Pomegranate, custard,

and a salad filled with love.

Let’s begin here, on a gloriously grey day in February where I’m sliding sideways in mud walking Mr Whiskey down by the river.

Everything is beautifully muted in colours by the quiet grey sky, that seems to make everything around me feel calm and gentle.

It’s the kind of low energy weather that can feel like a gift every now and then, and where I can light the fire at the cottage, cosy up, and not feel guilty about not making the most of the whether outside.

Tis also the season for bright red roses squashed together like sardines in a tin, in buckets outside flower shops and food stores, to temp anyone passing by to mark Valentine’s day with a dose of red, and perhaps a card.

It’s not my favourite day of the year, but that’s not to say I don’t like to celebrate love, I do, I’m just not drawn to soldier like roses, nor heart shaped boxes filled with chocolate.

But I will take any heartfelt note slipped in the night through the letterbox to say I love you, and a hand tied bouquet of particularly beautiful branches picked on a walk, but perhaps more so, I’ll take daily acts of heartfelt love, sprinkled like confetti, or pomegranate seeds, throughout the year.

I’ll take breakfast in bed on Valentine’s day, with a fresh off the press Financial Times the Weekend issue, with How to Spend it magazine inside. And if you top that up with the latest issue of House and Garden, coffee from the local coffee shop in a take away cup with the papers, and with freshly baked pain au chocolate wafting up from the kitchen downstairs, I’ll be happy as Larry.

Just don’t bring me red roses!;)

And before we go any further, let me just wish you a Happy Valentine's Day, from my little kitchen, to yours.

We woke before sunrise, and tiptoed downstairs to make no less than two rounds of my cinnamon knots ( you can get the recipe for them, here) this morning and still warm, we carefully wrapped them in a linen kitchen towel and put them in. basket for my daughter to bring into school for her friends an teachers.

Her way of saying I love you, and my way of saying I love you, standing barefoot side by side on the kitchen floor as the sun emerged on the horizon, with flour on our noses, and sticky fingers from the cinnamon knot filling, that we tasted again and again just to make sure it wasn’t too sweet. You know how its goes;)

As I was preparing what recipes to share with you for this special day, I wanted to give you a delicious dessert recipe, and a salad, both with pomegranates sprinkled in, as a reminder to us all to scatter love around us on a daily basis.

In this week’s letter, from my kitchen to yours, you’ll get two wonderfully simple, and yet ever so tasty recipes, and with them a few more bonus recipes of what to make with the left over bits and bobs, that on their own, and together with other pantry ingredients, will become many more dishes.

I love that about cooking, that the offcuts, byproducts and left overs can effortlessly go from one dish, combined with a few ingredients, to become something different entirely.

And contrary to what it’s often called, I never look at turning food waste into feasts, as frugality, but rather a continued way of celebrating ingredients and produce.

Besides, it will make your kitchen, and cooking, blossom when you do take the time to be creative about how to turn food waste into feasts.

This is a topic, filled with easy recipes to back it up, that I will continue to share more of in upcoming letters to you, and if you read on, there’s a few tips of what to do with the strawberry and raspberry from my jelly dessert discard further down too.

So, with no further ado, this is my, “I love you” jelly and custard, and it’s one dessert that, as you make it, creates a by-product that keeps on giving, which is how I think of real love, the kind that just keeps on giving.