4 days of foodieness! (Well actually - we did water the allotment too...)

Well, we've had a busy few days here in (mostly) sunny Devon.  As I predicted much cheese was purchased as well as several nice pints of ale consumed; or should I say 'quaffed'  [I loved this sign] at the food festival and now my fridge and freezer are both well stocked with tasty morsels.  [The bloke on the bar seemed so impressed with 3 ladies - Ma, big sis and I - all having pints of real ale he insisted on a pic of us.  Not sure whether that's slightly creepy or flattering!]  Whilst there I purchased a second smaller chopping board for pungent things like garlic.  This is a whacking solid bit of beech wood [really shouldn't have made it the first thing I bought!] and cost me a fiver.  Not bad considering that with a little care I should never need to replace it.  It came from the same people I got my full size oak one from [you'll have seen it in recipe pics] a few years back and is also made from reclaimed wood.  I really have no excuses to get any more now but they are truly things of beauty.

Another purchase I'm rather pleased with is this smoked pepper - ok not even vaguely pretending to be frugal [though you can lift basic food with judicious seasoning as long as you have the options in the cupboard] but it's very tasty without being overwhelming.  Although the bloke on the stall recommended it with things like steak I can announce it goes well with a salmon cream cheese roll for brekkie, garnished with a little sorrel from the allotment.  I think it'd work with eggs as well; with most things if you like the smoked flavour.  I'm a fan anyway!

I'm afraid this is a bit of a short post [I've watering to do] but really - if you're any kind of foodie at all go to one of these shows just so you've had the experience.  You don't have to go mad and buy far too much cheese like I did - virtually every stall has samples to taste and there's something for everyone.  Look up your local show and go now!  We picked up details for a couple of local monthly food fairs / famer's markets whilst we were there and I have now truly set my heart on attending Sturminster Newton Cheese Festival in September.  Oh - and making our own cheese but that's another post...

Happy long weekend!

Well that's as up to date as I've managed to get I'm afraid.  You'll have to wait for next week for news of our seaside forage (mussels and seaweed - and it hasn't killed us yet either!), cookie making, countryside wanders and most excitingly - this weekend's South West Food Festival here in sunny Exeter.  Pop in - it's great.  Even better I got reduced price tickets through work!  Ma and big sis are visiting for it and Chap and I shall stock up on cheeses and goodies - there's often some festival-deal bargains to be had.  We shall have to remember the size of the fridge though!!  Enjoy the 4 days if you have them.  :-D

Slow Cooker Carrot and Coriander Soup

Short on time and heavy on carrots?  [They were on the Aldi super 6!]  Knock up this slow cooker soup with a bit of chopping and finish it off when it's wanted.  Time frugal as well as cost frugal!  I'm good to you aren't I?  [Well - to myself!!] Although carrot and coriander is one of my favourite soups I realised I don't have a single recipe written down for it, the horror!!  I made this up with a bit of looking at a parsnip recipe from Sophie Grigson's veg book.  It can just as easily be made conventionally on a hob as well as in a SC [in fact I finished it off on the hob] - just simmer for long enough until the veg are soft enough to blend rather than leaving them in the slow cooker for several hours.
Carrot & Coriander Soup
2 red onions (or use one decent medium sized yellow one - I happened to have red ones in the cupboard)
2 lg / 4 sml cloves garlic

1 tbsp EVOO
'Thumb' of fresh root ginger*
1.5 lb / 700g-ish carrots
0.5 lb / 225g-ish spuds
1.5pt veg stock plus 0.25pt or
0.25 pt milk to slacken soup if liked
Living plant coriander (69p-ish Aldi!) / big bunch of it
Knob butter
S + P
0.5 tbsp lime juice
A little grated cheese - medium - mature cheddar or red leicester I'd suggest

Put the oil in the SC and turn it onto 'high'.
Roughly chop the onions and add them to the SC.  Add the finely chopped garlic and stir.
Grate / zest or finely chop the root ginger and stir into the SC pot.

Roughly chunk the carrots - being frugal aware make sure you get all the veg from round the tops - see pic.
Peel and chunk the spuds.  (Most of the time I don't bother peeling veg but for a smoothish soup you're blending you really need to.)
Add both to the SC and pour on enough stock to cover.  Mine needed 1.5 pints.

