Pie And Mash A Taste Of Traditional London Food

                                     

Pie and mash are as intrinsically linked to London as black cabs and Beefeaters (Yeomans, not the ghastly restaurant chain!) Eel, pie and mash houses are bits of living history, originally established in Victorian London, pie, mash and liquor was traditional London working class food.

In Victorian times eels were swimming in the river Thames in abundance, hence the pies sold in pie houses started their life as eel pies. The liquor was made from the water used to stew the eels, the green colour was due to the addition of parsley.

Eventually a minced beef and cold water pastry pie and mash were added to the menu, nowadays customers tend to like a meat pie and mash with a side serving of stewed eels and liquor. Infact pie and mash has become de rigueur amongst the urban professionals, along with other working class food such as liver and bacon and pork belly.

Recently my brother and sister in law came to stay with us for a weekend and we had some hugely disappointing meals out. We did the country pub, the restaurant on the seafront and in desperation even ate in our local Beefeater. None of the meals we ate were homemade, at best we got a half decent steak served with dry oven chips and frozen peas, at worst we got pre-plated meals straight out of the microwave.

Conversation turned (naturally given the circumstances) to how hard it is to find decent restaurant/pub food these days. One meal that never disappoints David or Sally is pie, mash and liquor which they eat at Goddards pie house in Greenwich. Like most pie houses, Goddards is a family run business which has been handed down through the generations and has been serving pie and mash since 1890. Well, as they say: 'you can take the girl out of London, but you can't take London out of the girl' so a trip to my brothers, and Goddards is imminent!

Meanwhile I decided to make a minced beef pie which was utterly delicious. Homemade pie is the ultimate comfort food and so simple to make, especially now you can buy all types of ready made pastry. I used good quality organic beef mince but this was still a very economical meal which served 4.

Minced beef pie

Recipe
1lb good quality, organic minced beef
2 large onions, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
400ml red wine or stout
1 pint beef or chicken stock
2 teaspoons English mustard
2-3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Large handful carrot batons
Salt and pepper
1 packet puff pastry
1 egg

Put the oil into a large pan on a high heat, add onions and mince, season and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally

Add the wine and reduce

Add mustard and Worcestershire sauce, mix well

Add stock and stir

Add carrot batons, turn the heat down very low, pop a lid on and cook for 30 minutes

Preheat oven to 180c/gas 4
Ladle meaty stew into a pie dish and allow to cool

Dust a clean surface with flour and roll pastry to about 1cm thick and a little bit bigger than your pie dish

Beat egg and use some to eggwash the edges of the pie dish
Carefully place pastry on top of pie dish, trim any overhanging pastry and squash the edges of the pastry to the dish
Eggwash the top

Cook the pie at the bottom of the hot oven for around 40 minutes or until your pastry is puffed and golden

Serve with steamed drained peas and buttery mash


'If someone is very upper class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.'
- Michael Caine

Love Donna xxxxxx

             

Superfood And Superblogger Ella Woodward

                                                    Superfood blogger Ella Woodward

Since writing this blog my interest in anything food related has increased, be it recipes, the dangers of trans fats, the psychological and emotional relationship we have with food...... it is such a vast and interesting subject and of course one which affects us all.

Julia Child famously said: 'I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.' I think a large majority of us eat without giving thought to anything other than our appetite.

Self confessed 'sugar monster' Ella Woodward was one such person, living on a typical university students diet, she was struck down by an illness that doctors were unable to diagnose. After being hospitalised and having undergone months of gastroenterology tests she was referred to a neurologist who diagnosed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which affects the autonomic nervous system.

Inspired by a book she had read about self healing, Woodward became a vegan and made her diet gluten, dairy and sugar free. Having had no cooking experience Woodward embarked on a diet where she started to create recipes by experimenting with different flavours. She eschewed all processed foods including tofu sausages and quorn burgers and enjoyed using ingredients such as buckwheat, brown rice flour and quinoa. Her recipes are full of ingredients such as sweet potatoes, avocados, courgettes, pumpkin seeds.......a thousand people a day download her sweet potato brownie recipe!

