It was 40 years ago today...

No, not Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band! 40 years ago today Jane and I got engaged to be married. At the time we were both undergraduates at Oxford University. I was already in the Army, and just about to head off to the Far East to join my regiment. It was a make-or-break moment. Would we part company and never see each other again, or were we already inseparable? We decided that it was definitely the latter, and I'm sure it was the right decision, because here were are 40 years on and still together! By the way, we also made a conscious decision NOT to become engaged on Valentine's Day because we thought that would be far too cheesy. So, 21st February is our day....

One of the things that keeps us together is a shared love of food and cooking, so it's hardly a surprise that we chose to celebrate by cooperating on the production of a special meal.

Here's the menu:-

Starter
Salade aux lardons. Mixed salad of lettuce, endive, watercress and radishes, served with a hot dressing of bacon lardons.
Wine: Jackson's Estate Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, New Zealand)

Salade aux Lardons

Main
Roast Fore-rib of Beef, served with roast potatoes, roast parsnips, Spring Cabbage, and Purple Sprouting Broccoli - and of course Yorkshire Puddings with gravy!
Wine: Hacienda Los Haroldos Malbec Roble (i.e. oaked) (Mendoza, Argentina)

The Beef was well marbled and had a layer of hard fat round the edge. Perfect!

Dessert
Pears in Brandy, with Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream

Pears in Brandy, with Cornish Clotted Cream

Since it was a special occasion we splashed out a bit and bought some ingredients that were more expensive than we would normally buy. That piece of meat, for instance, cost us about £20! But then it was just over a kilogram in weight. Yes, I know.... We were counting on having some leftovers. And anyway, if a piece of beef is too small it can easily go dry during cooking.

The Malbec was a bit special too. We bought it from a proper wine-merchant, not a supermarket. The chap who served us evidently knew his stuff. We were umming and aahing over which particular one to buy and he came over and advised us to get the Los Haroldos one, despite our initial preference being for a slightly more expensive one. Most salespeople would have tried to flog us the most expensive one, I'm sure.


We have been reckoning up how much we spent on the ingredients for this meal, and it comes to about £50, including the wines. That might sound a lot for one meal, but just think how much you would spend on a meal in a posh restaurant! The other day we had a £200 meal in a so-called Michelin-starred restaurant (which shall remain nameless because it fell well below our expectations) and it was nowhere near as good as the meal we cooked last night. [I hasten to add that the £200 meal was a prize that Jane had won.] You also have to consider the fact that for a couple of Foodies like us, the shopping for, the preparation of, and the cooking of the meal is nearly as much enjoyment as the eating of it!

Yorkshire Puddings

We don't claim to produce fancy "Michelin Star / Masterchef" dishes, but our style is good wholesome not-messed-about-with food, made with love and care, from real raw ingredients not processed gunk.

New computer

I'm not posting anything significant today, because I am playing with my new toy - a laptop computer. As some of you know, I'm retiring at the end of March, and I thought it was about time I got my own computer, rather than relying on one provided by my company!


So for today, just a couple of "miscellaneous" arty photos...

Sowing Parsley

Parsley is one of the herbs we use most often in our cooking, and I'm always trying to make sure we have enough of it available (in which I don't always succeed!). I have very little of it in the garden at present, so I have recently been sowing some more.


I sow about 15 or 20 seeds in a 5- or 6-inch pot, using moist general-purpose compost. The seeds are then covered with a thin layer of dry compost, and the pot is placed inside a clear plastic bag.

The bag serves to increase humidity, which aids germination. Germination can be quite slow with Parsley, sometimes as long as 21 days, but a bit of gentle warmth (e.g. from heated propagator) helps speed things up. Mine have been under the Growlights, which are on for 12 hours a day but provide very little heat. Nevertheless the most recent batch germinated in 8 days.


Soon after germination I remove the bag, because excessive humidity at this stage can encourage Damping Off, and other fungal diseases.

Once the seedlings are about a week old they get moved out from under the lights to a windowsill. I hesitate to say "a sunny windowsill", because at this time of year sunshine is a precious and rare commodity, but at least the seedlings get natural light.

 

When the seedlings look strong enough - which is really a matter of personal opinion - I plant them out in the garden. Parsley dislikes being transplanted, so it needs to be done before the plants get too big and develop a strong tap-root. I reckon they should be no bigger than 6 inches tall, with two or three proper leaves each. I usually plant them in twos and threes, but sometimes as a clump like this:

Parsley is fairly cold-tolerant, but if the weather is, or is likely to be, frosty, I give the transplants the protection of a cloche. Later plantings of course won't need this.

I now have three such batches of Parsley on the go, about three weeks apart, so hopefully that will be enough for the time being. My only batch that was sown last year was ravaged by birds and is only just beginning to recover.

Brussels Sprouts: second-cropping

It's not been a brilliant year for Brussels Sprouts. I had a decent crop, but nothing remarkable. Some of the sprouts split, which I put down to weather conditions:

Some of the split sprouts looked reasonably OK, and were duly picked and eaten, but the worst-damaged ones were left on the plants. They have now "blossomed", by which I mean opened out, to become like little cabbages;

If left to their own devices, I'm sure these sprouts will soon produce flowers, but I'm not going to give them that opportunity.

