~ yay! Michiel put the greenhouse up! ~

The greenhouse went up today!! Michiel very kindly did most of the work on that one: hes far far better at it than i am after all, so it makes sense for me to let him do it. As he says about him and cooking: “whats the point in me cooking when she does it far better than i do?”.

Anyway. its now up, although there’s nothing in it at the moment - filling it up will be tomorrow’s job. or maybe wednesday’s. See how tomorrow goes, really.. play it by ear. Didn’t get round to doing strimming today, ran out of time, so there’s that to do too.. hope its not as hot as it was today though - i was baking on the bus going up to Ashton (had to return those shoes). Have to say though: feels good to have the greenhouse back up. the garden felt empty without it.. Many thanks to my Great Auntie for sending it to me as a *very* early birthday present..

Photos behind the cut as usual. Including a way cute one of Jess!!!

 

~ focaccia ~

I stumbled across a wonderful blog via Rhonda Jean’s Down to Earth blog.. its called A Year in Bread, and its written by three people who are passionate about bread, and all things breadly connected.. they take a type of bread, then all three of them come up with a different recipe for it. There are some wonderful recipes there which i’ve been trying out. I tried calzone on saturday, as an alternative to our usual pizza night, which was semi-successful - the bread part was good but we agreed that the filling as suggested was rather too dry and would’ve been better with a tomato sauce inside as well. So i’m going to try a variation on that next week (when i’ll post photos and a recipe for my take on it).

Tonight i tried the Focaccia, Quick Rosemary Focaccia. I raided one of my neighbours garden for rosemary plants - with her permission, i hasten to add!! - took some proper rosemary cuttings in the process (and gave some to her for her mum!) and used the rest in this. Its a lovely bread, not a true focaccia in that it doesn’t have the big holes in the crumb, as the recipe says, its more of a cakey crumb to it (as you can see in the photo below). But for all that it tastes absolutely gorgeous, although i did use a little too much salt. While i love the site and their recipes (which make you hungry just reading it) they aren’t too clear in some of their recipes, so its very much feeling your way along - and, being American in origin, they tend to use cups and degrees Fahrenheit, all of which need translating into something i can work with. But its certainly fun, and i’ll be making this recipe again, minus some of the salt on the top, and perhaps by ringing the changes with other toppings.. There’s a lovely looking recipe for a Grape Harvest Focaccia - Focaccia with red seedless grapes pushed into the holes on the top of the bread, and i’m itching to try that (and to try it with black olives in a garlicky flavoured Focaccia.. that would be totally totally yum), as well as trying a proper focaccia recipe.

The good thing about bread is that it is relatively cheap - the most expensive thing about this recipe was the olive oil, i used a cheap one and it probably cost around 50p for the two loaves, so it didn’t break the bank too much, and it means its something i can experiment with without driving us into debt. We had this with spaghetti bolognaise, and there’s enough leftover for another meal from it tomorrow night - not bad going, really, for a loaf that probably cost around 30p to make (not including fuel costs). Definetly be doing it again..

 

~ final spring pics ~

In with the batch of photos i’d uploaded to the computer from the camera on 15th May were some spring pics. the final ones of the year (we’re now officially in summer), i thought i’d share the nicer ones here…. behind the cut, of course!

 

~ its a jungle out there* ~

It won’t have escaped the notice of regular readers that there’s been a gap. again. One of the sure fire ways of knowing that i’m on the way down / staying down is a lack of proper posts, and one of the ways i know i’m coming back out of it is from wanting to post again. I know i *should* write it out of my system, the problem is, by the time i’ve geared myself up enough to actually put fingers to keyboard and write it out.. i’m heading out anyway. so i’m stopping apologising for these gaps in blogging, and just getting on with it best thing, i think. The reason for this one? well.. i can’t really say here. those that need to know, know what its about - all i will say, so i don’t worry anyone, is that Michiel and i aren’t breaking up or anything silly like that, its a combination of external pressure/stress and other stuff going on around us that is causing this - and the only way i can cope with it, initially, is to put my head down and.. metaphorically pull the covers over my head, i guess. for a while. At the moment i’m coping with the pressure a little better, plus at least one of them is heading for.. well.. not a resolution. but an end to the not knowing, and once we know.. we’ll be able to handle things better, or at least, to get used to the idea. I’m sorry i’m being so mysterious about it, but it can’t be helped.

Taken from eye level, looking up past the kale plant (which has fallen over due to high winds) towards the trees by the fence.. in places the grass is as high as my knee!

Unfortunately one of the things that also suffers in this is the garden. When i’m like this, i struggle to even get essential stuff done like dinner and shopping. The garden.. well.. looks like a jungle. (or it did, before i grabbed the strimmer and headed out there yesterday). I also, in dealing with the photos i took yesterday/today, found some old photos from 15th May that i took and hadn’t put onto flickr - they do, usefully, show just how much things have grown in just under 4 weeks.. Photos behind the cut, as usual. This is a photo intensive post by the way..

 

~ exxxcellennnnttt… ~

I finally succumbed to the lure of lolcatspeak.. and created my own lolcat. or lodog. This picture was originally posted with another caption, but it reminded me so much of Mr Burns.. i mean.. what do you guys think?

my version

the cartoon version

see what i mean? the resemblance is uncanny!! anyway. you can vote for it here if you like..