But here's the thing, after six months of her regime Woodward was significantly better and in September came off of drugs entirely. She is now a glossy, glowing advert for her lifestyle and doctors are setting up trials based on her diet for other sufferers.

We already know that the modern processed diet has caused a surge in cases of diabetes, but what other diseases and syndromes our future generations will encounter (due to a processed diet,) we can only wait and see. Woodward ate herself well, how many of us are eating ourselves unwell?

Of course I'm not advocating to my readers that they go to such extremes, crikey I feel blessed if a reader cooks from scratch a couple of times a week because they've been inspired by some of my recipes. But I do advocate the use of fresh produce and free range meat (in moderation) where possible, and I do feel we should be making a connection between food and the inner person. As I've quoted before: 'the best marker of a healthy diet is whether food is cooked by an individual or a food corporation.'

One of my favourite chefs is Gennaro Contaldo and I regularly refer to his cookbook Passione, given to me by my mother. His recipes are simple but enticing, this next one is a doddle.

Pasta with tuna, fresh pesto and green beans

Recipe
For the pesto
75g fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons pine kernels
2 garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
200ml olive oil
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Place pine kernels, garlic and salt in a mortar and grind to a paste with a pestle
Add a few basil leaves and some of the olive oil, grind and stir
Continue until you have used up all the basil leaves and half of the oil and the sauce has a silky consistency
Add the remaining oil and the Parmesan, mix well

300g pasta
20 green beans, trimmed and cut in pieces
1 tin tuna in extra virgin olive oil, drained
Extra Parmesan to serve

Bring a large pan of lightly salted water to the boil, add the pasta and green beans
Cook until the pasta is al dente and the beans are tender, drain

Add the pesto and tuna to the pasta and stir over a low heat for 2 minutes

Serve onto warm plates and sprinkle with Parmesan

If you dont like tuna replace it with 4 small new potatoes, scrubbed and cut into quarters, cook the potatoes with the pasta and beans
Alternatively, if you don't like pesto replace with a large handful of rocket, add to cooked pasta with tuna and allow to wilt, season with salt and pepper and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Three nice and simple variations which are tasty and economical and beat ready meals any day!


'Would you pour sand into the petrol tank of your car? Of course not, your car was meant to run on petrol. Well your body works in the same way. It was meant to run on good food, fruits, vegetables, lean protein and lots of water.'
- Tom Giaquinto

Love Donna xxxxx

The Nurturer At Home

                                        The good housekeeping's cookery compendium

                                                           Introduction
'Here, in one handsome volume, is a true home cooking companion. It is produced with an eye to the needs of every member of the family and presented in pictorial form, so that young daughters can be shown all the basic processes of cookery.'

My mother bought this book before she married my father, not because she couldn't cook but because her repertoire was mostly Italian. She met my father whilst working in her uncle Chick's Italian cafe, my father would have his lunch there regularly albeit something very plain like a cheese sandwich, at that stage he didn't like 'foreign food'. And so it was that Constance Barbuti bought the  good housekeeping cookery compendium in preparation for cooking for her new husband.

After they were married my mother, like many young brides in the 1950s/60s became a full time housewife and mother. Her life consisted of walking to the shops daily to buy fresh ingredients, preparing and cooking food, taking us children back and forth to school every day on foot, and of course housework which was very labour intensive. My mother didn't have a car, there were no supermarkets or convenience foods, few mod cons, (my mum had a twin tub washing machine,) and she would have relied on my father for housekeeping.

There can be no question that my mother made sacrifices and was subjugated, but this was an era when 'I want' and 'I need' didn't preceed every sentence, consequently I had an idyllic childhood.

