fruits of our labour

The first of our fresh pickings from the allotment, a tasty salad of mixed salad leaves, rocket, radish, spinach, beetroot leaves, broad bean tops and pea shoots. One of the reasons for my lack of blogging is spendinglovely sunny days on the allotment, making the most of our changeable weather.I remember last year when we tasted our first broad beans and potatoes and how excited we was, it was just the same this year with this salad. I am very pleased to say that the plot is looking ten times better than it did last year and I will be posting some before and after photos soon. This is our second summer at the allotment and it is far more enjoyable than last year, I think the first year must be the hardest but when you get past it and survive it, it is all worth while. When we started out in March 2008 we knew virtually nothing about gardening let alone growing vegetables, so this is a message to anyone just starting out – don’t give up it is worth all the hard work. We were so useless last year that we had no idea if they were seedlings or weeds growing in some places, so I am constantly amazed by how much we have learnt by asking questions, reading books and watching gardening programmes. Being on an allotment has really helped us because we always have someone to ask for advice and everyone has been very welcoming and extremely helpful because they have seen us working hard. I cannot stress how much effort and time it takes to get your plot looking good and virtually weed free, I think this is why so many people give up after a year they watch Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and think its easy, its not as easy as they make it look but nothing worth doing is ever easy.

lovely finds

Below are are a few blogs, shops etc that I have found on my travels around the web. I have decided to just start posting images and links to speed things up, otherwise I will forget all about them – which is what I usually end up doing.

Kelly McCaleb

 Print Dolls

Tartelette

Nordljus

Pattern Bakery

Roddy & Ginger

Sea spray blue

And on that note I’m off to make my tea, bye for now.

Aprons

Apron by Mozi

I don’t know about you but I feel a bit naked if I don’t wear my apron in the kitchen. Its nothing special, bright red flowers with a bit of blue and white cotton trim, I think I bought it from Ikea a few years ago. I love the fabric pattern and it always makes me feel bright and cheerful. But I want to look at different items we all have in our kitchens and find  homemade alternatives to the mass produced products flooding the high street. So I’m starting with aprons, This is just the start I will update when I find new aprons I like and if you have a favourite please post a comment or email me about it. If you make and design aprons to sell then please send an email and I can write a post on you and your work.

I love the work of Teresa Green and this apron is lovely. I have one of her tea towels with the same design on and I think I will adding the apron to my wish list. I love natural linen and Teresa uses it in most of her work. If you want to read more about her work there is a article in this months country living magazine.

This teacake apron is from Gillian Kyle

 

This is from solitare.

This apron is by Australian designers Mozi and available from Radici in the UK. Both are worth checking out.

I love Lisa Stickleypieces they are very English and remind me of afternoon tea in the garden. This apron is one of a collection, click the link to go to her website and view it unravelled.

lemon frosted pistachio cake

I love this picture, its from Nigel Slater’s the kitchen diaries and the cake is one of the nicest cakes I’ve ever eaten. I’ve been one of those unfortunates souls that had to work over the weekend, but I did have Monday off and decided to make the most of it. We went to the allotment in the morning and planted more seedlings and sowed more seeds, its really starting to take shape now. So as a treat for all our hard work I decided to make this very pretty looking cake (I think I’m working my way through every recipe in this book). Lemon cake is probably my favourite cake because it goes so well with Earl Grey tea and is usually light and refreshing. This cake is like an explosion of flavours in your mouth, first the almond, then the orange, rosewater and pistachio, all flavours I love. It made me think of middle eastern food with the exotic flavours and wonderful jewel like colours. I left off the lemon frosting and served with Greek yogurt with lemon zest grated into it.

lemon polenta cake update

Sadly I didn’t make the lemon polenta cake, I forgot to buy polenta, silly me. I did however make this yummy lemon curd cake for our dog Tessie’s birthday, shes seven and very spoilt. I will post the recipe in the next few days when I’ve sorted out how I’m going to file all my recipes.

allotment day

Today has been a lovely day digging and planting down at the allotment. The plot is beginning to look really good now, its been very hard work but I’m sure it will be worth it when we get to eat our lovely homegrown veg. We have had the plot just over a year now and last year was so disappointing that we thought about giving it up, I’m so glad we didn’t. I think so many of us watch programmes like river cottage and they make it look so easy that we are shocked when we actually attempt it ourselves. I have dedicated most of my spare time to ourplot since about the end of February, having to put other projects on the back-burner for a while. I was talking to a new memberof our allotment family today, she has just taken over what is probably the worst plot (very prone to flooding), she reminded me so much of me about this time last year – a little unsure and asking lots of questions. Our conversation made me realise just how much i have learnt about gardening in a year, I was an absolute novice, I couldn’t believe I was giving someone advice. I felt so proud when she asked “how did you get your plot to look so lovely?” I was a little taken aback and thought she must be talking about another plot, but no it was ours. I will take some pictures this weekend to post so you can see before and after all the hard work and aching muscles.

