Ahhh, Hubby and I love the boat road down to the lough.  This time of year it’s filled with the most beautiful sights and smells: the baby burgers and all growing up into potential rump steaks, their mamas still snorting protectively as we pass, the brook gurgles and bubbles, hidden amongst a hundred different wild flowers, butterflies flutter by (sorry) and recently a beautiful, and surprisingly large Pine Marten dashed out in front of us, a teeny baby swinging alarmingly from its mouth.

This time of year, the Elders are in full bloom too.  The beautiful smell makes us both nostalgic - me for the cricket meadow back home, and Hubby for getting up to no good near some trees, probably.  So I happened to mention to Hubby that I’d seen a recipe for them deep fried in a kind of tempura batter.  I’d also squirreled away a recipe for Elderflower Champagne from the River Cottage website (which I obviously then fiddled with) and we resolved to gather a load the next day and give it a go.

Well, it’s not a particularly hard process, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be left with anything remotely drinkable at the end, but if you’d got some Elderflowers blooming near you, give this a go.  It’s a bit of a laugh:

Elderflower Champagne

Elderflowers (you’ll probably need 20 to 30 flower heads)

2 kg sugar

4 litres hot water plus another 2 litres cold

2 limes, juiced and zested

2 lemons, juiced and zested

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Dried yeast

So gather your flower heads and give them a quick rinse to get any bugs out.  You’ll need something to make your champagne in - I used a new bucket from Woodies - make sure it’s very clean, obviously.  Pour in the hot water and add your sugar, stirring until it dissolves, then top up to 6 litres with cold water.  Stir in the lime and lemon juice and zest, the vinegar and the flowers.  Now cover the top of the bucket with a clean tea towel or a baby muslin or something (not clingfilm, it needs to breathe), and peg the edges so no flies or icky things can get in.  Leave it somewhere like a utility room - not too hot and stuffy and nice and airy - for a few days then add a couple of pinches of dried yeast, stirring well.  Re-cover and leave for another four days, then strain well (through muslin or a clean cotton cloth) and bottle.

We used screw-top wine bottles that had been sterilised by washing in hot soapy water, rinsing, then baking in the oven.  I’m not sure if this is safe, but nothing exploded so hey ho.  Now you can leave your champagne anywhere from a couple of weeks to six months to mature (in the garage, in case of explosions) before chilling and cracking it open.  Apparently the end result is very mildly alcoholic but makes a lovely mixer with gin too.  I’ll let you know.  Cheers!

So there’s nothing nicer than spending a warm, early summer’s evening surrounded by the sound of chinking glasses and laughter.  And last night was exactly one of those nights.  Loads of people came (Hubby had invited more people when he was down the pub last night) and we had buckets full of ice dotted around to keep all the drinks cold, tons of food (the kebabs went down particularly well) and sweeties galore for the tiddlers.  Talking of smalls, I think at one stage we had upwards of seventeen kids between 4 and 15 running around like loonies.  Happily, they had loads of space as they had the run of D, Little C and Lou’s garden too, and spent a happy evening playing 40/40 (no idea - a bit like ‘kick the can’), having running gun battles, playing football and generally wallying about.  Us adults, meanwhile, nabbed every available chair in the place and parked ourselves outside on the patio where we continued to drink, eat and talk crap long into the night (kept warm by a very knackered, but startlingly hot patio heater we’ve had for years).  Several kids stayed over, others eventually collapsed in front of the TV and as people started to drift off, we were eventually left with just D and his sister A (her hubby J had taken little E home).  We carried on drinking and talking shite (oh yes, the Morgan’s Spiced came out) well into the wee hours until we decided to finally call it a night (morning?) and leave all the clearing up until we could stand up straight.

