The First Week of August

 There's a very strange old woman staring back at me from my new bus pass card which arrived in the post this week. ED helped me with getting it when she was here last month as I kept getting stuck moving photos from one place to the online form.  It won't get much use while I can still drive, we only have a couple of buses each day passing through the village. They go to all the wrong places and take three times as long as driving and I don't really enjoy bus travel anyway - did years of it in the past-  but it might be handy sometime.

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I'd been waiting for this pepper to turn red. It's from the plant  bought from a boot sale when my own plants were so slow to get going.

Shouldn't have waited because when I sliced into it some of the inside had gone black. No idea why - but I'll blame the weather. A little was usable and went into a quiche.

I'll bring  in two others that are not quite red later today and chop them for the freezer, if they are OK inside.

My four home grown pepper plants have a few peppers on them but they're still green.

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The rain that was forecast for Mid Suffolk for the 13th has disappeared from the weather charts, now there's nothing until perhaps the 17th and the long range forecast says above average temps and below average rainfall right through until September.   With the constant heat I seem to have sunk into weeks of achieving nothing much..................and I don't know how I'm going to get out of the slump- it's very worrying and feels like depression creeping in. 

All I've been doing is reading, doing all sorts of different puzzles in my puzzle books, going to exercise group, occasional bits of food prep in the kitchen  and shopping and too much TV again for company. 

I decided......had to force myself............. to go out yesterday to Pot Fest - a celebration of potters, sculptors  and their work. I went last year and enjoyed looking at all the creations. It was very hot and dusty there so I didn't stay long - photos next week.

Grass on the park was  dry as dust

Hope you have a good weekend, there doesn't seem to be anything interesting to go to so it will be just the boot sales  for me again then. 

The Red Peppers are Yellow and the Red Relish Recipe

 Red pointy peppers and yellow bell peppers, that's what I thought I'd sown.

There's just one yellow bell so far the other 4  are still green - taking an age to turn this year, but some of the pointy peppers are turning yellow which was a mystery .................. until I went and got the packet out of the seed tin and found.......

Pepper (Sweet)

Bullhorn Mix

Beautifully long, red and yellow fruits 

which average 25cm in length

So that explains it!

The crop overall is poor - 1 plant has just one pepper , my fault as I  used smaller pots than usual this year because shifting and emptying huge pots at the end of the season is not so easy as it once was.

 I'm not sure they are worth growing really, what with heat needed for germination plus compost, feeding and watering because Aldi have big packs of 'wonky peppers' quite cheap and I can slice and freeze them for winter or bags of frozen sliced peppers aren't enormously expensive anyway.

There will be enough red peppers for the relish recipe so I'll be making that as soon as the peppers are ready. It would go against the grain to buy rather than grow but ............

I was asked about the Red Tomato Recipe that I use for chutney/relish with the giant plum tomatoes. It is on the separate recipe page , a long way down, but I've copied it here for anyone who wants a go at it. In recent years  I've used less than 4lb to make a half or three quarter amount. But back to 4lb this year.

Over time I've altered it a bit as red wine vinegar is now easy to find (even Aldi stock it) I use that for colour. 

Chopping the onions and peppers as small as possible makes a smooth relish, but very eye- watering!.

It needs the rather large amount of sugar for preserving as less vinegar is used than many chutney recipes. More vinegar would make it too runny as would using ordinary tomatoes I reckon, although I've never tried and have always used the large plum.

RED HOT AND SWEET RELISH

4lb Plum tomatoes, skinned and rough chopped. 
2 Very  Large red peppers, finely chopped
1lb Red onions chopped small
1 - 5 red chillies (depending how hot you want it) de-seeded and finely chopped ( gloves!)
2lb Granulated sugar
1 tsp each salt, ground ginger, allspice.
1 pint white vinegar.
( For the best colour this really does need the red onions and white vinegar, and it doesn't work well with normal tomatoes which have too many seeds and are more watery)

Put everything except the vinegar into a preserving pan.

Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved

Bring to boil and cook gently for approx 1 hour until thick

Add the vinegar and cook for 30- 50 minutes until thick again.

 Put into  hot sterilised jars, cover, seal and label.

Back Soon

News From the Week and the April Library Book Photo

A good week of sunshine. The magnolias are now in full flower and green shoots appearing  on hedges and trees around although I noticed when I was over by the coast last week that the Hawthorn hedges are a week or more ahead to those here in Mid Suffolk.

In the garden something else was also enjoying the sun -  the first proper butterfly sighting of the year - a Peacock on the roof tiles, unfolded it's wings to sunbathe. Not many things around for it to feed on so I hope it survives.

