Tuesday 17 July 2012

If you can't work-eat

I'm on holidays, well sort of, in between correcting homework, perusing new curriculum's, feeding house guests and at times trying to hide down the bottom of the garden from phone calls and emails(made a bit difficult by the incredibly miserable weather we are having). Maybe I should go on a real holiday-you know somewhere far away, but what would the veg do without me? As any gardener knows you can't go away, not from May to September anyway!

Yesterday was a washout. Are we getting used to this? No! we are still optimistically waiting for Summer to arrive? of course we bloody are -any day now. Dace says the best thing about Irish weather is how fast it can change, and today is a big improvement over yesterday, so maybe she's right.

Dace spent yesterday cleaning up her new bike

The only thing to do on wet days is to cook and eat. By a happy coincidence I caught Hugh F Whittingstall on Sunday evening on more4 doing a whole series at river cottage on veg. Everything looked amazing,and pretty easy too, and it's not geared as veg to go with meat so much as self contained meals for vegetarians. As Dace is a vegetarian and yesterday was so miserable we made a fritatta recipe from the series for lunch. We amended the original slightly using new potatoes, the first courgettes, and baby broad beans-it was absolutely delicious with a lovely garden salad and Daces home made pesto. Later on for dinner we got some fine big Irish tomatoes, some Aubergines, and Irish peppers in Tipp town.We put them together with more courgettes from the garden, onions and garlic from the VEC garden, red wine vinegar and sugar to make a delicious ratatouille, served of course with a big pot of home grown spuds.God it was delicious, I forgot all about the weather.

Rain, what rain?
Courgettes at about the right size for picking
Courgettes; pick them small and pick them often. Don't believe those people who tell you about stuffing and roasting over sized ones in the oven and how utterly delicious they are. It really doesn't matter because I guarantee you'll never get round to it!

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