Yellow and Green Harvest

Whilst i was tying my sugar snap peas i realised there was enough to have for dinner.

They are the sweetest, crispest and most certainately my favourite vegetable after beetroot of course!

Then i decided to see how the carrots were getting on, as i didn't think i had thinned them enough, but i discovered some decent sized carrots

big enough to eat as "baby" carrots! I decided to trim the straightest one to how i think it's supposed to be for the show, the booklet says trim stems to 3 inches.

Bring on more harvests like this!!

A little ball of white joy

The garden has got so chaotic now and there is so much going on both there and in life in general it seems that i have decided to stop the weekly photos. But i will still post new developments and photos of harvests which is starting to happen more frequently now.

But when i was watering and bug spraying yesterday i came across this! - hiding in the cabbages (which also feel like they might be starting to heart up!) - my first ever cauliflower!

Ok, so it's only the size of a golfball right now but it's exciting nevertheless - gives me hope for the other 3 cauliflower plants. I don't know what happened there, i planted lots more seeds than that, however i seemed to end up with lots of cabbage (i'll be eating a lot of coleslaw and balsamic red cabbage then!) and plenty of brocoli.

next year i think i'll sow less cabbage and more caulis! Its a long learning process, veg growing, in fact i don't think you ever stop learning.

Baking Practice 4/4 - Honey and Banana Teabread

The Final and longest recipe, or rather longest cooking time, was Honey and Banana Teabread.

A pretty straightforward recipe, however i had misread it slightly and didn't have quite enough Honey, so i used all the honey i had for the mix and whilst that was baking i popped out to buy some more for the topping.



I also had trouble finding the nibbed sugar for the topping. I could only find it online and even then the first item i ordered wasn't what i was looking for - the grains seemed too small and i may as well have used granulated sugar! so i tried again and managed to get what i was looking for this time.


On slicing it, the loaf seem beautifully moist and with all that banana and honey (even tho it wasn't quite the whole 6 tbsp!)

I think this is another success that i will do again for the show (so long as my tasters think so!).

Baking Practice 3/4 - Chocolate Chip Cookies

This was probably one of the most successful recipes, but then possibly the most straight forwards of the 4 as well!

I didn't have any trouble. Nothing burnt, nothing stuck - i mean they're cookies - how wrong can you go with cookies?

They all came out pretty circular, apart from one, so i think these will definately be going to the show. Plus they took the least effort and time.

Baking Practice 2/4 - Almond Bakewell Tart

Recipe number 2 was Almond Bakewell Tart. I always thought that the jam was red, so either strawberry or raspberry maybe, but this recipe called for Apricot jam. I also needed to add about double the cold water pastry ingredients to make it come together in a ball so it could be wrapped in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 30 minutes. Once it was rested for 30 minutes and rolled out the consistency seemed fine, although the amount was a bit tight when it came to lining the flan tin and a little patching was required.

As it was cooking there seemed to be a huge bubble rising in it. I thought that despite pricking the base of the pastry before adding the jam and then the almond filling that the problem was my pastry but on slicing the tart, it seem that there is simply an air bubble, because i thing the pastry looks ok. It seems crisp and crumbly and looks cooked on the bottom too.

The problem with this recipe is that as i really dislike almonds which means i've never had a bakewell tart so i'm not too sure what it should be like! Hopefully my taste testers at D's work will pass on some feedback.

Baking Practice 1/4 - Cherry Cake

I picked up the schedule for the Countess of Warwick show last week, with plans to enter the vegetable showing classes (providing i have something worth showing by the bank holiday weekend!) but whilst looking through i discovered the baking classes, craft categories and some photographic categories as well.

With it being D's birthday this weekend, he normally takes strawberries and raspberries in from the PYO, but with it being a busy and long weekend, there wasn't time to get them and if i had picked them friday they wouldn't have survived until monday. It seems that we may have struggled to get some if we had tried anyway, as mum went to get a few for us Saturday night and a few is literally all she got! So i offered to bake instead - a perfect opportunity for a practise run! And i'm certainly glad i did!

So there are 4 recipes, starting with the cherry cake.

Doesn't look too bad does it? A bit "well done" round the edges, however i think that is more about me knowing my oven. I set the temperature to the normal oven setting rather than the temperature for a fan oven.