I've moved the 11 tomato seedlings from modules to pots, although I only need 5, and they are now out in the greenhouse with fleece right ready. My pepper and aubergine seedlings are now pricked out into modules. Plenty of peppers but just 2 aubergines but I'll make that enough for this year. They are still on the spare bedroom window cill/sill (which is right?!)  for now.

 Brought these 10 books below home from the mobile library van this week. 9 were reserved and I spotted that the van had another M.W.Craven on the shelves- it's a small novella from the 'Quick Reads' collection from 2022. It's been read already and  took less than an hour.

Several favourite authors this month - Alys Clare, Elly Griffiths with her new series of time travelling detective, Tracy Chevalier, Kate Webb and Jim Eldridge. A couple of new-to-me authors - Jim Kelly and Elif Shafak and Robert Peston (although he's a bit odd when on TV news etc!) Decided to re-read 'A Croft in the Hills' while the library still have a copy. I had a copy once, and her other books,  but they  went in one of the moves.

In March I collected these 9 below and read five of them, took lots of photos of the pages from "The Year Unfolding" to use on the blog and returned the others unread. I decided not to read 'Murder on the Marlow Belle' as it's on TV catch up channel and I rather watch it.

The books that I've read have been added to the Books Read 2025 page

Have a good weekend, I'm off to watch the EGD in her ballet school show. Enjoy the early April sunshine if you have it.

Back sometime next week

There Was Some Sun

 A much better week weather-wise - at last. The sun shone on more than one day - which is an achievement for this year so far.

I went swimming this week for the first time since October but it was crazy busy. The only other public swimming pool in the North Suffolk/Norfolk border area is in Diss and is closed for a year for complete rebuilding so more people are using Stradbroke and it's not very big!

The internet dropped out for several hours on Tuesday - a problem for several villages around I discovered and  I'm still without a heating boiler. The family business (Ian who does repairs, his wife who does the paperwork and their son who does servicing of boilers) - who usually sort out my boiler have a had a 'few' problems that rather put things into perspective - death of Ian's father, whose empty farmhouse was then ransacked and trashed on the day of the funeral, at the same time as their son needed some help moving house which all happened at the same time as the wife was injured by a horse - when I heard all that my boiler didn't seem a priority! I'm planning on having a new boiler as I'm fed up with all the repairs that have been needed since I moved in, although Ian and son only do new boilers in summer so I might go elsewhere.

It's been easy to keep warm enough in the living room and I bought a cheap oil-filled radiator to have on low in the hallway ready for this weekend when the temps are set to drop. It will keep the rest of the bungalow just a little warmer. I'm thankful that washing machines and dishwashers work from cold water inlet but going back to old fashioned ways of keeping myself clean isn't much fun! So although my electric bill will be bigger, the heating oil will be lasting longer - looking on the positive side - and a new boiler will be more energy efficient and will put off having to have a ground source heat pump for longer.

More garden tidying has been done this week and my seedlings in the propagator (aubergine, 2 types of tomatoes, and peppers)  were big enough to prick out into modules. I sowed 3 cucumber seeds, which I discovered were all I had. If all three come up that will be plenty but one failure and they'll be a shortage, plus I wanted to sow a seed later for late cucumbers so I'll need to buy some more seeds. Also sowed some Climbing French Bean seeds, they are on the windowsill beside the propagator.

 The flowers on one of the young pear trees are about to open so I hope we don't get frosts. The big Magnolia flowers are open but the petals are falling like confetti from the flowering cherry.

Flowers on the table (bookshelf) this week are my own tulips -lovely to have enough to bring in. 

Indoors, much reading has been done including a very poorly written book - 'Murder in Paradise' by Ann Cleeves. 

Published in 1988 -  ten years before starting her Vera and Shetland series - The George and Mollie Palmer-Jones books are a struggle to get through. They are written in an odd way with many short sentences and are quite confusing. All eight have been republished recently.

Much better was this children's book

"Set in Devon in 1941, 'Digging for Victory' tells the story of twelve-year-old Bonnie Roberts who is desperate to play a valuable part in the war effort. For her, tending the family vegetable patch just doesn't cut it; she wants to be a hero like her RAF pilot brother, Ralph. But when the mysterious Mr Fisher is billeted at her Devon farmhouse, and Ralph is reported missing in action, she starts to question what heroism actually involves. And as Bonnie attempts to find out who Mr Fisher really is, she embarks on a life-changing and emotional voyage of discovery. 'Digging for Victory' is an adventure-filled story, with beautiful verse and a very satisfying ending."

