The first of my dig in salad has sprouted, no idea what it is yet but its lovely to see, and my early potatoes have just poked their heads above the compost. While trying to clear out the troughs for the strawberries I decided to transplant the 5 leeks which are finger thick or less, into the flower bed and see what happens. Either they will thicken up enough for me to bother to cook them, or they will go to seed and look pretty, I hope.

On an unusual indoor gardening note, I bought special compost and repotted my orchid which is looking, to be honest, on death’s door. I’m not good with house plants although this orchid has been very good value, even if it dies as I bought it last year in february or march for less than £6, in flower, and the same flower spike was blooming all the way through to at least october and when it stopped it started growing a new flower stem. I think it liked our cool north facing hall window ledge. Unfortunatly either the extream cold over the winter or an accidental overwatering caused it to, quite literally, curl up its toes as some of its roots rotted. In an attempt to revive it I took it out of its pot, knocked out all the old compost, trimmed any roots which were dead and repotted it. We will see if it makes it.

Varieties used:

• Strawberries:
  Alice
  Florence
  Honeoye

I have also been collecting suitable twigs to create a bug box. My mum actually came to visit a few weeks ago with a big bag of hollow twigs she’d saved when they were pruning their garden, is it sad to get over excited when one’s parents give you a bag of twigs as a present? I hope not. It was my mum who bought me my compost caddy for christmas which I thought made a great present. Just make sure you know the person would really like hollow twigs or plastic buckets for slimy veg peelings before following these gift giving tips!

Seed sowing was delayed this year but several weeks, if not a couple of months, because of the weather. Even tho I sow seeds indoors, it was so cold I thought they still might get chilled on the kitchen window sil (we still haven’t got any blinds) and its been so generally gloomy that I think the poor things would have struggled with the lack of light. Finally towards the end of march I started with the tomatoes, broad beans, sweetcorn and some sunflowers for A. These have now all come up ok and I have just sowed the peppers and chillis, some experimental ediubal exotics – tomatillo, lemon grass and cape gooseberry, and a few ornamentals to fill up the rest of the garden – a grass, eryngium and echinacea.

Varieties I’ve used:

• Tomatoes:
  Trailing Cherry – Tumbling Tom Red
  Bush Cherry – Garden Pearl
• Broad bean:
  Dwarf – The Sutton
• Sweetcorn:
  Baby corn – Minipop
• Sunflower:
  Giant!
• Peppers:
  Mr. Fothergills – Sweet California Wonder
  Pennard Plants – Long Sweet Marconi
  Johnsons – Sweet Orange Baby
• Chillis:
  Wilko – Hot Cayenne (these were very successful last year)
  Mr. Fothergills – Hungarian Hot Wax
  Thompson and Morgan – Anaheim, Hot Tepin
  Suttons – Peach Habanero, Demon Red
• Tomatillo:
  Eden project – Physalis ixocarpa ‘Purplr de Milpa’
• Lemon Grass:
  Thompson and Morgan – Cymbopogon citratus
• Cape Gooseberry:
  Mr. Fothergills – Golden Berry
• Grass:
  Thompson and Morgan – Pennesetum Cream Falls
• Eryngium:
  Thompson and Morgan – leavenworthii
• Echinacea:
  Thompson and Morgan – Pink Parasol

In this new veg area, I’m currently clearing some old stumps, plants and rocks before creating 3 square veg beds each 5 foot square. I have decided to edge the beds with concrete building blocks as they are relatively cheap and I hope will make it easier to flatten out the beds slightly as this part of the garden is on rather a slope. The ground here is ok, the soil looks good but is full of stones, I dug a huge number out of the raspberry beds when making those, and just over a spades’ depth down its clay so slightly raising the beds with allow extra compost to be added as well.