It's ironic then, that my generation became the 'Cosmo' generation of feminists. I read Cosmopolitan from my early teens, a magazine written by feminists who implored us not to allow ourselves to be defined as just mothers or housewife's. We eschewed the notion that nurturing was in itself a worthy and qualified role. We threw our mother's sacrifices and unconditional love back in their faces, we were going to be the have it all generation!

I am not suggesting women should be tied to the kitchen sink, (I mean come on, most of us have got dishwashers!) Or that we should be submissive little housewives, but I do question how the lack of a nurturer at home has had an effect on society.

One of the trailblazers in the 80s was feminist Shirley Conran who famously quoted: 'life is too short to stuff a mushroom' the connotation being modern woman had better things to do than derive pleasure from assembling ingredients.

This is a bit of a double edged sword. Many modern women today have menial jobs, work long hours, have to place their children in child care, yet still have to run a home. Was this the ideal we all dreamt of?

I have followed journalist liz Jones for many years, a typical feminist from my generation she often writes about the subjugated life of her mother. Her articles are often very contradictory, like me, liz came from a home where her mother had dedicated herself to her family, which liz decries and admires in equal measure. However, for all her fame and fortune liz is not a happy woman and her articles often make for depressing reading. She realises her career is dog eat dog, the sisterhood has imploded, it's every woman for herself!

By virtue of being nurturers my mothers generation were kinder to each other, they looked to one another for companionship. My mothers life may have been boring but she was happy and I think we should all be kinder regarding the selfless and commendable role women of that generation played in our lives.

Naturally this brings me to the subject of stuffing mushrooms! There are few things more delicious than a garlicky mushroom, oozing cheese and topped with wafer thin slices of crispy bacon, placed in a toasted ciabatta bun this is as tasty as any burger. There are so many variations of stuffed mushrooms I don't know where to begin, however, this next recipe is a great accompaniment with steak.

Stuffed mushrooms

Recipe
1 large Portobello mushroom per person
1 garlic clove per mushroom
1 handful of Gorgonzola cheese (room temperature) per mushroom (if you find Gorgonzola too strong use Cheddar or mozzarella)
Olive oil
1 teaspoon runny honey per mushroom
1 handful breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven 180c/gas 4
Carefully remove the stalk from each mushroom to create a cavity
Rub a honey and a little oil on the inside of the mushrooms with the tip of your finger

Add crushed garlic to each mushroom

Stuff with cheese and top with breadcrumbs

Season and drizzle with a little olive oil, cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes

Serve in a toasted bun or with steak and chips

'God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.'
- Jewish proverb

'Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the adventures. The mothers stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.'
- Audrey Niffenegger

Love Donna xxxxxx

Loving Neglect

                                                                 

                                                                  My dining area

Aside from the fact that many children are growing up in homes where convenience foods are the norm, the act of eating has ceased to be a family occasion. Statistics suggest that only 39% of families in the UK eat as a family around the dinner table.

When I was a child family meal times were a pivotal part of the day, what we learnt at the table was how to communicate, how to listen, how to show respect, this was called table manners it wasn't snobbery but egalitarian, a lesson in social etiquette, open to all, free, hence the saying: good manners cost nothing.

Compare that with children's homeschooling today, children are left to sit in front of the TV with food on their laps, invariably food that they eat with their hands. It is evident that families are no longer eating around the dinner table because when they are in a restaurant environment children are climbing down from the table, spilling food, having tantrums......and parents seem powerless to control them. Look at an average restaurant table and you will see mobile phones and keys sprawled across it, hardly a good example to set, table manners have gone underground like a gene that has skipped a generation.

It is no coincidence that children whose parent's have paid attention to instilling good table manners in them develop into adults with good social skills. Conversation is how we become human. The word 'infant' literally means 'without the possibility of phatic expression.' Sitting around a table exchanging conversation is what makes us come together as a kindred species, without exchange, part of our humanity is lost. Children left to their own devices at meal times are missing out on fundamental skills.

Teachers and educational experts said the decline in children's social skills had become entrenched over the last decade. The term 'loving neglect' regarding parents  whose busy lives lead them to be too soft to impose rules or boundaries ie sitting down to dinner, are the root of the problem.

