Making Stuff for Jo's Birthday

Look what I made!

It's my lovely mate Jo's birthday this weekend so its of to London for some lowlife hijinks. As ever I am on an economy drive so I thought I would tern my hand to making her a prezzy. There's a lot of lavender in the front garden at the moment so I have mixed it up with some green tea, which handily came in a lovely tin, to make tea bag style soaks for her bath. Easy peazy!

I did think that was a bit tight though so I have made some green tea and lavender soap t go with it. I have always been put of making soap before as all the instructions make it sound a bit scary and sciency. Happily I was wrong, its actually dead easy. I followed the instructions in the fab book 'Making Stuff, An Alternative Craft Book' and simply added my b its at the end.

Result, I hope Jo likes it!

Bee's

I am lucky enough t live by two parks. One is just at the end of my street and is perfect for walking the hound before work, the other is quite a bit grander and larger but is still only a five minute walk away. The larger also has, hidden away, an apiary (that's a load of bee hive to you and me!)

Last year when walking the dog in the bigun I noticed that ne of the hives had fallen over. There is a sign with the Apiary Managers number on, so I called him to let him know. This led to him doing a bit of a sales job on me, trying to persuade me to join in. I have to say I was not immediately up for it but the thought of keeping my own bees has niggled away at me over the year.

So that is basically how I found myself all kitted up like a member of the klu klux klan in the park last Saturday.

Plenty Produce

The allotments really keeping us well fed at the moment. We have had loads of marrows, courgettes, chard and beans. There are some very very tasty pumpkins coming up too. We had our first one roasted with a drizzle of olive oil and some rosemary from the garden.

We are all pretty sick of marrow though. I have been making picalli with them as I usually do with runner gluts. My picalli recipe is in Septembers Kitchen Garden magazine along with some snaps of the garden at home. I always wanted to be on the cover of a magazine when I was a kid but I have to admit K.G was probably not my first choice! (I'm still very chuffed though)

Now I have a fixed lap top and found the camera thingy I shall get a few of my glut recipes on as I have been very busy in the kitchen pickling, brewing, jamming and generally finding 1001 things to do with chard!

Chickens!!!!

Introducing the girls!

Three light Sussex bantam hens. They are fab and very easy to look after. I can't wait till they start laying.

Save Sipson

This is a snap of the lovely Tracey from Sipson village. Although she probably won't thank me for uploading it, as it was taken on Monday as she was packing up from Glastonbury, and believe me there was absolutely no one looking at their best!

Sipson is the village that will be demolished if BA gets away with its stupid Heathrow expansion plans. Tracey was down at Glastonbury on the Green Peace Air Plot garden to tell people about the vibrant community in Sipson. I think she really touched people and was very inspiring.

If you haven't already (tut tut) sign up to help Tracey and all the other people in Sipson keep her community http://www.airplot.org.uk/

Bumper Fun Blag of the Year!

Woop woop I have just spent the last week at the Glastonbury festival all courtesy of work.

Before I get carried away, it wasn't all about having a mad one, we went down to build an orchard and an air miles garden. We were based in the Green Peace spot where the focus was against the stupid Heathrow expansion. We took the apples trees down to highlight that the Cox apple comes from Sipson, the village that will be demolished if the expansion happens.

The idea behind the Air Miles Garden was to show people how much stuff is flown in and how many diverse things you could actually grow yourself, even out of typical season.

It all went down well but more importantly we all had a wicked time. Dizzy Rascal was fab but the best music was definitely Peaches, it was a right waste that she was on in the Dance Village on Sunday night. The main soundtrack to this years festival though will be 'pshiisstt'. That's the sound of balloons being filled with nitrous oxide. They were bloody everywhere!!

Ta Da

This is what the labels Ro printed for the parsnip wine look like.

Printing Wine Labels

There is nothing like a good old bit of child labour. The Victorians weren't all bad!

This is a snap of Rosa silk screen printing some labels for my home made parsnip wine. She has printed me some lovely labels mixing inks together as she dragged the squeegee across and leaving a leaf shaped blank bit in the middle for me to write the description.

Allotment Update

Right check this out people!

Its will only be 3 weeks this Saturday but look how far we have come on the allotment (please take a look at the earlier post about the allotment to see what I mean).

We have actual signs of broad beans and tomatoes!!!! Not just that, the spuds seem to be doing very well, as do the courgettes. The runners aren't looking to healthy, but sod it, its all about having a go!