That's about it for my week

Hope you have a good weekend, I'll be back Monday. 

Sue

TV and Other Happenings This Week

Apologies for not replying to comments  or commenting elsewhere much this week. I've been avoiding the the lap-top in the evenings and generally cutting down on screen time - except for the TV!.

 

Imagine having a really good idea for a book, writing it and it's about to be published when you find someone else has had much the same idea and their book, with a similar title, is coming out just a few months before yours. It would be quite annoying. Last weeks issue of the Radio Times had details of lots of TV dramas featuring women detectives including the one that came second in print.

The second book was The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood (better known for writing the Death in Paradise TV series) and the one that beat him to the publishers was of course Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club.

But Robert got one over on Richard because The Marlow Murder Club has beat The Thursday Murder Club to the screen as The Thursday Murder Club film has been delayed. I watched the two episodes of Marlow on UKTV Play channel this week and thought them very good. Haven't read the books and probably won't. Some crime stories I find are better on TV than in a book - like Vera and JK Rowling's Strike series.

Son and DiL finally got news from their insurance company that their car has been written off - as they thought - pity that it took more than 2 weeks to decide - of course the  money they are getting off the insurance is nowhere near enough for a new-to-them car so good thing I have no mortgage and have savings to lend! That's what Mum's are for I guess. If Colin was alive he probably would have repaired their car but I can't help in that way so help out in the only way I can. They are borrowing my car again this weekend to go and look at something to buy. Thankfully the cracked windscreen was replaced yesterday so is OK for them to drive and for the car's annual service and MOT next week.

I begun to prepare for seed sowing by checking that my little window-sill electric propagator was still working and after finding it was fine, I filled up the seed trays and brought them in to warm up. Today I'll put in seeds of two sorts of tomatoes, aubergines and red peppers. Cucumbers will be sown later.

Back to Six Nations Rugby on TV this weekend and I'm still watching my way through the umpteen episodes of Bones on the Channel 4 catch up.

I shall be back Monday after a hopefully mostly dry weekend - if it is it will be the first for ages.

Sue

Peppers and Pond

 Two more peppers, sliced and  put into the freezer. If the other plants hadn't have been nobbled they all would have looked like this. There is one pepper left which I'll use fresh this week. I only grew this pointed variety this year but next year I'm planning on growing some of the orange block shaped ones that I grew last year, because having  all one sort is a bit boring.

I used the one remaining green pepper, my one small butternut squash, an onion, some potatoes, a courgette and chopped small some of my  runner beans plus half a jar of Korma curry paste and a tin of coconut milk to make a pan of curry which divided into 5 portions for the freezer = about 70p a portion

This is the beginning of my small sink-pond, still a lot to sort out.  It will eventually have slabs and stones all round to hide the pond liner. I need something to put in it to allow critters to climb out and something to put across a corner for shade and then I'll get some oxygenating plants and some pond snails.  Need more stones too - I had a bag of white pebbles bought during lockdowns with the  

 intention of painting them and Granddaughter brought me a few round pebbles back from their holiday, Brother-in-Law donated a bucket full of flints that he had sitting around in his garden but lots more needed and they are not easy to find in this part of the country where we have no natural stone - only flints - which are usually small.

 Perhaps it will attract some frogs next spring......or not!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Now it's Low Spend September

 I'm now doing a very low spend September as there's plenty in the freezer and in the cupboards and no big expenses due this month.

I treated the family to the sunflower maze visit but after that its tight purse-strings! 

Sadly there are a chunk of expenses that can't be avoided and happen without me even leaving the house  - Council tax, charity, phone and broadband direct debits and electric at the end of the month and if I didn't leave the house I wouldn't need diesel for the car but I do have to drive so can't avoid it. There might be a couple of unavoidable small expenses and there's a birthday later in the month but otherwise I'm hoping for minimum spend.........although I'm getting back to the swimming pool now the children are back at school so that will be £3 a week and exercise group is £1.50 each week.

Some September savings so far...........

Three of the huge sweet pointy peppers on the one remaining pepper plant turned red so they've been chopped and gone into the freezer - there are 3 left . I put loads of green peppers in earlier before they were ruined by the slugs(?) plus the £1's worth of red sweet peppers from the market stall and as soon as the other three are red they'll go in the freezer and there will be enough to last almost to pepper season next year.

I'm planning to use my one and only butternut squash in a vegetable curry to portion up for the freezer and yesterday I got lots of the huge tomatoes skinned and into the freezer in case I want some for chutney later. I've frozen them first individually on a tray then if they are not needed for chutney they'll be usable one or two at a time for cooking instead.