'Lots of children don't know how to use a knife and fork' headmistress Anna Traer Goffe said in a recent article. 'They are often given something to eat in front of the TV or have to eat on their own because parents eat later. With that comes a lack of key social skills such as listening to others, saying please or thank you and taking turns.'

For me, eating together as a family and with friends is a celebration, occasions that provide great memories. As Epicurus said: 'we should look for someone to eat with before looking for something to eat, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.'

I have posted this next dish once before but it is so good I thought it was worth re posting. This is a preparation rather than a recipe per se, it comes courtesy of a friend of mine who like me has a great love of life's dining table and its menu of morals, as she says: 'we all eat, and it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly!'

Best steak ever

Recipe
Serves 2
1 steak per person
2 onions, peeled and sliced
1 teaspoon dijon mustard per steak
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
A good glug of olive oil
A splash of malt vinegar
1 glass red wine
Salt and pepper

Remove steaks from fridge

In a bowl combine onions, mustard, garlic, oil and vinegar

Season well
Massage this mixture into steaks and set aside for at least 1 hour

Heat a large pan, add a splash of olive oil and allow to get shimmering hot
Remove excess marinade from steaks
Drop steaks directly into pan so that the whole surface hits the heat simultaneously
Cook steaks: rare 1 1/2 minutes per side
Medium 2 minutes per side
Well done 4-5 minutes per side
Use a spatula to gently press down on the surface, turn steak at half time
Remove steaks from pan, set aside covered in a foil tent
Over a high heat cook marinade in the same pan for 5 minutes
De glaze pan with a large glass of red wine
Place steaks on warm plates, top with marinade and sticky glaze
Serve immediately

                                  Serve with hand cut chips, stuffed mushrooms and peas

                                                 

'When your spouse is talking; turn off the television
When your child is talking turn off the world.'
- Crystal Delarm Clymer

'My mother is my friend
Who shares with me her bread
All my hopelessness cured
Her company makes me secured.'
- Israelmore Ayivor

Love Donna xxxxxxxx
       

Debates Around The Dining Table

                                             A young Bert: the centre of our universe

When I was in senior school my English teacher lent me a book of Wilfred Owen's poetry, it made a lasting impression on me about the sadness and futility of war. We are now 100 years on and to a degree we take for granted the freedom we have today thanks to the doomed youth whose courage and honour was the ultimate sacrifice.

Wilfred Owen died aged twenty five, a year younger than my Bert, his mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice day, as the Church bells were ringing out in celebration.

It may sound harsh, but when 'disaster' strikes ie Bert has the sniffles or misplaces his hair gel, or feels tired from working long hours, I sternly admonish him by saying 'at least you're not knee deep in mud fighting in the trenches.' I don't say this lightly, Bert, along with most of us, can never begin to imagine the most ghastly cruelties endured by those men during that brutal conflict. Death and despair touched every family and affected every community, there was no counselling available or a welfare system, if you lost your son's and husband you just had to get on with it.

Those that did survive suffered terrible injuries or neurasthenia (shell shock) not to mention severe depression, but the majority of those men had to soldier on, for them the war never really ended.

I say all of this because I had a little debate recently regarding our misplaced reverence of 'celebrities' which I found interesting. The current series of celebrity big brother, (the connotation lost on many people who have never heard of George Orwell, let alone having read 1984.) Saw the entrance of a character named white Dee aka Diedre Kelly (no I didn't have a clue who she was either!)

It transpires that Dee is a 'celebrity' because she featured in a channel 4 documentary about community spirit in her run down neighbourhood. Dee, a 42 year old single mother of two was on benefits, hence the title 'benefit street.' Dee said that she suffered from bereavement depression (her mother had died a couple of years ago, but she had apparently been on benefits for five years?) rendering her unable to work. However, since starring in the documentary, Dee has obtained an agent and celebrity status, she's been on a four day drunken rampage in Magaluf, (witnessed by both the press and the public but totally refuted by Dee who claims she was only drinking water.) She has made several TV appearances, and is now a contestant in the big brother house.