We have done it on a non existent budget, so most of the seeds and young plants have been rescued from work and the beds are very much made from what we have been able to skip dive. But Dave, Kaz and I are all feeling pretty chuffed!

Woo Hoo Back On Line

Finally the old tintyweb thing is sorted!

Check out the snap of my first try at Red Onion Marmalade. I made it for a colleague's birthday (I did also put in for the collection, I'm not that tight!). Lovely Verity drew a nice label for it too. I have seen a recipe for Red Onion Marmalade before but I didn't have one to hand when I made it so I winged it. Its worked out pretty well too!

Basically to make about 3 average size jars I used a bag of red onions, a packed of light brown sugar, 3 or 4 red birds eye chilli's, almost a whole bottle of red wine vinegar and about two and a half glasses or red wine, some good sprigs of thyme from the garden and a few bay leaves. I gently sauteed the onions & chili (for quite a long time) till they were very soft then added the herbs, sugar and everything else. Bring to the boil and then tern to a rolling simmer for about an hour. When its all nice and congealed and sticky, stick it into steralised jars.I think it shouls keep for a couple of months.

I had some with veg sausage in a wrap for lunch. Yum!

BT Have Mucked Up My Tintyweb Connection

Sorry for the delay in updates! BT have managed to upgrade the speed of internet connection for the whole of my area but have somehow managed to knock out a wire that only affects my internet connection. Its four days since I have had a connection. Argh!!!!

In the mean time please enjoy the picture of a lovely Vegan Cherry Choc Cupcake.

Early Mid Week Slump

Christ,I'm knackered with no good reason!

Gen and I were supposed to play silly tennis tonight (so called as we are so embarrassingly crap), we never got it together. But she feels crap too (what a relief) this now means that I have the time finally to get a batch of nettle beer on the go.

There are loads of different nettle beer recipes floating about the tinty web I use a River Cottage one. Having said that I don't know what today's batch will turn out like, as I'm going a bit free style. I don't have enough caster sugar so am going to use a mix of demorara and whatever I can find it the cupboard.

I'll keep you posted.

Worlds Most Expensive Fabric

It doesn't look that fancy does it? I am afraid to say that the picture shows the most expensive fabric that I have ever and will ever purchase.

In total - a tenner for two and a half meters of assorted fabric and a bit of elastic (the light blue is for a couple of cushions for the front room, the black for a t-shirt dress and the flowery green for some pj bottoms)
- £325 for the fee to get the clamp of my car.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Things I Want to do this Summer

This is a wish list of some of the sensible things I want to do this summer........

Visit Kew and have a picnic

Go walking along the Pembrokeshire coast & stay in St Davids where I went to primary school

Camp in St Ives & visit the Eden project

Go & see the Sea Eagles up in the Scottish islands

Visit the Victoria & Albert museum

Go to the lost gardens of Helligan

win the lotto

The Stall

I haven't had the photo's emailed to me of the food stall I did at Green Man on bank holiday yet. Here is a quick pik taken on Sam's phone as I was setting it up. I will get round to uploading the rest of the photo's and the recipes, as promised, soon.

Ground Force in Action

I am lucky in having some great neighbours.

Betty, who lives across the road, is particularly cool. She is 82 and a great laugh. I found out this week that she has been let down by someone she paid to do a bit of work in her garden. Betty still grows loads of veg but finds digging and doing the grownd work a bit tough these days.

I would like to think that I was feeling very community spirited when I had my bright idea to help out (I wasn't though, I was on my way back from the pub, so in all honesty I was feeling a bit pissed). I decided to rally some mates (drunk texting with a purpose, how strange) and get a crew over to help.

Thanks to Gen, Keir and Karen for getting out of bed this morning. It only took us a couple of hours between us to dig Betty's beds and discover Keir's suppressed topiary skills.

The Allotment

Uh oh,I think this may be the beginning of something serious. We have an allotment.

This has all happened incredibly quickly. Last week my lovely mate Karen popped in for a cuppa on the way home from picking up baby Nelly (that them in the picture) and suggested we may look into getting an patch in the allotments across the road from her house. I though that, what with allotment waiting lists, this would be a future plan. Next thing I know, Karen has had a chat with her neighbour who can't cope with his and bingo we are now co allotmentears!

It's barren but for a few weeds at the moment and has very clay soil (the site was an old brick works) so bring on some intense hard work and compost!

Spreading Seeds

Ah,I have had a lovely day off work today. Crikey I needed it!

