but also whipped up, lovely, light and creamy for the filling. 

Little Owl in my tiny garden

Yesterday morning, I hear D calling out to me and telling me to look out of our flat window at our wind battered garden fence. I couldn't quite see what he was pointing out at, squinting my eyes and trying to follow his directions and then I suddenly my eyes did - Wow - it was one big bird, about 8 inches tall. First we assumed it was the Sparrow Hawk as we've had them in the garden before, then on closer look with our binoculars we saw that it was actually an Owl. Yes an Owl. Whilst I was admiring its feathers, getting annoyed that a passing commuter train would come by and startle it, but even when a train did pass by, the owl sat patiently. D ran to fetch one of our bird watching books. From the feathering, colours and size we confidently identified it as a Little Owl. Later in the evening, D rang one of his avid bird watching friends to boast about the Little Owl in our garden on the edge of Glasgow. His mate, would not believe him saying 'you sure it wasn't a Little eared owl?!' No Sir, we are positive it was a Little Owl. We regret not taking a photograph of the Little Owl, but we were both just too excited and humbled that our garden continues to be an attractive location for birds passing by. The image is taken from a 1960s copy of the Readers Digest Book of British Birds.
We polished of the last this 'Lemon Blueberry Polenta cake'. Last week, whilst catching up with my blog reads, I was tempted by two good looking Polenta cakes. The first was the Kitchen Maids Berry Polenta cake. Kitchen Maid wrote that the polenta in the cake gave the 'cake a fantastically gritty texture'. I liked the sound of that, plus I had quick cooking polenta and frozen berries in the freezer to use up. Then I visited Cake in the Community and saw this zingy Lemon polenta cake. Chocolategirl64 wrote 'if you try to imagine what lemon curd would taste like in cake form, this would be it'. Lemon is a flavour my husband loves, so I was I was torn between the two recipes. So I sort of combined the recipes: Lemon from one and frozen (blue) berries from the other.
Its not the most well presented cake, but this Lemon Blueberry polenta cake had a splendid gritty texture from the polenta and almonds, sweetness and flavour from the zingy lemon and zappy blueberries. It was delicious.

Lemon Blueberry Polenta cake

Serves 6 - 8

Ingredients
200g butter, softened
200g caster sugar
200g ground almonds
100g quick cook polenta
1½ teaspoons baking powder
3 eggs
Zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
100g frozen blueberries
For the lemon syrup
Juice of 2 lemons
125g icing sugar
Method
Preheat your oven to Gas 4. Line and grease the base and sides of a 9in/23cm spring form cake tin.
Blend the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
In another bowls, mix together the flour, almonds, baking powder and polenta.
Gently stir in the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, along with one egg and mix well
repeat this for reaming eggs. Stir in the lemon zest and blueberries and gently spoon into the baking tin.
Bake for about 45 minutes or under the skewer comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.
For the lemon syrup
Gently heat both the lemon juice and icing sugar until dissolved.
Pierce the top of your cake with a cake tester or BBQ skewer, then evenly drizzle on the syrup.
Leave to cool before taking out of the tin and serving.

Watching Waxwings in my garden

Our winter visitors - the waxwings have been hanging out in my garden in the West of Scotland all week. The waxwings have been enjoying the last of the apples in the tree.

I don't know if we will ever have the honour of seeing these majestic birds with their Punk hairdo this close again, so we decided to film them in their large numbers known as 'irruptions' as best as we could.
I am delighted to share with you what we were able to capture. Hope you enjoy. If you want to see some some more photographs of them. Please follow this link from last weekend.

A tree full of waxwings

Our garden right now can be described as a Twitchers Paradise!
Look left

Look right

'Okay, its all right here'

'Not the greatest apple I've ever eaten, but beggars can't be choosers, even one so pretty as me'.

The waxwings came back. Beautiful. We do look forward to them visiting us, this being the third year now.

Smoky black beans meet snow white

Not that you can tell, but this bowl of Smoky Black beans was photographed on Sunday, outside the ice rink in my garden, otherwise known as my garden plot covered in snow.

