Potato salad with creamy avo-nnaise dressing

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve really started liking potato salad. Up till then I was always put off by the vats of bought mayonnaise too often slicked over it. When I eventually started making my own, I would make the dressing with half and half mayonnaise with yoghurt, and add a good dollop of wholegrain mustard, which to me gave the perfect balance of tanginess.

For ZZ2’s Afrikado "More than just guacamole!" Blogger Challenge, I thought I’d try making a dressing for potato salad that didn’t have any mayonnaise at all. I had a feeling that the avo would provide all the creamy texture needed and the mustard would supply the tang.

I finally tried it today and it worked perfectly. My only worry had been whether the green of the avo would make the salad a bit too, well green. But actually it looked great and tasted even better. My family tell me I can do this one again any time I like!

And the best thing that this is an incredibly healthy dressing for potato salad – no oil, no mayo and, if you want, you can make it dairy-free by leaving out the yoghurt – it still tastes fantastic.

There’s no problem either with the dressing turning colour before you serve it. The lemon juice keeps it fresh for a good few hours, and in fact the small bowl of leftovers is still looking fine this evening!.

Recipe for potato salad with avo-nnaise

For the avo-nnaise
1 ripe avocado
2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons plain yoghurt
2-3 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs – mint , parsley and either fennel or dill
Salt and pepper

Blend together the avo, mustard and lemon juice. Stir in the yoghurt and the fresh herbs. Season with salt and pepper. If you prefer to make this dairy free you can leave out the yoghurt and just use 2 tablespoons of water to let down the dressing to the right consistency.

For the potato salad
1 kg potatoes, boiled in their skins then peeled
4-6 small gherkins chopped
4-6 tablespoons finely chopped fresh herbs as above
Salt and pepper
Serves 6

This is my second entry for the challenge, my first being a delicious chocolate avo parfait, which we finished off today after our braai, alongside some wonderful guava parfait. All in all a wonderful Sunday lunch on a beautiful winter’s day, sitting around the braai while the old man snoozed in the sun and the youngster played in the grasses.

Disclosure: I developed this recipe to enter into the Afrikado challenge. There is a prize for the winning recipe which will be decided by a panel of judges. I received no remuneration for writing this post and bought all the ingredients myself.

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Bracken the Kitten

All our animals make it onto the blog sooner or later and I’ve been admirably restrained in waiting six whole weeks before indulging in a flurry of cute kitten pics!

Bracken came into the family as a very appealing and fluffy little 6 week old.  Normally that would be a bit young to be taken away from his family but our vets had rescued a whole litter that were unwanted, they were already separated from their mother and needed homes quickly.

The children and I rushed in to town after school to have a look at the kittens and they spent almost an hour getting to know them and trying to decide on just one kitten, as I determinedly kept my heart hardened and resolute in the face of pleas to take home two or three.

Eventually they all agreed on the fluffy ginger one, who was playful and not too shy and was happy to be cuddled. For the first two nights he slept in the girls’ room, until we found that they were being woken several times in the night. Then we took him on for a couple of nights, feeling that he was still too little to be all on his own. After one particularly broken night, we banished him to the bathroom, where he was happy to curl up in the laundry basket all night and, as long as the lights were off, no more disturbances were forthcoming.

Our two older cats were not happy to make his acquaintance. Fluff hissing like a pot boiling over on a hot fire, Socks ignoring him totally.

Fluff is a scary, grumpy old man

The poor little me look after meeting Fluff

So Bracken resorted to playing with the dogs and now chases Amy the Jack Russell all over the place. He’s fascinated by the ducks, who also seem curious about him and gather round him when he’s out exploring.

Dogs, I can handle

Devoted acolytes grooming for fleas

They even made me a pompom!

Now of course he has grown tremendously, into a lanky twelve week old and is climbing trees and falling out of them, stealing the older cats’ food, pouncing on their tails and getting into mischief. But he still curls up under our chins when we sit on the sofa and purrs like a motorboat, so therapeutic in times of stress. A purring kitten has to be top of the list when it comes to relaxation aids!

When the kids are at school he 'helps' my husband or I by sitting curled against us purring away, between our hands and the keyboard, so that we automatically de-stress as we work. Or else he tries to help us do the work itself, which is less successful!

Exploring the stoep in the winter sunshine

Catch that tail! Socks having his siesta interrupted.

He’s brought much joy and life to the farm, much needed when we’ve lost both Horror and Badger this year, as well as Toffee the rabbit, and the aunts have also lost one dog each. They are dutifully doting aunts to Bracken, instigating searches of the whole house when he’s not to be seen during their evening visits and being terribly anxious about his well-being whenever we are out for the evening!

