A Hint of Summer

So we have had a fantastically lovely bank holiday, sunshine and warmth, delicious!

I actually went for an actual run this morning in the sunshine and enjoyed it!  It's a shame exercise is so much more enjoyable and easy in the sunshine, imagine how fit we'd be if it was sunny more often!

We ticked all the Summer boxes this weekend, first BBQ, first Pimms and first tan lines.

I whipped up a skirt (fab pattern - super quick and easy) from a cute piece of fabric I found in a curtain shop remnant box ages ago.

I suddenly fancied a summery pencil skirt the other day and this fabric caught my eye in the shelf as just the sort of jolly Springy Summery pattern I was looking for.

It is a fairly thick cotton or a cotton/linen blend, lovely weight, not too stiff and with a satisfying slub running through it.

So not only is it quick to make, pretty, comfortable and made to measure, the whole thing cost me all of about £2.50.

Lovely skirt, but pretty certain modelling is not my calling....

Annoyingly, I have now realised I have no tops in the right colour to wear with it, so I am planning a little silk job with some leftover fabric from a ball gown I made last year.  Watch this space, I will show you the product of my labours!

I am feeling suddenly very inspired to sew, particularly as I have a wedding and a ball coming up and need (yes, need) new dresses for both.  I also went through my summer dresses the other day and noticed several  in a rather sad state, so I have put them in the scrapbag and made plans to make one or two simple cotton dresses ASAP.  I have a horrible feeling I saw the weather forecast for this week saying rain rain and more rain, but at least that gives me a bit of time to sew before I actually need summer clothing!

The rain is also useful in another sense (notice my positive thinking and generosity to the weather here) as my fruit trees and roses could do with a good soaking.

I now have 2 rows of radishes looking very healthy, and my sweet peas and mange touts have sprouted too.

I planted some lettuces last week but have yet to see anything from them; hopefully they'll make an appearance fairly soon!  The strawberries (both cultivated and wild) and covered in flowers and I did notice teeny tiny gooseberries growing too.

I can't wait to eat fresh fruit picked from my own garden, it always tastes a million times better than anything else...even if you do only get 3 strawberries wrestled from the slugs, 2 raspberries and a handful of blackcurrants.  I am running a zero tolerance policy on nature stealing my produce this year, so netting is going up and slug pellets generously sprinkled.

On Bendy Vegetables and Black Bananas

So sometimes life gets in the way of organised cooking/eating and you end up with rather sad specimens hiding out at the back of the fridge.  I hate throwing food away so have to rescue these poor abandoned items and give them a new lease of life as something completely delicious.

Bendy Vegetable Soup is a favourite and here I have altered it to use up the woody ends of asparagus.  It seems such a shame to have to throw away something so delicious and they make such a fab soup!

Woody Asparagus Soup

(Quantities don't matter)

Onion

Potato, celeriac or parsnip

Celery (optional, but something that does tend to end up bendy fairly regularly)

Asparagus ends

Garlic

Vegetable stock cube

(all very sad - woody asparagus, bendy celery, slightly bendy celeriac, and the onion was starting to go a bit mouldy...)

Slice the onion and gently fry in oil until soft.  Add the celery if you are using it and garlic and fry for a few more minutes.

Add the potato/parsnip/celeriac and asparagus chopped into pieces.

Fry for a couple of minutes, add a splosh of sherry/marsala if you have any knocking about, some salt and pepper, the stock cube (1 cube per pint water) and cover the whole lot in water.  Cover, bring to the boil and simmer until the vegetables are soft, top up the water if necessary.  Blend until smooth, then pass through a sieve to collect any last stringy asparagus bits.

Serve hot with a swirl of cream and hot toast or crusty bread.

For generic Bendy Vegetable Soup, follow the same recipe but swap the vegetables and asparagus for whatever poor vegetables you have in the back of the fridge.

Next up - for those occasions when the bananas get abandoned and sad but you have no time/energy/need for banana bread.

Fried Black Bananas

Sad bananas (although this also works very well with normal bananas)

Butter

Maple syrup/orange juice/honey

Melt some butter in a frying pan, then add the bananas, cut in half length-ways and width-ways.

Fry gently until they start to turn golden, then turn carefully (a flat knife works well) and cook the same on the other side.

When cooked, remove to a plate/dishes and add a large splosh of maple syrup, orange juice or honey, stirring until all the sticky bits come away.  Pour over the bananas and serve with cream, yogurt or ice-cream.  You can also sprinkle with chopped toasted pecans/walnuts/grated chocolate.

Not very beautiful, but absolutely delish!  My bananas were rather the sadder side of sad, so ended up rather squashy, but fresher bananas will hold together better.

Bluebells!

There are some woods not far from our house where I go several times a week to walk someone's dog.

It is a wonderful excuse to go ambling about and I love seeing the trees and plants change, how the light changes and how differently the woods smell through the seasons.  The bluebells are currently in their element and cover the ground in great swathes, looking like bright blue mist.

They look fantastic against the sharp green of brand new leaves as well as the dark browns and greys of bare branches and cut coppice.

Now that the Spring is here and the light is better, all the colours seem more vivid and everything is practically humming with life.

Teeny tiny oak leaves.

Bracken unfurling.

Fiddled about with the photo to get the colours darker, I love the bright blue Bluebells hidden amongst the branches.

Here is an update on my radishes!  Extremely exciting.

I took that photo a couple of days ago, and then some ridiculous creature dug a few up one night, so preventative measures have been put in place. (I replanted the dug-up ones, they have a 50/50 chance after all.)

