Category Archives: Uncategorized

Washing Hair After Cataract Surgery: The safety swimming goggles hack

Posted in beauty, Hair care, hair treatment, Health & Wellness, lifestyle, Scent, Uncategorized, Wellbeing by
Aveda Botanical Repair and swimming goggles
Aveda botanical repair and swimming goggles

Recovering from cataract surgery required a brief pause in my usual haircare routine. While the procedure itself was quick, the post-operative care required some serious thought—especially when it came to everyday tasks like hair washing.

Having worn contact lenses for years, I was already hyper-aware that getting water into your eyes can introduce unwanted bacteria. Because it is absolutely vital to keep water, soap, and pressure completely away from the healing eye during the first week, the prospect of washing my hair felt incredibly daunting.

Today, I want to share my exact personal experience, the clever safety hacks I used to navigate this transition smoothly, and how I turned a medical restriction into a comforting, holistic self-care ritual.

Post-Op care:

Wooden comb through wet hair

My Step-by-Step Post-Op Hair Routine

If you are nervous about getting your face wet, you do not have to rush into a full wash immediately. Here is the exact, protective routine I used to stay fresh while keeping my healing eye completely dry:

Days 1–3: Refresh with Dry Shampoo

For the first few days after the operation, I didn’t wash my hair with water at all. Instead, I opted for a high-quality dry shampoo. This completely removed the risk of accidental splashes during those critical early days while keeping my scalp clean and comfortable.

Day 4 Onwards: The Swimming Goggles & “Backward Tilt” hair wash

When it was finally time for a proper wash, I came up with a plan using a pair of swimming goggles I had originally purchased for a beach holiday last year.

Swimming goggles create an excellent physical seal to protect your eyes from stray drops of water or running soap. For an extra layer of safety, I placed a couple of dry cotton wool pads inside the lens area over my treated eye before putting the goggles on.

Once secured, I stepped into the shower, turned completely around so the shower head faced my back, and aimed the water stream carefully while keeping my head tilted firmly backward. This ensured that the water splashed exclusively over my forehead and down my back, draining safely away from my face.

Haircare Tip: I repeated this exact process a month later when I had my second eye operated on, and it worked perfectly both times.

Elevating the Experience with Plant-Powered Care

Once safely in the shower, I wanted to use products that offered genuine therapeutic and botanical benefits. For a very long time, I have been a fan of Aveda’s Botanical Repair range. Built on ancient Ayurvedic philosophies, this collection focuses on holistic balance and uses plant-powered, bond-building technology to naturally strengthen hair without heavy, stripping chemicals.

The aroma alone transforms the bathroom into a spa. It fills the air with a calming, blend of lavender, rosemary, ylang-ylang, and marjoram.

Why I Trust This Range (Especially Post-Menopause)

This range has been my absolute go-to since navigating menopause, a time when I noticed my hair beginning to lose its original thickness, strength, and lustre.

Engineered around a plant-based, triple-layer repair technology, the formula works systematically to restore compromised hair:

  1. The Cortex: Micro-molecules derived from corn or sugarcane penetrate the inner layer of the hair shaft to build structural bonds from within.
  2. The Cuticle: A nourishing macro-green blend of sacha inchi, green tea seed, and avocado oils mimics the hair’s natural outer layer to smooth the cuticle and detangle strands beautifully without heavy silicones.
  3. The F-Layer: Coconut and corn derivatives replicate the hair’s outermost, water-resistant barrier, locking in a healthy shine and guarding against environmental damage.

I usually shampoo twice. Because the formula is highly concentrated, a very small amount goes an incredibly long way.

My can’t live without product is the Aveda Botanical Repair Leave-In Treatment. It brilliantly acts as a protective conditioner and a styling product all in one. Because it shields hair from heat damage while smoothing frizz perfectly, I find I don’t need to apply any additional styling creams or gels—keeping my haircare routine wonderfully simple.

Because you want to minimize any tangles, tugging, or pulling anywhere near your face right now, I use a wide-tooth wooden comb to gently detangle your hair, always working mindfully from the ends up to the roots.