This doesn’t leave much space, as there are already 2 ornamental crab apple trees, the shed and the compost heaps but when the beds and paths are set out, I might just be able to squeeze and small cold frame in which would be very useful. The paths will be bark chips as I don’t want to have to mow them and containers and possibly small beds in the ground will be fitted in where I can. I’m going to include herbs and flowers as well as fruit and vegetables to attract other wildlife and provide herbs for cooking and flowers for the house. There is already a large clump of dafodils next to the shed which I cut and put in a vase. It cannot be seen from any window of the house so it seems a shame to waste them.

Next to the compost heap is my rhubarb, which is growing nicely and I hope to get a harvest this year. I am particularly pleased this survived as being planted in the middle of the summer last year then all the snow this winter I was worried about it and it has sentimental value as I inherited these crowns which is why I don’t know the variety, but it was always prolific and tasty when growing in my Nan’s garden. Against the fence here is another survivor I thought I’d lost, Jenny, my kiwi. As she was planted late last year I gave her a cloche to protect her from the winter weather, however just after the first snow I noticed the cloche had blown away!When I got a chance I replaced it and staked it well but thought the snow had put an end to my kiwi growing, I was sad and didn’t go near the area until mum asked how my rhubarb was doing (she has the other half of the section I dug up from my Nan’s in a tub, and it also survived despite the snow and actually is more advanced than my plant in the ground), while I was looking at the tiny crinkled rhubarb leaves, I glimsed a touch of green under the cloche! I have left the cloche in place until there is not risk of frost or chilly nights as I don’t what those delicate new shoots to be damaged, I’m guessing a few more weeks, then I’d better get on with fixing wires for her to climb up.

Despite these new fixed beds, I’m not giving up growing in pots and containers and I have a new project this year – potatoes! I have 6 potato planters and 4 varieties of potato, one I have already planted out in a planter, the rest are chitting on my kitchen window sil. I’ll plant the others out soon and keep my fingers crossed until I get a harvest.

The BBC are running their Dig in campagin again this year, and I have ordered and received my seeds already. Last year I ordered later and the site was overwhelmed by requests so I (and many other people) didn’t get their seeds until it was too late to plant some of them. I have already sowed the salad mix seeds and about half the carrot seeds in two more containers. I am trying out some flexible containers from Haxnicks and the carrots are in the tallest one, which says it is suitable for carrots, so hopefully I’ll get a crop this year. I like the idea of these containers as I don’t have much space to store really big containers and veg tends to only be in them for some of the time, these I can fold up and store easily when not in use. They also don’t look too bad. I didn’t buy them until I found them on sale tho as I think usually they are quite expensive, but now I have 2 packs of three and it worked out at under £3 a planter.

Varieties I’ve used:

• Raspberries:
  Summer fruiting – Glen Moy (3), Malling Jewel (1), Glen Ample (3)
  Autumn fruiting – Autumn Bliss (3)
• Potatoes:
  First early – Swift (5, already planted out)
  Second early – Charlotte (5), Vivaldi (5)
  Early maincrop – Rooster (9)
• Salad:
  Dig in salad mix
• Carrots:
  Dig in carrots – Royal Chantaney Red

What have I been up to? Well I have been cooking even tho I haven’t blogged about it. I have baked pull apart garlic bread from The Frugal Girl, and a lovely yoghurt cake from the Waitrose magasine which has an orange and honey glaze and pistachio nuts on top but which doesn’t seem to be on line yet. I did actually cook a non-veggie recipe for February’s cook book challange which was salmon fish cakes, chosen by A, and I was told they were very tasty. I made a veggie version with tinned beans instead of the salmon and that was nice. There are probably others I have forgotten as well. Actually, I tried to bake brioche but it turned out more like house brick, so I won’t mention that again.

Once the weather finally warmed up a bit and stopped snowing and raining I managed to get out in the garden, but I’ll put that in another post.

I have been reading this blog for a while and her wonderfully evocative photos of all the stages of bread baking made me want to join in therefore it seems appropriate that the first real bread recipe I tried was this one. It was wonderfull! The kneading was somehow relaxing and the house smelt just how I imagined it would when looking at those photos. Actually this isn’t surprizing as I have a bread machine I used to use semi-regularly and I’ve used packet bread mixes before, but this challange was about baking bread from the basics of flour and yeast with my own hands, and I did, and it worked, yay me!

