They’re getting bigger every day. Soon time to dust down the chutney pan and load up the shopping trolley with vinegar. It’s that time of year where if I forget to go out in the garden for a few days, I’m then inundated with armfuls of produce that I “have to do something with - QUICK!”. We’re novices at this growing lark so I’m sure we’ll find other ways of staggering our crop but for now we have umpteen lettuces, umpteen courgettes growing into marrow and give it a few months - a squillion apples.

I set about looking for recipes and came across this site which made me laugh. I was looking at it’s silly flashing icons while making one of the recipes for tea and then it started dawning on me. This all looked familiar. I seem to remember this funky cookery show on TV from my youth. I’m sure it was on late at night advocating anarchy in the kitchen backed by loud guitar music. But there’s more to it than this… I go back and look at the site some more. Oh yes, there were 2 crazy “mystery chef” characters. Then “plink” the missing piece of mental jigsaw slots in. There’s mention on the website of an incident where the “Mystery Chefs” were guesting on another TV show and threw a plate of spag bol over Johnny Vaughan while he was presenting a link. Why should this ring a bell? It was me who booked them as guests on that show!

If you’d like your snails with more of a sense of urgency then check these out

Thanks to my friend “allotment girl” who lent me the book, we’ve discovered Jamie Olivers’ ice cream “smush-ins” . I’d promised R a treat and she’d asked for an ice-cream. I was wondering how I was going to match the excitement of all those holiday ice-creams she’d got used to and this certainly did the trick.

What you (and / or your little ones) do is, get a couple of scoops of ice-cream and mush or smush into it, any lovely stuff that you fancy or have lurking in your cupboards. We bunged in banana, sultanas, sprinkles, some Winnie the Pooh chocolate coins left over from easter and mamaluke’s gorgeous strawberry cordial but the possibilities are endless. The idea is so, so simple that you wonder why any editor would’ve allowed it into a recipe book. Thing is, it turned into such an event that I understood why it was in the book - to create a buzz and excitement around mixing, bashing and smushing a bowl of ingredients. And then of course, there’s the eating. Yummm.

I love lists. I spend my life making lists. On several occasions I’ve actually caught myself making lists of the lists that I need to make. Is there a job I could do making lists? I drive Mr. P insane. I’m like Monica from friends except without the team of comedy scriptwriters. Anyway, I’m wondering if I can enliven my posts with some listy action?

I like the idea of those “10 things that make me happy today” lists. They’re uplifting & thought provoking but somehow not quite me. They don’t allow for my sardonic streak. (can anyone even think of 10 happy things - a day for goodness sake?)

I’m more with the “let’s talk about what’s good but lace it with a nice dollop of mockery” gang. I felt so at home working in Birmingham with the self deprecating humour of the brummies. Who else would create the most passionate and upbeat website about their home city and call it “Birmingham: It’s Not Shit.”? Hilarious.

So, how bout a list where the good stuff and the not so good stuff is all jumbled up – much like it happens in life? So here goes:

10 erm “things” about our Greek holiday.

1. On the plane over there, one of the passengers had a heart attack. The chief steward, Roger asked over the PA for any doctors to make themselves known. Several medically trained staff and passengers then spent a fraught hour stabilising the poor man. When we later landed in Greece, Roger came back on the PA, thanked everyone for flying etc and then said “AND to the passenger who complained that they hadn’t received their after dinner coffee, I would just like you to take a minute and think about if it was you or one of your loved ones who had had a heart attack on this plane, whether you would have preferred the staff to attend to your medical needs, or carry on serving the tea and coffee”. Everyone was tutting and gasping in disbelief. Someone shouted out “well said Roger” and then everyone clapped and cheered. It reminded me of the spontaneous applause at Diana’s funeral, during her brother’s speech.

2. We stayed on the island of Lefkas at a lovely complex of 9 villas with shared pool, bar and kids club etc. The villas were named after 9 Greek goddesses or Muses. Someone years ago mis-spelled the name of the accommodation in translation, so it’s always been known as “Mousses”!

3.Mr. P had food poisoning on day 3.

