Kids and weird food.....

I'm an adventurous person, not brave, just adventurous. I like exploring, making friends, making a fool of myself trying to speak any local lingo and I love eating stuff I've not tried before. This is not the case with the rest of the family but generally I can bully them into trying a little of something and occasionally I hit a home run. The girl must take after me as she is very keen to eat escargot and cuisses de grenouilles.

The thrill of a foreign supermarket is way up there on the list of great things to do on holiday. This thrill is deffo NOT shared by the rest of the family and so it was that I was passed the car keys and encouraged to go supermarket shopping alone this week during our quick and cheap getaway in France. What glee, no one to nag me and no time constraint. It's a wonder I ever came back. But come back I did, with various 'weird' bits and pieces.

The cooked prawns were an easy sell, 'Heads Off', we call them on account of having to pull their heads off.... Nice! In fact, pretty much all my purchases were approved, except one.

I'd watched the French shoppers, many picked up a box or two of the crab sticks. This is not a product I've ever thought of buying but on the spur of the moment I thought they might be good in a fish salad. Apparently not.

Waste not, want not, here's their transformation. Crab cakes made with questionable crab, gorgeous crushed potatoes, creme fraiche, tons of seasoning, stunning salted French butter, shallots, chilli and sweet pepper. Crusted in French crunchy bread crumbs and served with a citron butter and a fresh salad. Nom, nom. Tres Bien. Bon appetit.

Bountiful Land...

Just now there was a knock at the window and I jumped. I had been engrossed in settling my chilli plants on a window sill, they are all more than 2ft tall and heavy with long Ferrari-red fruits. I hadn't heard our farmer neighbour park as he arrived, bearing gifts.

He was proudly delivering a bowl of creamy field mushrooms, just picked from a 6 acre, south facing slope opposite our land.

'The whole field is white with them,' he said.

So the 9yo and I are set for dinner, although the other two family members are not so keen. She and I will share the feast and I may make a garlic and mushroom tart for my book club guests tonight when we discuss Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt.

Fresh Picked Field Mushrooms

The rest of the garden also continues to inspire for dinner; the leeks are good and the celeriac a decent size, the parsnips obscene. Spinach continues to thrive.

Planning ahead, the broad beans are emerging from their seed trays and will go in the ground next week. The kale and other spring brassica are almost ready for planting out.

Broad Beans

In the greenhouse I'm ahead for spring colour and scent, my sweet peas bullied daily as I pinch out growing tips to ensure bushy plants for next year. I'll do the same with the Cosmos babies, a find (and a financial saving) as they'd all self-seeded in the flower beds. I decided to dig some of them up in order to try and protect a few plants from the worst of the weather. The Lupins are doing well too.

Sweet Pea

Cosmos

Lupin

Fortunately the weather hasn't turned here yet, as the mushrooms will testify, so I've still got time to insulate my greenhouse this weekend. I'm determined to experiment this winter, to see how many seedlings survive out in the greenhouse and in hand-made cold frames, I need to see how they do without constant heat. Mind you, if temperatures dip dramatically I may use my paraffin heater, but at approximately £6 per 5 litres, this really isn't viable for very long periods.

I've managed to plant two long beds of 160 strawberry plants in the allotment in the field, these plants were runners from my original 12 plants that I received as a gift from our neighbours in 2009. Having planted these 160 plants I still had another 400 plants to rehouse in order to free up three of my seven raised beds. These runners had virtually taken over the walled garden.

I've potted up most of them in well rotted manure, thus ensuring another crop for next year. Being rather more portable, these pots can be dotted around the allotment or I might even sell some to friends and family.

Next season strawberries

This weekend in the allotment I spied a new red strawberry - extraordinary weather we're having for November.

Archie's chicks (Roosters centre stage?)

 

Archie's chicks are enormous and I still strongly suspect that 5 of the 8 are boys. Having experienced the financial disaster of the Poultry Auction when selling roosters, I am determined to lean how to humanely dispatch (polite word) and dress my own birds. After all, I regularly buy free range birds for the family to eat, at a cost of £8+.

Bearing in mind these birds roam or grounds, are fed on corn and quality pellets as well as selected scraps, I know they will be quality meat, so I'm afraid their days are numbered. I just cannot afford to keep them and, believe me, no one wants to take in additional roosters.

To that end, another farmer has promised to teach me how to to responsibly kill. It's not a decision I came to lightly, after all I know these birds personally, however, it is interesting to note that we, [and I mean all family members,] have only named one of Archie's chicks, that being the little white one; Moon. Maybe we are seeing them less as pets and more as egg producers or livestock.

Are we becoming more countrified I wonder?

Garlic, Auctions and Giganta-Ants....

It is official: I am a derr-brain! Last year I planted food-stuff in an effort to have some crops for Spring. That didn't really work but hey-ho! My onions just didn't seem to be growing. Last week I clocked my neighbours onions (that's not a double-entendre btw!!) Blimey they were huge. Today I stood looking at mine, they are OK but not a patch on his.... As the top leaves were dying off I decided to end my pain and torture, (and competitive growing,) so I pulled them up. Bugger me! ('scuse the french,) they aren't onions at all; they are garlic - massive garlics..... The kitchen pongs a bit now. I'm not a champion onion grower, I'm a champion garlic grower. Yeah!

***

'Oo Oo Oo,' she said, bouncing up and down with excitement like a child needing a wee! We've been to the fine art auctions again in Ludlow, on the lookout for old tat to replace the newish tat we arrived at The Larches with. The cheap Swedish stuff from the blue store looks so out of place here. I'd rather have Agneta (also from Sweden) design my home....

Hubby was like a boy trapped in a sweet shop. He bought 4 spurious little oak tables for £5, exceptionally good for drinks and family snacks in the sitting room! He bought a short chest of drawers and yet another table for £8!! I bought two old school desks with cute inkwells for £12!!! He countered with a pink striped sofa in really gorgeous condition for £20!!!!

But the pièce de résistance was the dresser: Victorian, Welsh dresser-like, it is pine and veneered with two glazed display cupboards, flanking shelves, 3 wide drawers and a lower cabinet to hide away my occasional crockery. At 72" wide there is a slight hitch, we can't get it in the car and Dizzy Disco needs a new clutch so we can't tow it back home just yet...or the sofa for that matter. But soon, soon....... I've got such plans for the kitchen now, can't wait to get started.

***

I'm not sure the children will last the summer. Having been out of school for almost 10 days their brains have rotted: Today they thought it might be amusing to jump up and down on the dung heap, deliberately disturbing a giganta-ant colony (they're big up here in Shropshire.) The little creatures fought back, running up the inside of the sproglet's clothes, biting all the way. Fair play really.

I heard the screams several fields away and raced to find the 5yo hysterical, tearing off his clothes on the top of the poo mountain. The 7yo was less eaten and was spitting on a doc leaf and rubbing at her injuries.

'Good job I didn't show them the wasp nest yet...' commented hubby. Hmmmmmmmm.

Gardening in Pictures, part III

Onions and garlic are going well.



Strawberries basking in the sun...


Fat Hen.... no, not you, the plant, the weed, it's called Fat Hen. It is delicious, although in large amounts it can be toxic, (so can wine!!) Cooking it as you would spinach reduces the potency.



The pumpkins, courgettes, peas, beans and sweetcorn are really motoring along. I'm going to start serving mini courgettes with butter at dinner and pickling the glut.



I may have overdone the potatoes!!