slugs, stolen goods, and the art of the Spanish language.

I am now happily eating lemon blueberry cake and drinking a much much much needed cup of tea.

Today was a very busy Friday. Joel and I have been patiently waiting for our strawberry crop to fruit and ripen for us to pick and try one. We were waiting for today because our first big red strawberry was going to be ready. Daddy was out in the garden, we asked him to check on our fruit and lo and behold,  a slug had gotten there first. Right in the middle of our lovely juicy ripe strawberry a baby slug had happily munched away on half of it. I was annoyed, Joel's face was the picture of disappointment. We deemed it a naughty slug. I looked up what to do to keep slugs away--consensus seems to be eggshells or beer. Joel liked the word beer. Eggshells were what we had to hand. We then crushed all the eggshells from today (5 in total) and spread them around to defend our strawberries. Later I checked the shells were doing the job, only to find the most enormous Jabba the hut slug I have ever seen under one of my strawberry plants. So I did what you do. I flicked it 15 feet into the hedge with my trowel. Nothing messes with my berries.

We also did some much overdue DIY this week. Finishing off the trim in the conservatory (it's taken us since Sept 2010 to finish this job.) And hanging some shelves. We need to pick up some bits to tile a splashback in the downstairs loo and so we took a family field trip to Wickes. Whenever I walk in Wickes with the children, immediately, the annoucement about how parents must look after their children is played. I wonder if they have a button they push....  Anyway, we looked at tiles, decided we needed to do more research, went back to the car only to realise that Joel had tucked, under Luke's carseat, on the trolley, some particularly lovely stone border tiles. Daddy and Joel returned the stolen goods.

While making dinner- we created the kitchen mess. While it was fun--  mixing crushed cornflakes, chicken breasts, DF ranch dressing and toddlers gets messy. Then they wash their hands and dip the tea towel in the washing up bowl, lifting it up to say "It's dripping now mummy" Really? Shock.  Then we made cake. Joel's learned that he likes batter. So now instead of waiting to lick the beater or the bowl, he just tries to dig in. Managed to stop his hand, only to turn around to get blueberries out of the fridge, to find him then dipping the beater back into the batter and trying to load it into his mouth. Boy likes cake. Even not yet cooked.

On the plus side, we learned some Spanish while making all of this mess. Joel is pretty good at 'Hola' and 'Buenos Dias'. Quite liked 'bombero' as well.

Lemon Blueberry Cake

1/2 cup butter (dairy free spread)

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

zest and juice of 1 lemon

3 cups flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup milk  (can use soy or almond or oat and still turns out well)

1 pint blueberries (2 x 125g packs. They are 69p at Aldi this week. go go go)

Grease a 13x9 pan, or a tube/bundt pan. Preheat oven to 190C/375F.  Cream together the butter, sugar and eggs. Add the lemon juice and zest.  Then add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Dust the blueberries with flour and fold it. Pour it into the prepared pan and bake for 40-50 mins, until a tester in the center comes clean. I like to drizzle a glaze of icing sugar and lemon juice on top. Your call. Just as nice without.