From my mother’s garden to mine

Lavender harvest
Lavender harvested from the garden

Every time I open these bottles, the herbal aroma instantly reminds me of my childhood home. Growing up, my mother cultivated both rosemary and lavender in our family garden, harvesting them regularly to brew a traditional, homemade hair rinse. She used it on our hair constantly to give it an incredible, healthy shine, but she also knew the functional secrets of those plants: their powerful, natural antibacterial and protective properties.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), these two botanical powerhouses represent a beautiful Yin and Yang balance for total scalp health:

  • Rosemary (Mi Die Xiang 米迭香): A warming herb known to stimulate the movement of Qi (energy) and blood circulation. In TCM, hair health is a direct reflection of blood vitality. By stimulating the scalp, rosemary delivers essential nutrients directly to the hair follicles.
  • Lavender (Xun Yi Cao 薰衣草): A cooling, calming herb that clears heat and soothes cutaneous irritation, perfectly balancing the energetic warmth of the rosemary.

Today, I grow both rosemary and lavender in my own garden. At the end of every season, I lovingly harvest the lavender and tie them into fragrant bundles, placing them in vases all around my home. It acts as a completely natural air freshener that feels exceptionally fresh and deeply grounding all at once. In TCM, these ambient botanical scents soothe the Shen(the spirit and mind), making the entire home feel like a peaceful sanctuary during recovery.

A time for patient healing

Recovering from surgery is a gentle reminder that our bodies deserve time, patience, and protection. By pairing the practical safety of swimming goggles with the timeless, plant-powered wisdom passed down by my mother, a simple shower can transcend a medical chore and become a moment of deep healing.

If you are preparing for your own surgery, take it one slow, mindful step at a time. Put on your goggles, tilt your head back, and let nature lend you a helping hand!

Disclaimer: Always follow your specific ophthalmologist’s instructions regarding when you can safely wet your hair and face after surgery, as individual recovery timelines and protocols may vary.

How scent from my garden became an act of self-care

Posted in In the garden, lifestyle, Perfume, Scent, Uncategorized, Wellbeing by
Cut roses from garden by my workspace
Scented roses from the garden

I had a busy work week and last Friday, I found myself heading off to the A&E to have a sebaceous cyst looked at, after the nurse at my GP said they couldn’t help me further after a course of antibiotics the practice had prescribed.

When I finally returned home after the long wait to see one of the consultants, knowing that I had to go back on Saturday, because they couldn’t treat me that day, I turned to my happy place; the roses that I had planted about 3 years ago, now coming beautifully into bloom.

Cutting a few stems and placing them in a vase on my desk made me feel happy, a welcome distraction from hospitals and what that entailed. I cut some rosemary and placed this in a vase so it would sit on my windowsill behind my desk.

The science of the “Happy Place”

We often think of comforting fragrances as a luxury, but modern science proves they are a physiological intervention. There is a profound medical field called Psychoneuroimmunology—the study of how our emotional brain interacts directly with our nervous and immune systems.

When we experience sudden trauma or work related stress, our bodies flood with cortisol (the stress hormone). In clinical studies, high cortisol levels have been shown to delay physical wound healing by up to 50%*. It slows down cellular repair and constricts microcirculation.

Scent can be a shortcut straight to the limbic system—the brain’s ancient emotional control centre. 

So when you inhale an authentic, uplifting botanical fragrance, your brain instantly signals your nervous system to switch off the “fight-or-flight” response. By dropping your cortisol levels, a happy scent physically allows your body to redirect its resources toward cellular recovery and healing. 

My garden brings comfort to my mind, and it is also a way to help repair my body.

I have to admit that I had not tended to the roses and only purchased soil improver to ensure the roses would bloom over the coming months and some rose fertiliser, sprinkled around them and raked in.

From Garden to Bottle: Bringing the Antidote Indoors

They are now entering their most beautiful phase of growth, so each morning before doing anything else, I will take a pair of secateurs and give them a light pruning, taking away spent rose heads so that the plants continue to bloom well into autumn.

While I am fortunate to watch Gertrude Jekyll and The Poet’s Wife bloom right outside my window, you don’t need a mature cut-flower garden to harness this therapeutic power. The beauty industry has long looked to these exact heritage botanical profiles to create scents that do more than just make us smell good—they alter how we feel.

