Where to start?

I'm at that stage where I've been away from the blog for so long that I could easily just let it slip away and become little more than a fuzzy, well-fed memory, but I really ought to soldier on. To what end, who knows, but there you go. I'm back, world of the web!

We are finally unpacked and connected to the internet in our new place and all in all, it's really working out. Neither of us could remember for the life of us, what the kitchen looked like before moving it, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that its general cleanliness and airiness when we got here after an epic van trip (never have I undertaken something as terrifying as driving solo almost the length of England in vehicle that is almost the same length as the house. It was like driving a missile silo down the road. It wasn't so much that I had blind spots as that I had small sections where I could actually see! But anyway. I made it without any scrapes - either to me, the van, our possessions or any innocent bystanders, so that's all that matters).

The garden is great in that we have one! We have a proper backyard with shrubs and a fence and all those normal suburban things. Given the weather has been uncharacteristically bright, it's been such a joy to be able to sit in the sun reading and sipping quietly on a glass of sparkling mineral water. I'm no soil scientist (that job goes to someone else in my extended family) but it doesn't take a doctorate in geology to know that the quality of dirt (or rather, dry crust overlaying solid clay) is crap, but I'm hopeful that things will grow regardless. My new landlady left a housewarming (garden warming?) gift of 12 runner bean seedlings and a bean tripod thingy in the garden, so I now have 18 bean plants in the garden. Actually, when I planted them I had 18. I now have 17 and a half because of the voracious appetites of the local snail and slug brigade (I may come back to my battle against these bean-loving beasts another time). Incidentally, transporting my balcony garden of pots was one of the more difficult processes of shifting house - nothing died, but the lad gave me more than one dirty look after the 15th trip up and down the stairs carrying sacks of potato plants and/or pots of courgettes! Hehe.

My newly appointed garden now sports:
3 varieties of potato (3 bags plus every spare space in the actual garden. I must have planted 20 seed potatoes last week. If they all grow - and I have my doubts - there will be potatoes for one and all. Come and visit, won't you? We'll have potato salad!)
3 varieties of beans (and the dwarf french beans already have the tiniest cutest wee beans. I'm dying for them to hurry up and grow so that I can eat them! There might also be bean salad when the eventual 'glut' arrives!)
2 kinds of courgette
1 tomato
Beetroot
copious quantities of herbage
salad plants scattered wildly around the garden in the hopes that the slugs might focus some attention on the easily replaced rocket leaves, instead of my precious beans!

I'm very excited about the garden, but this post is already too long, so I should sign off and come back to wax lyrical about the joy of adding one's own nasturtium flowers to a salad another day...

This week I've cooked:
- a truly lovely summer kedgeree which features hot smoked salmon, peas and sugar snap peas, served with a fried egg and crispy shallots on top. Not my own recipe (I'd change a few things) but one from Delicious. magazine if you want to try it yourself. I'd use ground cumin instead of whole if you track it down to try yourself (and I highly recommend it. Yum).
- homemade pesto and orzo salad with bocconcini, semi-dried tomatoes and rocket. Perfect for lunch when travelling - providing your office colleagues aren't afraid of a little garlic aroma. This recipe was from Good Food mag and will be a regular in my packed lunch repetoire I think.
- mini pavlovas served tonight at 10pm with local raspberries and strawberries. Blissfully summery and good.
- homemade ciabatta (actually I've only half made that - the dough is slowly rising in the fridge overnight).
- gingernuts and chocolate chip cookies
- fresh garlic bhajis
- oven baked paella (decorated with nasturtium flowers from the garden. Picture below although it actually looks a bit red overall in the photo. It was much prettier in person).



I have other stories about my first potatoes of the season but it's time to say goodnight. I hope your Friday nights were delicious and indulgent!