In terms of hope and inspiration, sunshine on a Monday morning is a blessing, especially in the middle of winter and following a spell of grey skies rain and snow. Cold as it is my mind is straying to spring planting and to clearing the garden, to eating outdoors. As always with us some of this will remain a dream for a while yet. Steve has the patio dug up. the yard and the entrance to the garden has piles of rock sat in large large pools of water the rock comes from the old broken and very uneven patio. The water used to run under the gate from the road and gather in muddy pools outside the back door, it now runs though a pipe but as yet the pipe goes nowhere and the water rock mud combination makes venturing into the garden a difficult and dangerous undertaking.
On the other hand the patio is shaping up well, I can´t wait for the first BBQ.
All the little finishing jobs in the downstairs cloakroom have now been done,( hence the start on the patio) and we are determined to plough on with jobs that will make us a bit more visitor friendly. time and finance might conspire against more than large project in a year but we have decided that we would feel better if everywhere looked less like a builders yard, quite how we achieve that is another matter as we don.t want to throw anything away and building materials that will be used eventually have to go somewhere in the meantime.
In the garden
Well actually there is nothing really growing at all. My cut cabbage stalks, where we have already eaten the cabbage, are regrowing so we and the rabbits are eating the resulting green leaves. I have also got purple sprouting broccoli that has already given us a couple of pickings but has slowed down again because of the cold and that´s about it. Next year I am hoping that a bigger greenhouse will give a few more winter veg.
In the Kitchen
We still have salted beans, stored squashes and loads dried stuff so thank goodness we are not without home grown food
I am still finding ways to use the dried food. At the weekend with our curry I did make a raita with dried cucumber and dried mind and it was surprisingly good
It really doesn´t look promising, and that´s one of the problems with home dried goods`but I think that I liked the end product better than with fresh ingredients, It is really simple to make a spoonfuls of chopped dried cucumber half a teaspoon of dried mint salt and pepper and fill up the ramekin with yoghurt. Then you have to leave it in the fridge for an hour for the dry ingredients to rehydrate. the yoghurt thickens up quite a lot as the cucumber soaks up the liquid so I added a little lemon juice at the end. As Steve does not really like yoghurt salads I always have to make small quantities and this makes it easy
Next year I will dry more more cucumber s( assuming that we have a glut again) just to make this dish.
On the other hand the patio is shaping up well, I can´t wait for the first BBQ.
In the garden
Well actually there is nothing really growing at all. My cut cabbage stalks, where we have already eaten the cabbage, are regrowing so we and the rabbits are eating the resulting green leaves. I have also got purple sprouting broccoli that has already given us a couple of pickings but has slowed down again because of the cold and that´s about it. Next year I am hoping that a bigger greenhouse will give a few more winter veg.
In the Kitchen
We still have salted beans, stored squashes and loads dried stuff so thank goodness we are not without home grown food
I am still finding ways to use the dried food. At the weekend with our curry I did make a raita with dried cucumber and dried mind and it was surprisingly good
It really doesn´t look promising, and that´s one of the problems with home dried goods`but I think that I liked the end product better than with fresh ingredients, It is really simple to make a spoonfuls of chopped dried cucumber half a teaspoon of dried mint salt and pepper and fill up the ramekin with yoghurt. Then you have to leave it in the fridge for an hour for the dry ingredients to rehydrate. the yoghurt thickens up quite a lot as the cucumber soaks up the liquid so I added a little lemon juice at the end. As Steve does not really like yoghurt salads I always have to make small quantities and this makes it easy
Next year I will dry more more cucumber s( assuming that we have a glut again) just to make this dish.
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