Now Fluff is mostly tolerating him, unless he is especially annoying, and Socks has been known to play with him once or twice. And that crazy fur still looks like he's had an electric shock, whenever you see him back-lit!

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In Memory of Badger

We returned from our  blissful visit to Grootbos to find all the children happy and well, but Badger, our 10 year old border collie, was not doing so well. He’d been to the vet a week before and there were no obvious infections, so we knew it was probably going to be something more serious if he hadn’t improved with the general remedies they’d given him.

On the Sunday evening he didn’t eat, although he plainly wanted to, so first thing on Monday I took him in and left him for the vets to check him out. Sadly it turned out to be a horrible throat cancer and so we had to make a decision over the phone then and there. I was far more upset than I’d expected to be, usually I manage a stiff upper lip with the eventual demise of pets, perhaps it was because it felt too soon and too sudden.

We’ve had Badger from a puppy. He was born on the farm, one of six pups to Berry, my SILs collie who has also recently died. Cobalt our collie, inherited from our dear friend Ursie, was his father, an incestuous liaison that is probably against all the rules of good breeding and happened by accident.

We’d picked one puppy from the litter already, Indigo, who our son had fallen in love with, and were only intending to keep the one puppy. But when a family of prospective puppy buyers came to view the last three pups, this little ball of fluff with huge brown eyes kept coming up to me and gazing up with those eyes saying 'pick me, pick me'. Impulsively and irrationally we kept him too.

So there we were with a four year old, a toddler, a three month old baby and two border collie puppies to bring up. The puppies used to curl up on the baby play mat in the kitchen with Youngest, when I was cooking supper.

Indi was bright, energetic and eager to please, Badger, noble looking and we suspected slightly on the dim side for a border collie, but very loyal and protective of his family. He was always ‘badgering’  us for attention, so the name (given for the broad white blaze down his nose) became doubly apt . He was a total farm dog and hated going in the car. We tried to get both puppies used to it, by taking them to pick up the kids from kindergarten. In the end we gave up and they have always stayed home to guard the house, a duty they take seriously.

A stormy relationship with his father Cobalt, made the  house less than peaceful as Badger grew up and there was much snarling and jockeying for the prime position under the kitchen table. They never did resolve their differences, so it has only been since Cobalt died a year ago that Badger has really had a chance to be the boss and lie unchallenged in all the best places.

It feels strange to only have the two dogs following me out to the washing line or the veggie garden. There is a gap. Indi feels the responsibility of having to bark for two at arriving and departing cars. Amy, the Jack Russell, tends to join in noisily only once the defences have been truly breached and  the invaders are at the door.

The family has been clamouring for a puppy for months now, ever since my husband suggested that as our dogs are starting to get older we need to introduce and train the next generation (me as always resisting the pressure as long as possible). So we have to decide whether we will go the puppy route or adopt a rescue dog. We will be getting another dog, when the time feels right, but we will miss Badger for a while yet.

Badger joining in Youngest's birthday party six years ago.

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Ginger Oat Cookies on A Quiet Saturday Morning

An unusual silence for a Saturday morning. The house is holding its breath, a dog’s snoring the only sound above the rustle of leaves in trees, as an infant south-easter prepares to ruffle the hot morning air.

I’m home alone, which hardly ever happens; the girls at an impromptu sleepover, my husband dropping our son and his inseparable computer at a friend’s house for the weekend before heading off to a meeting.

I made all my noise earlier with the vacuum cleaner, washing machine and  dishes, in a fit of virtuous housewifery. Now I’ve run out of steam and virtue, finished my book and I’m not ready to do any of the 101 things that I ought to do. The siren call of bloggery lures me and I remember a half finished post intended to feature an essential biscuit recipe...  can I find it? Of course not.

Waiting for something to happen

We’re out of biscuits now; the full tin that I was preening over in the vanished post a distant memory. But instead of baking up a storm and wowing my family on their return with tantalising wafts of newly-baked goodies, I’m going to write that post all over again instead. Maybe, just maybe, the girls will bake something when they get home, if they don’t just collapse in a heap after their jollities. In the meantime it's too hot to bake.

This recipe for ginger oat biscuits is one that I always used to keep stocked up in the biscuit tin, back when I was a full-time mother and the kids were toddlers in urgent need of regular snacks. The oats are a sop to the health freak in every mum, and if you are avoiding wheat you can use rye, oat or combinations of almost any other flour; it’s very forgiving recipe.  And they are tasty, satisfying and not too fancy for everyday.

