Summer Gardening

Despite the slightly late and rather damp arrival of proper sunshine-y summer, we have managed to spend a fair amount of time fiddling about in the garden over the past few weeks.  The recent spurt of sunshine followed by rain has made the vegetable patch do very exciting (and slightly mad overgrown) things.

We have so far been enjoying fresh lettuce, a stuttering supply of radishes and some very teeny broad beans.

The very first harvest was turned into a miniature salad (served on a saucer and eaten with a cake fork for extra miniature-ness).

Things are getting a little more serious now however and we have had several courgettes and more substantial bean offerings, which yesterday I sauteed in butter with an onion, some fresh thyme, a splash of milk and some manchego cheese and stirred into pasta.  Just what two tired garden-potter-ers needed to replenish our energies.

We have also managed to wrestle a very few strawberries from the all consuming, slimy grasp of the slugs, and a fairly reasonable harvest of gooseberries which is impressive considering that the gooseberry bush lives in a tub and rarely gets watered.

Happily, gardening seems to involve quite a lot of replenishment of energies...

...or maybe that's just in our garden?!

(Homemade madeleines and coffee for a mid-morning boost)

The sweet peas are finally finally doing beautiful and heavenly-smelling things, I have a posy of them with some roses to keep me happy while I wash up.  It almost makes washing up enjoyable...almost.

The rhubarb is going great guns, is huge, and absolutely delicious.

Ditto to the herbs which have over-run the rather stingy space I allowed them.

We are now awaiting various things that are just hinting at being ready; the tomatoes have tons of flowers, there is a delicate purple tinge just arriving on the blackcurrants and there is a very exciting collection of little grey green raspberries clustering bravely atop the canes.

Now it's just a case of waiting and keeping a constant vigilance against any wildlife that tries to get to it all first!

Quick Kedgeree

Seeing as were camping by the sea we decided to use some local fish for supper.  This very simple kedgeree is very easy to make, takes little time and few ingredients, making it perfect for camping.  It is also fab at home as a quick supper or a hearty breakfast.

(To serve 2)
2 tbsp butter
1 small onion
Half a bay leaf
Pinch cayenne pepper
Small sliver of lemon peel
100ml milk (approx)
1 packet quick cook/microwave rice
1 or 2 hard boiled eggs
Smoked haddock (as much or as little as you want!)


Melt a large knob of butter or a glug of oil in a pan, add finely sliced onion and fry gently until golden.

Add the rice and use double the amount of milk instead of however much water it says on the packet.  As we were camping and I had nothing to measure with I just guessed, it still worked, so don't be too worried about quantities!  If you have access to them, chuck in the bay, lemon and cayenne pepper.  Cook over a gentle heat until the rice is almost cooked but still has a slight bite to it.

Add the fish broken into pieces.  We used an oak smoked haddock bought from a fab little fishmongers just off the sea front in Lyme Regis.  It smelt amazing!

If you have the resources/time you can also add a couple of chopped hard boiled eggs at this point.

Heat until the fish turns opaque, add a large spoonful of butter and a small pinch of salt and serve immediately.

If possible enjoy outside with a sunset and a glass of cider!

Escape to Lyme Regis

As the weather was so glorious last week we decided to go and spend as much time in it as we could, and go camping by the sea.  We closed our eyes, pointed at the map and set off for Lyme Regis in Dorset.

We left just after the home-time rush and arrived in good time to set up camp and still have time to watch the sunset with a glass of cider.  (It wasn't quite as warm in the evenings as it was during the day!)

Next morning we followed the meandering footpath along the river into town and spent the day rummaging about in Lyme Regis.

It is such a cute little town, full of wonky houses painted in bonbon colours, nice rummage-y sort of shops and endless ice creams.

We spent quite a long time sitting in the sunshine consuming said ice creams and marvelling at the fabulous weather.

