We harvested our first beetroots yesterday and they were so tasty. We pulled three out of the ground and turned them into a mouth-watering salad with honey, mustard and goat's cheese. The recipe is below - it's an adaption of a hot beetroot salad we discovered on the BBC Good Food website.
Ingredients
3 raw beetroots
1 lemon
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 tsp clear honey
1 tsp grainy mustard
Lots of goat's cheese!
Method
1. Boil the beetroot for about 20-30 minutes depending on the size. The larger the beetroot the longer the boiling time.
2. Test the beetroot is cooked by inserting a sharp knife into it, if the beetroot slides off easily then it is cooked.
3. Peel the beetroot and slice into thin circles.
4. Add a little oil into a frying pan and gently fry the beetroot for a couple of minutes.
5. Drizzle the juice of the lemon over the beetroot.
6. Add the honey and mustard and toss so all the slices are well coated.
7. Crumble a very generous helping of goat's cheese on top of the beetroot slices and serve.
Sunday, 24 July 2011
Thursday, 21 July 2011
A soggy garden
It is so wet out there! I've just been taking refuge in the greenhouse from the relentless drizzle. The garden has had a good soaking over the last few days but a few little rays of warm sunshine would certainly be much appreciated now.
If the sun does come out this weekend, I will take some photos of the garden as it's looking very very different to how it was a couple of months ago. It's exploded into a sea of green and looks like a real jungle. The neighbour came over the other day and looked at the garden through the kitchen door and exclaimed, "Wow, your garden is a jungle! But in a good way." He was very quick to add the bit at the end. Maybe too quick. ;) Yes, it's true the garden does need a bit of tidying up and a bit of pruning. The banana trees have grown and spread out and their large leaves are providing a canopy of bright green above your head as you walk through the garden. The campsis has spread across the new fence so enthusiastically that you can hardly make out the fence anymore through all the long green stems and the beautiful red explosions of the trumpet-like flowers. The oleander recovered very well from its rigorous pruning over the winter and is now a fireball of green and the periwinkle has spread like wildfire around the phormium and its stems have even made their way over the wall of the path towards the broken paving.
Talking about the broken paving, this coming Monday the paving people arrive! Paving is big business these days it seems. The company whose quote we eventually accepted had over a two-month waiting list and their quote was by no means cheap. I've obviously missed my calling in life. If I had gone into the paving business this recession and economic crisis would have nothing on me!
Anyway, the two months are now up and our turn has come. The old grey slate slabs are finally going to be replaced with some bright Indian modak sandstone which will hopefully complement the brick-red paint on the walls of the borders very well. We're dreading the arrival of these paving people as it's going to be such an upheaval. A lot of the potted plants are going to have to move indoors to the study upstairs. We won't even be able to put them in the lounge or kitchen as these paving men are going to be using our lounge and kitchen as a thoroughfare to the garden. Ah the joys of living in a small London terraced house!
First they have to remove all the slate slabs and any bit of cement that is still currently there, they then have to remove a large amount of soil and dig quite deep, then they build some kind of sink hole for drainage and then they start cementing and cutting and laying the slabs. It's going to be noisy and dirty and messy! Poor Cowick Garden. It's not going to be a pleasant week but hopefully once it's done it will look good. And there will be photos in celebration including a full landscape view of the whole garden.
If the sun does come out this weekend, I will take some photos of the garden as it's looking very very different to how it was a couple of months ago. It's exploded into a sea of green and looks like a real jungle. The neighbour came over the other day and looked at the garden through the kitchen door and exclaimed, "Wow, your garden is a jungle! But in a good way." He was very quick to add the bit at the end. Maybe too quick. ;) Yes, it's true the garden does need a bit of tidying up and a bit of pruning. The banana trees have grown and spread out and their large leaves are providing a canopy of bright green above your head as you walk through the garden. The campsis has spread across the new fence so enthusiastically that you can hardly make out the fence anymore through all the long green stems and the beautiful red explosions of the trumpet-like flowers. The oleander recovered very well from its rigorous pruning over the winter and is now a fireball of green and the periwinkle has spread like wildfire around the phormium and its stems have even made their way over the wall of the path towards the broken paving.