Ginger Oat Biscuit Recipe

115g / 4oz butter
1 cup / 250ml plain flour (or wholewheat, rye or oat flour)
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda / baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup brown sugar (soft dark brown or demerara)
½ cup white sugar
1 egg
1 cup rolled oats / porridge oats
1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger

Preheat the oven to 160C / 325 F
Makes about 24 cookies

Cream together the butter and sugars. Add beaten egg.
Sift flour with baking powder, bicarb, salt and ginger. Stir it into the butter mixture.
Add the oats and mix well in.

You should now have a soft rather crumbly dough.
Dollop generously heaped teaspoons of mixture onto two greased baking trays about one inch apart. The biscuits will spread as they cook.

Bake for 15 minutes until they are firm at the edge. The biscuits will crisp up as they cool. Cool on a rack and then store in an airtight tin. They keep well if you can manage not to gobble them all up in a day or two!

Here is the same cookie recipe but as a chocolate and cinnamon version, posted back in the early days of my blog, when the kids were little.

Home alone is only a relative term with so many companions of other species available for conversation at any time.

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Horror’s Story – The Final Episode

Our little black cat had the most fiercely independent and tenacious nature, I’ve come across even in a species known for those qualities.

She used up most of her nine lives in narrow escapes and hazardous exploits, but hung on to that last one for another five years after the vet shook his head over her and advised us to take her home to be comfortable for her last few weeks. She recovered, relapsed, recovered and never ran out of determination for an instant even at the last.

Back when we lived in our London photographic studio, before the children came along, our cats were our kids. We bought them solely to solve our mouse problem, so we told ourselves, they were to be studio cats with a job to do... they quickly became part of the family.

The studios were old factories and warehouses with tin roofs, surrounded by railway lines and archways. Our kittens soon became streetwise, finding their way around the rooftops, making it safely along the street to the pub, playing with mice in the cobblestone yard, miaowing to be let in at our skylight at three in the morning, urban cool cats to the core. There were delivery vans and trucks in the yard, express trains on the tracks, long drops from the railing that they used to access the roof. Sometimes they featured in fashion shoots, other times they entertained visiting photographers and models and looked decorative. Certainly the mouse population moved out to safer pastures.

Horror (named Horatia, shortened to Horry and thence corrupted) among other exploits managed to stowaway on a trip to Birmingham in a furniture van (luckily being brought back to our yard on the return trip). We think she fell one time from the high platform that led to our first floor studios as she came in limping. She definitely lost one life one Christmas, when we were away: our friend came by to feed the cats for us and found her with her head wedged in an empty cat food tin, limp, almost out of air. He was probably more traumatised than she was and remembers it to this day.

Her middle and old age has been mellower. Since we brought her to South Africa, she adapted to country life and showed the dogs who was boss very early on. Last year she used to enjoy taking showers in the herb garden sprinkler, getting herself thoroughly soaked and washing furiously.
More recently she has been weaker, lying out in the sunshine in the middle of the path, where she would be right in the way, sprawling in the centre of the kitchen floor to be tripped over. It was as if she wanted to make sure she was close to the action, even though she was getting rather deaf and blind. I’d be making bread and step back only to find she’d crept up behind me and I was treading on her tail again. Yet she was still fiercely clinging on to life, demanding to be fed, expecting attention, purring, deciding for herself exactly where she wanted to be. With some animals you know it is time to take them on a final journey to the vet, that they are ready to go, but with Horror that moment never came.

We came back from our week’s holiday at the river to find her a little weaker than before. She greeted us and lay in our path as usual. The next day she didn’t bother eating and lay out in her usual place all day slipping gradually into a comatose state. We thought then it was the end, wondered about taking her to the vet, but decided that would be more traumatic than kind. It was the right decision; she slipped away gradually in her own time, at her own pace. At the end of the evening found that she’d gone. It was her time, she’d finally decided to let go.

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An Abundance of Ducks

Abundance is one of those wonderful words that we use all too often. Unspecific, it conjures up visions of harvest festivals, cornucopias of plenty, everything we need, just when we need it. We add it to our list of positive intentions for the year; love, health and abundance, our grown-up Christmas wish list for our families.

Sometimes though I wonder whether perhaps we should have been slightly more specific about what we wanted in abundance, especially now, when our ducks have produced brood after brood of ducklings, which seem to be thriving all too abundantly, with far fewer casualties than most years.

Ducks are notoriously bad mothers. My sister-in-law has regularly been traumatised by losing ducklings to birds of prey, snakes, or simply to their mothers letting them get cold and wet on a chilly spring day. Several years back it got so that the only way of raising the next generations was to take them away from their mothers and raise them under a light until they were big enough to weather the big wild world on their own.