The roses were an investment – I guess looking back little did I know they are also an act of self-care.

If you are looking to bring this grounding, anti-stress ritual into your daily routine, you can explore it through fragrances such as:

  • Affordable budget friendly High-Street Everyday Mist: For a light, accessible burst of morning optimism, The Body Shop’s British Rose offers a clean, dewy, straight-from-the-flowerbed freshness that acts as a perfect midday pick-me-up at your desk.
  • Historic rose scent : To truly replicate the timeless, old-world rose experience, look to L’Occitane’s classic Rose Eau de Toilette. It beautifully captures the elegant, velvet depth of traditional rose species—the very same historic heritage varieties you can source and plant in your own space via David Austin Roses.
  • Luxurious and Aromatic: If you want the a sophisticated pairing of floral and herbal notes with white musk, Jo Malone London’s Rose & White Musk Absolu is the ultimate luxury. By weaving authentic rosewater with sharp, earthy rosemary, it has a crisp scent that helps with mental clarity.

A New Lens: Navigating Cataract Surgery, Menopause, and the Scent of Recovery

Posted in eye care, Health & Wellness, lifestyle, Perfume, Scent, Uncategorized, Wellbeing by
L'Occitane Eau de toliette. Now has new packaging
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Visit L’Occitane’s site for Vervine Eau de toilette with new packaging

Hello again,

It’s been a while since I last shared a scent story here. Life, as it often does, required a bit of a “pivot.” For the past few months, I’ve been navigating a journey that many women face but few talk about in the world of lifestyle and beauty: experiencing Menopause, High Myopia, and Cataract Surgery.

Clarity and Contrast: Navigating Menopause and Cataract Surgery

The last few years have been hectic, helping my daughters find their way through higher education, balancing that with the ever increasing pace of change at work, but always finding personal enjoyment through scent. But as my estrogen levels shifted, so did my sight. I learned that for those of us with high myopia, the “menopause ” can sometimes bring cataracts forward much earlier than expected.

The Reality of Mid-Life Vision Shifts

I found myself like many people, getting older also meant getting reading glasses or in my case a combination of multi-focal contact lenses and high strength multi-focal glasses. It was manageable, but for the last couple of years, I struggled with both near and far sight and couldn’t focus. It was on my last visit to the opticians where during the consultation, the optician told me that I had had the cataracts for years but they had been very small and were gradually getting worse. It was time to get a referral to the GP to get an appointment with a specialist.

Inevitably, surgery was the recommended path forward. If you’re thinking about it and have been delaying the idea of surgery. Speak to your optician, explore the options available and don’t wait for things to get worse. I can honestly say it’s the best decision I made to have cataract surgery.

I opted to use my work private health care insurance to have a better type of lens implants. In the UK, the NHS will provide basic monofocal lenses. So for a small premium, I elected to get the multifocal version, the type that would be very similar to how my contact lenses helped me see things at an intermediate and distance range.

I’ll cover off the process in a different post for another time.

Sensory wellbeing: My Recovery Essentials

During recovery, when I couldn’t wear my usual makeup or even splash my face with water, there was one sense that I leaned on: Scent. I found myself returning to one of my absolute favorites from L’Occitane. There is something about the Lemon Verbena—and especially the Verbena with Mint—that helped lift my spirit. During the short recovery after the cataract surgery, the sharp, zesty “frosted lemonade” scent was the clarity and it became the sensory anchor that helped lift my spirits.

What’s Next for The Scented Abode? I’m relaunching this space not just to talk about perfume, but to explore how we navigate the “mid-life shift” with grace and some helpful information that I’ve learnt. Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing:

  1. The Waterless Cleanse: How I redesigned my skincare routine when water on my face was off-limits.
  2. The “Strong Lip” Phase: How I felt “assembled” when I couldn’t wear eye makeup.
  3. Sensory Weight Loss: How I used citrus scents to help me lose 20kg naturally.

Recovery isn’t just about healing; it’s about rediscovering the world through a new lens. I’m so glad you’re here to see it (and through the senses of sight and through scent) with me.

If you’re new to this site, welcome. Please explore other content, such as the home made skincare such as the Rosewater toner recipe

Spring clean your skin with Grapefruit 

Posted in beauty, lifestyle, Skin Care, Skincare, Uncategorized, Wellbeing by

Sunshine and spring weather has finally emerged and is making me feel it’s time to give my skin a spring clean.