Which is why from this angle you can see how much it has erupted like a volcano!! Which of course then meant the topping of demerera sugar cracked into pieces.

From the outside i could still see cherries near the top however on slicing it seems that the majority had sunk to the bottom. Mum said from her experience the trick was to lightly dust the glace cherries before adding them to the mix.

With 3 other baking classes i may decide not to enter this one, especially as the other 3 recipes were more successful. Although i did manage to do all 4 in about 6 hours, and that includes all the washing up after each one too!

New Toy!!!

Well i finally settled on a brand and make of camera, the job then was just getting hold of one before they sold out! The camera i had seen at a price that suited my budget and was recommended by a small independant camera shop was being discontinued it turned out as of couse with all technology these day it was being replaced by a newer model which was already in the shops. So my panic then was to see if i could quicky find anywhere else that still had some and see if they were selling them any cheaper.

Many of the main electrical superstores no longer seemed to stock them and those who did weren't cheaper than the independant stores, and i didn't really want to but something like a camera online. With technology i like to have somewhere i can take things back to in i have any trouble. So my choice was this:

Shop 1 - £200 package deal for the camera, a 1GB card and a standard panasonic case

or

Shop 2 - £170 for the camera, then i found a case for £15 and a 2GB card for £12, so £197 in total
obviously i went for shop number 2 - more storage and a case of my choice. so it's fairwell little Canon Ixus II!

It's served me well for 4 years, but its running out of steam, however despite this i think mum wants to use it as an intro to her first digital camera. I'm not sure how well it will work tho anymore, the screen seems to go purple when you try to take photos.
And hello to my new friend the Panasonic Lumix TZ3!

This side by side comparison shows the LCD screen difference - the Canon screen was about one of the biggest 4 years ago as well!

Anyway i have lots of playing to do - lots of settings and functions to find my way around but i'm already pleased with the quality of picture it takes. I took these last night.

Featured by Blogasaurus » Happy 4th of July!

 Glamasaurus, from Dawanda featured my American Flag brooch in her 4th July handmade picks today!

Blogasaurus » Happy 4th of July!

Monday Photos

Sorry about the lack of photos last week but we were away (more of that in another post). We got back to a rampaging and wild garden which after getting some food in on sunday, we spent tidying up and watering as i don't think it rained here at all while we were away.






All tomatoes seem to be doing well.

































The ones in the front garden had a drip feeder so have grown a bit more than those in the back garden.














Yet actually the first fruit have appeared on the ones on the patio!



































The sugar snaps have out grown their wigwam.
















Just hope we don't get any more strong winds!














The strawberries from this basket are unbelievably sweet, not sure if its the varieties or the fact it gets more sun than the planter on the patio.













i love just walking past and picking and eating the odd one thats ripe. although there were a few ripe yesterday so i gave them to mum to put on her cereal this morning.





































despite being drowned whilst the drip feeder was being set up before we went away (which means i still havenn't need to water it!) one of the new seeds did germinate. i need to put some more compost round them tho and earth them up and stablise them a bit more.

























came home to our first decent sized courgette, which mum had half of and i used the rest in a batch of ratouille.











first sowing of beetroot are finally forming roots - maybe i should feed them some worm wee........



















Well i did have an almost ripe blueberry - it was huge too - but when i went back the next day it was gone!! it was by the edge of the cage so i can only think a bird got there before me sadly. might have to put the bigger cage on it.













second sowing of beetroot is coming on - might be time to put in the 3rd












Like the strawberries these are extremely sweet and wonderful to just pick the odd one as they ripen. birds got to a couple while i was away tho.

Proudest garden moment 2008 (so far!)

Remember my excitement at the appearance of my first ever broccoli? Well, mum suggested that i picked the first one because it was looking like it was going to start to open and flower, even though it wasn't as big as one you'd find in a supermarket.

But as mum pointed out its ok, because there are new ones growing below, almost like side shoots on a tomato plant. You can just about see them in that photo.

So here it is my first ever home grown broccoli, about the size of a baseball i would say.

We popped it in the steamer whole, and i don't know if mum was keeping a particular eye on it, but it was steamed perfectly. Not too crisp but certainly not overdone, juicy but still with a bit of bite. I can't explain how it tastes better or different when it's homegrown but i'm sure it does - maybe it's partly psychological too!