Trim the leaves from your coriander and put them in a glass of water in the fridge.  Chop the rest of the stalks (you've probably got about 2-3"), ensuring you get all you can from the pot and stir them into the SC.
Turn the SC down to medium or low, depending how long you've got / are out of the house for.  Mine was on low for 6.5 hours.
Blend.  Don't be disappointed by the taste at this point.  Once we add the seasonings it comes into it's own.
When ready to eat retrieve the coriander leaves from the fridge, reserve a few for garnishing if liked and chop the rest.  Stir into the soup and gently reheat on the hob. 
It'll be quite thick so slacken with a little more stock / milk at this point if liked, or leave thick if that's your preference.  I added 0.25 pint milk.
Stir a knob of butter in and add salt and pepper to taste.  It did need salt to bring the flavours out.
Remove from the heat and stir the lime juice through. 
Serve scattered with a little grated cheese and the reserved coriander leaves.

This was really good - the zing added by the lime worked so well but next time I'd up the amount of ginger used.  Guess it depends how big your thumbs are!!* Adaptable too - just leave out the cheese, butter and milk for a vegan dish.  I can also see it working with a little coconut milk in place of the extra 0.25 pint liquid at the end.  As ever with any 'recipes' I make up it's adaptable as you wish / are dictated to by the fridge & cupboard contents.  More of a guideline than a strict recipe.  Just so long as it's enjoyed.  :-)
[I've noticed this post gets a fair few hits, if you try it out - and I hope you do, please leave a comment and let me know how you got on.  It'd be nice to find others enjoyed it too!]

* What in the world is a 'thumb' of ginger?  It really is one of the most useless measurements in the world.  What if you're a big burly bloke or a dwarf - the size of your piece of ginger will bear no relation at all to each others.  I can cope with a 'knob' of butter and a 'glug' of olive oil - in fact I now believe them to be measurements which mean 'enough to add the desired flavour to the dish and that you're comfortable with in relation to your waistline' but a 'thumb' of ginger?  I ask you!  (Although I suppose that it could be argued there's a potential for difference in 'knob' size as well...)

Allotment update

Well, where to start?  It seems rather a long time since I got a proper regular 'this is me wittering on about what I've been up to' post up on here.  Perhaps a little allotment update as it seems to change daily at this time of year.  Every time I look around the seeds in the front window have grown another inch I'm sure!  Triffids on a bid for world domination!  (Yes, yes - I know that was an excess of exclamation marks then.)

My allotment is long and thin and one short edge abuts the track round the site.  Theres a small slope here from the track to the plot which was just dead space with grass on it which I wanted to utilise better with some 'raised' (built into the bank) 3 sided beds.  These could then be planted up with bee friendly plants - good for the bees and hopefully good for my plot by attracting more pollinators to it.  Well - mention it and it shall be done.  Chap was there with wood assorted and power tools and in a couple of hours I was the proud owner of 2 smart, free, upcycled beds.  All the wood came from other jobs - old fences, roofs etc.  The preservative I've used on the insides was a branded end of line one in £land that I've had sitting around at home for a good 8 years!  From this:

 Grassy bank and scraggy old bits of wood. 

To this:

Pretty smart eh?  (Ignore the rasps there - they need tidying up I know!)   Both are now nearly full of earth - as I've been prepping, raking over & planting each bed I've been shoveling the rock hard lumps that refuse to break up [see pic above left to see what I mean] into these.  I'll cover with some compost and plant up very soon.  I have various wild flower bee happy seedlings at home to go in and more seeds to sprinkle over.

Speaking of seeds here's some random exciting heirloom bean varieties a friend sent me.  I have planted a few of all of them and passed some on where there were spares.  I also got the Pea Bean recently after reading about it on littleblackfox's blog.  It's also a heirloom variety - I found them at Nicky's Nursery - incidentally very reasonable on price and very helpful on the phone when you realise you forgot something on your order the day before so call up to see if you can add it in!  Lovely people. 

