About
Veggie Guide to Glasgow
Cruelty Free Guide to Edinburgh
Accounts
Click here to check if anything new just came in.
July 20 2010
how does your garden grow?
Wildly. Freely. Abundantly. Rather similarly to Cat’s I see this morning! Sadly my courgettes are nowhere near as good as Penny’s (I’m hoping they’re late developers 
).
Some very early pics from before the sun was properly up this morning:
raised bed with kale, onions, radish and some small tomatoes
the small toms are ones I took out of an organic tomato and just stuck in the ground as an experiment – they are doing amazingly well though were started off a bit late. In there are also the four surviving cabbages that I overwintered. They gave us green leaves for smoothies right through to the end of January when most of them died (very low temp was hit one night). I should have put plastic over them… gardening is a constant learning experience.
This is a long post with MANY pics so click below if you want the rest of it
raised bed of broad beans, peas, sunflowers, leeks and the odd potato
odd potatoes are everywhere in the garden grown up from layers of kitchen compost – I let most of them grow and they’re already very delicious cooked with mint and then served with marg and parsely
broad beans - pods growing about 1cm a day just now with the heat and rain
peas, best straight from the pod into your mouth
amazing kale - harvested everyday, it just continually grows back
French beans in the tyre garden (no actual beans as yet)
growbag on patio - with last years lettuce and more of the experimental toms
Leaving things in as opposed to tidying everything up for winter, while disorganisation/laziness was the reason, has proved very fruitful. We use most lettuce as cut and come again – these are similar to iceberg and leaves are frequently nabbed for sandwiches, juice and salads. Some more winter surviving lettuce:
in the cold frame, a more likely place to live through winter
the jungle of the allotment bit at bottom of garden
Lots of potatoes in there (officially this time), purple sprouting broccoli, leeks, lettuce, chickweed, some late peas, beetroot, carrots, kale, leaf beet, rhubarb, parsley and garlic.
keenly awaiting broccoli
I planted rows of leeks between most things down here and in one of the raised beds – good for biodiversity and avoidance of pests (and another wonderful winter survivor/grower). I didn’t grow these from seed but bought a pot of about 300 from a small local hardware and garden shop for £1.75. This was a rather fabulous price – when visiting a popular big garden centre I saw a set of 12 leeks there for £2.99, only very slightly larger then the potted ones I bought!
beautiful leek
Related posts:
July 08 2010
if the mountain defeats us…
Mither Tap against sun
but it didn’t, so we did not have to brave the mines of Moria, 3 times up and down Bennachie accomplished and quite a bit of money raised for the trees :) My legs hurt today!
at the bottom of the Mither Tap path
top of first climb up steep Mither tap path
down the Donview way
caterpillar
back up on top and heading down Rowan
These new signs help to avoid confusion, there are even paths at the bottom linking different carparks so you can go down different ways without reclimbing if you wish
no such plan for us - back up Rowan
This was the toughest climb being our third, even though it is the easiest path and most gentle slope.
resting on way up - some of the shoes did not make it (5 years old, ethical wares, much walking done)
reaching top 3rd time
steep final descent
down down down
treat picnic at bottom
rose cupcakes
Related posts:
July 02 2010
sea, river, Balvenie, vikings
dunes
Had a wonderful afternoon with friends, sea swimming and boogie boarding – walking over dunes beforehand. Then another busy day yesterday at a home ed group viking re-enactment workshop (associated with the Dufftown Heritage Festival this weekend), also visiting Balvenie Castle and Banff Museum (which is exactly as I remember it as a child, slightly disturbing).
had picnic by the river Deveron in Huntly
Balvenie Castle door
looking down to hall
window
club with spikes
bits and pieces
battling vikings
Saw some of the lovely t-shirts made by one of the families in the group beautifully modelled – they have home ed, breast feeding, Pictish and Celtic designs (Charlotte has a Celtic one).
Related posts:
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:
June 17 2010
Tap o’ Noth and Dunnydeer
OS thing at top, Pictish fort walls visible
Practice triple climb of other hills! Tap O’ Noth first, then Dunnydeer twice.
a tough climb this one
up we go
then on Dunnydeer, Tap o' Noth in misty distance
down the other side of dunnydeer, before going back up and home
beautiful hill
June 12 2010
trees for life
Four of us girls (Charlotte, me and Lucy and Eleanor from moonrabbits) are doing a sponsored climb to raise money for trees for life, the wonderful charity that is replanting the Caledonian Forest. We intend climbing Bennachie 3 times in one day, taking all three routes to the Mither Tap 
in about a months time. Trees for life is not a member of just giving or any such online fundraiser but please feel free to donate directly on link above if you wish For every £5 raised a tree will be planted.