Talking about the broken paving, this coming Monday the paving people arrive! Paving is big business these days it seems. The company whose quote we eventually accepted had over a two-month waiting list and their quote was by no means cheap. I've obviously missed my calling in life. If I had gone into the paving business this recession and economic crisis would have nothing on me!
Anyway, the two months are now up and our turn has come. The old grey slate slabs are finally going to be replaced with some bright Indian modak sandstone which will hopefully complement the brick-red paint on the walls of the borders very well. We're dreading the arrival of these paving people as it's going to be such an upheaval. A lot of the potted plants are going to have to move indoors to the study upstairs. We won't even be able to put them in the lounge or kitchen as these paving men are going to be using our lounge and kitchen as a thoroughfare to the garden. Ah the joys of living in a small London terraced house!
First they have to remove all the slate slabs and any bit of cement that is still currently there, they then have to remove a large amount of soil and dig quite deep, then they build some kind of sink hole for drainage and then they start cementing and cutting and laying the slabs. It's going to be noisy and dirty and messy! Poor Cowick Garden. It's not going to be a pleasant week but hopefully once it's done it will look good. And there will be photos in celebration including a full landscape view of the whole garden.
Saturday, 2 July 2011
Celebrating Wimbledon
It's the weekend of the Wimbledon finals and Nadal is playing so what better way to celebrate than with a Pimm's Punch! It's also ten years since I saw my tennis hero, Goran Ivanisevic win Wimbledon for the first time after entering the tournament on a wild card entry. He made history as no wild card entry had ever won the tournament before. What a match! He played the Australian Pat Rafter and the match went to five sets. It was so close the whole way through and I was there on Centre Court watching it. There was no roof on Centre Court back then and because of all the rain delays the men's final was played on a Monday which meant it was open to the public. I managed to get one of the last seats on Centre Court and to watch my longtime tennis hero finally win Wimbledon after being in the finals three times was a dream come true. Time to celebrate!
We used strawberries and mint from Cowick Garden so I think this recipe qualifies for entry onto the blog.;)
Pimm's Punch
Ingredients
Pimm's
Lemonade
Handful of strawberries, cut into quarters
Half an orange, sliced
Handful of mint, shredded
A few cucumber slices
Method
1. Add 600ml of lemonade to 200ml of Pimm's
2. Add in the strawberries, orange slices, mint and cucumber.
3. Stir and allow to stand for a few minutes.
4. Pour into glasses, sit back and enjoy the tennis!
We used strawberries and mint from Cowick Garden so I think this recipe qualifies for entry onto the blog.;)
Pimm's Punch
Ingredients
Pimm's
Lemonade
Handful of strawberries, cut into quarters
Half an orange, sliced
Handful of mint, shredded
A few cucumber slices
Method
1. Add 600ml of lemonade to 200ml of Pimm's
2. Add in the strawberries, orange slices, mint and cucumber.
3. Stir and allow to stand for a few minutes.
4. Pour into glasses, sit back and enjoy the tennis!
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Sunday, 12 June 2011
Mellow yellow mangetout
Well I certainly didn't have my facts straight last week. There I was saying that mangetout are yellow before they turn green. Well that's not true. There are some varieties of mangetout that are yellow and as it turns out the variety we have are yellow...they won't be turning green. They're called Golden Sweet and if I'd read the seed packet correctly I would have realised that we were in store for some lovely golden yellow mangetouts. We were patiently waiting for them to turn green but as the pods started swelling and they were still a bright yellow, I thought something was a bit odd so I dug out the seed packet and sure enough they're not going to be turning green...at all.
So yesterday before the rain set in I picked up a handful of mangetout and last night we made a delicious mangetout stir fry with some cream and tagliatelle. This recipe will be perfect when our spring onions and peas are ready as we added some shop onions and peas to it so some fresh Cowick Garden peas and spring onions will make it extra tasty. I found the recipe on the Cooks United website but tweaked it a little to incorporate the peas and onions.
