A very warm welcome to  Lemon House Life a  new blog from Ruth Osborn, you might remember her  Our Lady in Italy.

Well she’s now set up her own blog Lemon House Life to share her thoughts on fresh life and fresh food in northern Tuscany. Ruth moved to Italy with her partner James last year and she’s been enjoying Italian life ever since.

Read her latest blog – where she shares her recipe for beef with spiced wine and roast roots.

Before moving to Italy my experience of gardening was limited to a few shrubs around a small lawn, and the odd grow bag of salad leaves.

Now we are the proud owners of around 50 olive trees and around half an acre of land crying out to be turned into the garden of our dreams.

The olive grove is established and relatively easy to care for. Every spring Paolo comes to prune the trees (this is a dark art that we novice olive farmers would not dare undertake for ourselves). In the autumn the olives are picked and we take them to the mill to be turned into oil.

However the garden is a different matter. Our house was built very recently on the site of an old rustic shed, and until a few weeks ago the surrounding land resembled a builder’s yard.

‘Have you got your tomatoes in yet?’ a neighbour asked in March. I admitted guiltily that I hadn’t – there was no way seedlings would survive amidst the rubble and concrete dust.

However it seemed that every other shop front had sprung huge shelving units, stacked with seedlings for every imaginable vegetable, strawberries and melons.

Everybody grows their own round here, and I didn’t want to be left out.

Our first purchase – a lemon tree – didn’t need to wait. Our hillside location means that it has to live in a pot, to come indoors in the very worst weather, so we were able to install it straight away on our patio.

The metre high tree came bearing five or six ripe lemons but the real test is whether it will produce more under our care. I treat it like the most delicate of children – watering only with rain water, spraying the leaves, moving it out of strong winds.

We faced an anxious wait, but two weeks ago flower buds began to appear. Success! We are over the most difficult stage and the flowers will almost definitely generate fruit.

But back to the business of taming the remaining land…I spent a whole day clearing stones from a few square metres, and in the process made my wrist so sore I couldn’t lift anything for a week. James has to work full time. The only way forward was to call in the builders…..

Robbie (so nicknamed because he wants to be Robbie Williams and has the tattoos to prove it) Abdul and Kevi descend on our house for a week. They lift with ease stones that I couldn’t move an inch, lay paths, another terrace, and shift earth.

Now it seems we have a beautiful orto (fruit and vegetable patch) ready for planting in front of our kitchen.

We rush to the nearest agricultural shop with a long shopping list. James has to curb my enthusiasm – ‘Don’t buy more than we can plant at one go,’ he warns.

How right he is to be cautious. Later as we are planting bean seeds and tomatoes, Francesco stops his Land Rover in front of the house; ‘Pomodori, bravo!’ he calls out.

Bella our dog bounces across to see him – and beheads two of the plants.

So it’s back to the drawing board – we cannot plant more until we have made the orto dog proof. We spend the next day dodging showers (yes it’s been raining here too), erecting a low fence.

Finally, we can have the fruit and veg patch of my dreams. We have been back to the shops. The melons, cucumbers and zucchini are all waiting to go in – as soon as the rain stops.

This weekend I finally, finally managed to do what I’d been putting off for weeks -I  threw out our old clothes. It wasn’t simply a case of chucking out stuff I hadn’t worn for ages, otherwise I’d have done it ages ago.  For some reason I’d convinced myself that I/we needed this stuff.

How did I do it? Me, a hoarder supreme, well since you’re asking…

1) I chose the right time

For me being that little bit knackered, such as after a 10k run (Race for Life) helps. It means I’m in a no nonsense mood and am less likely to feel sentimental. If you are feeling emotionally knackered that’s a different story. I wouldn’t recommend chucking out things just after a split/divorce/bereavement.

2) I gave myself a time limit

I told myself I had just one hour to sort out the pile at the end of our bed. It worked, I set the timer on my iPhone and set to work. An hour and three black biner liner full of old clothes and underwear later. Result.

3) I had a end result in sight

There’s a chance we may be moving, but that’s a way off. I realised that Cancer Research the NSPCC and our local council recycling clothing charity needed these things more than I did.

4) I gave myself a reward

Tough tasks deserve the prospect of a treat at the end. Mine was an eyebrow shape and dye, which I’ve booked with Benefit in Spitalfields (nr Liverpool St) but a glass of wine or a bar of Green & Blacks probably would have done too.

