A couple of years ago I decided that when you have a lemon glut you should make limoncello. But not for me the old cheat�??s way of simply throwing a bit of lemon skin into a bottle of vodka and letting it sit for two weeks. No, I trawled the interweb and found what I felt to be the most authentic limoncello recipe available.

Basically it started with ROCKET FUEL FROM A SECRET SOURCE and went from there, for months. Months of turning and scooping and filtering and attracting swarms of bees when it came time to add the syrup.

At its first tasting it drew comments like: �??Gawwwdd, it�??s like paint stripper.�?? Even diluted it had that hint-of-Meremere-dragstrip tang that grabbed you by the throat and squeezed so hard your eyes popped, your ears smoked and your nose bled intermittently for the next five days. The most fervent of my boozy friends would do that quick hand-over-glass gesture when I came around with the bottle to top them up. When everyone had left I found shot glasses, still full, hidden behind pot plants.

I can find only one person �?? an American friend who had other Americans staying for a summer holiday �?? who actually admitted finishing the entire bottle I had gifted them before their road trip around the South Island. Granted they were trapped in the middle of nowhere, and the moon was full. Granted also, my friend had told a small porky about limoncello being the traditional bevvie of the tangata whenua so that the tourists would have felt churlish to have refused a tipple. You could blame it on the scenery and solitude, but they finished their bottle, then I believe they took their clothes off and painted each other with volcanic mud. At other friends�?? houses, the less loyal of those I know, I see the gifted limoncello lurking in the back of their booze cupboards. They�??re too frightened for their pipes to even tip it down the sink.

I�??m sure all would have been well, or at least a bit better, had I left the recipe alone. But, like Colonel Sanders, I had to keep adding those herbs and spices. I do swear, though, that I DID NOT PUT HABANERO CHILLIES in it.

A couple of years on and the brew has matured. I still have several bottles of the golden elixir just begging to be used so I made a limoncello-and-blueberry trifle the other day that was honestly a triumph. I shall make it again, soon, and this time I�??ll take a great big photo and pop it up on Foghorn so you can drool into your keyboard and lick your monitor when your colleagues aren�??t watching.

That�??s a quarter of a litre gone and just a few litres left.

And, finally, we arrive at the point of the story: the dried-fruit-and-booze part.

I was talking to my sister, who�??s not shy around the bottle (a family trait). We were mulling over the idea of soaking something in the limoncello and she thought figs. I�??m only telling you this so that when tasting time comes and guests start spitting figs into the garden we�??ll all remember who�??s to blame. Last night I did a jar of Figs-in-Limoncello and they sit in the fridge like a Hunterian exhibit of dehydrated goats�?? gonads aged in formaldehyde, but I�??m sure they�??ll taste better (or bitter).

The figs may become a sensation but what I�??d really like is something special for Mr Scott. Some years ago he used to enjoy one of those special desserts that �??wasn�??t on the menu�?? at a local restaurant. I believe they called it something like Fainting Maidens (or not) and it featured apricots soaked in vodka. Before I go tossing dried fruit willy-nilly into jars of booze I have a few questions which I�??m hoping someone out there can answer.

1. Is it OK to use ordinary dried fruit which is full of sulphur dioxide when soaking it in booze?
2. Do you have to add sugar? I know you do when making a Rumtopf (with fresh fruit and booze), but does dried fruit need the added sugar? If so, how much?
3. Any tried and true (or completely mad) ideas for fruit/booze combinations?

I finished up with a Dr Seuss-like three-step process where I started with a scrap bowl on the kitchen bench which, when full, was emptied into the lidded scrap bucket at the back door which, when full, was emptied into the compost bin proper. Stupid really. Within a couple of days I proved that time flies when you�??re having fun and fruit flies love scrap buckets.

This weekend I went shopping with Mr Scott and fell instantly in love with this fabulous bench-top ceramic compost container from, of all places, Briscoes. And being in Briscoes meant we were in the midst of the Briscoes Perpetual Weekend Sale and were happy to accept the offer of a further 30% off the sticker price. NICE!