The jellies were a huge hit.  #2 made little cranberry and raspberry shots, #1 made raspberry and lemonade ones, and I made Absolut Kurant and Blackcurrant ones for the adults.  Basically you just make the jelly up as you normally would with half a pint of boiling water, then with the kids ones you just make it up to a pint with cold water and whatever else you fancy, and with the adults you add a big glug of whatever booze takes your fancy.  Apparently, once you’ve melted the jelly in the ½ pint of boiling water, you can add up to ¾ of the rest in alcohol (depending on how strong it is) and it will still set, although I didn’t put in more than 4fl oz as I didn’t want them to be too potent and have people falling all over the place.

Anyhoo, I’m off to the carnage that was once my kitchen.  Having been the hostess with the mostest, I’m now reverting back to my primary role in household management: chief cook and bottle washer, all with a crashing headache.  Happy days.

So okay, I know at this exact precise moment it’s still Thursday but I’ll be FAR too busy tomorrow to post anything so you’ll have to indulge me.  What’s that you say?  Why will I be busy?  Well, dear reader, I’m having a PARTAY!!

You see, people, in Ireland you definitely have to go with the flow a bit.  A party can often start for the most inane reason.  For example, last Friday we popped over to D Next Door’s sister A’s house to pick up #2 who was round there playing with little K, and ended up staggering home some time after 2am, sans child (he stayed over having lost the hope of ever dragging us home somewhere around 11) and last night turned into a bit of  a sesh round D’s (Hubby popped in for a chat, cracked a beer with D, then other people popped in and suddenly there was a houseful and, well, it’d be rude to leave), so we ended up staying until 11pm (headaches all round again this morning).  And this, apparently, is only the beginning of the summer barbecue season.  Now you know why the kids here have such bloody long school holidays, it’s because the parents are planning on being so hungover they can’t possibly do the school run for three whole months. 

Anyhoo, so we thought we’d get in there quick and invite all the lovely people we’ve met here for a little gathering: D and the kids, obviously, C and his lovely wife C (the ones with the boat) and D’s sister A and her Hubby J and their kids, and T & L who live next door to A & J, T who fixes the cars and his wife G, and probably a few other stragglers from GAA (that’s Gaelic Football to you foreigners, heh).

We got the usual burgers and sausages, etc, and I thought I’d marinate some chicken in different stuff like honey, mustard and soy, and Thai green curry paste, etc and do kebabs with various dips, plus those minced lamb kebab things and then just round it all off with an enormous plate of pistachio brownies and ice lollies for the kids.  Drinks-wise, I thought as well as wine and beer, we could whizz up a big blender-full of Frozen Strawberry Daquiris just to get things going, plus various non-alcoholic fruity smoothies for the children (no, don’t worry, I won’t mix them up and get the kids drunk).

So Hubby and I went up north again today (the £ being terrifically bad against the Euro, it’s cheaper for us to do our shopping there) and came back with a car load of food, beer, wine, champers and….er…jelly.  Yes, jelly.  Well I’ve always wanted to make jelly shots and… oh dear, this could be another late one.

So J, C and little C finally came up for their long-awaited visit. Hubby and I made a special trip to Flood’s the butchers in Oldcastle to get a joint of their fantastic beef. It’s a very busy place which is always a good sign in my book, and they have all the details about where their meet comes from (even the abbatoir if you’re that interested) up on a blackboard in the shop. The chap brought out a whole bloody great wodge of cow so we could choose a nice cut for our roast dinner. Small distractions like me dropping the entire tray of Yorkshire puddings mid-pour, and leaving the potatoes so long that they turned into mash and I had to do some more for the roasties did nothing to dampen our spirits. J & C came armed with so many pressies you could hardly see J for the piles of boxes. I got the most AMAZING Le Creuset bean pot in the same blue as my Denby Jetty that I shall be salivating over for years to come (Hubby and C just didn’t get it).

Bertie went mental as soon as he saw C, his favourite person in the whole world. A quick check-up indicated that we’re doing well - lovely coat, just the right weight, but claws a bit too long (uh oh, I hate doing those), and Bert even got to show J & C his favourite route past the cows and sheep down the boat road. He was a happy boy. Later, when C was lying on the sofa, Bertie gingerly climbed up on top of C and perched, happily if a little guiltily, until told to get down. It’s love, pure and simple.

