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July 30 2010
potatoes
pink and white tatties
Never before have we had so many of these beautiful apples of the Earth. Pull a stem and reach into the ground for tuber after tuber – the plot is full of them 
Weather conditions have no doubt contributed to this abundant harvest but I’ve also been a more diligent waterer on dry days. Sunshine finds me standing at the well, filling cans with the water so rich in iron it smells of metal. Plants love it. Potatoes are thirsty roots.
…and we do love these pots: in salads with mayo and chives; as a side dish with marg and parsley and in soups with kale and onion from the garden too
Related posts:
July 27 2010
sweet things
Alpro soya milks and puddings
Have been sent some Alpro goodies to try We do like their soya milk. The only one I didn’t know about was the ‘milk alternative’ suitable from 1 year old. Lots of extra vitamins and iron in it (and surprisingly nice in nocaf!). The chocolate puddings are lush lush lush…
Blackcurrant smoothies, there have been a few more – here’s a before pic Layered up are borage flowers, gooseberries, blackcurrants, leaf beet, parsley, linseeds (flax), brazil nuts, bananas and apple juice.
smoothie to be
sweet red onion from garden - very pleased with these
blackcurrant cake - currants cooked in batter and raw squished into icing too
also made some banana muffins with lots of redcurrants in – no pic but very good
Charlotte's strawberry jam bubbling on cooker - taking 'sweet' to new levels!!
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July 04 2010
rhubarb, tweets and elderflowers
rhubarb and ginger jam
We have a veritable forest of rhubarb so into jam some of it went yesterday! recipe over on frugal where there is also a twitter competition detailed on the front page to win my copy of The Moneyless Man (who is vegan by the way, don’t think I mentioned that before) 
Gathered some elderflowers in the wood yesterday too and made some cordial sort of from this recipe though I made much less as I know it doesn’t keep for long even in the fridge, even with citric acid which I didn’t use this time… the taste of summer in it is amazing…
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June 29 2010
joyful swimming and pie
early morning swimming
When we bought this house the old endowments associated with our previous mortgage were no longer needed and we wanted to invest the money from them in this property (trying to be sensible). The kitchen was hanging by a thread so that got replaced and the children were given the choice of what the rest should be spent on. Their chosen pool has been a fantastic buy, on it’s 4th summer now, Charlotte being the most determined swimmer among us, beating her personal best every day!
from above
Wishes Come True Pie from the novel Hubble Bubble, very delicious even with some substitutions for things like grains of paradise and job’s tears
root veg, nuts, seeds, grains, gravy topped with pastry
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June 27 2010
green soup and juice, raw chocolate pud
minty pea and nettle soup
wheatgrass
been drinking wheatgrass juice with friends
slight deviation away from green
Raw chocolate pudding teamed up with Swedish Glace (booja booja stuff in a tub is raw if you prefer). Pudding was made thus: grind up some raw chocolate nibs (could use cocoa though of course not raw) then blend with a large avocado and 2 ripe bananas with a squirt of agave nectar – makes enough for four people. I also added a little water for a smoother result.
Poppies:
inside a flower
seeds within
Related posts:
May 20 2010
you think i’ve been quiet…
i haven’t! i’ve been very noisy and busy, but it has all happened offline. i know, what is this offline of which i speak? it appears to be the thing one discovers when one stops playing with fabric and fibre and ventures into the world of offices. ick! no, they don’t pay me, but i get moral brownie points that i can splurge on sweetcorn fritters from vegan with a vengeance:
in fact, they were so good i have to post them twice!
