1. try to recall if you have all the following in the house

150g golden syrup
100g margarine
225g jumbo oats or some boring muesli that needs PIMPIN’ (other types of oats will work too, but you’ll get a different texture)
c.175g various dried fruits, nuts and seeds. Whatever takes your fancy.
a deepish baking tray, or silicone cake/bread tin

2. Turn on your oven – about 170 degrees centigrade. Ask goggle for conversions.

3.  Put a medium sized saucepan on your scales and zero it.  Weigh your syrup and margarine/butter into it. Any other way is craziness.

Simmer it until it’s all melty and a bit bubbly. Turn off heat.

Stop! I have no golden syrup!  [ on err goto #eek1 ]

4.  weigh out your fruit/nuts/seeds. Chop em up a bit if they’re a bit big. Chuck them in the pan

5.  weigh out your oats.  either take a big handful out and whizz them in a blender till they’re like flour, or just put a stick blender in the bowl and whizz them a little bit so some of them go floury. This helps them stick together and get that more solid cakey texture.  Don’t do this if you want to make oaty cluster type thingies. You’ll ideally have caramelised the sugar mixture if that were the case though so never mind.

6. mix everything together. if you haven’t got a silicone cake tin or something like that, then line whatever you’re using with greaseproof paper.  Just use something that lets you put the mixture in to about 1.5-2cm deep. Or deeper. It doesn’t matter that much. If you do make it deeper, then turn the heat to maybe 150-160 and leave it in for a bit longer.

7. Put it in the oven for about 25 mins, until it goes golden brown.  Take it out, and resist poking/cutting/removing from tray until it is fully cooled. This is sometimes hard. Use the forsh.

8. Once cooled, tip it out of the tray and chop it into little squares.  The original recipe had it in 20 pieces with each piece being 126 kcal or something, and this one has more oats and fruit. Just so you know. Don’t blow 500 calories a day and blame me.

[ eek1:

Oh well, don't panic.  You can substitute honey or even sugar, you just need to make sure it's melted.  I sometimes use a mixture.

If you're using sugar, add a couple of teaspoons of water and simmer it for a while with the margarine until all the crystals are melted. It's all sugar, right?

sorted.

GOTO 4

]

Not much has happened in the wild foods section in leekworld recently, there was a brief go at rose jelly, but it was more of a strange syrup in the end – I have learned from the experience however, and will share that 1lb of wild rose petals is a completely ridiculous amount, and would take all flipping day to collect – IF you could find enough bushes!

Moving on.. an offer of access to a good big clump of (semi) wild blackthorns (plus apples and plums) has rekindled me creative juices.

Sloe gin is the first and most obvious choice, but I’m thinking a jam might be nice. I don’t want a british type jam though, all sweetness and ugh, I want a high fruit continental style jam that actually tastes nice on bread. That high fruit stuff in the tall jars you can get in supermarkets is so pappy and boring urrghh.

This recipe looks like it could be ok..

Luckily for me, Lloyds Pharmacy just up the road doesn’t care if you’re a junkie or a WI member (or both, or neither..), and I was able to obtain all the ingredients and equipment for tomorrows elderflower and rose products extravaganza…