I love the scent of Grapefruit and on a recent trip to the high-street, I purchased this lovely tube of refreshing Grapefruit skin sorbet from The Body Shop. The scent is uplifting and energising. Since my budget did not stretch to getting any further skin treats, I decided to make my own refreshing bath soak and skin scrub in one.

This is the simplest way to get the scent of grapefruit to fill your bathroom and give skin a refreshing spring clean.

All you need is half a grapefruit. Just squeeze the juice into a bowl and mix in a large helping of rolled oats (I had porridge oats in my store cupboard), next add in a teaspoon of Green Tea leaves, since I’d received a gorgeous tin of White Peony Tea, I used this to ensure the antioxidant benefits found in Tea would make its way onto my skin.

To add moisture, I added half a teaspoon of Jojoba oil to the mix.

To boost the scent of the grapefruit, I added Bergamot essential oil. You can add any citrus-scented essential oil that you have to hand if you don’t have grapefruit.

Add the zest of the grapefruit skin by grating it with a fine grater.

By now this mix looks clumpy and can the smell of Grapefruit and the citrusy scent has already filled my kitchen with its wonderful aroma.

You can now use it as a skin scrub or use it as a bath soak.

So that the small bits of the porridge do not float around the bath, I filled some empty tea bags. You can order these empty tea bags online or use a tea infuser.

These tea bags with fresh ingredients will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

Just hang the tea bag under a hot running tap in the bath and the aroma of Grapefruit and all the lovely ingredients that have been used in this mix will infuse the bath water with its scent and goodness.

There’s just nothing like a good soak, except perhaps smoothing over the Grapefruit souffle body lotion to complete the experience.

If you like citrus scents read my latest post about how it helped me through myopia and menopause related Cataracts : Lemon Verbena

Nespresso machine for Coffee and Walnut Cake

Posted in At home, baking, Drink, Food, Home, lifestyle, Uncategorized by

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We bought a Nespresso machine, an offer which really was too good to miss and now we have two coffee machines that sit on opposite sides of the kitchen.

The Dolce Gusto machine makes great coffee, it also makes lots of other great drinks which my kids enjoy, particularly the iced Cappuccino and iced tea, drinks which if we were going to Starbucks would cost a small fortune.


The Nespresso machine however, makes coffee an experience and I wish we had gotten around to getting earlier. If you are thinking about getting one of these machines, this month there is an offer too good to be missed. Not only is the machine on offer but the Aerochino machine is free. Yes that’s right free as long as you purchase their coffee pods from the website.

We’ve been in coffee heaven, and what better way to enjoy a cup of rich intense coffee, but with Coffee and Walnut cake.

This is a simple recipe – just use the Muffin mixture from this recipe and use just walnuts instead of the blueberries and cinnamon, add an espresso shot of coffee to the mix and bake.

That’s it. I used these cute cardboard mini loaf cases which I spotted in M&S, which were a perfect size for individual portions to serve for a tea time treat.

The Marzipan that turned into Blueberry Muffins

Posted in At home, baking, Food, inspiration, Uncategorized by

 

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The month of May is almost over. In fact most of April and May has been filled with work, a decorating and a DIY project for my youngest, all of which has meant I’ve not written as regularly as I’d like for a while.

Its also meant a few ingredients that were meant for Easter were left as I didn’t get around to much in the way of baking. In previous years, this usually means I find them lurking in the back of the cupboard until one day, when I am looking for something else I come across it and it’s past its sell-by date and too late to do anything but throw it way. I then kick myself for the wasted food.

So, this year, when my youngest said she needed some photos to cakes to bring into school, so she could apply to join the baking club.

I decided not to repeat the mistakes of previous years. With the Marzipan that I bought, I looked for a simple cake recipe to turn it into something quick and simple.

There were loads of recipes which included ground almonds, which I didn’t have, I’d almost given up until I came across this one. A simple bake with cherries and poppy seeds.

Ok I didn’t have the tinned cherries, but I had some fresh blueberries that were destined for a fruit salad instead.

