I’ve been moving house for the past couple of months and my daughter has been doing her GCSEs so blogging has taken a bit of a back seat.  The move is almost complete now though and any day now I will have a shiny new kitchen and loads of space to get cooking again.  I’ve got one of those “slide and hide” door ovens so that I have less problem with getting food in and out of the oven (dodgy back not getting any better any time soon it seems).  Over all, I’m really excited about it.

But the real purpose for this post is my lack of hay fever this year.

I’m not really a bad sufferer.  It’s generally only fields of oil seed rape that does it to me.  And I live in Kent which means it’s everywhere – fields of gold but up until this year, that has always meant sore, watering, tired eyes and constant sneezing.  This year, however, nothing.  I can stand in the middle of a rape field whilst the dog chases through it and feel absolutely fine.  Others seem to have found this year worse than usual so it isn’t some modification to the crop that has brought this about.

I can only conclude that its because, over the past 18 months or so, I’ve increasingly used rapeseed oil in my cooking.  It’s better than olive oil for frying as it has such a high smoke point and the cold pressed expensive stuff is great in dressings – my mother can’t stand the taste of olive oil so I started using it in the main for her.  It’s cheaper than olive oil too, it’s local and just as good for you.  Maybe it’s pure coincidence but I can’t pretend that I’m not happy that my hay fever days appear to be at an end!

I’ve just been given a big bag of pistachio nuts so I’m about to try making pistachio ice cream and nut butter…..maybe I should have swirls of the nut butter in the ice cream……mmmmmm.  Watch this space!