The apples are in!

In our garden we have an old, gnarled apple tree. I have no idea how old it is; our house was built in the 1950s on the site of an orchard, so it is quite a venerable specimen. I love it; it provides blossom in spring, shade in summer and apples in autumn. After last year's dire harvest due to bad weather I have been watching with anticipation as the apples have been swelling and growing. 

Yesterday was officially designated apple-picking day! This is a major event for our family. We all join in and take turns with the fruit-picker thingummy jig. Everyone else tries to catch any fallers, or sorts out the good from the bad. This year, maybe because of the late spring, the fruit is good quality but small. Between us we managed to pick 25kg of fruit and we left quite a lot for the birds.

So now the fun begins! During the week I bravely defrosted the freezer ready for the onslaught of stewed fruit. Some fruit has gone to our long-suffering neighbours, but there is only so much I can palm off onto other people. There is also only so much apple crumble that we can eat, so we have splashed out on a juicer. We thought about this long and hard, as they are not cheap. In the end I think it will be worth it; we also have a pear tree which will need harvesting soon. The pears don't keep so well, so at least this way I won't waste any.

Yesterday evening we had our first baked apples which I stuffed with sultanas, cinnamon and brown sugar. They were baked in an ovenproof dish with a little water at 180C for half an hour. Yum!

Tomato ketchup

Me: "I've made some tomato ketchup!"
DH (caught on the hop and incapable of lying): "Oh....(long pause)... should be interesting..."

After

Before - free with my veg box!

 The recipe is here!

Extreme crochet!

Back in August I embarked on a large crochet owl basket. What I didn't realise, was quite how large this particular bird would turn out to be! According to the pattern, it should take 500g of any super bulky yarn. Well, I am about half way through and I have already used more than that! Here is the beast, which I think will be challenging the European Eagle Owl for the title of largest owl:

There was no way I was going to lug that around on holiday, so I have been crocheting up a few snowflakes:

This one hasn't been blocked yet. It is from a free pattern available here, and I used a 2mm needle. From the sublime to the ridiculous!

I realise that blogging has been a little sparse lately. There has been a lot going on, both at home and at school, and I have been short of head space. I am adjusting to the new normal; service will resume shortly!

Going through the mincer...

Back in the January sales DH and I bought a mincer. I had fantasies about roasting a large joint, and producing delicious cottage or shepherds pies the next day. It all fitted in with the lifestyle I would like to lead. Unfortunately the reality is rather different!

On Sunday I slow-roasted a shoulder of lamb with garlic and rosemary. It was very tasty and went down very well. So far, so good. Yesterday I boiled up the bones to make stock. Very domesticated. Today I unpacked the mincer for the first time. It didn't have any instructions, but, hey, I am a modern woman and I fitted it all together:

The first problem was that it didn't clamp onto my work surface, so I faffed around finding a wooden-board it would fit onto. Then came the actual mincing. It was much harder work than I anticipated - I would develop biceps if I did it regularly. Eventually I ended up with what looked like a pile of mince on a plate. Result! I had enough for a small shepherds pie. So I made gravy with the lamb stock, and added it to the mince. 

Now, up to this point I was feeling very smug. Roll over Mrs Beeton! Unfortunately as soon as the gravy hit the mince it collapsed into a pile of what can only be described as mush. I did add the mashed potato and served it to my unsuspecting and long-suffering children. They are used to being experimented on, and are usually tactful in their responses. However, this time they didn't hold back. We abandoned it in favour of cheese sandwiches!

So before I consign my mincer to history or the top of a cupboard, does anyone have any suggestions on how to use it properly?

The Eden Project

It's taken me longer than I anticipated to get around to this post; but it will take longer than a few weeks for the memories of the Eden Project to fade. We were all completely blown away by our time there; even my cynical engineer of a husband!

DH took a lot of the photos!

Pioneered by Tim Smit, who was also the visionary behind the Lost Gardens of Heligan, Eden is set in a disused clay pit. It has been transformed into a place which celebrates life on Earth and encourages visitors to think about sustainability. The two biomes each house mini-ecosystems, one of Mediterranean plants and one of the rainforest.

We went into the Mediterranean biome first, which is the smaller of the two. It still took our breath away!

This tiny little chap is a "Dorset Naga" - the one of the hottest chillies in the world. It is slightly strange to think that it was bred in a country once notorious for its bland cuisine!

This specimen was growing in an iron cage to protect passers by. Once we had finished strolling through the Mediterranean countryside, we wandered over to the rainforest.