With sugar, eggs, self raising flour and some milk in the fridge, this would do the trick.Photo of ingredients such as Marzipan

Muffin Ingredients:

255g self raising flour
115g caster sugar or soft brown sugar. (I used a 50/50 mix of white and brown as I had this in my cupboard)
2tbsp poppy seeds
150g fresh blueberries or canned cherries without pips
115g golden marzipan, chilled in the fridge and grate coarsely
1 medium egg, beaten
50g butter or margarine, melted
175ml whole milk

To make:

Pre-heat oven to 190°C/375°F/Fan 170°C/Gas Mark 5.

Put some  muffin cases in a muffin or cupcake tin, to keep the shaped of the cakes.
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl, and stir in the sugar, poppy seeds, blueberries (washed) and the grated marzipan. I find that chilling the marzipan makes it a lot easier to grate.

You’ll need to either chop the marzipan or grate it so it can be distributed evenly in the cake mix. It will infused the cakes with the most lovely scent of almonds. Hmmm heaven.

Make a well in the centre.

Mix together the egg, melted butter with the milk. I used Soy Milk.

Pour into the well and mix to form a thick, rough batter. My youngest insisted at this point to put her hands into the batter to mix the batter.

We made a lot of mess by this time and she could tell that I wasn’t impressed with this technique as by this time she had lost interest and had gone to find something else to do.

Now that we had the batter, the mix was spooned into the muffin cases and put into the preheated oven for 22-25 mins, until risen and golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

This part of the cooling process is tricky in our house, firstly it’s hard to resist the tempting smell of the cakes as they cool, but they also summon our two cats, who are also keen on the taste of freshly baked cakes. This means we have to guard them until they are ready to serve.

We took photos of the muffins and printed them so my youngest could take them to school. They were eaten for tea that afternoon.

 

Sometimes it Snows in April

Posted in inspiration, Music, Uncategorized by

For the last few days, I’ve been listening to music composed and performed by Prince. He was a huge influence in music around the world. To me, his music punctuated significant moments, a rite of passage from my teen years to the present. He was always present, not necessarily always on my mind, but never far. I’d always have a least one of his albums on my Walkman and now my iPhone so I could listen to his music.

 

Up close, I heard his songs in my head with headphones in my ears and I imagined like everyone else that he would go on for ever, or at least I was well into my old age. He just seemed eternal, didn’t age like the rest of us.

Then last Wednesday 21st, as I arrived home, my husband told me the news. I’m still adjusting to the idea that there will never be anymore new work by Prince, never any shows that he’ll announce and get the press and public excited over. No more surprises.

He never stopped evolving, transforming and changing, his music went from commercial pop to something altogether more sophisticated, it reflected his audience, they grew up and their tastes changed too.

I’ve been looking at all the interviews he’s given, he mentions his faith, he talks about his fans and how they now bring their families to his shows.

All of this was new to me, he wasn’t just a distant musical genius, his interviews and his Princetagram and tweets show him to be humble, hard working and funny. I’ll never be able share future stories of seeing him in concert with my kids. I will only be able to tell them about him, show them the music he created and the only time that we saw him perform live at the O2 back in 2007.

He made a big impact on music and on me, a young impressionable teenager, who saw him for the first time at the Cinema, in Christoper Tracey’s Parade, a black & white film. I wasn’t allowed to see Purple rain, and I’m not sure that I would have understood it.

And when I went to see Christopher Tracy’s Parade, I saw it with my future husband, though I didn’t know this at the time.

The film was so different to anything at the Cinema, it had a style of it’s own. Prince, dressed in his power 80s costumes, glittering and shiny with big doll like eyes, more beautiful than the female lead, what I saw was someone who had created through their imagination a world that looked beautiful, sad and nostalgic. All the ingredients for an impressionable teenager to fall in love with.

By the time I was studying for a degree in music, I had saved up and bought two of his albums, Parade and Sign of the Times on vinyls at the time. My husband had other Prince albums, so we used to listen to these together, just the ordinary kind of things teenagers used to do.

The albums I owned were sandwiched amongst classical albums of Mozart and Beethoven, composers I was studying. They still are in my vinyl record collection that I haven’t been able to part with.