I also planted a second row of seeds and I hope I will be able to keep planting a row every week or so throughout the summer to get a rolling supply of radishes.

  Asparagus is also in season and absolutely delish, we had some steamed for lunch with bacon, poached egg and a mustardy-lemony mayonnaise.

Sorry this is such a bitty post, I have been super busy with Spring cleaning,

(including sorting out my extensive zip collection)

looking after my neighbour who is off work

 and doing about a million other things, sadly none of them exciting enough to bother telling anyone about.  I have a few projects lined up for this week however, watch this space for inspiration!

Sausage-Stuffed Mushrooms

It is freezing, it is pouring with rain, it is windy, miserable and cold and rubbish.

I stubbornly wore my new shorts all day (admittedly with a large woolly jumper, socks and slippers) and ate healthy healthy (freezing) salad for lunch, but by supper time my will was worn down, I put trousers on, more socks and cooked hot comforting food.

Sausages will solve any problem.

Here is a seriously tasty dish to rustle up in fairly short time.  Very adaptable and good enough for a dinner party as well as a hearty relaxed supper, a light lunch or a tasty breakfast.

Quantities are far from exact, it entirely depends on the occasion and what you fancy!

You will need:

Large flat mushrooms

Plain or flavoured sausage meat/de-skinned sausages (free range or organic is best, or better still get them from your local butcher)

Splash of ale/wine/sherry/port/ginger wine

Freshly ground black pepper

Mashed/finely sliced garlic

Place the sausage meat in a bowl with the alcohol, garlic, pepper and mix well with any of the following (optional) extras:

• Chopped apple with thyme/sage, sherry/ale
• Sweet chilli sauce, finely chopped sweet pepper, red wine
• Cooked chestnuts, apple, thyme, sherry
• Mustard, finely sliced fried bacon, ale
• Apple, ginger wine, mustard
• Caramelised onion, port
• Any of the above in any combination!

Wipe any earth from the mushrooms and pull out the stalks, stuff with the sausage (making slightly rounded but no thicker than 1 inch) and place on a greased tray.

Any leftover meat can go on the tray around the mushrooms, either to be served alongside, or to stuff in a roll with ketchup and lettuce for lunch the next day.  Bake for 30 mins at 190C/gas mark 5, checking that the sausage is cooked all the way through and not pink in the centre before serving.

Serve with:

Entirely dependant on what you want from it you could do:

• Steamed vegetables
• Buttery mashed potato/parsnip/celeriac/carrot/swede
• Roast vegetables
• Roasted/fried tomatoes
• Hefty toast (no pre-sliced, bagged bread in sight, you need a good loaf, a sharp knife, and slices at least 2cm thick)
• Crusty bread/rolls

The Twist:

• Add breadcrumbs to the sausage meat and sprinkle a few on top for a crusty topping
• Top with a shortcrust or puff pastry lid (cut the pastry quite big so that is droops down the sides) - great for a dinner party
• Swap the mushrooms for puff pastry and make amazing sausage rolls

Bank Holiday

Oh yum, what a perfectly delicious weekend!

Edward was away last week on a course so it was even nicer than usual to hang out with him this weekend!  We went to the cinema on Friday to see Iron Man 3 which I enjoyed a lot.  Saturday morning I was teaching and got home just in time for the sun to make a rather shaky appearance.

We hot-footed it to Rickmansworth for a quiet amble along the canal followed by cake and coffee and reading books in a cafe.





Everywhere is suddenly covered in all sorts of tiny wild flowers.  I love the wonky imperfections, the colours, the way they are hidden like tiny jewels amongst the grasses.  Sadly I think I am still about six years old in my head, they make me think of fairies and I like to imagine the different outfits teeny tiny winged creatures might make with them.  They heark back to childhood and sweet posies of tiny flowers carefully gathered to bring home as treasures from a walk.  Here are just a few!


Dead Nettle (looks like Nettles but is much prettier and doesn't sting)


Ground Ivy (doesn't look anything like Ivy, how confusing)


Forget-Me-Not

Home again home again for a lovely evening of slobbing about; takeaway, films, pyjamas all included: fab.

We went to look at St Albans on Sunday which was lovely,





the sun came out, we had a picnic by the Cathedral (which was absolutely beautiful inside and completely ancient and full of history),



a wander round the town



(who needs ASBOs?)

and delicious cake to round it off (hmm, only just noticed quite how heavily cake seems to have featured in our weekend...).

Today was completely glorious, sunny and warm and perfect for pottering about.  We had breakfast outside, then washed the car and tidied the garden.  The chicks had their very first outing in the garden and completely loved it (lots of dust baths and lying about in the sun).



I weeded the fruit bed and cut the edge with the cutty thing which makes it look very smart.



I also planted some seeds but they are very dull to look at at the moment, so I will show you when they grow (notice 'when' and not 'if'...).  Now is the perfect time to plant things, any space will do, be it an ice cream tub on the window-sill, a window box, a grow bag or an allotment - get things growing!

More fiddling about and a spot of baking before dropping Edward off at the station.

(Experimental Rhubarb Meringue Pie...



which needs a bit of tweaking!  Completely delicious and frighteningly disappeary-into-our-mouths-very-quickly-y, but also quite dribbley, oops.)

I now have that lovely hot skin feeling having spent almost the whole day outside, and even some very faint tan lines, hurrah!

I also have the fabbest husband ever - when I got home there was a surprise waiting for me!  A present!