I've made a deeply intense Black Bean Chilli before, but this one is very different in character.
Its sauce is thin, yet it has heat and smoky overtones from the dried chipotle chillies.

So far, we’ve had this Smoky black beans three times this week. Ladled over plain Basmati rice, over jacket potatoes and with some home-made (bread machine) crusty bread. We still have plenty to feed us at least another two meals, if not three. I could have easily halved the quantity but with more snow predicted I knew it was going to be a hectic week at work, and that’s just the travelling to and fro. Its not the only dish I’ve made, I’ve also made some Quinoa cabbage rolls but that still sitting pretty in the fridge waiting to have a blast in the oven.
I was actually going to mince all the chipotle peppers, but D tasted a spoonful and said. Oooh I think that is smoky enough. I ended up fishing out the other two. After softening the onion and garlic in oil, I actually added all the ingredients to the slow cooker aka crock pot, but if you don’t have one these can easily be made on the stove too (see recipe below).
Whilst taking the photograph of the Smoky Black beans in the garden, D captured this little fella feasting on an apple in the tree. I know the apples are not perfect, but s/he doesn't seem to mind.

Smoky Black Beans
Serves a lot of people

Ingredients

500g dried black beans

3 1/2 pints water

2 - 3 chipotle peppers, dried and soaked in hot water for 30 minutes

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, finely sliced

3 - 4 garlic cloves, sliced

1 x 400g tinned tomatoes, chopped

Salt to taste
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seeds
Handful of coriander, roughly chopped

Method

Soak the beans overnight. The following day, drain and rinse them well.

In a frying pan, heat heat the oil, then add the onion and garlic and cook and soft. Add to a large pot, along with black beans, tinned tomato, chipotle, cumin and water. Bring the mixture to a boil, then turn down the heat, and simmer for an hour, then add salt to taste. Cook for another hour or until the beans are tender.

Retrieve the chipotle peppers from the pot. Mince either 1 or 2 and return them to the beans. Add the coriander and simmer for a few minutes before serving. Adapted from Didi Emmons Vegetarian Planet.

Cranberry and Clementine Bread for Us and the Birds

This year, although I have been extremely good and committed to eating local, fresh produce or British grown. There are some seasonal products that are not grown here, so have to be imported, such as the cranberry, which you may know, I have been thoroughly enjoying. So for next year, on my gardening 'wish list' is to get myself a cranberry bush, here’s hoping.
Anyway, as I still had some imported cranberries sitting at the bottom of my fridge, a couple of days ago, I decided to make Cranberry bread. I got the original recipe from Freds blog Grown Away. Fred informed me that his home state was one of largest cranberry producers, so he was merrily looking forward to receiving some black heirloom cranberries in his vegetable box, but surprisingly none appeared. Although disappointed, Fred was not deterred and purchased some dried local cranberries from his natural food store; and made an incredibly simple cranberry walnut bead.

Now I have absolutely no doubt that Fred's Cranberry and walnut bread was delicious, but you know me, I had to tweak it just a little. Sorry Fred, (she says wincing) but I think you will approve.
I don’t think the photograph taken does the 'Cranberry and Clementine bread' justice, as it doesn’t show the burst colours of the cranberries, but they are there. The bread was moist, it was not as sweet as the scones and the muffins I made earlier in the month. I think because they had white chocolate in them, whereas this bread allowed the sourness of the cranberries to come through, which my husband loved. The flavour of the Clementine also came through, although a tad subtle and the walnuts gave it that extra texture. Nice.

Now talking of growing and cakes, I thought I better mention that I have been fortunate to have been chosen to receive not one, but two gifts from fellow bloggers. The first is a baking book called Muffins Galore from Icook4fun of Kitchen Snippets. I had completely forgotten about this until I got an email yesterday. The second will be a surprise gift from Ribbit of The Corner Yard where I will become one of the lucky recipients of a 'Pay it Forward' parcel. Please do check out this link, I absolutely adore the way my 'blogger name' was picked out!

