Lavender Truffles: Tasty treats that smell like your nanna

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The Lavender bushes are doing extremely well and are flowering profusely. I have been drying out the flowers and using it in soap; making Lavender essential oil; even those little sachets that go into one's drawers to make one's drawers smell nice. Now I have turned to using them in food.

I found a whole lot of recipes online that use Lavender, including Lavender and Limoncello cookies. Being excessively fond of Limoncello; in fact all things booze, I am looking forward to trying that one.

I started out with a chocolate truffle recipe. It tastes excellent, if you can get past the old-lady smell that Lavender often evokes. I had some problems with the melted chocolate that I had to dip the Lavender and cream part into. For some reason it just firmed up too quickly so instead of smooth Lindor looking balls, I created dumpy blobs of frumpy chocolate. Not nice looking enough to sell in a shop but certainly tasty enough to stick in my gob.

Chocolate Lavender Truffles

Ingredients:

12 fresh Lavender flower heads
10 ounces of high-quality bittersweet and semisweet chocolates.
1/3 to 1/2 cup of whipping cream. (more makes the center softer)
2 tablespoons butter.
waxed paper

Procedure:

Break about 12 flower heads off of your Lavender bush. They should be at least partially in bloom. Add to the whipping cream in a microwave-safe glass bowl. Heat up the whipping cream/flower heads in a microwave carefully (10 -20 seconds at a time) until just beginning to show a little steam (or hot to the touch). Remove from the microwave, stir and crush the flower heads a little, and then let sit for a few minutes. Repeat the heating and stirring procedure two more times. If you taste the cream, you'll be able to taste the lavender in it by the time you're done.


Heat only 5 ounces of the chocolate carefully in the microwave for a minute, stir, and heat again in 20 - 30 second increments and stir until melted. Pour the whipping cream/lavender mixture through a wire strainer (to catch the flowers) into the melted chocolate.Chill for an hour or so, until somewhat firm but not hard.

Melt the remaining chocolate with the butter for a minute, stir, and heat again in 20 - 30 second increments and stir until melted and blended. Make balls of the lavender-flavored chocolate and dip them into the melted chocolate to coat them, and then place them on a cookie sheet covered with waxed paper. Chill for at least two hours.

I have no idea where I pilfered that recipe from so sorry, no namecheck. I cut and paste the recipe and could not be bothered converting the measurements into metric, I'm too busy scoffing truffles to to do that. :)
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Had a little accident; nothing too serious.

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Today I had intended to regale my readers with more tales from my boring life. A little bit of banter about living in the country, perhaps throw in a recipe and some quaint stories about my bucolic country existence to round it off.

I have some pictures of the strawberries we grew organically and the plump and juicy cherries weighing down the trees.

Even a picture of my latest batch of soap I made from scratch with a few creative touches like a sprinkling of dried lavender on the top.

That is all quite mundane and uninteresting compared to my day's very surprising adventure. Some of you may know I did myself a mischief at my workplace and have acquired a very nasty and painful back problem.

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The dogs needed walking today but I am in so much pain; I literally cannot get off the bed unassisted right now--imagine the shame of having to wake the Colonel up everytime I need to go for a slash during the night--so I rode my ATV and let the dogs run along beside me. Why should my pampered pooches miss out on their daily perambulations because their Mummy is a pain-riddled old lady?

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I ventured up an old logging road; long since fallen into disrepair, thinking it was a quite an adventure. The bumps were murder on my back but that was nothing compared to what was to come.

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I got to the end of the road and attempted a 3-point U-turn when the machine went down over the side of a steep decline. A large pile of wood debris was piled up and I rolled right over it; still on the machine and hanging on for my life. Lucky I didn't get an eye poked out by a branch as they were sticking out all over the place.

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I tenaciously clung on to the quadrunner as it rolled over twice. I finally came off and it landed on me, then slid down behind me, resting against some trees. I was jammed in between the woodpile and the ATV. My leg was under the machine but luckily I was able to get it out. I had NO MOBILE phone signal down there so I couldn't even call for help.

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I was cut to shreds, bloodied, bruised and with more scratches on me than a Smith Street transexual hooker after a vicious bar-room brawl. Not a pretty sight.