The next day we were hoping to follow the South West Coast Path along to Golden Cap, but by the time we had negotiated two diversions (due to a large portion of the path having fallen in the sea over the winter), we ran out of time and energy and stopped in Charmouth for a blisteringly hot afternoon rummaging for fossils.

We managed to forget our swimmers so had to content ourselves with a bit of paddling.

The second green blob of cliff is where we hoped to reach...we made it a disappointingly short way!

Despite not having reached our intended destination, we did do rather a lot of walking and arrived back to camp later and tired-er than expected...

...so we shuffled back into Lyme Regis and stuffed enormous greasy takeaway on the beach.  It was delicious!

We decided the next day to venture slightly further afield and went along the coast to Chesil Beach.  It is utterly stunning, miles and miles of smooth round pebbles all heaped in a big bank, as if the sea is collecting them from around the world and putting them carefully in one place.

You can't swim off the beach as it drops down very quickly into deep water with strong currents, but there are millions of smooth flat stones and a great canvas of smooth flat sea perfect for hours of skipping pebbles.

We dragged ourselves away and drove over to the Isle of Portland.

We climbed up from the village to the War Memorial and fabulous views of Chesil Beach stretching away to the horizon.

A little further along the road is Tout Quarry, a Nature Reserve and Sculpture Park.  It's quite an unusual place to walk through as it looks so wild and rugged but is completely man made, but as it's in a sort of bowl you feel like you have been transported to end of the Earth.  It's filled with huge piles of stone, banks of stone chips and cliffs made of fossilised swamps, the whole lot rambling with wild flowers.

As you wander along (feeling a bit like you've been whisked to the wild west) you notice an oddly shaped rock and suddenly a shape appears and you notice a sculpture in the stone.

This then unleashed a tiny bit of inner five year old and we wandered round trying to spot all the sculptures.

The neat walls and tunnels cutting through the quarry make a beautiful contrast to the wild abandon surrounding them.

The rambling paths brought us out for one last glorious view before we had to trundle back down the hill for sensible things like lunch and going home.

There couldn't have been a more perfect end to our escape-y weekend!

Apple and Elderflower Fritters

I finally managed to coincide some sunshine, some spare time and some elderflower all on one day, so I made the most of it, hopped on my bike and whizzed off to raid the park.

Whilst rummaging in the hedgerows I also found some roses that had escaped from someone's allotment.

They were proper ones with thorns and they smelt absolutely heavenly.

 There was also masses of honeysuckle adding its scent to the elderflower and roses to create a sweet heady essence of summer wafting about in the breeze.

I made several batches of elderflower cordial on my return home.

As the sun stayed out the next day and we were pottering about in the garden I decided we needed a summery afternoon snack to keep us going.  These fritters take minutes to make and taste like crisp little bites of summer.  They are just the thing to accompany a cool drink, some dappled shade and a comfy seat.  They must be eaten freshly cooked and piping hot.

4oz plain flour

pinch salt

80ml water

60ml milk

2tbsp elderflower cordial

2tbsp elderflowers picked off the stalks (optional)

1egg white

4 eating apples

Whisk together the flour, salt, water, milk, elderflower cordial and flowers until there are no flour lumps, just flower lumps.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg white until it forms peaks - you should be able to turn the bowl upside down without anything moving.  Add this to your batter and carefully fold in using a metal spoon.  Don't over-mix as this will knock the air out of your egg white.

Cut the apples into quarters, remove the core and cut each quarter into three.  (You could also remove the centre of the apple with a corer and slice the apple horizontally to make round fritters)

Heat about 1cm thick of oil in a frying pan.  Drop the apple segments into the batter, coat them and carefully place them in the oil.  Fry until golden, then turn and fry the other side.

Remove to a plate covered with a couple of pieces of kitchen towel for about a minute and then to a serving plate.  You can dredge or toss them in sugar if you want to be extra naughty, but to be honest they don't really need it.

Now all you need to do is fix yourself a drink, find a quiet spot in the garden and stuff yourself silly!