i also FO’d a project that i’ve had kicking about for a while: rav
May 15 2010
planting log, sitting, eating, stones and sea
broad beans and leeks in one of the raised beds
I have just planted over 300 little leeks, lots of kale and purple sprouting brocolli seedlings, carrots, radish, garlic, basil, sunflowers and flat leaf parsley as an alternative to the madly (but wonderfully) continually self seeding curly
allotment bit at bottom of garden, greenhouse left
The thinking of the planting this year is to grow things that both do well up here and that we eat lots of, no experimentation with things like aubergines which only just manage to flower before winter! Also in are lettuce, rocket, mixed salad leaves, french beans, broad beans, peas, potatoes, onions and in greenhouse there are tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes and a giant grapevine obtained on freecycle and doing very well so far. Perennial things like rhubarb, chives, lovage, bronze fennel, mint and leafbeet are thriving. Fruit bushes and trees all look to be heading for a bumper year. Cold winter can’t have hurt them
sitting together continues, even in sunless situations
and the eating: chocolate sesame snaps now have thick chocolate stripes on them
chocolate sesame snaps
Made some gorgeous dandelion fritters to go with wild garlic pesto – saw them on home baked a while ago and used basic vegan pancake mix of soya milk and self raising flour beaten to a thick batter, a flower in each spoonful/fritter:
a nice lunch
no shortage of this ingredient in the garden
next wild food recipe on the list to try – Cat’s nettle pies!
stones and sea
broken arm update: after two weeks it has healed so well it does not need cast anymore and writing can take place again
May 09 2010
hang the parliament and eat cake
we’ve managed to get a hung parliament. for those of us who object to our political system (FPTP), this is great news. it thoroughly demonstrates how inadequate the system is for a modern democracy with more than two parties competing for seats and power. however, the current state of affairs sees our bid for PR on a knife-edge as the reformist liberal democrats are in negotiation with the vocally anti-reformist conservatives. my fridge has made its views very clear:
yesterday, in response to all this, j and i went on a demo to campaign for a fairer electoral system. since purple is the colour of the suffrage movement from, oh, so long ago, we were requested to wear it. i don’t actually own a single item of purple clothing(!), but i managed to find this quite lovely vintage number for a couple of quid at a local charity shop (excuse the shocking photo – i’m not very good taking photos in a mirror):
its vice-like grip on my ample endowments made me feel like a suffragette in a corset (note the fugly back-fat coming into view)! so, i wore it with green for effect. the glasgow showing was poor, but thousands turned out in london and succeeded in gaining counsel with nick clegg himself.
i drowned my political fears in domestic goddessness today with scones:
and chocolate cupcakes from vegan cupcakes take over the world:
we bought some hemp milk yesterday and, although pricey and a little hemp-y in flavour, it imparts a delicious texture to baked goods.
i still haven’t finished my orange election jumper. i think that says something, but i’m not sure what. still, at least i won’t have to think too hard about whether to use blue or red buttons… not that it looks like i’ll get much of a say in that, anyway!
April 18 2010
April 16 2010
f***-you cupcakes
so, i have to go to a birthday party this weekend. i usually like birthday parties, but i hate obligation, and i really hate one-sided obligation. the pressure’s not coming from the person whose birthday it is, but it is coming from the party organisers, who expect me to be there and, furthermore, “don’t have time” to make cake suitable for vegans “as well as everything else”. by now it’s a moot point to make that vegan-suitable cake is not exclusively suitable for card-carrying vegans. i despair.
so, i’m making that point in person. i will probably suffer bad karma forever, for i am making fuck-you cupcakes:
i’ll post more photos when they’re all done, but believe me, revenge has never tasted so sweet!
April 15 2010
growth
colour
Planted my berry bushes from Suttons yesterday, well protected there from the rabbits Potatoes are going in today… Dipping into the Anastasia series again to get truly inspired again with growing, so different from anything else I’ve ever read.
honey berry bush, in beside goji and blue
Made wonderful leek, potato and wild garlic soup from the recipe on Cat’s blog
pond flowers
fairy all springlike now beside the Archangel dead nettles
rabbit bones
daff
new leaves on sweet chestnut
flowering currant - is full of bees, lovely noise
new mint
April 08 2010
of Russians and swans
woods and loch
Totally loving the gorgeous springness that is all around now Had some lovely wild garlic pesto yesterday and think may do same today. Seems to have less of a garlic hit when very young though still very good.
freshly picked wild garlic and the sky
Swans are still following us around – whooping ones fly over the garden and woods regularly just now and look – we have new swan taps on the bath following a water gushing disaster with the old very antiquated ones!