Setting up a pen to raise the first brood this year

About three years ago we were down to one lone duck after an eagle picked the rest off one by one, and we had to advertise in the lonely hearts column for two more ducks to keep him company. Last year however one mother duck successfully raised two broods, immediately laying a second clutch of eggs after her first eight ducklings were whisked off to be raised in safety. We were suddenly up to twenty or so ducks on the farm.

This year her offspring have proved remarkably dedicated to their reproductive duties and, over the past month, no fewer than seven mama ducks have emerged from the bushes proudly leading lines of fluffy yellow or brown ducklings. The first two broods (of eight and twelve respectively) were duly taken to a safe warm box of straw to be raised. The next ones were herded into the duck pens with their mothers to be kept safe from predators but take their chance with the vagaries of ducky mothering abilities. Mamas five and six were also penned in  a big run on our stoep to keep them safe.

By the time we got to Mama duck number seven there was nowhere left to pen her, so she was allowed to roam free. She’s amazed us by only losing one duckling so far and being a remarkably good mother. She supervises water play and calls them out to get warm and preen feathers after they've had long enough. She keeps them warm and hidden away at night and has restored our faith in ducks instinctive mothering skills. We then started feeling bad about one penned mama who was getting very frustrated with her captivity, so we thought we’d give her a shot at raising her ducklings free range too. They were a week old already, still cute and fluffy but not as tiny and vulnerable as newly hatched ones.

So before the girls went off to school today, we caught the whole family, took them to a nice area of bushes and released them. After five minutes of the girls running around after her with the ducklings that had got left behind, mama duck seemed to have calmed down  and have all her ducklings under control. Until, that is, free-range mama duck arrived at the water run-off with her brood. This is where the grey water runs out into a small ditch and is a favourite duck playground and wallowing area.

The newly-freed ducklings rushed off to join the free-range brood and played happily in the water for ages. By the time free-range mama called her family out of the water to preen their feathers, the other ducklings had so far identified with their new friends that they went and joined free-range mama, copying all their movements.

Duck grooming session

Their own mama meanwhile was wandering around quacking desultorily, looking for them in all the wrong places. Even when we shooed her down the hill to join them, she didn’t seem to recognise them as her own. Three of them wandered towards her, then changed their mind and ran back to their new friends. In no time free-range mama had a family of fifteen clustering around her and other mama was quacking around distractedly any time she remembered, in between having a nice bath herself and forgetting about them entirely.

I was inclined to leave things as they were, free-range mama seeming to be quite happy with her extra large family, but in the end distracted mama was given a slightly larger pen area and put back in with most of her babies. One of hers has remained with free-range mama and nobody seems to mind the swap.

Distracted mama duck re-assigned to high density housing

The first hatchlings now have their adult feathers and are ready for new homes. I think we’ll be repopulating the entire local area with ducks at this rate, so if you hear of Cape Town being overrun by a mysterious plague of ducklings next spring,  it may well be our ducks to blame. Unless of course this was a freak breeding season and next year we go back to cocooning our few precious survivors once again.

We are lucky enough to have an abundance of strawberries too this season, so I’m not going to complain about the Universe’s generosity. Just need to get jamming to show that I really do appreciate it!

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Spring, Veggies and Bunny Bouquets

Spring is fickle. One minute wooing you with bouquets of daisies, the next blowing a gale and laughing manically as it catches you in a shower of rain. Luckily our vegetable garden seems to thrive on this callous treatment.

The cabbages are pictures of bursting health, we have an enviable broccoli crop this year, and while for some bizarre reason our last carrot planting failed, there are new rows beginning to show promising signs.

An evening walk - Youngest still immersed in book

Most mornings we walk around the farm road to try and get at least a bit of exercise before freezing in front of our computer screens for the rest of the day.

We walk purposefully along, stride up the hill until we reach the veggie patch, where I veer off the road and start gathering a bouquet of greens. Bunny bouquets for the two rabbits and two guinea-pigs, who must have the healthiest diet of any caged pets: beet leaves, nasturtium leaves, cabbage leaves, broccoli leaves, rocket gone to flower, spinach, lettuce, radishes.

Picking all this fresh food for them delights my frugal-disguised-as-green-living soul. All they need is the outer cabbage leaves, the lower broccoli leaves, the thinned beets from overcrowded rows, the radishes that have got too huge for us to eat.

It’s free for the gathering, unlike the extortionate bag of designer guinea-pig food sold to my husband in the pet shop, where the girls chose their new guinea-pigs. State of the art flakes of dried fresh food, guaranteed to have a residue of vitamin C and originate from real apples and carrots... like eating your salads in the form of breakfast cereal.