Later we made cocktails, which descended into throwing everything you could possibly imagine into the blender and seeing what the result was. J’s masterpiece was this, a slightly spicy strawberry number that, quite frankly, will blow your hat off. Woohoo!

Death By Strawberry

Tin of strawberries
Morgan’s Spiced Rum
Absolut Kurant
Lime juice

So add a few spoonfuls of the tinned strawberries, along with a splosh of juice. Add a shot glass full of Morgan’s and another of Absolut. Squeeze in the juice of half a lime and a handful of ice. Blend until smooth. Drink until giggly.

So J’s on nights at the moment. We love this as it gives us the opportunity to have random nocturnal chats about all sorts of things while she’s on her break in the bowels of wherever it is she works (she does something incredibly clever and technical which I don’t honestly understand). Hubby came in last night very late to find us gabbing away about the kitsch retro food of Fanny Cradock. Remember her?

This brought me neatly along to the subject of Boxing Day (St Stephen’s Day over here) at Grandma Maudie and Grandad Sam’s house, when four hundred or so of our closest family members squished together in Grandma’s ‘parlour’ to be treated to a Boxing Day feast of epic proportions. I was one of the youngest and therefore was allowed to sit in front of the evil electric fire, which would strip the skin off a bare young calf in a matter of seconds, but she had this fab furry rug, so it was plum position, third degree burns or no. Grandad Sam would have been put to work peeling several hundredweight of new potatoes, ready to be turned into potato salad (with salad cream, not mayo - and covered in snipped chives). When not rushing up and down getting drinks, taking coats, giving cuddles, mending broken toys, playing snap, or any other of millions of uses that every good Grandad has, he used to have a swift swig of whisky in a very comical Monty Python type way while Grandma was in the kitchen, giving us a conspiratorial wink as he hid the bottle again. We laughed like drains.

The grand opening of this gargantuan spread would always be prawn cocktails: forever an eye-watering shade of Barbie pink (J fears that the dreaded crushed beetle may have come into play here) with added chopped tomato on a bed of lettuce, served in Grandma’s best posh glass bowls. I hate prawns but somehow could woof down several of these delights. Other wonders on the heaving table would be sausage rolls, glistening slices of ham, pickled onions, pickled walnuts (ew), Piccalilli (double ew), thinly sliced circles of cucumber (no skin: Grandma Maudie would rather have impaled herself on a sharp implement than served cucumber with skin on), and half of a mystery fruit (melon?) covered in foil and then randomly stabbed with cocktail sticks containing tiny sausages, squares of cheese and baby silverskin onions, or cheese and pineapple, or cheese and cheese. All were the height of yumminess. I also loved the hard-boiled eggs which she used to halve, remove the yolk, mix with salad cream and pipe back into the whites. Fantastic. Ooh and what about the celery sticks cut into 2 inch lengths and piped with cream cheese before being sprinkled with something pink (paprika??). I must talk to me Mam about this because she’s bound to remember loads of other bits.

Puddings were wobbly jellies containing floating fruit pieces, (and squirty cream!!) and, oh…the rabbit mould containing Crème Caramel which was turned out with a flourish to provide a glistening brown edible bunny. Wrong on so many different levels, but oddly nice. There were cakes and chocolate swiss rolls and ice cream floaters, meringue nests filled with cream and topped with enough (tinned) fruit to make Carmen Miranda feel slightly bare, and then while we could still just about waddle to the kitchen, we’d be allowed to make Snowballs.

I’m misty eyed and nostalgic about Snowballs. So much so that Hubby bought me a bottle of Advocaat on our recent trip to the North and I’m going to get the kids to make them. Snowballs, if you didn’t know, are in my family the only form of alcohol widely accepted to contain no actual alcohol and therefore permissible for small children on that one night of the year. They’re actually very simple (slosh some Advocaat in a glass, top up with lemonade), but with Grandma Maudie at the helm they took several wonderful hours of careful mixing and blending with her handheld plastic whisk to get just the right level of frothy topping, then to choose the perfect complementary colour of plastic cocktail stick, and the roundest, pinkest cocktail cherry to nestle in the top. No wonder I have a serious cocktail addiction. Ahhh, all our Christmas yesterdays, eh?