4. R spent all night throwing up on day 4

5. We had lemons, limes, figs and olives all growing outside our door in the most beautiful gardens.

6. Day 8 – At last! Our first bit of “mummy n daddy quality time”. While R was in the kids club for the morning, we got all ready for an adventure round the island, got in the car and the battery was flat.

7. Shopping was fun. Greeks create whopping sized pain au chocolat which you can have “straight” or with raspberries, apple or sultanas. They are also fond of glace fruits and vegetables. Imagine tomatoes and carrots soaked in syrup? What they don’t go in for is any kind of fruit squash – couldn’t find it anywhere. I bought a pack of nappies for 12 Euros which is over £9!

8. Our villa was kept spotless except for the live mouse which I nearly trod on one morning in the kitchen. Perhaps the translater was trying to call the complex “mouses” not “mousses”?

9. The Ionian sea is a spectacular colour. What makes it so turquoise?

10. R made lots of friends with the villa kids and also the locals. It was lovely to see how effortlessly they communicated without needing to know the language. One group of 3 young girls we met sitting on top of a rock at the edge of the beach. They were playing with a dead baby octopus. Lots of animated talking, picking the tentacles off and eating them.

I’m sitting here getting wafts of something smelling really lovely. I did turn the air freshener on earlier but it’s not just that. Ah! The basket of elderflower heads sitting next to me on the table might have something to do with it – doh!

I think I might have got away with it. The flowers were out the week before we went on our fortnight hol. I was convinced there wouldn’t be any left when we got back but sadly didn’t have time to make any cordial before we left. Was amazed to see a few flowerheads still on the go when we got back but it’s taken me a few days to get the citric acid together and even then I forgot to buy the lemons – double doh! So I dragged R out before tea today on a “flower hunt” and managed to find just about the last dozen elderheads in the whole county I reckon. Boiled up the water and dissolved the sugar before tea and now R is settled, toys semi tidied away and the washing sorted, I can get to zesting those lemons. That is, if Mr. P hadn’t decided to be a model husband and do the washing up and in the process chuck my nicely cooling cordial base down the sink. Is someone somewhere trying to tell me this cordial was not meant to be? Of course that only makes me more determined to make the stuff!

No, not the next Indiana Jones epic but a sight for sore eyes in our back hedge. I was reading this blog a few days ago, amazed at the idea of elderflowers being picked for cordial – already! Then I remembered the author lives in Italy. They must be way further ahead than us. But what did I see tonight en route to the compost? These little beauties winking at me! Elderflowers were the first thing that I harvested from the hedgerow last year and therein started a new addiction. Elderberries followed, then sloes, bullaces, rosehips, blackberries. I was smitten. How quickly the season has come round again and I’m excited about planning the list of hedgerow treats for this year, a year older but a year wiser:

Elderflowers: – will pass on the champagne this year. Mine was flat as a pancake, my neighbours fizzy enough to power the village for a year. But the cordial – yum. Will make as much as poss and freeze for year round supply. I thought getting citric acid sounded a hassle last year so found a recipe without it in. Mistake. My neighbour made some with the citric and it definitely helped cut through the otherwise cloying sweetness. So citric acid it is this year, despite my neighbour saying the pharmacist gave her a look when she bought it, apparently it’s a good substance to cut recreational drugs with.

Elderberries: I made some “Elderberry Rob” last year – it’s a traditional spiced fruit syrup recipe for coughs or to ward off colds and flu, and to aid sleep. Elderberries are reputed to contain nine magic ingredients. Well it certainly worked for us, we took it daily until it ran out and when it was all gone, we were all ill for the rest of the winter. I’m making several vatfuls this year. Especially keen since my sister recommended a similar elderberry tonic from the healthfood shop that sells for £12 a bottle!

Just cover elderberries which are washed and stripped from the stalks with water, and simmer with a lid for half- an-hour. Strain and measure the liquid, pour back in the saucepan and for each pint or 570ml of liquid add:
225g or 8oz sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
12 cloves

Simmer covered for-half- an-hour, then pour into sterilised bottles and drink diluted with warm water (or swig straight from bottle if you’re like me or feel a tickly throat coming!). Apparently also nice warm over ice-cream.