The biomes are both impressive, but the Rainforest Biome is huge. It is large enough to contain the Tower of London, and holds around 16,000 different plants! When we first walked in we were hit by the heat and a wall of moist air. Huge trees towered above us and tropical butterflies flitted by. It was difficult to know what to look at first. There are amazing plants around every bend of the path:

A stream cascades through the middle of it all.

There is even a giant helium balloon, which the gardeners use to tend the tree-tops. What a cool job that would be!

Once we had dragged ourselves away from the biomes, it was lunch time! Eden has a large stage area, which was being used for den-building. While I trekked back to the car for the lunch, (half an hour round trip!), DH and the kids built us a den to eat it in! Tens of thousands of butterflies fluttered around the stage:

This collaborative piece of work, (which my children decided they were "too old" to contribute to), was designed to draw attention to the plight of butterflies.

After lunch we explored the Core building, which in an interactive education centre with loads of buttons to press!

The far wall is covered with fridge doors with the requisite fridge magnets. I couldn't resist!

One of things I really liked about Eden was the collaboration between art and science. At the centre of the Core building is a 70 tonne "Seed":

Made from a single block of Cornish granite, which took two years to find, it has 1800 hand-carved "bumps" and had to be lowered into place with one of the biggest cranes in the world. It is very tactile; we all ran our hands over it. I managed to restrain DS from climbing it!

We finished our visit by investigating the gardens. There was a lot for the children to do. They particularly enjoyed the "barefoot trail" which involved walking through lots of different textures such as bark chips and mud! There was a sensory garden which included my favourites, dahlias.

Eden is not a cheap day out, but we paid with supermarket loyalty vouchers and took a picnic. The canteen is worth a visit, it is not over-priced and is an adventure in itself. 

We all absolutely loved our day. It is a very inspiring place, and reminded me of the incredible diversity on this planet we have been entrusted with.

A spotty parcel!

I was fortunate enough recently to win a giveaway over at Dorothy's creative blog "Dorothy's Room". Dorothy must have put a lot of thought and care into her prize, because a fun-looking package arrived today:

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I really like the bag it came in. It made me smile, and I am sure the postman was smiling too! DD was almost as excited as I was, but I managed to persuade her to pose with the package before we opened it. It did feel rather like Christmas...

Inside was a beautifully wrapped parcel. The rose is actually a clip! Inside the parcel was...

...this lovely bag. You can't see from the photo, but it is a "Dorothy special". She has lined it, embroidered the flowers and inserted a zip. I am very impressed. Zips appear to be a black art to me, which go in by some sort of unknown magic. Inside the bag was...

...this beautiful selection of fabrics, buttons, cotton and all manner of things. It really is a treasure trove. The dark blue spotty material is Cath Kidston, who I usually admire from afar as I have never actually bought anything by her. I really liked the beige material in the bottom left. It fits in well with our living room, so I am thinking of possibilities for it. The chocolates didn't last very long! Here is a close up of the rather sumptuous peacock material, with a sweet little scented dog who somehow missed the original line up:

He is now hanging up in my kitchen. So, thank you Dorothy for such a wonderful gift. I feel inspired to get out my sewing machine...

Finding the Lost Gardens of Heligan

One of the places we really wanted to revisit on our Cornish holiday was "The Lost Gardens of Heligan". DH and I visited in the 1990s. We had fantastic memories of it and we were keen to see what had changed.  

The original estate went into decline after the First World War when many of the staff went off to fight. The "big house" was eventually sold off in the 1970s. In 1990 the gardens were rediscovered under a tangle of laurel, and the restoration has been going on ever since. 

This friendly gentleman greets you as you arrive. I think he could do with a hair cut! Heligan is a very large garden, covering 200 acres, but we did our best to see as much as we could. In the morning we walked in the woodland and the "Jungle" and after our picnic lunch we explored the formal gardens and the kitchen garden.

 

The "jungle" looked almost prehistoric. Dragonflies zipped around the tree ferns and palm trees reached upwards. 

I felt much more comfortable in the large walled kitchen garden. This rather well-to-do scarecrow kept watch over orderly rows of vegetables and flowers.

I loved the way the rows of dahlias were nestled between the runner beans and cordon apple arches. I assume these were for cutting for the big house.

The pineapple pit was built in the early nineteenth century. The local gentry would compete to see who could grow the biggest fruit. They also grew melons, which were hung in little nets as they grew.

The formal gardens were spectacular, with well thought out colour schemes. There were lots of nooks and crannies to explore, far more than we could manage in one day. We were happy but tired by the end, and grateful to return to our cottage to recover!