I listened to his music, alternating between the serious business of studying for music exams and well just listening to music that I loved.

My favourite song by Prince is in the title of this post. There’s a lovely version I found on YouTube which you can hear by clicking on this link: And Sometimes it Snows in April. It snowed a day or so after he passed away. As I watched the snow gently fall outside the windows of the glass building of our offices in Canary Wharf, I could hear the song in my mind, I wasn’t really in the mood for the meeting or work, just kept thinking about the sad news and how strange and quiet the snow was falling.

At 6.07pm (ET) 4th of May, Radio Stations in the US will be simutaneously broadcasting Nothing Compares 2 U. I don’t think the idea has reached the UK, so this post is my way of joining in from the UK.

 

 

 

To me Prince represented life, bigger, exaggerated, full of energy, the kind that was on an epic scale that was glorious and full of colour, a life lived in 4K, high definition, to the Max. I wonder whether that’s the reason for his signature colour Purple.

I don’t think he’s really gone, his physical presence perhaps. I remind myself that the greatest composers in previous centuries such as Beethoven or Mozart, they still live on when people perform their music. They created a new sound and music historians refer to their time and genre as Baroque (Handle & Bach) Classical (Mozart), Romantic (Beethoven), in the future, there’s going to be a term to define Prince and his style of music, because just saying he created a fusion between R&B, Jazz and Pop and crossed all musical definitions, well I don’t think that’s enough. I think we need a new way of defining what his genre of music is, because so many musicians have been influenced and inspired by his music and so many People have enjoyed experiencing it.

Prince started to write about transcendence and still being able to communicate in a metaphysical sense, in the album called Art of Offical Age. I like to think that he’s not really gone forever, it’s just temporary and somehow, he’s actually found a way to move beyond the physical world and into another plane of existence, perhaps this seems crazy, but then not so long ago, people thought the Earth was flat and we’ve since discovered through science, it’s actually round.

And even if this is just wishful thinking on my part, one thing is for sure, we’ll find him through his art when ever we listen to his music.

Farewell Prince,  I wish you heaven.

 

Because everything will be coming up roses – Rosewater Facial Wash

Posted in beauty, Uncategorized, Wellbeing by

Rosewater Facial Wash

I love the sent of roses.

Yesterday I finally got around to planting the two rose bushes purchased a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t got round to putting them into the garden as the previous weekends had been busy and the weather had been, well pretty unfriendly.

So when I looked out of the window in the morning, there was no more excuses. I dug the soil, as it had been wet, the ground was soft and much easier to dig. With some bonemeal to sprinkle into the earth around the rose bush, I patterned down the earth around the two rose bushes.

I can hardly wait for the first rose buds to appear. The rose bushes cost just the same as a bunch of ready cut roses from the Supermarket, but hopefully, they will yield a lot more blooms throughout early summer and Autumn. I chose fragrant varieties in deep pink and white.

Rosewater Facial Cleanser

Meantime, in the bathroom, I’d run out of face wash. I prefer to wash the day’s make-up off with soapy cleanser, somehow the foaminess feels so much more refreshing than just the Rosewater toner/cleanser that I use afterwards.

Since I have a bottle of Doctor Bonner’s Castille Soap (baby wash version) waiting to find a use in my cabinet, I’m using this for the first time to make a batch of facial cleanser. As it is supposed to be non-scented, it will make a good base for a natural facial wash, though it still has the scent of Castille soap.

I’ve combined this with Rosewater along with Jojoba Oil and the scent of rose along with Jasmine makes the facial wash a floral sensation.

Here’s the ingredients:

1/4 cup Doctor Bonner’s baby non-scented Castille Soap (you can use solid or liquid)

1/4 cup Rosewater

1 teaspoon Jojoba oil, 1/2 teaspoon Rosehip Oil*

4-8 drops of your chosen blend of essential oil (I’ve chosen to use a 10% dilution of Jasmine Absolute and Rose Geranium)

Making the facial wash could not be easier, just combine all the ingredients in a bottle shake vigorously to combine and put a cap on.

I use this at night to remove make-up and afterwards use the Rosewater and Witch Hazel Toner. Just wash face until all trace of make-up has gone. It is quite watery, though if you use a muslin, simply squirt a bit on a damp muslin and rinse until clear.