There are a few beetroot left, runner beans are doing well and the sweetcorn cobs are just about  to be ready and there are plenty of leeks too. In the greenhouse the one remaining cucumber plant made a miraculous recovery with the cooler weather before this week and is looking hopeful. Plenty of tomatoes still coming and even one courgette plant has started producing again.

 I saved some fuel yesterday by not going to look at the last of 2023's Domestic and Rural Bygones Sale  at Campsea Ashe Auctions. After looking online and finding this sale was mainly 'leftovers' from an antique dealer and nothing very interesting it wasn't worth the journey although  I liked the description - 

To include from the estate of antiques dealers Richard & Miranda Goodbrey 'A Collection of Chattles from their Home, Workshops & Storerooms'

We don't use that word chattles very often nowadays. In Suffolk (maybe elsewhere too) we have a word for food left on the plate by children - 'chates' which surely must come from the same root.

I'm saving more diesel (and parking fees) today by not going to Ipswich to visit any of the buildings open especially for National Heritage Open Days. Not because I don't want to, as there are several I'd like to see inside, but walking round town in predicted temps of 29℃ doesn't really appeal. There's always next year - God willing!

On Thursday it was good to have a visit from Essex friends who I've not seen for 4 years. Before Colin died we visited them or they came to us several times a year and camped on the campsite in several summers. They are about to become Grandparents for the first time so I was able to pass on some of the baby toys that all my lot have grown out of. 

They kindly brought me some huge onions and a jar of A's proper home made marmalade and went home with some leeks as well as the toys.

So that was week one of Low Spend September.

Did anybody watch the Cycling Tour of Britain passing through my part of Suffolk on TV on Thursday? It was quite interesting to see the roads and  places I know so well from the air.

 I've gone to watch them speeding by twice in past years, when they've had a stage in Suffolk, once in Friston near the smallholding and more recently through Eye just up the road from here  so didn't bother this year. They are always gone by in a flash anyway!

I'm looking forward to World Cup Rugby Union matches on TV for the next few weeks. Is it really 20 years since England won? They have no hope this year!

Back Monday.

Sue

No Frugal Round Up This Month.

 As there there were no big extra expenses this month I decided it would be a good month to sort out a new settee and armchair. The family have been nagging me for several years as both are old and saggy. There's a replacement bit of foam on the settee that moves forward and back cushions that have pillows behind them to prop them up and the huge patchwork throw over the bare fabric underneath is also so old that it's starting to fall to bits. My armchair has 4 cushions under it's throw on top of the actual chair cushion and another at the back to make it sit-able. Yes - they really are old and saggy!

There is a family run furniture shop in Diss that is easy to get to with a really good choice so that's where I went, first for a look a few months ago and then for choosing design, fabric and colour. I'm very excited and looking forward to delivery in a few weeks. - And that's why there are no frugal notes because I've paid half so it was a very un-frugal month!

There was another expense for August that I'd forgotten - the half year bills for water and sewer, but now I have a meter they are much more manageable.

Of course I have carried on with all the normal penny-pinching things and savers - one big one being having enough veg from the garden so that only pence were spent on vegetables this month (carrots and that £1 worth of red peppers for the freezer).

 And talking about peppers............. I mentioned  a mystery something damaging the peppers and causing them to rot, but after removing all the plants - except the one that looked OK - from the greenhouse, I've had no more problems and have 5 big pointy sweet peppers slowing turning red. I reckon it was slugs - active at night so I didn't see them and in the pot soil during the day.

September is another month without any big extra expenses so I'll probably be ordering some heating oil - not sure if it will be 500 litres or 750 as the watchman remote measuring thingy seems not to have changed for a while - which in one way is good but on the other hand makes me wonder if it's actually working........and I hate having to climb a stepladder and dip the tank.

Back Tomorrow with a First-Day-of-the-Month post, then taking a few days off.

Sue

Figs and Peppers

 The first two figs were ready last week, the others are still green.

It's a treat to have them so soon after bringing the 18'' tall fig  here in a pot  when I moved in in May 2021. It's now more than 6 feet tall with lots of side branches and about a dozen more figs - hopefully they will grow and ripen.

I've got a problem with the Peppers in the greenhouse - something - and I'm not sure what, is making holes in them and turning them rotten from the point upwards. Yet there doesn't seem to be anything inside when I look. I cut most of the the remaining green peppers and froze before anymore are damaged. There's just one plant that still seems OK. When I first noticed some of the leaves being eaten  thought it was birds getting in and biting bits, should have investigated more thoroughly. 