Part of the compost canister�??s beauty is its engaging design, but not even its smooth lines can compare with its gorgeous carbon filters. Filters that have banished the fruit flies forever. Filters that trap odours so my waste doesn�??t stink (which is something I�??ve been telling Mr Scott for years).

The brand is Ecology Rona and it�??s so jolly green I think you can even eat packaging.

In New Zealand you can find them at Briscoes and if you�??re from another part of the world you�??ll find that Amazon has a dizzying selection. Buy one for your best friend for Christmas.

Last year my home vege garden came under attack from every parasitic insect known. An entire TV series could have been based on the whitefly colony alone. The battles were legendary and we lost every time �?? except, that is, for the lettuces. They were fine. Nothing touched them. So this year I�??m doing my lettuces in the same manner  �?? in huge pots. This prevents �??wilt�?? caused by dog-who-must-pee-on-everything.

I was making a salad the other night and gave the lettuce leaves a good old whizz-around in some cold water, shook off the excess, wrapped them in a towel and took them outside for a final helicopter-spin to get rid of the last bit of moisture (I could buy a salad spinner but they�??re such enormous and ugly-looking things). Midway through making the salad I did notice a lot of �??matter�?? in the sink water but chose to ignore it. I simply stared more intently at the leaves, hoping anything still kicking would wither beneath my steely gaze.

The unvarnished truth is that one of my lettuce plants has aphids. I like to think that washing the leaves got rid of them but I guess we ate eggs and the odd aphid that was really good at holding its breath underwater. We haven�??t been harmed (apart from the antennae Mr Scott now has growing from his head and a propensity for clinging to the underside of leaves) so I expect we just had some additional protein. But now I wonder what does a vegetarian do in this situation?

Later that same evening we watched on television a chap all alone (except for the television crew filming him) in the jungle (Amazon basin, probably, I wasn�??t paying enough attention), just surviving. That�??s all he was doing. I think they were attempting to show you what to do in case your plane ever goes down in dense jungle and you want a food source beyond eating your fellow travellers à la the 1973 rugby-playing Andes plane crash survivors. (As the single engine of the plane I�??m in sputters and dies over Peru I�??ll rue the day I paid more attention to the Sudoku [difficulty - medium] than I did to the television.) There is a point here, though. What I do remember is the chap eating termites, really little ones, and they had more protein than a bodybuilder�??s breakfast shake or something like that. These things were little protein bombs and he said they were rather tasty, too. Unfortunately, later that night he got a terrible stomach upset which made for truly fascinating viewing. He blamed it on the water but I�??m not so sure.

Questions:

1.       Should we be concerned about eating aphids?

2.       If not, should we warn any vegetarian dinner guests that their salad could contain insect proteins?

3.      If we should stop eating aphids immediately, how should we treat the lettuce given that we strip leaves from it on a daily basis so really don�??t want to spray it with insecticide or detergent or dog pee?

This is the way I think of Secret Santa: before the event, the names of the participants are put into a �??hat�??. Each person draws out a name, keeping the identity secret and is responsible for buying a gift for that person. A gift value is usually set. On �??the day�?? the gifts are placed under the tree and are marked only with the recipient�??s name �?? the identity of the giver remains secret.

Does anyone have variations to this theme?

This means we have had to be sensible about presents. Either that or we will finish up in debtors prison. Each year we take a letter (working with the ones which comprise the family name) and each person buys one present starting with that letter. All the presents get loaded under the tree at the celebration venue and when we�??ve tortured the children for long enough with comments that weren�??t even funny the first time they were said (like: �??Oh, we�??ve decided not to hand out the presents this year. We thought we�??d give them all to the missions … ha, ha, ha, ha�??), we gather around the tree.

Things proceed quickly and loudly from this point. Out comes the video camera. A �??Santa�?? is nominated. We shout a lot because we�??re noisy and we order each other around. As gifts are dished out chronologically by age of recipient we oooh and we aaaah over the cleverness of collectively being able to come up with a fine array of unique goods all beginning with an obscure letter (yes, it�??s hell when your family name is Zqjzqj).

