Writing, Gardening and Cooking

Very successful writing session this morning. I wrote a thousand words and solved the problem of how to reveal the heroine's dilemma.

The weather forecast was bad but this morning it was mild and the rain held off. I'm growing first early new potatoes and second early potatoes in large containers. As I added covered them with more compost I remembered an incident with my late husband,  who knew nothing about growing fruit and vegetables.

I was chitting new potatoes i.e. waiting for them to sprout before I planted them. "Strange," I thought, "where are they?" So I asked my husband. He shifted from one foot to the other like a guilty schoolboy. He had cooked them for lunch.

Anyway, today I put my runner beans outside to harden off during the day before I return them to the   greenhouse for the night, re-planted my bay tree and stood the pot on the doorstep, I also planted
out a new hosta and put organic slug pellets around each of my hostas. Next I did some weeding and picked flowers for the house as well as  picking the first broad beans of the season and Swiss chard,
which has cropped since last year in the early summer.

I steamed the baby broad beans in their pods, and when the were ready cut them as I would cut French beans, and I steamed the Swiss Chard. I also cut the stalks into 3 quarter inch pieces, cooked them quickly and served them in a white sauce flavoured with parsley from the garden, salt, pepper and English mustard. Yummy.

Home Grown Vegetables

Home grown vegetables for lunch today. New potatoes with parsley sauce, Swiss Chard dressed with powdered sesame seeds and vinegar and runner beans. Delicious.

Culinary Delights

Shopped for food like crazy today. This week I plan to use Swiss chard from the garden to make a chard and ricotta pie, and to use the stalks for a cheese dish. I also plan to make colcannon, mango ice cream, and courgette pickle with courgettes from the garden. I also bought ready made biscuit dough which my small granddaughter will enjoy rolling out and cutting into various shapes before I put the biscuits in the oven. And I'll make more ice lollies for the grandchildren. Well that plus my strict writing routine and some gardening should keep me out of trouble.