Best recipes for leftovers: Cauliflower cheese with mashed potato
Danny likes our cauliflower cheese especially when I add ham and tomatoes and serve it with garlic bread. Quite often I pick up 6 pints of milk from the Tesco CFC and make it into white sauce, ladled into plastic zip lock bags and frozen flat in the freezer. This takes the strain out of making CC as the palaver of making the sauce is already done. The sauce can be gently heated from frozen in a sauté pan. Then all you have to do is add the cheese. I discovered that my cauliflower bought in the market with suspiciously long leaves was the...
read moreMint
Photo: Michelle Meiklejohn “What is that tiny leafed seedling on the kitchen window sill?” Danny peered at the teeny seedlings. “It’s mint.” “It doesn’t seem to be growing at all.” Following the comments on yesterday’s post I will let you into a secret. I can’t grow mint. I know that for most people it is invasive. “The mint just took over the garden. The roots were a nightmare!” But not for me. When I moved into the cottage there was quite a lot of mint in the garden. It died out within a year or so. I’ve planted...
read moreThe Veggie Grower’s Bible by Lorraine Burn: a review
One of the many pleasures of writing this blog is that sometimes I’m sent a cookery or gardening book to review. This feeds my reading habit and introduces me to masses of new ideas. I don’t review every book I am sent as I prefer to write about the books that I have particularly enjoyed. I was intrigued when Lorraine Burn emailed me about her book. I checked out her website. She writes “Borne of frustration, the many books I read all had lots and lots of beautiful pictures but never told me everything I needed for one particular...
read moreBoning up on flowers for the gate side stand
Having come from a long line of perennial gardeners I always thought of annuals as the sort of summer bedding that you see on roundabouts and parks. I usually put geraniums in the big barrels beside the cottage front door and add a bit of lobelia. Apart from a few marigolds to grow with tomatoes and lots of sweet peas, that’s it. I had no idea that there were so many gorgeous annuals available until I read your comments on this post and on the post the next day. In the end I decided to order some plugs and some seed. This past week has...
read moreDehydrator update and The Waiting Room game
Our cheap and basic dehydrator continues to delight us. I’m reaping the rewards of dehydrating fruit and vegetables when they were on offer or marked down on the CFC. As all the chopping and preparation has been done prior to dehydrating a slow cooked meal can be prepared very quickly. This week I had to go for blood tests. I think that the doctors in Newmarket might be suffering from blood testitus as the clinic is always packed and you have to arrive early to get in the queue. I wanted to make our slow cooked skirt of beef stew but...
read moreThank you!
I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who left a comment on my last post. Yesterday was a long and stressful day but every now and then I’d log on and laugh and laugh. Danny had a busy work day but the intermittent guffaws from The Rat Room told me that he couldn’t resist checking too. Everyone knows the healing power of laughter and most of us have heard of Norman Cousins who claimed that laughed himself back to health. As you know, I’m an avid reader of The Oldie magazine. Very witty and great writing. I do miss the old...
read moreEgg laying in our flock of chickens
Zebedee our youngest hen hatched on May 20th last year. The day that Mrs Squeaky Clean died – super clean heroine of all things white. A Garbo of the chicken world. We loved Mrs Squeaky and it was a shock when she died. The arrival of the new chicks salved the grief and Zeb has grown to be a beautiful back hen. Elegant yet happy to scratch in the mud. She been laying sporadically since the middle of January. Her eggs are creamy coloured with a very pointy end. Hope, the little black and white Wynadotte hen has being laying too. Hope...
read moreKitchen garden update February 2010
I’m so pleased that we have planted lots of Tuscany Kale as it has really come into it’s own after the frosty weather. The other kale Frosty – has toughened up a bit so next year we will harvest this first before the cold weather sets in. We are also still harvesting Brussels Sprouts, Swiss Chard, leeks, parsnips salad and stir fry leaves. Although the Savoy cabbages have headed up well they are disappointingly small but still taste very sweet. The early purple sprouting broccoli has just started to sprout and if we get a bit of sun...
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