I had a brilliant time at the Green Man festival in Shropshire on the bank holiday. The first outing of my new sideline, my vegy food stall, went down really well. We sold out of almost every thing and got some great feedback. Quite a few people asked me for recipes which I will put on here in the next week or so, as soon as I have the piks to go with them. It was knackering though!!

Today I have been making packets of salad seeds for friends. I love to mix my favourite salad leaves and herbs together to get a good mix. Its a lot cheaper than buying rip off bags of loose leaves from the super markets and as I love peppery leaves I can put plenty of fiery varieties in a mix.

The Greenhouse!

Check out this baby! Yeah, it rocks. Best of all it cost nothing!!!

I am so excited about finally having the greenhouse up. I got it from work at Christmas. It used to be in the plant sales area behind the shop, but when they decided to turn that into the new kid’s play area it had to go. As it was considered quite knackered, the powers that be decided it wasn’t a good idea to find a new home for it in the gardens so I blagged it.

It took ages to get it from work to my house as I had a right struggle finding a van big enough to transport it. Putting it up was, amazingly, not too bad. I was able to go onto the Alton’s web site and find the instructions. It had obviously been moved quite a few times in the past as there was evidence of previous bodging but Sam and I managed to get it up relatively easily.

There are a few broken pains (that was me I’m afraid, transporting it) but they have been filled using polytunnel plastic. I got the polytunnel plastic from International Plastics in Digbeth, which is an experience in itself as you get to drive in right up to the counter!

Sam laid the brick path in the middle with bricks that we have found during the countless occasions when we have doug up the garden. The Erdinger bottles that edge the u shaped bed were scavenged from outside a neighbor house last summer (sadly not consumed at ours). I spotted them one night before glass recycling, thinking that I would use them to bottle some nettle beer but as I never got round to it they had just been sat in the back of the garden. I am well chuffed with how they look.

I have got far to excited about the new growing possibilities that we now have. Rather typically I have planted far too many seeds! This year I will be growing my tomatoes in there, so hopefully avoiding the heart break of blight. I’m also giving violet tomatillos a shot, as well as cucumbers, melon, sweat peppers, yellow peppers, chilli’s and whatever else I can lay my hands on from the Heritage Seed Library. I am going to have to have a serious chat with myself to remind myself that it’s not the size of the Albert Hall!!!!

Free Food!

God, I get so excited at this time of year. Spring has well and truly sprung and there is loads of good stuff ready to be foraged. I have a couple of favorite spots for picking wild garlic and sorrel, which are absolutely teaming with the stuff at the moment. Even better than that, I have come across some of both in the park at the end of my road too. This is great as the other spots are a good drive away, so I now have a local spot for fresh stuff too.

Both the garlic and the sorrel are great in salads, but don’t use too much of the sorrel as it has a very sharp lemony flavor and can over power the other leaves. I also love tearing fresh sorrel leaves onto pasta that has been tossed in olive oil. For something so simple to do it tastes like you have been slaving over elaborate wine sauces for hours. The garlic also makes a dead nice addition to risotto.

What I tend to do with both wild garlic and sorrel is make pesto’s as this allows me to keep a supply going throughout the year. I like to stock up on pesto made of each on their own and then some of them mixed together. The pesto can be used in lots of different ways; a particulate favourite of my dad’s is wild flat bread, which is dead easy.

Pesto – this is very simple and down to your own taste really but I blend the leaves with good olive oil and pine nuts (but you can use walnuts or almonds depending on what takes your fancy), if I am just doing wild garlic pesto I usually add some lemon juice. My other half is vegan so I don’t normally add Parmesan cheese and vegan Parmesan tastes like toe jam (not that I know what that tastes like, I’m guessing obviously) but if it takes your fancy you can. Blend it until it’s at a pleasing consistency and add a good slug of good salt and pepper, jar it in sterilised jars and it will keep well until opened. Once you open a jar treat it like a jar of shop bought pesto and keep it refrigerated.

Wild Bread – make a basic bread doe (brown or white whatever floats your boat) after you have let it rise twice, pull a ball of and pull flat, almost as if you are making an odd shaped pizza base. Let it stand and rise for 15 minutes more, or until risen to about an inch, then dimple all over with your thumb. Spoon, brush or spread lashings of your wild pesto over the bread and then bake in a hot oven for about 10 – 15 minutes (depending on how good your oven is, my oven is on its last legs so this has been known to take up to 25 minutes so you will need to play it by ear, just watch out that the bottom doesn’t burn)