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Fortunately no bones were broken, no limbs lost, and I was able to crawl my way back up the hill and walk far enough to get back into cell phone range. I called the Colonel and like a knight in shining armour, he came to my rescue and managed to winch the ATV that was on it's side and wedged between trees and the wood pile out, and ride it home. My hero.

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Two days ago, I wrote off our brand new ride-on mower. Had I destroyed the ATV I think the Colonel may have killed me and buried me out on this deserted road.

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I think an Angel was looking over me today.

Country Crafts

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The country-fication of Countess Chichi continues. Living out here in the country is leading me astray in all kinds of weird ways. My city ways are constantly being challenged. I think nothing of slowing down the car when I drive to avoid the bears, deer, moose and so on as they run across the road in front of me. It's a long way from having to slow down to avoid drug-addled drunks stumbling across the road as anyone who has ever driven along certain Melbourne streets has had to do on a regular basis.
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Now I have developed an interest in making my own soap. Store bought stuff is full of all kinds of chemicals, in fact many of those bars are mostly liquid detergent. By making my own I get to control what goes in, while being creative and perhaps a bit artistic at the same time.

http://www.handmadesoapwholesale.com/images/5-soaps_hzb0.jpg

I had to accumulate a whole lot of ingredients and utencils before attempting my first batch. It is a little daunting, especially because lye, (Sodium Hydroxide) is used. I am way too ADHD to handle something that dangerous, without doing myself a mischief.

http://www.festivals-and-shows.com

I wore goofy googles and gloves and tried my best not to be careless and cause some kind of catastrophic harm. Fortunately all went well. Lye used to be available on grocery store shelves, nowadays it is quite difficult to get. In fact, many stores don't stock it. We found a country Co-op store that does, then had to undergo the Spanish Inquisition as to the reason for the purchase before we were allowed to buy it.
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Apparently the store refuses to sell it to many people. Why you ask? It seems that lye is used in the producation of crystal-meth. Yet another product, useful in so many ways, is now difficult to get thanks to those druggies. I'm so sick of them ruining things for the rest of us.
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I used Shea butter, coconut oil and olive oil for my soap. I added some violet colouring and used an English violet fragrance. I eventually will make some unscented soaps but to start with I wanted something pretty and lovely smelling.

I used a milk-carton for a mould as I didn't want to invest in a fancier mould until I had made a batch. I get sick of things so easily and if they don't turn out the first time I normally just move on. No point investing a pile of cash until I was sure I would continue on with the activity.

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The soap sliced easily to make chunky bars. They are going to be left to dry for a few weeks but I had to try one. It lathered beautifully and left a delicate violet fragrance on my skin. I think I will be doing this again. Maybe I could turn it into a business and become a soap-mogul. Not a bad job, I would always be clean and sweet smelling but possibly a little scarred from the lye.
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I plan on experimenting with different recipes until I can eventually make fancy artisian stuff like goat milk, cow milk and buttermilk soap.

Looks like everyone I know will be getting gifts of soap from me from now on. I usually send jewelry gifts to Ms Patrice, so it may be a bit disappointing to get a bar of soap instead of diamonds. Sorry Ms P!
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July 4th, 2010

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Yesterday was Independance Day here in the States. We went over to Hope to enjoy the fireworks on the lake and have dinner at the Floating Restaurant.



It was all going so well. Good food, beautiful view and all that good stuff. Quite suddenly the sky darkened and it started to rain. How nice, considering we were sitting at an outdoor table and the indoors part of the restaurant was already quite full.

Many of the other patrons scurried indoors like rats fleeing from the rain and huddled in the overcrowded room like storm refo's. We were already wet and cold so getting a little wetter was not going to matter really.

We got pretty wet before one of the staff came and put a sun-shade umbrella over us. I may have had dripping wet cutlery but at least my tucker didn't drown. I did however manage to look like a drowned rat, the mascara running down my face really completed the look.

A barge on the lake put on a 40-minute fireworks show. The really fun part was the massive bolts of lightning mingling with the display. I sat there hoping I would not die from a lightning strike as we sat at our metal table, on our metal chairs, floating on the lake; at least not until I had finished my dinner and desert please!

As I sat there watching the colours bursting in the sky I realised that this place is now home.

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Independance Day Cake.

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