So it’s been a while, but last night we had another little dabble with the Cocktail Bible (Hamlyn £14.99 - beats the real one hands down, sorry Mam). I was especially interested in recipes containing watermelon as my delightful second child insisted that he ‘loved watermelon’ and waited while I spent ages cutting up a baby one (no pips!) into bitesize chunks before daintily nibbling one tiny corner and deciding that he’d changed his mind. I bagged it up and shoved it in the freezer, and blimey, I’m jolly glad I did.

Here goes with the recipe then:

First, take your frozen watermelon chunks, then plonk them into the blender (no, I still haven’t saved up enough for a KitchenAid one yet) along with a large measure of vodka (officially one measure is 25ml, but I use a shot glass), half a measure of strawberry liqueur (it should have been passion fruit liqueur, but I don’t have any), a large glug of cranberry juice and a squeeze of lime. Whiz it up into the most delightful salmon pink slush and serve in your incredibly expensive Urban Bar glasses.

We also used the carton of frozen tropical fruit we got on a bogof offer at Tesco to make Tropical Daiquiris and they were bloody nice too:

Half fill your blender jug with the frozen fruit, then add ½ measure of fresh lime juice, 1 measure of Bacardi, a slug of Cointreau and whiz until slushy. You might need an extra splosh of fruit juice if your blender gets clogged up. Drink whilst curled happily on the sofa going ‘eurgh’ at CSI:Miami (that last bit’s optional). The first one was my favourite though, although I could have been influenced by the colour.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of pink stuff, I’ve finally managed to persuade Hubby to allow a touch of pink into the bedroom. Here’s our new watermelon martini-pink bedlinen complete with a delighted Bertie (he’s in touch with his feminine side). Bless.

Oh yes, last night we were mostly drinking Frozen Strawberry Daquiris. I know, I know…STB again, but actually I don’t feel as bad as I did last time, which is always a bonus. I was in a cocktail type of mood because of two things:

Firstly, we took twiglet dog to the beach and had a mighty fine time. We met some very friendly people who had a little girl who loved dogs. B took to her instantly, enjoyed lots of cuddles and gave her a jolly good wash (we were very impressed that she was still laughing at the end of that). She also did lots of barking at seagulls and sniffing of very interesting things in the sand while we skimmed stones and walked and talked, and basically got our fix of sea air. Having never lived by the sea before, this is a revelation. The first of many visits methinks.

Secondly, I’m delighted to report that the aforementioned girly weekend has been booked - wehay! After a flurry of emails, the flights are booked and C&R are coming for a visit from the good old UK! My responsibility is now to find a fab spa for us to spend a day being pampered. I’m also already thinking about doing a bit of a cocktail night when we get home from the spa, so I had to try out my new recipe (that’s my excuse and I’m not budging). I thought maybe we could have a couple of the abovementioned daquiris:

Frozen Strawberry Daquiri

This is slightly different from the peach one because instead of crushed ice and fruit, you just use frozen fruit. There’s a fab farm shop where I used to live in the UK that sold frozen fruit of all different descriptions from open freezers, and you just scooped what you needed and paid by weight, but obviously now I’m reliant on my new fave, Dunnes, which has a fairly decent selection in the freezers. If you used mixed summer berries you might have to sieve the pips out. So (sorry, digressing again):

Put frozen fruit in the fancy blender attachment of your stainless steel beast of a food processor (I know, been there before but please be careful your blender is man enough or you’ll have a frozen strawberry kitchen to clean up), then add:

Juice of one fresh lime
4 measures Bacardi
1 measure Cointreau

Whizz up and pour into chilled glasses. Repeat liberally until giggly.