Last year a lovely mix of red, orange and green peppers went into the freezer and lasted me through to May so it's a disappointment.

Then there was a bit of luck at Sunday's boot sale as there was a market stall there that that hasn't been there often and he had some bowls of fruit/veg for £1 each including  odd shaped red peppers. They are now sliced  and frozen to add to all my green ones.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Growing Well

 I had a fright one morning in the week before last - looked in the greenhouse and all my babies were looking a bit limp - of course it was a night when they'd not been covered with fleece and the temperature must have dropped lower than the forecast. Thank goodness a while later they were all standing up straight again....phew!

These photos were taken on Saturday - Before the Coronation I worked in the greenhouse for an hour filling up some of the big pots ready for all these to go into later.

There are too many peppers and  too many aubergines here...........

and too many tomatoes too!

and just one cucumber............so far. There are two more babies on the living room windowsill although I only need one because the plan is to sow another cucumber seed in June for a later crop.

Also on the living-room window sill are some teeny squash seedlings - a second sowing after the first three didn't germinate - thought I was going to have to buy new seeds but they seem to be OK.

The raspberry bed is looking more hopeful, considering how sad they looked through the heat of last summer when there was no sign of any new canes appearing. Brother in Law hammered in two metal posts - from his neighbour's old gazebo- early last year and now I've put string along the top and two rows of wires below and fixed a new piece of netting right over the top. The netting cost me over £20 and I wondered aloud if I would get the value back in raspberries but as Lesley (who sold me it ) said -"well without it you won't get any!" - Very True

One more thing looking good is the plant stand. The pots have been standing on the patio all winter after the trellis collapsed but now they are back and the whole thing is tied to the post. There is someone at the car-boot sale who sells succulents so I may be tempted to buy two small ones for the top two shelves and I lost a lovely pink flowered Saxifrage over winter so could replace that.

 You can see the difference in temperatures this spring compared to last if you look at THIS PHOTO of the Plant Stand taken at much the same time last year.

And my 3 Minarette Apple trees are in flower. I know it looks weedy around them but the plants there are mainly Phacelia which are a green manure - self seeded from last year - and after they've flowered for the bees I'll hoe them up and leave them on the soil as a mulch.

Fingers crossed for an edible harvest later.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Peppers

 The red pointy peppers  did really well this year and the orange block shape were good too. All sliced and into the freezer now. I don't blanche them but always use stir-fried or cooked - haven't been ill yet - touch wood!

 This is my very last one, I've given up waiting for it to turn red now the weather has got colder.

And of course had to look up the history in my little book " A Potted History of Vegetables".

Peppers were never used in the home kitchen of my childhood and I'm not sure they were widely available  until the 70's but they are thought to have been first harvested from the wild around 10,000 years ago in South and Central America. By about 3,300 BC it was being cultivated and arrived in Europe in the 16C. Now it's vital in many recipes around the world. 

I didn't start growing them until we were at the smallholding and growing for sale and also had a couple of years of growing many different sorts to sell the plants at the Suffolk Smallholders Show. 

Nowadays I only grow sweet peppers and the red pointed are my favourite, but they are available in a wide variety of shapes, colours and sizes although brown or white don't appeal to me at all but purple would make a good addition.  

As I only use the hot chilli peppers in chutney it's cheaper to just buy a pack now rather than grow them.  I noticed in the new seed catalogue from Kings Seeds there are a couple of varieties that are listed as Chillies but with no heat and another that can be sown and grown all year round on a windowsill, producing tiny fiery fruit for about 3 months.

Back Soon

Sue

Saturday 3rd

Thank you for all the comments about the new wood-burner. Everywhere we lived in our married life we always had an alternative to electric. For 5 years we had an  LPG fire but usually a Rayburn stove or a wood-burner and I always cooked on an LPG cooker. I knew moving here I was going to regret it only being electric and oil heating but I didn't know the electric was going to be off so often!

It was very quick for them to fit the woodburner- being a bungalow the flue didn't have to be too long to get out of the roof and no mess either.

Definitely not needed the fire this week, another glorious sunny week - long may it last.

Had a visit from Col's sister and her husband last weekend, first time I'd seen them, apart from dropping off the Christmas hamper, for over a year. - They only live 6 miles down the road but are very busy and had been seriously shielding all this time. So it was the first time they'd seen the bungalow. It's a bit different to their home which is a very old farmhouse, with huge rooms and big enough to get lost in. 

She brought me a bag of very hot chillies which was so lucky as they were on my shopping list for making another batch of proper Red Hot Relish. I said they would be getting some of the chillies back in this years Christmas hamper!.

