Tag Archives: UK

Food Gardening Travel

O’Henry Peaches from Frog Hollow Farm

I am going to publish a scientific paper about how time goes more quickly in the summer and when you’re shopping on eBay.

If you follow me on Facebook you know that I just got back a couple of weeks ago from another trip to England. I spent the first week in London for work, but weekends with the rest of the  family in the country. If you’re a garden lover and a runner like me, the English countryside in the summer is pretty much as good as it gets. Except, if you’re like me, you have to stop every few feet to snap photos of the gardens.

I know, it’s really bad.

I just.can’t.stop.

Can’t.

I even checked out the Queen’s gardens this time around. They weren’t too shabby either.

Aside from English gardens, summer is also really great for peaches. I can turn just about any fruit into a dessert, but sometimes, you’re best off leaving it the way it was made.

Such is the way with organic O’Henry peaches from Frog Hollow Farm. Frog Hollow is in Brentwood, California, and produces the most breathtaking fruit, lovingly packed and shipped.

I got to try this fruit because, as luck would have it, my colleague The Fruit Maven generously brought a box into the office. This is generous because, had I received this box, I would have eaten it by myself in front of the shipping container within three minutes of receipt.

My pictures, sadly, do not do these peaches justice, since they were taken with my iPhone under the romantic glow of fluorescent lights. Even so, note the beautiful read marbling on the peach slice, cut from the peach that was soft enough to be cut by a plastic knife found in the break room. The texture was soft but had the perfect amount of body, and the taste was sweet and, well, peachy…possibly the peachiest peach I’ve ever eaten. Sweet and peachy — all you could ever want in a peach.

Frog Hollow Farms ships too — you can order a box of peaches from this link. And while you’re eating your peach, I’ll tell you about the rest of my trip.

The second week was spent in the countryside.

My mother-in-law got the kids raincoats and wellies, so it promptly stopped raining.

Which meant that they could go on a ropes course.

I got to catch up with my neighbor Helen, who moved back to the UK two weeks earlier:

My sister-in-law took me shopping, where I fell in love with a dress that looked really sad on me:

Nevermind, though, because we hit Cath Kidston next where I got a tiered cake platter and a set of flowery napkins that my husband doesn’t like (but I love!).

We had a dinner celebration for my brother-in-law’s 40th:

and then headed over to spend a few days with our friends Simon and Laura.

And some time miming I guess.

The kids had a great time with their daughter, swimming:

hanging out:

and visiting her school:

Now I’m back at home, waiting for my flowers to be plentiful enough to place by my bedside table. Til then, this memory will have to do.

 

Cooking Food Popular

Rose Petal Jam

When we’re in England, we spend a lot of time at my in-laws’ house in the countryside. It’s an old oast house, and my husband says that judging by the plumbing it was built in 200 BC. It’s also rumored to be haunted, which freaks me out, because you know that some old 16th century English ghost is going to take a look at me and go, “Hey look! A Chinese person! I want to talk to her!”

At the oast house lives a dog, Musty. My kids beg me 382.7 times a day on average for a dog, and when we’re over they make it their personal mission to be Musty’s personal trainer, working with him for 90% of the day. They start with a morning run through the fields, during which Musty is required to fetch sticks through wheat, streams and over equestrian-type obstacles.

Here, my father-in-law Chris observes a never-ending game of fetch, shortly before Musty begged for mercy.

I write about Musty to offer these quality personal training services to your dogs. I’m not ready to commit to a pet, so it would be a great help if there are canine volunteers out there looking for some endurance training.

One thing you see a lot of in English gardens is roses.

And these flowers, whose name I forget, so I’m just going to call them St. Agnes Himmyhocks, because it just feels right.

My mother-in-law, Georgina, who is as famous as I am usually famished, had an idea that we should make rose petal jam with the roses in the garden. So she and the girls went around the garden and gathered petals.

They smelled soooo good.

Start by prepping a syrup of sugar, water and lemon juice and let it boil down until syrupy.

Throw in the rose petals — we had mostly pink but some blue (violet) roses which added some nice color — and let them boil 20 minutes.

Once we were done boiling we found that the petals were still rubbery, so Georgie ended up fishing them out of the jam.

I know, that’s not really the right picture for what I just said, but I didn’t get a picture of that.

The result? A brilliant violet-colored jam that tastes like it smells — a wonderful combination of the sweetness of roses and the brightness of lemon. Up top you can see that I had it drizzled over vanilla ice cream with raspberries on top…divine!

There are a number of different recipes online for rose petal jam, some of which involve soaking the petals in advance, or coating them with sugar overnight — they may result in softer petals and perhaps you would be able to leave them in. We haven’t yet experimented with those. But this one was lovely all the same. See how happy Georgina is with the jam?

ROSE PETAL JAM

Ingredients

  • 1/2 lb rose petals, rinsed, brown petals removed
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 4 1/2 cups water
  • Juice of 2 lemons
  • 3 1/2 TBSP pectin

Preparation

Combine water, sugar and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add in pectin and simmer for 2-3 minutes longer.

Add in rose petals and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Jam will begin to take on the color of the petals. With a slotted spoon, fish out petals, pour jam into jars allowing room for expansion, and cover with jar lid. Allow to cool and use or freeze (tip: if you freeze, use only jam jars with straight sides to avoid glass breakage from jam expansion).

Makes 2 1/2 – 3 jars.

Anyone else experiment with rose jam? Would love to hear your suggestions!