Mangetout tagliatelle stir-fry
Ingredients
100g mangetout
150g peas
3 spring onions, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
5 tbsp single cream
250g tagliatelle
Parmesan cheese, grated
Method
1. Cook the tagliatelle in a pot of boiling water. Use fresh tagliatelle, if possible.
2. Steam the peas.
3. While the pasta and peas are cooking, stir fry the mangetout in the olive oil with the garlic, onions and cream until the mangetout are soft.
4. Add the peas and then the pasta and toss well.
5. Sprinkle with the parmesan cheeese and tuck in!
So yesterday before the rain set in I picked up a handful of mangetout and last night we made a delicious mangetout stir fry with some cream and tagliatelle. This recipe will be perfect when our spring onions and peas are ready as we added some shop onions and peas to it so some fresh Cowick Garden peas and spring onions will make it extra tasty. I found the recipe on the Cooks United website but tweaked it a little to incorporate the peas and onions.
Mangetout tagliatelle stir-fry
Ingredients
100g mangetout
150g peas
3 spring onions, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
5 tbsp single cream
250g tagliatelle
Parmesan cheese, grated
Method
1. Cook the tagliatelle in a pot of boiling water. Use fresh tagliatelle, if possible.
2. Steam the peas.
3. While the pasta and peas are cooking, stir fry the mangetout in the olive oil with the garlic, onions and cream until the mangetout are soft.
4. Add the peas and then the pasta and toss well.
5. Sprinkle with the parmesan cheeese and tuck in!
Sunday, 5 June 2011
When the going gets tough...
Trying to write this post while watching the French men's single final and I'm not doing a very good job of multi-tasking. Nadal is precariously close to losing the first set and being a big supporter of the tall tanned Spaniard I'm biting my nails and burying my head in my hands rather than tapping away at the keyboard. Right, I'm turning away from the TV now and focussing on a battle of a different kind. Ohh...break point for Nadal, err I'll be right back.
And he's done it! He's broken Federer's serve. He may, just may, win the first set after all. As the old saying goes - 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going!' And the plants in Cowick Garden are toughing up and going for it. It hasn't been very easy for them with all the dry weather, the strong winds and all the different assortments of bugs and beasties attacking them, but they've hung in there and they're pulling through.
The first photo on the left is of one of the little chilli plants growing in a pot in the greenhouse. We had a few of them growing together in a large pot on the deck but they were a bit too crowded in there and jostling each other for space. So I separated them out and gave a few of them their own pots and they seem to be enjoying the space and the chance to spread their little roots out.
And he's won the set! Incredible. And now it looks like Federer has completely given in as he's lost six consecutive games. What a turnaround.Well I hope our plants have done a Nadal on all the bugs out there. We haven't seen many greenfly for a while now and the lovely ladybirds have been munching away greedily at all the aphids on the apple tree. There still seem to be a few slugs hanging about like stragglers around the beetroot though hopefully they'll soon realise that they're not very welcome and find another party to crash in someone else's garden.
The second photo on the left shows the parsnips rearing to go. In between the parsnips we planted some fennel which is growing very tall. Down the left hand side the marigolds have spread out in their bright orange and yellow glory. Being the unexperienced garderner that I am, I didn't realise they would spread out as much so looks like there is going to be some competition and some bullying between them and the parsnips.And along the back and side of the vegetable patch are the sweet peas. Looking forward to seeing those in bloom soon.
The peas are growing well as you can see from the third photo and we should be able to harvest a few pea pods soon. The mangetout which are growing just outside the greenhouse have beautiful purple and pink flowers and quite a few yellow mangetout pods are now appearing. I had no idea that mangetout were intially yellow. We are going to have to come up with a few intereresting recipes for mangetout because it looks like we are going to have a lot of them!
I've also added a photo of the beetroot. A few of them are growing proud but you can see some smaller ones which had most of their leaves chewed off by the nightly slug escapades. We also have some fennel growing in between the rows of beetroot. The spring onion are behind the fennel but not so easy to spot in the photo.