I made the Relish and as the first lot was labelled 'Not Very Hot Red  Relish', this batch has been called 'Very, Very Hot Red Relish'..........think I might have over done the chillies a little!

During the week I texted Brother-in-Law to ask if, in his garage full of things that might come in handy, he had any net sacks to store my onions. He said he had "500 - how many did I want?" Just the one I said wondering why he had 500 but after thinking about it I reckon they are at the farm where he and a friend used to do kindling for sale.

Have you noticed an ad on TV for a collection of  "Time-less Classics" books - a part work - a book a week I guess, the first one is £2.99 ( A Jane Austin or perhaps Little Women, I can't remember) then the next 74 are £11.99 each!. Add that lot up and then guess who  won't  be subscribing - they are all available in the library for free for goodness sake.

This week I have been grateful for

• A gift of hot chillies for making relish
• Enjoying the late summer sunshine
• Reading and enjoying ' The Bookwoman's Daughter'
• Planning for winter warmth
• Lots more peppers put into freezer

And finally - apologies to my cousin A - if she reads this. It's her birthday today and although I wrote the card in plenty of time, I forgot to post it.........twice! Duh!

What have you got happening this weekend? I'm doing some unexpected Nanna duty over by the coast and going to a car boot sale of course. There's garage sales in a nearby village too. No rain forecast here for Saturday or Sunday but more unsettled weather next week although the % chance for rain here is never more than 60% .

Back sometime next week

Sue

Using Up Odd Bits of Vegetables

 A couple of weeks ago I used a Morrison's Red Thai Curry Kit (£2) to make a big pan of good looking vegetable curry to go in the freezer. The Kit has a sachet of curry paste, a sachet of coconut milk and a sachet of dried spices.

 I used up various vegetables from the garden. Starting with 2 onions and two medium sized aubergines,

then a green pepper that had a hole in it, four red tomatoes - cutting off the blossom end rot bits and the last of the green beans. I cooked the beans in water in the microwave for a few minutes first.

It looked very good (better in real life than the photo!)and divided up into several portions which are in the freezer. They will make a change from my usual batch-made curries which I make using curry powder. I'm waiting for the butternut squash to be ready to do that.

Today I'm being brave and buying a new lap top - they will transfer some things from the old one onto the new. I shall be lap top less  (hopefully not all weekend!). It will be good to have a keyboard with all the keys still there and a space bar that doesn't stick and to be able to do things that this old clogged up machine won't do because I'm "unsupported". Oh how I wish I knew more about computers.

I've got another busy week coming up so I shall be back sometime but I know not when! Apologies in advance for not commenting anywhere or replying to comments here.

(I've added the Cheese Straws recipe to the recipe page for CLM and anyone interested)

 

Sue

Food Production in Early July

 Things are coming along OK - although we need rain. I filled up the big water butt from the mains a couple of weeks ago and now it's empty again.

Had the first picking of French Climbing Beans yesterday. I discovered one of the plants absolutely covered with Black Fly - never had that on this sort of beans before. I filled a spray bottle with water and washing up liquid and tried that - hope it works as I don't want to lose the plants so soon and also don't want to use anything nasty.

 

Sweetcorn plants - too close ( a common theme) , behind them is the space where I shall put the Kale and Brussels Sprout plants when they arrive. I've got the wire netting frames BiL made for me and enviromesh to put round and over them.

 

Beetroot - too close with a couple of rows of leeks squashed in behind them and 4 courgette plants - Two too many!

 

Onions in front - which I won't bother with again ( don't know why I grew them this year as I'd decided not to grow them again a few years ago - cheap to buy and too dry is the reason). There are 3 squash plants - with room to trail - just about! and empty canes for the runner beans on the right some have been sown here and some in a small tray and the French Climbing on the left.

In the greenhouse are too many tomato plants, 3 cucumber plants at the end, one aubergine standing on the water butt and one more on the ground. I moved one tomato plant to outside a few weeks ago but could really have moved two more out before they got too big to move.

Four pepper plants, the basil and two more aubergines standing up on the staging

 

Pointy peppers beginning to get pointy

 

Some of the aubergines flowers have set but others just fell off. There will be enough to a big batch of make my favourite aubergine/tomato pasta sauce

Nice to get back to growing food again after my enforced year off last year. 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Half Past March

 The car went for it's annual service and MOT on Monday and I didn't even have to take it the 3 miles because Ashley,one of mechanics, now lives in the next village so left his car here and picked up mine as he passed by on his way to work. Later in the morning Tom, the boss, rang up to warn me that out of the four tyres, one would be a MOT fail, one was on the cusp and the two front ones, which were only replaced by them 3 years ago were not going to last much longer either! I resigned myself to a large bill ((sigh)) At least I now have a car with 4 good tyres which should last longer than 3 years as they are a better quality than the make they'd been using............... until they had so many problems.