That’s it, and best of all it’s all natural and can be customised to suit your skin

*I have chose Jojoba Oil and Rosehip oil as these have great anti-aging properties. You can use Coconut or Sweet Almond or any other natural oil best suited to your skin instead. Experiment until you get the right consistency you prefer

Rosewater Facial Wash

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to do with a ripe juicy Pomegranate

Posted in At home, Drink, Food, Uncategorized by

image pomegranate seeds

Pomegranates are one of the fruits that I think of as very versatile. It wasn’t always so. I never really knew what to do with it other than throw it into a fruit salad. But of course you can add it as a lovely topping on Roast Lamb, or sprinkle some into a plain yoghurt with breakfast cereal. l like to sprinkle them over chocolate ice cream.

A few years ago, a friend invited me to an impromptu lunch at her house. We’d been to a meeting together and on our way home, she collected a few groceries and invited me to lunch. As she started to make the colourful salad, she took out the reddest pomegranate I’d ever seen, cut it open and tapped some of the seeds out over the bowl of salad. A drizzle of Olive oil and orange juice dressed the salad. It was delicious.

So when I saw these huge Pomegranates in the green grocers, ripe and gorgeous I bought one along with some large oranges.

If you are looking for something easy to make, this lovely refreshing orange and Pomegrante fruit juice takes just a few minutes to make.

Squeeze some fresh Oranges into a jug. I stuck a sieve over the top of the jug to keep the pips and pith from falling in. Two Oranges, some mango juice I had in the fridge made it into this drink. I added some fizzy mineral water and then swirled in about two tablespoons of Pomegrante seeds into the sparkling juice. It frothed to the top of the jug just in time to serve with some ice. Enjoy!

Home Made Apricot scones infused with Rose Pouchong tea

Posted in At home, baking, Food, Fruit, inspiration, lifestyle, Rosewater, Uncategorized by

 

Apricot Scone infused with Rose Pouchong tea

 

When we visited Fortnum and Masons, I noticed  lovely jar of Rose Pouchong infused Apricot conserve, which is the inspiration for these apricot and Rose scented Scone recipe.

Scones are so easy to make, and they are better freshly baked, eaten slightly warm with a big pot of tea, jam and whipped cream. I can’t think of anything better to cheer up a dull cold afternoon.

Here are the ingredients for home made scones:

50grams of dried apricots (diced into small pieces about the size of a raisin. Soak the dried apricots in a strongly brewed dark Rose Pouchong Tea overnight. Drain and remove all the excess liquid.

40grams of room temperature butter

225grams of self-raising flour

1.5 level tablespoons of caster sugar, a little more if you prefer the scones to be sweeter to taste.

A pinch of salt

110ml milk (this can be soy milk if you prefer)

A little extra flour for rolling and dusting the scones with.

To make the scones, preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

The mixture should be made as light as possible, sieve the flour into a bowl. Cut the butter into the flour and rub into the flour as if making pastry. Aim for a light fine crumbly mixture. It’s very important to get the butter combined in well with the flour, next add the sugar and salt and mix well.

Slowly add the milk and then add in the pieces of apricots. By pre soaking the dried apricots overnight in the Rose scented tea, they have taken on the wonderfully aromatic floral qualities of the tea. This is enough to add just the subtlest hint of Rose to the scones.

If you want the scones more fragrant, add a couple of drops of Rosewater. Continue to add the milk and then combine into a soft dough.

Roll the dough out on a well floured pastry board. As my work tops are made of granite, I dusted this with plenty of flour and rolled them out with a well dusted rolling-pin. The dough should be rolled out to the thickness of about 2cm or thicker if you want high-rise scones. I’ve rolled these out to about 2cm and then used a large round cutter to cut out 8 scones.

Lay them out on a well buttered baking tray.

I then sprinkled some granulated sugar and dusted the scones with some flour.

Next, pop the baking tray(s)  into the preheated oven (220 degrees Celsius) for 15-20 minutes until the scones look warm and golden in colour.

Cool them on a baking rack.

Best served freshly baked and still warm from the oven with a pot of tea, with Jam (apricot or marmalade is delicious with these scones) and  cream, clotted if you want to be extra indulgent.