A favourite of our kids years ago, the lorax speaks for the trees. Richard St. Barbe Baker “the man of the trees“ who inspired Trees for Life, was sometimes fondly known as the lorax
(lorax on amazon) Buy UK or Buy US
A nice tree filled place we cycled round recently, thanks to a neighbour telling us the best way to get in there:
rhododendron way into the woods
more rhoddies
a little loch
June 09 2010
Peregrines
Peregrine Wildwatch Centre
Wonderful place this, great home ed group event there
quarry face where the nest is
red squirrel
female peregrine in tree - she was making a lot of noise!
fast
building a hide
impression of a caterpillar called Bob
best friends
a few more pics in our home education set on flickr
and a short video of the squirrels below, much topical talking in background…
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 10 2010
a spot of sun
Fantine and Toby - not the best of friends but they will share a sunspot
and some ballet feet pics:
in parallel
rise
must learn to pull socks up
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 06 2010
polytunnels and taps
Weve had a few spring-like days now, causing me to dig over some ground for the little polytunnel and clean and set up the coldframe to let the ground warm up for salad seeds. Browsing Suttons trying to decide what to plant this year – will have more room with extra raised beds… this really does feel like waking up after winter! The pond is finally unfrozen today so I expect frogly activity soon It’s been like this in varying thickness of ice and pattern for months:
Dance mania continues with ballet, tap, jazz and contemporary being studied :)
Books and films amany dug out to accompany this in fine home educating fashion. The Ballet Companion is a gorgeous book, it’s been to good for me to read that things have come on with problems such as eating disorders and painful pointework (ouch pouches – love them!) being dealt with much more compassionately in general. High quality vegan ballet shoes are even available As for films… oh so many, from White Nights to A Chorus Line, loving them all, also deeply appreciative of friends sharing the enthusiasm and cost of DVD purchase… Had a nice time reading over T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and then watching Cats and boring delighting others with tales of cast members I knew/was taught by or with… same goes for Billy Elliot… ah to be an old “when I was young — fill in with unbelievable sounding fact–” person – it’s great fun!!
February 06 2010
swan lake
There were swans on the loch yesterday
Had a lovely day with friends morphing into a very balletic afternoon which was great fun. It’s been wonderful rediscovering ballet being for enjoyment, rather than an eternal striving (not to mention starving) for perfection. Looked out the old class music etc. I have but it’s all on cassettes – technology moved on a bit fast for me there 
Watched Fast Food Nation (quite good trailer there on amazon), fictional film based on the non-fiction book – strong stuff, a round of exploitation to go with the fries… good cast, making it very watchable though gradually more horrifying.
January 12 2010
a casserole and a cookbook
We will have been married 20 years this year… which causes me to reflect how far weve come, how much the world has changed in that time and to note the two items above. They were given to us as a wedding present by friends who I used to babysit for and here they are still with us, I don’t think any other dish we own has survived that long! The Cranks Recipe Book sparked my interest at once, as I had eaten in their restaurant in London while a student, and it called to mind lovely brick walls and earthenware plates of hearty soup (they now have one restaurant in Devon).
It really taught me to cook, being the only cookery title I had at the time (bit of a change there then) in our first flat that we loved so much. I was fairly clueless when it came to the culinary arts. I remember phoning my mum at times with questions such as ‘how do you cook a neep? I can’t even seem to cut it up’. With the book I learned to bake bread, make cakes and the wonderfully frugal crecy plate pie, prepare soups and casseroles got put in the dish It influenced me in more subtle ways too. Being the one and only it got thoroughly read and I absorbed the health oriented nature of the pages, reading for example, how much adding fresh herbs enhanced the nutritional value of the food. I remember the excitement of planting up a small herb garden and reading more deeply into these subjects. Looking at it now I notice all the cheesy recipes but you could just use any one of the many vegan cheeses available now or leave it out altogether.
Bit different when we first went vegan - a vegan cookbook obtained from the library that shall remain nameless (mainly as I can’t remember it’s name, I think it was somewhat generic, but also I do not want to slander it as it may have had other redeeming recipes) was responsible for me making a vegan cheese out of marg and yeast extract 13 years ago - absolutely disgusting, totally foul!!
So, my cranks book, heavily marked with food, water and childrens crayons. It is now available in a swanky new asparagus covered edition but you can still pick up the original for a penny
As for the dish, it still gets used though not as much anymore. The odd apple/rhubarb crumble is popped in it. I now favour my big Le Creuset that you can cook on the hob and in the oven with - very handy for making a sheperdess/red dragon pie base in and just putting mashed tatties on top and then into the oven it goes. I am very lucky to also have two similar cast iron AGA pans/casseroles given to us by another friend who had them sitting unwanted and unused in his garage, and these are my 3 usual dinner cooking pans now.
Weve always been blessed with friendship I am currently reading Walking to Greenham sent to me by a wonderful woman and friend… a fascinating book and I find myself contemplating the larger worldwide changing of the times. What will the next 20 years bring?
December 11 2009
getting a bit festive
Charlotte’s mince pies and chocolate logs made by a friend… said logs went very well with A Christmas Carol in 3D. Wonderful film, amazing having snow falling all round us like that
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