The next photos are of the tomato plants in the greenhouse. They have been doing well. I think they're enjoying the sumptuous soil we added in for them. We removed a lot of the soil from last year and replaced it with a whole bag of multipurpose compost mixed with soil improver, which they seem to be loving. They are growing very tall and there are even some tiny green tomato fruits on one of the plants. When the flowers start appearing that's when you need to start feeding the tomato plants fertiliser, such as Tomorite, once a week. Apparently it's not a good idea to give them the Tomorite before because then the plants focus on producing more leaves instead of flowers and fruit. We've also been picking out the side shoots so that more of the plant's energy is directed towards fruiting. Saying that, I've just spotted a side shoot in the second last photo...oops, looks like we haven't been doing such a good job.
Remember the tiny green shoots that we had poking out of the potato grow bags? Well the last photo shows how much they've shot up since the last post!
Federer is now fighting back and could possibly take the second set. Just goes to show you can't let your guard down. Just because there aren't too many beasts out there at the moment, doesn't mean they're not going to be coming back in full force, guns blazing, so just like in tennis, you have to stay focussed.
Break point now for Federer...
And he's done it! He's broken Federer's serve. He may, just may, win the first set after all. As the old saying goes - 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going!' And the plants in Cowick Garden are toughing up and going for it. It hasn't been very easy for them with all the dry weather, the strong winds and all the different assortments of bugs and beasties attacking them, but they've hung in there and they're pulling through.
The first photo on the left is of one of the little chilli plants growing in a pot in the greenhouse. We had a few of them growing together in a large pot on the deck but they were a bit too crowded in there and jostling each other for space. So I separated them out and gave a few of them their own pots and they seem to be enjoying the space and the chance to spread their little roots out.
And he's won the set! Incredible. And now it looks like Federer has completely given in as he's lost six consecutive games. What a turnaround.Well I hope our plants have done a Nadal on all the bugs out there. We haven't seen many greenfly for a while now and the lovely ladybirds have been munching away greedily at all the aphids on the apple tree. There still seem to be a few slugs hanging about like stragglers around the beetroot though hopefully they'll soon realise that they're not very welcome and find another party to crash in someone else's garden.
The second photo on the left shows the parsnips rearing to go. In between the parsnips we planted some fennel which is growing very tall. Down the left hand side the marigolds have spread out in their bright orange and yellow glory. Being the unexperienced garderner that I am, I didn't realise they would spread out as much so looks like there is going to be some competition and some bullying between them and the parsnips.And along the back and side of the vegetable patch are the sweet peas. Looking forward to seeing those in bloom soon.
The peas are growing well as you can see from the third photo and we should be able to harvest a few pea pods soon. The mangetout which are growing just outside the greenhouse have beautiful purple and pink flowers and quite a few yellow mangetout pods are now appearing. I had no idea that mangetout were intially yellow. We are going to have to come up with a few intereresting recipes for mangetout because it looks like we are going to have a lot of them!
I've also added a photo of the beetroot. A few of them are growing proud but you can see some smaller ones which had most of their leaves chewed off by the nightly slug escapades. We also have some fennel growing in between the rows of beetroot. The spring onion are behind the fennel but not so easy to spot in the photo.
The next photos are of the tomato plants in the greenhouse. They have been doing well. I think they're enjoying the sumptuous soil we added in for them. We removed a lot of the soil from last year and replaced it with a whole bag of multipurpose compost mixed with soil improver, which they seem to be loving. They are growing very tall and there are even some tiny green tomato fruits on one of the plants. When the flowers start appearing that's when you need to start feeding the tomato plants fertiliser, such as Tomorite, once a week. Apparently it's not a good idea to give them the Tomorite before because then the plants focus on producing more leaves instead of flowers and fruit. We've also been picking out the side shoots so that more of the plant's energy is directed towards fruiting. Saying that, I've just spotted a side shoot in the second last photo...oops, looks like we haven't been doing such a good job.