 Good job I know and trust them or I'd think they were ripping off a helpless old woman!

They managed to order the tyres in ,service the car, and get the  MOT done all in one day and Ashley swapped cars again on his way home. The bill was huge...........

The Council Tax statement thing for the year arrived, I eventually managed to get through to the District Council to change it to direct debit so that I'll get the £150 "gift" from the government without having to claim it. My bungalow here is Band D, Clay Cottage was Band F - a saving of £60 a month - thank goodness!

 

Growing Food..................If only germination was always like this....................

 

 

Do I need 8 Aubergine plants? No, but I sowed 8 seeds, just in case, and all 8 have germinated.

Do I need 4 Pointy Red Peppers? No, but I sowed 4 seeds, just in case, and all 4 have germinated.

There are also 5 out of 6 Orange block peppers beginning to pop up. Fingers crossed they stay alive until big enough to be transplanted!

I've being growing my own food for 40 years but every spring I  still get scared of a total failure !

On Wednesday  late evening there was a storm here with rain and  gusts of wind and this is what greeted me on Thursday morning. I'd only moved it from out of the corner where it had stood sheltered all winter just the day before. What a mess.

The stand itself is OK but the clay saucers have either cracked or broken. The wet and windy weather also carried in lots of Saharan sand so the windows, car and everything else are splattered. This happens at least once a year, more usually in Summer and always gets mentioned on the news as if it's never happened before. The sand is just a fine dust so doesn't do any damage, it gets carried here high in the atmosphere then lands on Suffolk and Norfolk.

 The buds on the Magnolias are all beginning to open. Still think it's a bit odd to have two Magnolia trees side by side in one small garden but they will stay as they're both a good size.

What gorgeous weather we had here in Suffolk after the Wednesday storm. Lovely sunshine, although a chilly wind in places..........it is only March after all............but I took a chair into the greenhouse and soaked up some sun. The weatherman said yesterday that it might be dry for the rest of the month that sounds very good.

This week I have been grateful for

• Living in a safe country
  
• Sunshine
• Car service and MOT sorted.
• Seeds germinating

Guess where I'll be this morning - and with better weather there might be more people selling than on previous Saturdays.

 Have a good weekend, I shall return, with or without treasures, on Monday.

Sue

Soup From Anything?

"Bother" I said as I put away some newly bought carrots in the salad drawer of the fridge and discovered 4 sad carrots hiding under the tea-towels which I use in the drawer  to absorb moisture. I nearly chucked them (the carrots not the tea towels) but being a good girl decided to make soup, even though soup is not one of my favourite things. From  the greenhouse I fetched in a Very Large red pepper and  started the soup as always with a chopped onion. 

After sweating the onion and pepper in a little butter and adding the grated carrots and sweating a bit more I chucked in a little flour, some black pepper, stirred it all up and added just-boiled water. Cooked it a while and tasted - Oh Dear. Not that nice. Maybe it wasn't possible to make a good soup from 4 manky carrots, one large red pepper and an onion.

 I added a little salt and cooked it a bit longer - tasted - still not good. I added a vegetable stock cube and a bit more water, cooked it a bit more and turned it off while I did something else. Later I came back and tasted again, slightly better but still not quite right so I chucked in a teaspoon of sugar, heated it up again and tasted again..........improving. I let it go cold, whizzed it in the liquidizer and shoved it in the fridge. Next day tasted it again and....................Success .........Delicious. 

 

Artfully chucked some snipped Basil on top

 

 Proving it is possible to make soup from just about anything. 2 portions to eat and 2 into the freezer

 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

PS Edited in to say I've now replied to all the comments yesterday - Thank you everyone

Don't Try This at Home.......Yet

I wanted a chutney recipe to use and celebrate the  giant red peppers but without using tomatoes (which have nearly finished). Searched my recipe books and found this in my oldest, much splattered preserves book.

But I didn't want a brown chutney so didn't want to use brown vinegar or brown sugar or black treacle and I'm not overly keen on currants,raisins or sultanas in chutney.

So.............

I chopped some onions, cooking apples and 4 giant red peppers and added up the weights. Which came to more or less half the weight of the fruit in the original recipe. I added white sugar and red wine vinegar - using a bit more than half the recipe as it looked too dry - and a little salt .