What a lovely way to end the year…unexpected gifts, Smiles and new blog friends.

And finally, how could we forget about the little birds that entertain us in the garden, I made them a loaf of there own too. I made this with vegetable fat which I melted, ands then poured into a 2lb loaf tin that contained a mixture of chopped apples, nuts, seeds, dried fruit and some fresh cranberries. I left it in the fridge overnight and then the following day, cut a slice and left it on the Bird table. Sorry I didn't get a picture of that, I wanted to - but the red breasted Robin just wouldn't pose for me.

Cranberry and Clementine Bread
Makes 2lb Loaf

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour
¾ cup caster sugar
1½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon bicarbonate soda
¼ cup butter*
1 medium egg
¾ cup Clementine juice
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries

½ cup chopped walnuts

Method
In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and soda. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Beat egg, juice and peel; stir into dry ingredients just until blended. Add the cranberries and walnuts. Spoon batter into a greased 2lb loaf pan. Bake at Gas mark 4 for 45 minutes to an hour or until a toothpick inserted near the centre comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

I took Fred’s advice and cooked the bread on a lower temperature. I loved the simplicity of this recipe, plus the use of American cup measurements. *The only part that made me raise my eyebrows was measuring butter in the quarter cup, you have to push in the butter and then spoon it out to use.

Bird feeders - how many do you have?

Yesterday while tidying up the garden plot, I couldn't help but notice how many bird feeders have. Quite a few.
This one is mainly for the Field fair.

This one is for the blue tits, coal tits and Great Tits, but also for the wrens and sparrows.

Is free for all - mainly small birds.

Bird Table is for the robin.

Although bought with good intentions, this one is purely decorative, but the coconut shell does sometimes hold a suet ball.

The magpies, blackbirds, thrush and gang of starlings tend to scavenge on the ground for seed droppings or suet ball bits, and if their really lucky a worm or two.

In the past, the garden bird feeders and apple tree has also attracted Waxwings and a Woodpecker. The RSPB or SRSPB would be proud of us!

Hanging apples in an apple tree

D has been feeling sorry for the garden birds and has been buying apples, stringing them up and throwing them in the tree. I came back from work after working the early shift and there they were, hanging off the apple tree like big red Christmas baubles, with a Waxwing beak in practically in every one of them. The birds have certainly been appreciating this, as they have been coming back since there arrival in mid December 2008.

We have a small garden, but what we do have in our small garden is a very big cooking apple tree, which has rewarded us over the past three years or so with lots of delicious apple crumble, apple pie, apple ice-cream or simply baked with butter and raisins.

Towards the end of Autumn, the apple tree is laden with cooking apples, that we struggle to normally reach, but this year a week long of strong winds knocked most of the apples to the ground, some we rescued to be turned into delicious delights, others we gave away to neighbours and friends at work, some had rotted from all the rain downpour this year, that they had to be put into the compost bin. So there were barely any left on the tree for the birds over the winter season.

I was never into bird watching, but the apple tree changed all that. It has also attracted a lot of bird life: Collared Doves, Woodpecker, as well as a Hawk preying on one of the littler birds and succeeding. That’s nature.

Recently, a gang of punky red head birds called Waxwings arrived which got us really excited. The Waxwings came in their hoards and chased away our Fieldfair, who used to be the only one eating the apples (for two years until now). When the fieldfair feels brave and comes back, it ends up chasing away the blackbirds, the blackbirds chase the smaller birds: wrens and sparrows. The blue tits and coal tits come when there are no other birds around and hang of the bird feeder and fat balls. The magpies come and go when they want to be territorial, but always entertain when they arrive.

And how can I forget Ds little red robin. Robin dominates the bird table, bird bath – in fact the whole garden and certainly lets D knows it’s there. Robin has perhaps had the most special treatment of all the birds, with worms, maggots and not too long ago slice of our wedding cake being on the menu.

Anyway, thoughts towards food… I had some left over yellow spiced lentils from yesterdays dish of Cabbage Dolmades, that I decided to turn them into a pasty for tomorrows lunch.