This weekend I made hot chocolate each morning for myself and the girls. Saturday Edith made big tall towers of the old kitchen containers while I cleaned and filled the beautiful new Le Parfait jars to take pride of place in the pantry.

In the afternoon we went to fabulous Lakeland out by Brent Cross in the middle of shopping-by-the-motorway-land. I discovered that 3L Le Parfait jars are not advertised on their site and are £5.39 each as opposed to about £8 which was the cheapest I found online. We were on a mission for jam jars as this weekend was to be Sweet Orange Marmalade weekend. Oh yes. Back in the car with our new collection of small Le Parfait jars we headed home for ice cream.

Sunday was indeed Sweet Orange Marmalade making day, with much shredding, boiling and testing, the marmalade is quite heavenly and will be ready to photograph tomorrow. In the meantime I’m back and regularly updating my Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

Burleigh mug from the Habitat sale. Clipper Hot Chocolate from Planet Organic. Le Parfait preserving jars from Lakeland. Orla Kiely storage jars from Heals.

Sale tip of the week: Burleigh have 25-50% off everything you could possibly want to buy (apart from the cheese plate I wanted).

The other night after we got back home from the Zoe and Morgan jewellery preview for next Spring and Summer I discovered we had about four 2kg bags of Riverford apples in the fridge. And some pastry that needed using up. So at 10.30pm it was time to bake an apple pie.

I based the recipe on the one in Donna Hay’s Modern Classics 2. I used double the apples and about four times more lemon juice. I added a jar of Biona wild blueberries and because it was so late I couldn’t make almond meal so I pounded a couple of handfuls in a plastic bag with an old jam jar.

Recipe

16 apples, peeled, de-pipped and slided
1/3 cup water

Juice of 2 lemons
1 jar wild blueberries, drained (about 400g)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup sugar

1 cup almonds, ground or roughly pounded

A pack of puff pastry (home made is obviously preferable)
1 egg, beaten to brush on the top
Sugar for dusting

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C
Boil the water in a pot and add the apples. Allow to simmer, covered for 5 minutes.
Drain and allow to cool.
Line a big pie dish with pastry and cover the base with the almonds.
In a bowl mix the cooked apples with the lemon juice, the blueberries, the cinnamon and sugar.
Pack the pie filling into the pastry-lined pie dish.
Put the pastry lid on, trim to size and crimp.
Brush to lid with the beaten egg and dust with sugar.
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

I am posting over at Lovely Shops too – most recently about the beautiful new clothes we’ve been buying at SMALLable.com

I don’t know whether i’ve mentioned this – but my main ambition for our trip to the uk this time was to furnish myself with a nice set of le creuset pans. So I’ve been monitoring amazon – and I must admit I’ve been kicking myself for not just buying everything I wanted when the satin blue was half off – but i think I’ve found my final two pieces to complete the set.

Because my life is so exciting I spent all of last night looking for the best pan to buy before we go back because they’re six hundred dollars in New Zealand (also not a joke) and our red habitat one has well and truly died. And because I’m not averse to the odd bit of mixing and matching – and because we like yellow – we bought the olive pan which is quite nicely reduced. I found a nice Tefal Jamie Oliver one but that would be one step too far in the mixing and matching department.

And while I was buying the olive pan I discovered the 26cm olive baking dish which I already have and love is reduced from £20 to £7. And the ramekins are a bit of a bargain too. Anyway just in case anybody wants to know, that’s not bad.

As long as you like yellow that is.

edit: changed my mind today as I saw the olive pan in a shop and it’s way too shallow and small so I bought the non-stick lidded wok instead. And the baking dishes at that price have sold out.