Filed under: Uncategorized
Mushrooms Borough Market
And tonight Mellors is making mushroom dumplings, woo hoo!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/usrkepolishdumplings_9692
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: recipe; pear; chutney; sweet potato, soup
Spicy sweet potato soup
Ingredients
½ sweet potato, peeled, chopped
300ml hot chicken or vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
pinch dried chilli flakes
2 tbsp double cream
1 tbsp chopped fresh chives
olive oil, to garnish
Method
Place the sweet potato, stock, salt and freshly ground black pepper and dried chilli flakes into a saucepan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the sweet potato is tender. Blend using a stick blender. Pour into a warm serving bowl and top with the double cream. Garnish with the chives and a drizzle of olive oil.
Pear chutney
Ingredients
60ml olive oil
1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
300g sultanas or raisins
100g demerara sugar
400ml cider vinegar
100g crystallised ginger, finely sliced
800g pears cored and cut into wedges
½ tsp salt
½ tsp nutmeg
2 tsp ground allspice
1 good pinch of saffron
Method
Heat a large saucepan with the oil, add the rosemary, sultanas, raisins and sugar and fry them until the fruit begins to caramelise.
Pour in the vinegar and boil on a high heat for three minutes. Then add the rest of the ingredients, bring to the boil, then turn to a simmer and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Because of the fruit, this chutney has a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pan, so stir it well and keep an eye on it. Don’t let the pears cook too much; they should keep their shape.
Spoon it into clean hot jars, filling them as full as you can, and seal while hot. Store in the fridge.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Crunching leaves
The clocks have gone back in Britain and it is properly dark! On Monday I took the one year old (hereafter Bumblebee for she is fat, happy & busy) to the park to run around, pick up leaves, oggle at squirrels and burn off some energy. The change in timings caught me somewhat off guard. By the time we got there after her nap, it was practically sunset!
Park in the mornings from now on. Afternoons in the library.
<gavel>
PS Parks with kids are enchanting places. Bumblebee collects the world in tiny handfuls, carefully bringing me leaves, crushed petals and sticks to admire. She clutches a yellow leaf with one fist, the other cold in my hand and crunches through piles of brown leaves with squeaks of joy.
Here are some autumnal scenes for your viewing pleasure.
This stunning ivy is in a league of its own
Pumpkin on 31 October
Alexandra Palace park in Muswell Hill, North London
Filed under: Secret Garden
Steve’s Green City walks in London: http://www.greencitywalks.com/HiddenGardens.html
Filed under: Edible Gardening, Equality, GardenAfrica Project, Love the planet | Tags: Africa, equality, feminism, garden, women
Women in Africa:
52% of the total population
contribute 75% of the agricultural work
produce 60 – 80% of the food.
BUT
earn earn 10% of African incomes
and own 1% of the continent’s assets.
The tragedy is that women are often better economic stewards of capital than men. For example, crop yields in Kenya could rise up to 22% if women farmers had the same education and inputs (such as fertilizer, credit, investment) as men farmers*. A report called Economic Empowerment of Women by Almaz Negash shows that women are more likely to reinvest profits back into human capital than are men.
When women have economic power – defined as control of income and capital (land, livestock, etc.) -they gain more equality and control over their own lives, while contributing directly to their children’s development (nutrition, health and education) and thereby indirectly to their nation’s income growth. Increased income controlled by women gives them self confidence, which helps them obtain a voice and vote in land use and conservation decisions: rural women tend to favour sustainable environmental practices since they are usually the ones that collect the families’ natural resources such as water and firewood.
Women’s economic empowerment could ease corruption and violence in Africa, promote greater environmental sustainability, and through education, contraception, and lower fertility rates, help lower HIV/AIDS rates. If this kind of process is accepted by society, then it should be apparent that women’s education and economic empowerment is not only a matter of human rights but also human security.
A very simple solution to some of the challenges outlined above? GardenAfrica empowers women in Africa, giving them the training and the resources they need to grow food for themselves and their families, while selling their excess produce to pay for their children’s school fees. Please dig deep. www.gardenafrica.org.uk.
*UNFPA, UN Population Fund, State of World Population 2005: The Promise of Equality, UNFPA, New York, 2005, p. 47
Filed under: Bees, Edible Gardening | Tags: artichoke, sloe berry, tomatoes, vegetable garden
Cherry tomatoes from the greenhouse
Artichoke
Sloe berries
Tomato plant growing in olive oil tin
Homegrown apples
Bumblebee in the herbs
Little greenthumb
Filed under: Edible Gardening | Tags: gardening, Isobel Dixon. root vegetables, poem
Root Verses by Isobel Dixon
Something fantastical is happening
to our weekly vegetables.