Remember the tiny green shoots that we had poking out of the potato grow bags? Well the last photo shows how much they've shot up since the last post!
Federer is now fighting back and could possibly take the second set. Just goes to show you can't let your guard down. Just because there aren't too many beasts out there at the moment, doesn't mean they're not going to be coming back in full force, guns blazing, so just like in tennis, you have to stay focussed.
Break point now for Federer...
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Windswept Sunday
What is going on with this weather?! Warmer than average for this time of year, no rain and wind wind wind and more wind! I shouldn't complain as all the beautiful sunshine has been wonderful for the garden, however the fact that we haven't had a decent spell of rain for a number of weeks is not so good and on top of that all this wind. Poor Cowick Garden is taking a beating!
I wanted to transplant some beetroot seedlings today but with the galeforce winds we've been having I've been transplanting turned-over pot plants to calmer surroundings, namely the kitchen - hence the photo below. Getting to the kitchen sink has turned into a bit of a challenge. I also spent quite some time tying up the poor campsis who's had four of five branches, some of them quite large, completely ripped off. The lovely banana leaves who were just opening up into large proud green leaves have been shredded and the bamboo who is normally quite hardy has lost a lot of his leaves all over the garden.
Apart from this chaotic weather it's been a busy month in the garden. The sweet peas, peas and mangetout are all doing well and after a slow start the spring onions are looking sturdier than the wispy blades of grass that first appeared out of the soil. Parsnips have been slow to come up but some are now making a gutsy appearance above the soil and I'm hoping the rest of them will overcome their shyness soon too. Some tiny slugs made a midnight feast of a few of our beetroots seedlings a few nights ago. One day the beetroot was standing tall, colourful and proud and the next day they had been chewed back to their stems. The cheek of those slugs! Well we put an end to their after-hours parties.
My partner in amateur gardening crime was very keen on planting some potatoes this year so he bought some potato seeds and growbags and after weeks of chitting (leaving the seedlings in egg boxes to allow the sprouts to grow) and earthing up (covering the stems as they grow) there are some lush green leaves appearing at the top of the grow bags. Below is a photo of the bag with the King Edward potatoes. In another bag we have Maris Piper.
Strawberries are growing (they're on the kitchen sink at the moment - see photo above), apples are forming and the nectarine has a lovely little fan trellis to keep him attached to the wall. Bought in the nick of time yesterday afternoon before the war of the winds began!
I wanted to transplant some beetroot seedlings today but with the galeforce winds we've been having I've been transplanting turned-over pot plants to calmer surroundings, namely the kitchen - hence the photo below. Getting to the kitchen sink has turned into a bit of a challenge. I also spent quite some time tying up the poor campsis who's had four of five branches, some of them quite large, completely ripped off. The lovely banana leaves who were just opening up into large proud green leaves have been shredded and the bamboo who is normally quite hardy has lost a lot of his leaves all over the garden.
Apart from this chaotic weather it's been a busy month in the garden. The sweet peas, peas and mangetout are all doing well and after a slow start the spring onions are looking sturdier than the wispy blades of grass that first appeared out of the soil. Parsnips have been slow to come up but some are now making a gutsy appearance above the soil and I'm hoping the rest of them will overcome their shyness soon too. Some tiny slugs made a midnight feast of a few of our beetroots seedlings a few nights ago. One day the beetroot was standing tall, colourful and proud and the next day they had been chewed back to their stems. The cheek of those slugs! Well we put an end to their after-hours parties.
My partner in amateur gardening crime was very keen on planting some potatoes this year so he bought some potato seeds and growbags and after weeks of chitting (leaving the seedlings in egg boxes to allow the sprouts to grow) and earthing up (covering the stems as they grow) there are some lush green leaves appearing at the top of the grow bags. Below is a photo of the bag with the King Edward potatoes. In another bag we have Maris Piper.
Strawberries are growing (they're on the kitchen sink at the moment - see photo above), apples are forming and the nectarine has a lovely little fan trellis to keep him attached to the wall. Bought in the nick of time yesterday afternoon before the war of the winds began!
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