Next – tackling my tax return, will let you know how I get on…

A big welcome to our cookery and all things frugal blogger Simoney.  Simoney is a writer of all things foody and, under the guise of OriginalShimmeringDesigns, likes to make beautiful things on a budget, from dangly silver earrings to chocolate cherry cupcakes.

I am not a great fan of doing any unnecessary work in the kitchen. Most of us live extremely busy lives, balancing work, family and  social events so the idea of having to slave over a table making pastry or labouring to create the perfect icing is simply unappealing.

While I am all for doing things on a budget – and making pastry or icing from scratch is cheaper in the long-term – there has to be a limit to being a domestic goddess.  Not all of us have kitchens the size of a supermarket, despite what TV chefs would have you believe.

Not all of us are so wealthy that we can afford not to work but can live a life of baking luxury. There has to be a line drawn between doing it yourself and doing yourself in.

And this is where my fruit pizza comes in. It’s simply called Fruit Pizza. I believe I made this up out of my own head, having tried a recipe for making my own savoury pizza, and deciding that I could make a dessert along the same lines. I certainly have never seen this recipe anywhere else!

Fruit Pizza

This recipe will have your friends, family and even children oohing and aahing and getting all excited, despite the fact they are basically eating fruit – lots of it.

It looks amazing when it comes out of the oven, in all its sizzly glory and tastes divine. You can mix and match fruits to your heart’s delight – but a word to the wise, oranges, clementines and satsumas do not seem to sit well with the other fruit. Leave the strong citrus fruit alone and stick with berries and orchard fruit.

You will need:

1 large, flat pizza tray, circular or square, lightly oiled

1 sheet of Jus’roll puff pastry

2 large apples

1 cup of blueberries

1 cup of strawberries, sliced lengthways

1 cup of blackberries

1 cup of raspberries

½ cup of custard – pouring custard will do but you can make it yourself and keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Don’t allow it to be too thick-it has to be spreadable.

Two tablespoons of icing sugar to dust

Some cream – Elmlea low-fat pouring cream does the trick

What to do:

Roll the pastry out over the pre-oiled tray – whether square, round or rectangle, it doesn’t really matter. Score a distinct line about 1cm away from the edge of the pastry all round – this will help the edges to rise up in puffy goodness and go all brown.

Don’t make the base too thin – the fruit juices will penetrate the pastry base otherwise.

Take the cold custard and spread it over the base as if you were spooning tomato puree over a savoury pizza base. Sprinkle some nutmeg or Allspice if you like.

Start laying the fruit onto the custardy base. Have fun creating faces, patterns or just being liberal-handed. It doesn’t matter.

Cook it for 20 minutes on gas mark 6 or the electric equivalent. Personally, cooking with gas is just the best thing in the whole wide world, until the government announces that we’ve run out. I’ll cross that ecobridge when I come to it.

When the edges are all puffy and goldeny brown, take it out of the oven, dust it with the icing sugar and serve immediately at the table, using pizza cutters and a slice. If you leave it too long before you get to the table, the icing sugar will have dissolved. Serve with low-fat Elmlea double pouring cream (30% less fat than normal cream) or go the whole hog and serve with vanilla ice-cream.

How to be extra:

People at school used to say I was “being extra” if I drew in the margins of my essays. If you want to be extra, crush a meringue nest into pieces and put that over the top. These usually come in packs of eight and you can use the other seven for another fabulous dish like cherry meringues or Eton mess. Or just eat them by your own, when nobody but the cat can see. And he can’t tell a soul…..

How to save money

1) Berries freeze brilliantly if you are using them for baking or for smoothies. So I tend to buy bulk whenever there is an offer on for blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. So if you freeze these – and they keep for ages – you can save money and time when you make this in the future. Apples can also be cut up into nice slices and, if sprinkled with a little lemon juice to prevent oxidisation, can also be frozen. However, strawberries do not freeze well AND keep their shape afterwards, so best to buy these fresh.

2) Make your own custard – but not from scratch, using vanilla pods and all that. Who has the time? Insanity. But do always have a tub of custard powder and granulated white sugar in your cupboard. This will help you save lots of money as buying a carton of pouring custard is exceptionally costly – you use it once and it’s gone.

Our favourite things