Unique that is, apart from the year when the letter was G and nearly everyone went home with a gnome, proving it�??s not only the great minds that think alike.

Appropriately for Christmas, this year we have a virgin venue. A family branch has gone all chicken-coop-and-gumboots and taken themselves off to live in the country. There�??ll be no dashing up to the corner dairy for the forgotten pint of cream this Christmas so, in the absence of a house cow, we�??ll have to be supremely well organised. Organisation hasn�??t really occurred since Mother was alive, and even she consistently managed to leave some vital part of the lunch menu in the oven warming drawer or at the back of the fridge. Usually it was a bizarre dish of ham and asparagus in a thick sauce. I�??m not even going to try to describe it because no written version of the recipe has ever been uncovered and that is a GOOD thing.

We�??re going for the letter Y this year. All Y gift ideas will be gratefully received.

Yoghurt-maker

Yoyo

20 great Yodelling hits CD

Yashmak

Yacht (just a toy one, probably)

Yoga mat

Yellow …

Steph writes: The time has come in the year for us all to have a wee clean-out before the silly season!  
 
Last year, friends and I held a garage sale and raised almost $2000 for the Women�??s Refuge. It was an amazing day and it wouldn’t have been anywhere near the success it was without your help. The donations of items we received was just overwhelming and humbling.
 
This year I have been a member of the Altrusa Club of Auckland. Through this club, I have been working with a group of amazing ladies to carry out different projects in our local communities. These projects all obviously cost money to carry out, so this year I�??m holding a garage sale to help raise funds in order to keep the projects going.
 
Two of Altrusa’s main projects are: Magic Mums and Dedicated Dads. Altrusa takes some Mums and some Dads (on separate weekends) away for the weekend and gives them a bit of a break from their special-needs children. It also give these wonderful people a chance to speak with other people in a similar situation to their own and helps them find other ways of coping and also other means to find funding and help.

Sooo, this year, the garage sale is on December 13 in Mt Eden (Auckland) and I would like to ask you to donate any second-hand clothing, toys, books or items you deem good enough to on-sell.
 
Please send this out to all your family, friends, co-workers, lady down the  hall, man you keep bumping into in the tea room and let�??s see if we can turn it into a MONSTA GARAGE SALE!
 
Thanks heaps and remember, I�??m happy to collect if need be but otherwise please dash a note for a Mt Eden, Auckland, drop-off address.

Rita Massey Ferguson came from Trade Me, sight unseen, no test drive, just a reasonably sized adoption fee. She was a birthday present for Mr Scott. I called her a mudguard from the start �?? all shiny on the outside and shitty underneath. She showed up on the back of a truck like an old tramp making one final effort with a push-up bra and a corset. Once you started to strip her down she quickly fell to bits, leaked on the floor then refused to get on with the job.

She ran hot, she ran cold but most often she only coughed and crawled. As a mistress she is a failure, as a tractor she is far more disappointing.

She is demanding of time and money. Rita parts have been carted around the country, stinking out the car with their fumes and emissions. All sorts of men have tinkered with her bits into the wee hours and now and again she has had the good grace to actually perform the duties for which she was purchased … tow the boat (Stacey) along to the boat ramp and deposit Stacey into the sea. It�??s quite simple, Rita, most tractors can do it.

Rita�??s most recent surgery involved her petrol tank, her bladder if you like, which has now had a complete dust and clean that should cure an irritating cystitis-leak. And Christmas really did come early for Rita when she got a couple of new brackets and a tricky switch arrangement which would stop her from feeling too tired to tow.

The old bint has now had more cosmetic surgery than the Bride of Wildenstein so if Rita starts complaining about the chrome flaking around her shiny parts, she�??ll be back on Trade Me faster than you can say �??two-botox-with-a-cosmetic-peel�??.

We are in Mt Eden and happy to put some aside for anyone who would like them.