When interviewed for This Morning and asked how she was well enough for holidays and TV appearances but not well enough to work, she said it was due to her bereavement depression. Compare her bereavement with that of the wives and mothers of those young men and boys 100 years ago, think of Wilfred Owen's mother on Armistice day and it makes you weep.

Contrary to the intimation during my debate, namely that I don't sympathise with Dee's depression, I have a very deep understanding of the disease and lost my mother as a direct cause of it. Unfortunately people who use the term 'depression' glibly negate the very seriousness of the disease and it's often tragic consequences.

We all live with a certain amount of grief, sadness heartache and anxiety, I suffer with bouts of melancholy but depression is totally debilitating. I suspect Dee's agent has advised her that depression isn't telegenic and it seems to have lifted since she has become a celebrity.

Debates and discussions are an integral part of sitting around a table and eating together, therefore my posts aren't entirely tangential. The guy who designed Two Mad Cows, my previous blog, was quite critical regarding my deviation from anything specifically food related, he thought my writing was inappropriate for a food blog, as I've said before, there is enough material out there for people wanting 'recipes' and quite frankly most people are going to Google Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson long before they are going to look to me for inspiration!

So, now I am going to talk food and todays post is pertinent because it's one of Bert's favourite recipes, and Bert is the son I'm so lucky to have given that so many son's were lost 100 years ago.

Pork with egg fried rice

Recipe
4 pork loin chops

Marinade
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon chilli sauce
2 teaspoons chinese five spice
1 thumb size piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 cups of rice, cooked according to packet instructions
2 eggs, beaten
Stir fry vegetables of your choice, I used bamboo shoots, baby corn, water chestnuts and spring onions
Vegetable oil

Pulse all marinade ingredients together

Massage into meat, cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour

Heat oil in a large pan, add chops and cook for 5 minutes each side

Remove chops from pan, set aside covered in a foil tent
In the same pan stir fry vegetables over a high heat, add cooked rice, keep tossing until everything is covered in leftover meat juices/marinade
In a separate pan add a drop of oil, when shimmering add eggs, tip pan back and forth until you have a thin omelette

Shred omelette

Dish rice/vegetables onto a warm plate, top with shredded omelette

Top with chops and juices

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock kneed, coughing like old hags, we cursed through the sludge,
Till on haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, out stripped five nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick boys! - an ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone was still yelling out and stumbling,
And floundering like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gurgling from the froth corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.'
- Wilfred Owen

Love Donna xxxxxxx

Home Is Where The Heart Is

                                The ornaments of a home are the friends who frequent it                      

There is an old adage that states: people who give you their food give you their heart. This certainly applies to my friend Bev who has an open house, towards which many people gravitate.

Last night I was part of the company at Bev's welcoming table where we all heartily consumed a veritable feast. Earlier that day Bev had been to Camber Quay fish market where fresh fish is landed daily, she bought fresh crabs, dog fish (also known as rock) and mackerel. I arrived to find Bev shelling crabs, cooking the dog fish, making a carbonara (incase anyone didn't want fish) and baking several batches of cakes.

Amongst the shells, bubbling pots and baking aromas, people were arriving, Bev's children, her children's friends, her parents, two French students........ Bev's house epitomises home and her kitchen is the hub of the house.

                                                         A kitchen that is well used!


These days people tend to aspire to owning a large house, children no longer share bedrooms, women want large state of the art kitchens, (that they rarely cook in) we want studies and utility rooms and large gardens (that the children rarely play in.) But many of these houses are like show homes, I had a friend who never used her main sitting room, only ever used the microwave in her pristine kitchen and spent most of her time in the den. As Quentin Crisp said 'I like living in one room and have never known what people do with the rooms they are not in.'