I plan to pick them and cook them up just as if they were miniature cabbages.

They will need a bit of careful preparation, but I reckon there will be enough for a decent meal for two. Very brief cooking will probably be appropriate.

It's interesting how the four plants, each a different variety, have produced very different-shaped mini cabbages. The leaves of this one are very crinkly.

These on the other hand have very smooth, rounded edges.

Sowing Cabbage seeds

This is the very last of my 2015 Cabbages:

I have tried to make it look bigger, by cropping the photo, but it is in truth tiny - only about 6 inches in diameter! It's one of the spare plants that I put into a pot which had previously held potatoes. Having been kept back long after it ought to have been planted-out, it never had much of a chance to grow big and strong. Still, it will probably be enough for a meal for two, so it's worth having.

I'm not planning to be short of Cabbage this year...

I have sowed seeds for 7 different types. Of course, due to space limitations I will not be able to grow as many as I would like, but I'll squeeze in as many as I can.

The seed merchants Marshalls have kindly supplied me with some free seeds again, for me to try and to review. As well as "Mila" from last year's batch, I have "Gunma F1" and "Cabbice F1". The latter sounds particularly attractive: "One of the most refreshing and sweet-tasting cabbages you'll ever try - even uncooked it tastes just like an iceberg lettuce...".  Gunma is a flathead Cabbage, a type very popular in Asia. It has the advantage that it can be sown very early in the year. It's not a type I have ever tried growing, so this is a novelty for me.

As well as the Marshalls seeds I have two varieties from Simply Seed - "January King", a very well-known variety, and "Ruby Perfection ", a Red Cabbage variety. As a business, Simply Seed concentrates on providing value for money without any expensive frills. Their plainly-packaged seeds are very keenly priced. January King, for instance is 95p for 400 seeds. In the past I have not had much luck with Red Cabbage - they have usually been very small - but I'm ready for another go, and hope to do better this time.

Having mentioned value for money, I should point out that it would be hard to beat the Wilko's seeds for value. The packet of "Greyhound" seeds you see at the back of my photo is priced at a mere 60p - and is included in the current 3 for 2 Mix and Match offer in their retail shops. It will be interesting to see whether the Cabbages produced from this pack are in any way inferior to the more expensive ones.

My 7th variety is "Golden Acre" from D.T. Brown. This particular pack was one given free with a magazine, and is not new, but I find that Cabbage seeds remain viable for several years, so I have every faith that these will germinate successfully for me. This variety apparently does well even in poorer soil, which could be a significant advantage for some people.

I have sown my Cabbage seeds in 4-inch pots of potting compost, two seeds per pot. If both seeds germinate, I will pinch out the weaker and keep the stronger of the two.

They are now sitting in one of the mini-greenhouses where they will be protected from the worst of the weather.

Cabbage seeds tend to germinate very quickly (3 - 5 days is normal) and can go leggy very quickly if kept indoors. Putting them in the greenhouse is therefore a good plan, since they will get maximum light as soon as they germinate.

It's Daffodil time again

Despite our crazy ("unsettled") weather these past several months, the Daffodils have still remembered to flower at approximately the right time - although many of them were very early this year.

One of my favourite types is "Soleil d'Or" with its multiple-headed stems bearing two-tone flowers:

The little white tips on the yellow petals are very characteristic of this variety.

This is another variety very popular in the UK - "Tête à Tête":

I have little clumps of them growing in several places round my garden. Their diminutive size makes them ideal for small gardens - as well as less vulnerable to windy weather!

I also have some in pots, so that they are portable. Here is one pot outside our front door, attempting to distract attention away from a rather unsightly drainpipe.

The sunken pot arrangement means that I can easily replace the plant in the smaller pot when it has finished flowering. One or two of the pots have been brought indoors at flowering time too, as an alternative to buying a bunch of cut flowers. They look nice this way, but they don't last long. The sudden exposure to much warmer conditions causes them to go over much more quickly.

My Iris Reticulata have been notable by their absence this year. They only seem to last a year or two, unlike Daffodils which come back year after year. I didn't plant any new Irises last year, and very few have come up. This is one of them:

How are your bulbs doing this year?

Harvest Monday - 15th February 2016

My garden is definitely in "Hungry Gap" mode at present! This week my only harvest has been Purple Sprouting Broccoli, and a couple of tiny spears of Brokali. Having said that, I think you would be hard-pressed to find any better PSB...

Before:

"Early Purple Sprouting"

After:

In the kitchen:

Seen from certain angles, it looks grey/green, but from others it definitely looks purple!

I shall leave it whole for the time being (this helps to keep it fresh), and I will cut it into separate spears just before cooking. There must be about 10 decent spears on this one head.

Unfortunately PSB doesn't keep its purple colour when cooked; it goes plain green, like this:

In the picture above, some PSB is served (plain, steamed) with Braised Beef with onions and carrots, Potato-and-Butternut Squash mash, and Brussels Sprouts.

That's all I have to offer for Harvest Monday this week., but perhaps you'd like to stop by Our Happy Acres and see what other people have managed to produce.