I actually doubled the recipe and baked two loaves at once. Next time I’d cook them a little longer so the outside was just a touch crisper and I’d be aware our house is freezing at the moment so rising took longer than expected therefore I had to cut the first one whilst still warm to eat for lunch and it squashed quite a bit but my mum and the little one both happily tucked into plenty of nice warm bread and homemade leek and potato soup and just left clean bowls so it couldn’t have been too bad. The second loaf we ate for tea with this favorite Delia recipe.

For next month’s bread baking I have far too much choice. I have bought this book on recomendation and I’m glad I have. From the little I have read so far it looks to be a very useful guide. I’m looking forward to trying sourdough and other breads made with wild yeast but I think I’ll take baby steps and leave that for a few months. I might try foccacia next month.

Sweet baking was not quite so successful this month. I tried this recipe, also from the blog mentioned above, but hadn’t realised ‘coffee cake’ to an American is a cake to eat with coffee, not coffee flavoured. After double checking the blog post and comments for missing ingredients and working this out, I decided to add some coffee as I wanted a coffee flavoured cake thereby making a different cake from the recipe. It also wasn’t an improvement, I think it would have been better without. The texture was also slightly off although I am sure there is nothing wrong with the recipe, but rather how I measured the ingredients as it uses American cup measures. I have a set of cup measures but was unsure how to measure the butter by volume, especially as the kitchen is so cold even butter left on the side is as hard as butter in the fridge. I used a website of conversions from cups to weights and weighed the butter but I don’t know whether this was truely equivalent. Can anyone more used to american recipes tell me how you measure more solid things as cups?

Not wanting to risk another disapointment in the cake baking department, I decided to stick to a book I have used before (but try a new recipe in the spirit of the challange) that uses weights rather than cups for measurements. I will try american recipes again, there are too many wonderful sounding ones on the internet not to, but I have visitors coming tomorrow so cookes Nigella’s ‘Lemon syrup loaf cake’ from the horribly titled ‘How to be a domestic goddess’. I can’t find an online version of this recipe but basically it is a slightly lemon-y sponge baked in a loaf tin then pricked all over with a skewer as soon as it comes out of the oven and a lemon syrup poured over the top. I’ll let you know if it tastes as good a it smells after tomorrow but the temptation to try it now is so hard to resist.

This recipe was from winter and was a chunky minestrone soup containing onion, carrot, garlic, potato, swede, tomatoes (tinned), beans (mixed tinned rather then the stated dried, cooked pinto), cabbage, pasta, bay leaves, marjoram and stock. Quite a lot of chopping up to dice all those vegetables but well worth it as it was very tasty, served with crusty french bread and a little grated parmesan on top it made a lovely lunch on a cold wet saturday. Three clean bowls and Hubby even had seconds! You can’t get much better than that and there is some left over for supper tomorrow or lunch on monday. I’m not sure it would keep its texture very well if frozen.

This was the first time I’d made minestrone soup from scratch but now I’ve done it, I can see it being a useful recipe for using up left over vegetables so I’m sure I’ll be cooking it again with a few variations.

I did make a few changes: I halved the quantities as only hubby and son (aged 2 and a half) would be eating it, I only had 3 chicken drumsticks in the freezer, I used half a tin of chickpeas because that was what was in the cupboard, mild chilli powder was used instead of fresh chillies, half stock cube for the stock, more stock instead of wine and I only used a few green olives because I didn’t have any black ones and hubby doesn’t eat olives so these were all eaten by son. I think it was basically the same recipe tho.

It was easy enough to cook although did create several extra plates etc for washing up, but I always create extra washing up when cooking to a recipe so it might just be me. I did check it half way through cooking and add extra water as it seemed dry, probably because of the small quantity in the bottom of a big pan.

