Gruszka is Polish for pear! Oh come on Catherine, I hear you say, surely you could use grape or gooseberry, you’ve painted both. Nope, I’ve never cooked gooseberries, if you send me a recipe I’ll be glad to swap! As for grapes…remember my trouble with the letter U? I didn’t want to paint ugli fruit and can’t fly to Jamaica to get them anyway, so swap to Spanish ‘uva’ or Turkish ‘uzum’ for grapes and that problem is solved. It was a close call, Mum’s grapefruit marmalade nearly made the cut, but I think we’ll save a marmalade for later!

Pear and rocket salad with walnuts, shaved parmesan and balsamic and olive oil dressing is a standard favourite for many people, but although one child likes this, the other two don’t like rocket, walnuts or balsamic! So here is a child friendly twist on the recipe.

Pear salad

Ingredients

1 pear, cored and sliced

1 small head of dark mignonette lettuce, washed, pat dry, and tear into medium pieces

1/4 cup of roughly chopped dry roasted almonds

Torn basil to taste, be generous

Small wedge of room temperature Brie roughly diced

1 mandarin, reserve one half for juice and deseed and dice the other half

Method

Place torn lettuce and basil in a large salad bowl and toss, then layer all the other ingredients artistically and squeeze mandarin juice over salad and pear so it doesn’t brown.