The bouquet looks so pretty that it’s a shame to let it drop to the floor of the cage... the guinea pigs stand up on their back legs and squeak desperately until I hand it over. It’s polished off in twenty minutes flat. Thereafter any time we go past the back door heart-rending squeaks ask for more, more, more.

Inspired by all this free goodness I made a Thai green vegetable curry for supper last night, hoping to convince the kids that this is an edible option. I put in plenty of potatoes as a base (they will all eat potatoes at least!) then added in the just-picked broccoli and spinach. All I can say is that three out of five of us ate it quite happily and at least our son will eat plain rice till the cows come home... what was that vitamin deficiency linked to rice-eating, I wonder?

And spring on our farm continues to look gorgeous, every time the sun shines and brings the daisies out in a blaze of dazzling brightness.

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Horses in May

With two daughters who both loooove horses, every month has a fair amount of horse madness involved. But May seemed to be even more horse-themed than usual.

I started off the month with a visit to the studio of equine artist, Rachel Dubber. She paints gorgeous portraits of ponies and horses, some in motion, some close up studies, but all showing oodles of character and life. It was wonderful to get an insight into how she works and the amount of time and intense focus that goes into each canvas. Her studio walls are edge to edge with paintings and drawings, some complete, others in progress, the real life originals of the images on her website (which we’ve been working on for her) and so much more alive than any photographic image can convey.

I saw this painting of Montana in its early stages and have been following its progress ever since on Rachel’s Facebook page – love how it turned out now it’s finished. I was thrilled to come home with a gorgeous oil study called Connemara Princess, and the girls were just as thrilled , so thank you again for that Rachel!

Youngest on Violet   Middle Daughter on Flink

Youngest with trophy from last pony show

The next big event on the equine calendar was the pony show at the stables where the girls ride. These are practise shows, not as formal as the official round of shows, lots of fun but still with  proper dressage and equitation events. It was a beautiful day for this one, so no fear of standing holding ponies in the rain, as happened at a couple of previous ones. Youngest had graduated to a bigger pony for most of the events but was still down to ride the characterful Peanuts in the jumping at the end.

He has a will of his own usually matched by the determination of Youngest; in the last show she won one of the floating trophies for her persistence and determination in the face of his insistence on departing from the prescribed dressage programme. Violet, her new love, is far more biddable, though still no pushover, and Youngest picked up a rosette or two, as did Middle Daughter on the reliable and gentlemanly Flink.

I meanwhile am left holding Peanuts who has a wide gap in his schedule. All my video footage of the girls’ events is interspersed with sudden jerks as he drags me off to find a fresher clump of grass. By the time the jumping class is about to start his nose is thoroughly out of joint at having had to watch all the events from the sidelines. When Youngest mounts to give him a warm up ride in the side arena, he declines and trots off determinedly in the opposite direction at a fast pace, hauling Youngest right into the middle of the equitation prize giving. There is no persuading him after this. Usually Youngest can get some measure of co-operation out of him, but she hasn’t ridden him for a few lessons now and he is making her pay for her disloyalty. He kicks up his heels like a nursery rocking horse on amphetamines and heads out of the arena repeatedly as she tries to get him over the jumps. In the end her teacher puts him on the lead rein and runs him round the course. Youngest takes all this with remarkable composure, though I am exhausted! They are all pleased with their day and it was a great show altogether.

The girls have been building up a herd of Schleich horses for the last few years and these horses are the raw materials of endless games and ongoing stories and dramas. Each time they go to their friends’ house the horses are all carefully packed up, wrapped so as not to get scratched. The friends’ herd returns the visit. Sometimes individual horses stay for sleepovers with the other herd, but always everyone knows the name and owner of each individual.

There was much anticipation this month as the shop in Cape Town that stocks the Schleich range was rumoured to be getting in new stock. Between the two families the girls possess almost every previous model of horse (at least all the ones that they consider desirable), so this was exciting. Unfortunately their savings had been depleted by some acquisitions at the crystal shop, so they had to negotiate terms with their aunt. They set to work cleaning windows and booked in for further work. For the first time we permitted a credit arrangement, whereby they would work off the costs over the following two weeks, as they hadn’t saved enough by the time that the trip in to town was scheduled with their aunt. We had a long discussion about credit, credit cards and the fact that the bought goods could be repossessed by the creditor if the debt wasn’t paid in time! The girls came back triumphant with the horses they were wanting to add to their herd and now just have another two hours work still to do to own them in full!

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