Just a brief blog

Today B. travelled from Wallasey to Stafford as she had a dental check-up.  She’d arranged to meet up with a friend later in the evening and wanted to shop at the supermarket as well, so we invited her out for a pub meal at a nearby hostelry that serves food all day.  We knew we had time to fit this in her busy schedule.  We placed our order at the bar and waited for the meal to be served.  When it arrived they had made a mistake and brought one meal that we hadn’t chosen.  I said I would have the meal they had prepared as long as they adjusted the price because I had paid for a more expensive option. (I really didn’t mind as it was a meal I have ordered on previous occasions).  They offered to replace the meal but I said I was happy to eat what had been cooked, so they apologised profusely and refunded the cost of the meal.  

I ate for free - that’s the sort of mistake I don’t mind.

Therapies

Gardening and cooking are two activities which I find are therapeutic.  Days are less fraught when you are busy and on Sunday we worked all day on the garden and cooking.

Suddenly, we have a mini-glut of courgettes and peas. I put in an online search for Courgette and Pea soup and I came up with many recipes – it was just a guess that these two vegetables would be combined.  So I printed off the most straightforward of the recipes and adapted it.

First I added potato, not one potato but about twenty miniscule potatoes that were part of the harvest from the potatoes that were grown in the potato planters (large bags with handles so that they can be moved about).  Then I didn’t have any fresh basil so I used dried and guessed about a teaspoonful would be sufficient. I didn’t use the fresh cream, which was optional according to the recipe and I omitted the large pinch of salt.  I’m trying to make sure that we don’t overdo the salt.

The cooking meant I was kept busy preparing the ingredients and then getting through the mountain of washing up that ‘real’ cooking produces.  The bonus was eating the soup with warm bread rolls – the flavour was mild but good enough to use the recipe again.  Since the recipe produced enough for six servings we will be using it up over the next few days.

F was busy getting the garden back into some sort of order.  The hedge at the front of the house needed cutting so the electric shears were used – the trimming doesn’t take too long, the clearing up after takes more time.  Then F had to get the ladders out to trim the climbing hydrangea from around the windows at the front of the house.  As the lawnmower had to be moved to get the ladders out of the garage F said he might as well cut the front lawn so now we are looking quite tidy at the front of the house.  I mixed up weed killer glyphosate and sprayed the persistent weeds that are growing between the paving slabs and in the gutters – if you pull them out and leave just a little bit of root in the ground they grow back with a vengeance.  The gardening waste bins are full to the top and should be emptied today – ready for the next load. 

By the time we had finished the gardening jobs it started to rain – F was still cutting the front lawn but he decided to complete the job – he was not using an electric mower.  Everything that he had to pack back into the garage was wet.  He was soaked by the time he came in but he was able to warm up with homemade Courgette and Pea Soup.

Harvest

Another long break from the blog – I must try harder.

The garden has suffered from a lack of attention this year and considering that I didn’t put anything into the ground until early June I am lucky to have any produce at all.

I planted potatoes in large bags after last year’s scabby crop in the veg plot.  Yesterday the first bag was emptied, with the help of the under-gardener, as the tops of the potatoes plants had wilted away.  The resulting crop from ten seed potatoes – beautiful, blemish free and about enough for two meals!  A neighbour had said that they never managed to get reasonable quantities when they used bags to grow potatoes.

You can judge for yourself.

 

 The courgettes have been equally lacking – how do you manage to not get a glut of courgettes?
 

The one crop that has bucked the trend – the magnum bonum peas – a late cropping variety that were popular in Victorian times. 

Last summer, I was sent a present of six pea seeds by a fellow Open University Student who I had met for the first time when we both attended a revision weekend before the astronomy exam. We discovered that we both enjoyed gardening and when I told her I had recently started a veg patch she promised to send some seeds.

There were not many peas to eat last year but from the pods that were left on for seed there has been a bumper crop this year.  The peas grow quite tall and need a frame to climb through.

You can judge for yourself.