A deep organic mystery.
Take this peculiar Buddha root,
these conjoined tubers,
apostolic, luminous.
At first it was our ignorance
that had us both agape
at sprouting aliens, but Google,
Wikipedia, my fat Larousse,
enlightened us. See, here,
celeriac, kumquat, jackfruit,
chard, tamarillo, salsify –
we learned to welcome strangers
to our house. The whole green world
was subject to my knife,
till more burgeoned from the box
than I could chop.
This wasn’t what we signed up for:
our direct debit, like the widow’s jar
of oil, a source of never-ending
anti-oxidants. I waited,
but could never catch the van.
Piled offerings at our door –
neighbours complained – we took them in.
I’ve called the helpline
and the chap from – Delhi?
Mumbai? – answers me,
then puts me through to silence,
growing quiet down the phone.
I sit among the congregated squash,
the jungled cress, the mute
appeal of finger-shaped shallots.
Wish that the zinging in my ears would shush,
ponder the way of xylem and of phloem,
pray for the peace of photosynthesis.
Filed under: Our Garden in North London | Tags: baby, gardening, Pick more daisies, raised beds
With an almost one year old rampaging around, I am experiencing the garden in a very different way.
A one year old sniffing the sweetpeas with exaggerated “Hmmmmm….aaaaah”s of pleasure is adorable. A one year old hell bent on chewing bees and trampling on dried holly leaves is not.
Features such as our raised beds made of empty wine bottles and barrel pond no longer seem viable.
Raised beds made from bottles
The plus side is that I am seeing nature through her unjaded eyes. Every speck of dirt is worth grave consideration. Each tiny ladybird is regarded with awe. Birds – well – they’re greeted with shrieks of delight, obviously. And the wind moving through the apple tree is spellbinding.
Yes, she picks a lot of lovingly planted daisies. But like the poem* goes, if I had my life over, I would pick more daisies. She is just getting a head start.
Picking daisies
*When the late Nadine Stair of Louisville, Kentucky, was 85 years old, she was asked what she would do if she had her life to live over again.
“I’d make more mistakes next time,” she said. “I’d relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been on this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds and I would pick more daisies.”
Filed under: GardenAfrica Project
Oi! You! You with the trug! Yes, I know your back wall is covered in bindweed and last night’s rain has brought a plague of snails unto your borders, but put your trowel down NOW and wash your muddy hands. You simply cannot miss hearing GardenAfrica’s Radio 4 Appeal broadcast for the last time ever through the marvellous invention of the wireless at 3.27 GMT today.
And once you’ve heard it you will want to see photos of the indomitable Lizzie and her gorgeous grandchildren and the fertile Eden she has carved out of a scrap of semi- desert in Swaziland (puts my borders to shame). So get thee over to our Swazi photo story here.
And if you feel moved to help (donations, surplus vegetables, telling your friend, retweeting for us or any other way you feel you can contribute, its Open Mike over on the Radio 4 Appeal FaceBook page.
Filed under: Outdoor art
Today was a glorious June day tasting of sunshine and Mr Whippy, so Muswell Hillbilly took herself and assorted loved ones to Alexandra Palace. The grounds are lovely as ever and first time visitors from South of the River (boo, South London!) drew favourable comparisons with Crystal Palace and admired the excellent view of the City from Ally Pally. Having paid our respects to the angel guarding the stained glass window, we headed for the boating pond.
The usual palace attractions are diverting enough (Ice rink! Skater Boiz! Giant boats shaped like swans! Actual deer in a pen!) but today there was an exhibition forwards slash performance art thingy on – sculptures and assorted whimsy placed in the palace grounds which made a walk super-exciting as we looked at everything with new eyes. Is that just a boring normal café table or is it an INSTALLATION?
Swan boats at Alexandra Palace, London
In between such everyday sights as dog walkers, yummy North London mummies with Bugaboos plus a cheerful 9 month old eating stale bread feeding the ducks for the first time ever, were random picture frames.
Loved this sign on a tree which, if you were in a hurry, looks like a dull sign and not a funny one.
Silly tree sign
Tree sign
Amongst the common or garden roses were bright and mismatched fakes, reminding me of the minion in Alice in Wonderland , hastily painting white roses red in a bid to save his neck.
Best of all there is nothing about this exhibition on the Alexandra Palace website, so either there is acid in the teacups at the boating pond café or this really is the best kept secret in North London.