Cooked it all together until it thickened up and popped into hot sterilised jars. ( I didn't add spices to the jar as per the recipe) Screwed down tight while still hot.

It made 5 jars

and a little left over to taste. Very sweet and sour.

  Because this is a sort-of made up idea for a chutney I have no idea how well it will keep - which is why I say don't try it yet. I'll let you know in a month or three.

There are still some big peppers ripening in the greenhouse and I've already put lots in the freezer, but among my recipes is one for mango and pepper chutney - another one for the Christmas hampers maybe.

 

(See the old metric measurement for vinegar............. 6dl? This book was written way before we went metric and dl's were never used when eventually metric became more common - not even sure what it means.........deci-litres I guess ...........600ml we would say now I think)

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Last Week and it Seems Like Summer Has Gone

The week just ending felt like the beginning of Autumn already. Tuesday night with Storm Francis which woke me several times and then chillier evenings. The lights are on before 8pm for reading now but still two months before the clocks change - thankfully.

Swimming on Wednesday morning was good again and more people there but still not busy as they are limiting numbers. During the summer holidays they would normally be running canoeing or snorkeling classes and inflatable play times but all those things aren't happening so there's actually more opportunity to swim than a normal August. I probably need to go more often to make up for lost time as 25 minutes was enough to get me out of breathe and aching. I'd only just bought a new 20 swim ticket just before Lockdown so can go lots of times before needing to pay again.

When it was fine I shifted all the logs from one builders bag that had been standing outside by the woodshed into an empty bag inside the shed, something I've been meaning to do since spring. Now there's  a gap to reach all the logs that still need splitting.  BiL Andrew will be round later today, weather permitting with either the log splitter or chainsaw or both to split or cut some of the stuff that's been waiting 3 years. Although if he doesn't make it now he's talking about retiring at the end of October so will have a bit more time then.

Also got a batch of roasted onion/pepper/tomato sauce made (as per instructions from Sue in Wales/England!) 1 portion to eat and 4 in the freezer.  When I said the peppers from the 3 Thompson and Morgan plants were huge - this is what I mean.........

Huge pepper beside a £1 coin

Rainy afternoons have been spent watching the earlier series of Strike on BBC i-player (see below) ready for a new series starting tomorrow and there's actually some live cricket on BBC this weekend. Colin would have enjoyed that a lot, after all the years of only being able to see the highlights of test matches at the end of the day.


This week I'm grateful for

• Swimming again
• Not watching Strike when it was on TV first time so I can enjoy it now!
• Lots of fruit from the garden 
• A good collection of library books

The weather forecast for the weekend is fine but lowish temperatures. That's OK for wood cutting and boot-sale visit and a probable meet up for coffee with Rachel.

Hope you have a good weekend, a Bank Holiday long weekend for some people.
Back Monday
Sue

First Pepper

The Pepper seed-sowing failure seems a long time ago now. One plant from 2 or was it 3 sowings? I can't remember. But the first pepper from my one plant was picked a couple of weeks ago. A very odd shape, it ought to be long and pointy but this curling happens sometimes.

These below were the plants I sent for from Thompson and Morgan, the only company I could find that were still accepting orders back then when all garden centres were closed.

 

 They were good plants, grew well and the peppers on them are gi-normous!

 

A couple have turned red and are now sliced and in the freezer, I think I'll be giving some away - there are so many.

Keep forgetting to say hello and welcome to more people who've clicked the follower button. Hope you enjoy reading about my 'even quieter life than it once was' in Suffolk

.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Chilli Jelly

There are so few cooking apples on my tree this year that the bruised windfalls are even more precious. I thought the best way to use them would be for the chilli jelly, because only the juice would be needed. So a couple of weeks ago I picked up all I could find cut all the manky bits and was left with just over 2lb of decent  chopped bits to which I added a pint of white vinegar and a pint of water and a few chopped chillies. Cooked this altogether for about 30 minutes and then strained through the jelly bag for several hours.

I ended up with 1½ pints juice. I heated this gently while adding the equivalent amount of sugar then added some chopped chillies and brought to boil.

Test for setting on a cold plate. Pour into hot jars and seal.

The things that went wrong were -
The juice wasn't as clear as I expected
 Some scum formed that I couldn't clear even by adding a bit of butter, which works for jam
The bits of chilli rose to the top of the jelly in the jars.

I know it's hot as I tried some - Phew - Very Hot.

I think a couple of jars are good enough to give away in the Christmas hampers, and eldest daughter wanted some too.

Back Tomorrow
Sue