Birthday Girl

There may be only a few signs if the green shoots of economic activity but at least in the garden somethings are sprouting. So far all the work seems to be done by the Alliaceae. The onions (red and stuttgarter) and the garlic are coming on strong. We have had our first produce, radish leaves are a tasty peppery component of a salad and are a pleasant by-product of thinning.

We had Emma and Richard's hens camping with us on their summer holidays. They got on well with our girls and there were no fights. However, they never truly mixed and they tended to stay in their two groups; out two and their four.

The products of 6 hens is about 6 eggs a day so we needed to find ways to use up eggs. They best we found so far was creme caramel. This was a very successful recipe :-

Ingredients:
20 g butter
4 eggs
6 Tbs Sugar
1 ½ Tbs vanilla sugar
500 ml milk

Melt the butter in s saucepan add 5 tablespoons of sugar and the same of water. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture is a light brown.Do not let it darken to much or it will be bitter. Pour the caramel at once into 4/6 warmed individual heatproof moulds and rotate until the moulds are coated.

Preheat the oven to 180c or 350f or gas mark 4

In a bowl whisk the eggs with the rest of the sugar and t the vanilla sugar until frothy. Bring the milk to a boil and pour it a little at a time into the beaten egg mix stirring continuously. Strain the custard through a fine sieve into the prepared moulds.

Stand the moulds in a shallow roasting tin. Fill with hot water two thirds up the sides of the moulds and cook for 25 to 30 mins in the centre of the oven.