Hubby said it needed more meat, but I knew 3 drumsticks was stingy however I am running out of stuff in the freezer because of being snowed in, and was a little too lemony for him but he ate it including the chickpeas which are one of the very few pulses he eats. Son ate the olives first which was no surprize as he loves olives, closely followed by the chicken. He also ate all the veg and some of the chickpeas, although he decided he didn’t want any more part way through, and a good bit of rice. The half quantity left about a serving spoonful of the rice / chickpea mixture so was about right. I’ll call it a success anyway.

What did I eat? Well I chose the challange to be in this format because I didn’t want to try and cook two different recipes on the same night as its very hard to find a veggie recipe and a meat based recipe that uses lots of the same basic ingrediants. After cooking the chicken dish, I had a red pepper left so thought I’d stuff it with flavours based on those in the chicken dish.

I started by simmering the pepper, whole, in boiling water for 5 minutes and at the same time I fried a couple of sticks of celery, finely chopped, because I’d used the last onion up, and a couple of sliced mushrooms. When the pepper was done I ran it under cold water until cool enough to handle and cut the top off and took out the inside bit. I made up some couscous with boiling water and mixed the onion, mushroom, other half a tin of chickpeas, couscous and a few green olives flavoured with some ground cumin, ground coriander and chilli powder. Stuffed the pepper and put the rest in a dish round the pepper. Squeezed half a lemon over the lot and added a couple of slices of lemon round the edge and a touch of grated parmesan on top and put the whole lot in the oven for about 25(ish) minutes. Despite its hastily thrown together nature, this came out rather tasty and having couscous was a nice change as this is something else hubby doesn’t like.

Hopefully I’ll be cooking a vegetarian minestrone recipe later in the week for the veggie part of this months challange. If the weather doesn’t improve soon, I’ll have to investigate yeast free bread recipes for the baking part and feel that packet mix postman pat cakes probably don’t fit the criteria, but they are Son’s favorite to make so think these are on the ‘to cook’ list in the near future.

We have a flock of long tail tits who visit about twice a day – early morning and middle of the afternoon, some days there are only 2 or 3, but other days there seems to be nearly a dozen. I think they are one of my favorite garden visitors as they look like little bird lollipops with their round bodies and stuck out tails.

Long tails are one of the success stories discovered by the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch as they are adapting to feeding from bird feeders rather than their more usual diet of little insects. In our garden their favorite is the fat ball feeders. This years Big Garden Bird watch is on 30th and 31st January and you can find out more information and pre-register here. If you start feeding the birds now, they should be used to visiting your garden for a feed by the time the BGB happens and you will see more birds.

I feed the birds bought bird food: Peanuts, Fat balls, Suet pellets, Mixed seed and Niger seed, but it is possible to feed them left overs. Bread on its own is not recommended, as it is not high in calories so can fill them up too much without giving them energy, but left over cake (!), grated cheese or a soft apple will all make a good meal for them. I have also poured the left over fat from a roast piece of meat onto breadcrumbs for them and this seems to go down well. There are lots of other bird cake recipes on line if you want to cook gourmet delights for your birds.

Another treat is live mealworms, and these can be so tempting that I have seen a friendly robin actually sit at the window to ask for his mealworms then come and sit on your hand eating them. I get mine from Wiggly Wigglers, here. If you order soon, they are still on sale at buy 3 tubs, get 3 free. I will be putting some of these out for the BGB to see just how many birds I can attract in the hour.

And finally, easiest of all but often forgotten especially when its freezing outside, make sure the birds have a source of clean, liquid water to drink.

I am hoping to do more with that garden, particularly growing more veggies and making a perminant veg patch so I will try to record how that goes.

I have started a new cooking challange, rather than trying to cookmy way through a single book, I have decided to set an easier target. I am going to try and cook one new, seasonal veggie recipe, one new meat or fish based recipe and two new baking recipes, one sweet and one savory every month. Hopefully this will be achievable and expand the range of things I cook as well as being an incentive to try bread baking which I have wanted to try for ages.