swan tap
fitted for us by a Russian plumber, first plumber to come here who didn’t make a soap opera-esque drama about getting the water on and off with our old system and was also gentle and kind to elderly cats and frenzied frogs! More Russian-ness in The Turning Point from the beautiful Misha and Grishko ballet shoes from here:
ballet shoe heel
sandy shore of the loch
March 17 2010
Spring pics
The only crocus to survive intensive rabbit grazing
beautiful biscuits for a ballet day with the girls...
cake too, no anorexic dancing here
poor mangled nut feeder - deer trample it to get the peanuts out!
soon there will be daffs
willow catkins and the sky
chives
parsley
free veg seeds from the bbc here
March 09 2010
reflections and windows
The bridge did get finished:
Now this may appear to be a blurry photo gone wrong – well, it is - but it is also a picture of trees reflected in chocolate so worthy of inclusion
It is a montezuma’s very dark bar…
February 28 2010
walnut cake and sheep
Vegan Easter has been updated
Walnut cake with a tablespoon of Nocaf added to the mix. It is not coffeeish as had intended but is very nice:
1st of March tomorrow, so will it get more springlike?
February 14 2010
toast, Valentine cookies and a cheesecake
We do still favour green smoothies for breakfast but on a cold winter’s day sometimes only decadently topped toast will do
Valentine cookies: made this basic dough and did half plain (some topped with coconut), a quarter of it with a little finely chopped fresh ginger and the other quarter with unwaxed lemon rind, beautiful flavours!
Tried this Mamma Cucina cheesecake, very impressive to get a vegan one readymade in a shop but not a patch on homemade… what is though?
and a scene from a recent sunny day (more snow predicted for tomorrow!)
February 02 2010
cheap
a frugal recipe again, basic pasties :)
and bargains to be had – the book people are offering 10% off all orders until midnight tomorrow (Wed. 3rd Feb) – just enter WIN10 at checkout for offer.
January 05 2010
edinburgh xmas
they're fieldfares, and had made their way into j's mum's garden to eat the last of her pink rowan berries during the hard frost that accompanied the snow we've been having for the past few weeks.we'd gone for the handmade xmas approach and so didn't really have much to offer in return for our epic treatfest, which included a new teapot and some pekoetea to go with it, an alessi jar with some dried beans to fill it, two sets of whisky glasses (j and i love our single malt!), a tweed flatcap for j and some awesome books:
so, left to right, that's veganomicon (unbelievable book! super-highly recommended), vegan cupcakes take over the world (perfect for the sweet tooth in everyone, not just vegans), jekka's complete herb book (how to grow, harvest and prepare herbs for cooking, medicinal and cosmetic uses), and the twisted sisters sock workbook (beautiful handspun, beautiful socks, inventive approaches and inspiring ideas), phew!we just gave folk homemade truffles and knitted items...
apparently, this is the coldest winter for 30 years. really, it couldn't have come at a worse time. just as it seemed the tide was turning on public opinion of climate change science, this year has really put a spanner in those works. a feeble summer, dodgy scientific practices, failed UN summits, and now more snow than there has ever been in my lifetime. as much as this is actually evidence for rather than against climate change, it rarely gets interpreted that way - least of all by the deniers. so, it really feels stacked against at the moment...listening: most of the day, to j's sister's will young cd
reading: too many brilliant books!
December 08 2009
chocolate brownie cheesecake!
it's the chocolate brownie from how it all vegan topped with the cheesecake from easy vegan cooking. you just make up the two cake batches then put the brownie mix in a round baking tin and pour the cheesecake mix on top of it before baking the whole lot.
as you can see from the above photo, there's a bit too much fluffy brownie layer and a bit too little stiff cheesecake layer. next time, i'll halve the baking powder called for in the brownie mix and then halve the mix again for the cake quantity. i just felt it was too cake-like and not pudding-y enough to be a real brownie. i'll also double the cheesecake quantity and not bake the whole thing as long. i think i ended up leaving it in for over an hour, so maybe just the one hour next time should do it...
listening: mumford and sons
reading: turbulence 4: who will save us from the future?
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