Bev's house is large and homely, there is always something cooking in the kitchen, people conversing around one or other of her tables, a roaring fire by winter or chiminea by summer. Her home has a lovely feel to it, a good vibe, big houses should be filled with people, love and laughter that's what makes a house a home and not a mausoleum.

                                                              Delicious crab claws

                                                                           Dog fish

                                                 Mixed crab meat on homemade bread

After our delicious meal Bev produced the cakes she had made earlier

                                                                  Wow!

We then took our wine out to the garden where Bev has a mini vineyard

                                                                 

There was a chill in the air so we gathered around the chiminea

                                           Every large home should have its faithful friend

                                           Bev and I snuggling under the blanket

Several of us sat and talked late into the night, sharing delicious wine from Bev's wine cellar. I couldn't have wished for a nicer evening had I been sat in a posh restaurant, sharing good food and wine in a friends happy home is a joy and a privilege.

'Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people have gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.'
- Robin Hobb

'If ever I go looking for my hearts desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.'
- I Frank Baum.       The wonderful wizard of Oz

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Love In A Cold Climate

                             A perfect English summer's day at my favourite holiday camp

Don't get me wrong, I've spent some lovely days so far this summer, either at a holiday camp, on the beach or sipping Pimm's in either my own, a friend's or a pub garden. But these days have been intermittent, we've averaged about 30 days of good weather since May and most of those have been warm but overcast, we've probably had less than a fortnight of stonking hot weather.

I was discussing this with friends recently who, rightly so, told me I have been spoilt due to spending so much time in Spain. I just can't muster up that true Brit grit spirit required for sitting in a deckchair on a blustery day, teeth chattering against my ice cream cornet, by pretending I'm enjoying myself.

For those of you unfamiliar with stepping off of a plane and being enveloped in a wave of dry heat that warms your very bones, I can only say it is akin to running a warm hairdryer over your head, the heat has a smell and a taste and a texture, it is stultifying yet exhilarating.

                                   The early morning heat shimmering outside my window

                           The sultry heat at 10pm just as the Spanish come out to eat and drink

In rural Spain people will sit outside their front doors late into the night, sentarse al fresco literally means having a chat outside your door. Here in the UK we are lucky if we get half a dozen al fresco opportunities. But hey, when the weather is good, England is a great place to be!

                                                         A relaxing game of lawn bowls

                                                         Pimm's o'clock

                                                                 Outdoor chess

I have spent August and will be spending September here in England, the theory being I would get the best of both worlds, a British summer followed by three glorious weeks in Spain come October. I'm not complaining, I've been to some fabulous parties and barbecues albeit with a cardigan and brolly always at the ready.

                                                                      I do love a buffet!

                                                                     Al fresco bubbly

                                                     Brahms and Pimm's can't be bad      

Alas this was in yesterday's paper

    
Well, I had invited a friend and her young children for the day with high hopes of paddling pools and an Alice in wonderland style, outside tea party, but the weather took a downturn last week so we had to eat our cake, jelly and ice cream indoors, never the less, given that cake isn't my strong point, we all tucked in and had a jolly good time.

Ginger cake

Recipe        

125g softened butter

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tablespoon mixed spice

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon ground almonds (optional)

Pinch of salt

1/4 cup of milk (1/2 cup if adding almonds)

1 cup self raising flour

Preheat oven 200c/gas 6

Cream butter, sugar and salt in a bowl, beat until light and fluffy

Add flour and spices (and almonds if using)

 Beat eggs and milk and gradually add to bowl, beat until well combined

Spoon batter into a loaf tin and bake for 30 minutes or until cooked through

Allow cake to cool on a wire rack

You can now dust with icing sugar or as in my case, let the children ice the cake

We sprinkled the cake with grated orange zest

Serve with lashings of jelly and ice cream! 

'Take some more tea' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.'
'You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter; 'it's very easy to take more than nothing.'
'Nobody asked your opinion,' said Alice.'
- Lewis Carroll

Love Donna xxxxxx