I hope they all do ok - the Pea Bean is the only one not to have sprouted yet!  They're in loo roll inners at home along with 3 different runner beans, celeriac, 2 types of beetroot, the bee plants, asparagus peas, soya beans [they haven't come up yet either thinking about it], herbs, the Chap's chillis, pumpkin, 3 different squashes, courgettes, chard &c, &c, &c... 

Since these photos of the plot, where you can see my [somewhat straggly] broad beans; we've also planted the spuds, onion and garlic sets, peas x 2 varieties, parsnip x 2 varieties, salsify - not expecting much there as the seeds were somewhat out of date - I've put the lot in to see if anything happens, Hamburg Parsley and 3 different types of salad leaves as catch crops between these.  Also 2 different radish types in the centre of the runner poles which are in but so far only colonised by a few sweet peas - worth having a few in amongst the runners to attract the pollinating insects to the area.  More pollinators = more food for you.  Companion planting a go-go!  Plus I like sweet peas.  Anyway, this is the product of a couple of weekends.  Now the rest to do - toms, carrots, kale, perpetual spinach beet, the oriental radish the Chap bought, swede, land cress, saltwort, cabbage, cauli, sprouts, er - I'm sure there's lots more but I'll have to check the seed box[es.]  I defy anyone to have as many packs of seeds as me and remember them all!!  :-D  What have you planted?

Occular Errors Part Deux

The next 'thrilling' installment in an increasingly longwinded and irritating post attempt.  :-/

2 days later I was back at the hospital; after being shunted around for 4 hours they decide to do corneal scrapes - anaesthetic drops in your eyes followed by scraping with a mini scalpel blade (or what looked like one) from the surface of your eye - fun.  They also upped the drops to every 2 hours and gave me an additional stronger one to tke every 2 hours as well.  Needless to say I was quite concerned by all this but toddled off and managed to get the right bus back into town.  At which point the amaesthetic drops wore off and I was in muchos pain for the rest of the night where they'd scraped my eyes.  :-(
The following Monday I returned once more for another check and the results of the scrapings.  Nada - they had grown nothing.  As I understand it keratitis is normally caused by an infection of some kind but they thought that perhaps as I was already on the antibiotic drops possibly this had succeeded in stopping it.  Either way they were very pleased with my progress and the ulcers had lessened in size.  Phew!  I'm now back to the ranks of the bespectacled; for 6 weeks at least, and finished the course of antibiotics.  I am very very relieved that they're getting better.  I was painfully aware that you only get one set of the ol' baby blues [ok - bluey-greyish-greens] so should anything hideous happen to them that's your lot.  They must be looked after, a lesson I'll be well aware of in future.
Well - what with one thing and another I'm now mightily behind on the posts.  I will endeavour to catch up to the present day but bear in mind it's another 3 day week...  :-)

Hope you all had a nice easter break.

Unexpected break in transmission

I'm still having trouble posting this so will do it in parts. Here then is the first 'thrilling installment'. lol

Well - I certainly didn't mean to suddenly abandon posting like that. Unfortunately my eye was decidedly dodgy so I ended up in the Walk-in centre on the Monday. "No lenses[contact] for 48 hours" I was told sternly - making me effectively useless as I can focus less than a foot from my face before it all goes blurry. If it didn't clear up by the end of that time I was to go to the hospital eye centre.
Wednesday at the hospital - Keratitis - ulcers/abcesses on your cornea. Not clever and they made it very clear they were glad I was there. This is something which if untreated can have serious ramifications for your sight so I was very glad I was there as well. There is an infection you can easily get in conjunction with Keratitis that is particularly nasty and can destroy your cornea in 2 days flat. Scary stuff. I was told I can't even think about wearing contacts for 6 weeks. They gave me antibiotic eye drops and told me to use them 4 times a day and and return in 2 days to check on my progress. Meanwhile to go to the opticians and get glasses - something I didn't have an up to date pair of. [My last pair is 18 years old!]

Return for your next exciting update - well, when I get the effing thing to work. Had quite enough tussling with it now! I'm off to enjoy the easter-time sunshine. Enjoy!

test test test

Harumph - I'm off unexpectedly and Blogger decides it's no longer my friend. I'm trying desperately hard to get a thrilling account of why I suddenly vanished posted on here and it isn't playing at all. Just going to see if this posts...