The image above is sadly not my allotment or my garden, it was one of the show gardens at Tatton Park flower show last year, I just love it.

the kitchen diaries

This is Nigel Slater’s kitchen table from his book The kitchen diaries. I have only recently discovered this book, I think because I was living overseas when it was first published. I feel in love with it almost instantly, if the warm welcome the cover sends out is not enough (I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but most of us do) then the obviously passion Slater has for food can’t help but inspire you to rush into your own kitchen and start cooking. I like this book on many levels, the recipes are easy to follow and make everyday not just on special occasions, the design is lovely – great photos and a story begins to unfold in the form of a diary. Slater must think of nothing else but food even while he is sleeping I suspect.

Every weekend I will try to post a link to a recipe, it could be from a cooks website to a bloggers or even my own. The first isa little lemon polenta cake, it looks delicious, from Slater’s website, I’ve never made polenta cake before but I am going to give it a try.This blog is all about my journey from growing to cooking to eating and trying and learning about new things everyday. Enjoy your weekend.

lobster & swan

I have just stumbled upon the most lovely blog Lobster & Swan. It is full of inspirational images and many of them appear to be from around the kitchen table. I love this image above, the colours work beautifully together and I really love red and turquoise with white. I have been trying to plan a photo session for the header of this blog and the idea I have is my kitchen table beautifully arranged in a similar fashion to this, just hope it looks as lovely. I really like the chair peeping over the table top. The post that this image is taken from is very aptly named A week at my table. the same blogger has another blog called Record the day which is beautifully put together, a visual diary.

Kirsties homemade home

Cath Kidston's Kitchen

Did anyone watch Kirstie Allsopp’s new programme on C4 Kirsties homemade home on Thursday night. I quite liked it, it was a very lighthearted look at making and re-vamping things for your home. Kirstie is renovating and decorating an old house in Devon, first week was the kitchen. She visits various craftspeople, this week a potter, glassblower and seamstress, learning how to make her own lovely objects for her house. I love the fact that she is championing British craft and hope lots of people that normally shop at mass produced stores on the high street will sit up and take note. I have been expecting a programme of this sort for a while with the handmade revolution that is apparently taking place. We have had an array of buy local produce and eat with the seasons to champion British food produce so now its about time we started promoting local artisans.

For part of Kirsties research she visited the queen of vintage chic Cath Kidston. I was shocked to see her kitchen was so white and minimal (see picture above). I expected old wooden dressers painted in bright colours and odd chairs around a lovely old wooden table and maybe an old Aga, but no it was very minimal looking. It did leave her wonderful products space to take centre stage, sparkling like jewels on the shiny white surface.

Overall I thought it was a good programme to lounge on the sofa with a nice glass of wine and just chill out and look at all the pretty things. The C4 website has lots of useful information on courses, markets and design tips, well worth a look, I found a course I want to do.

Mallard Tearoom

A couple of weeks ago we went for a drive to Cheshire (UK) and stopped off in Knutsford a little village not far from Manchester, we found a lovely Tearoom called Mallard. Now I love a cup of coffee as much as anyone but my preferred drink is definitely Earl Grey tea, I am going to get on my soap box and moan about the lack of good places to drink tea now. We are supposed to be a nation of tea drinkers and everywhere you look its coffee shops and chain coffee shops at that, the whole coffee issue is another blog entry that will definitely being raising its ugly head soon. But on a happier note we found Mallard a modern and stylish place to drink tea and lots of different varieties of tea for a change. We had the dog with us so decided to get a takeaway and picnic lunch to have in the park. I’m finally getting to the point of this blog post, the tea was lovely and served in these gorgeous takeaway cups, pictures above. Each variety of tea has its own design on the outer of the cup, which corresponds to the tea caddies displayed on a shelf behind the counter, what a great idea. So I decided to google the tearoom but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have a website but the designer behind the cups does, Sarah Walsh. The second on the left with teal background and flowers is Earl Grey. We had a lovely day drinking tea and eating strawberry tarts in the sunshine.