Gastronomic

Last night we went out with our usual group of veg*n friends to Blah Blah Blah which has relocated to Twickenham. It was  our first visit to the new spot and we wanted to see how it compared to our memories of the old place but I've more or less given up on my potential career as a restaurant reviewer because I found that where things are good I think little of it, it's what I expect after all, and the things that annoy the most are generic problems with nearly all restaurants, things like lack of imagination and focus in the menu, ambience problems of one sort or another, the other customers or lack of them.

So I'll refrain from launching into an unprovoked attack on an establishment that was very nearly flawless in what it set out to do and just say that the best dish for me was the Mogo chips (that's cassava) served with a tamarind dip. Easily the most edgy dish on the menu. Don't take my word for it though, go there and try some for yourself.

Now, since Google decided to do away with their useful RSS reader I've been trialling Feedly as a replacement and all was going fairly well as long as I just stuck to reading what was served to me but I have to say there are a lot of niggles under the surface to do with feed management and control.

Probably the most annoying thing that happened is that I couldn't add a new feed directly to my collection so went back to Reader and added it there. Some clever interlinking means that Feedly picks up the Google feed list and updates its own. However, in the interests of tidiness while I was on Reader I marked everything read. Big mistake. That also filtered through to Feedly and I lost my entire reading stream. It's made worse because there seems to be no one place on Feedly where I can view my feeds as opposed to the stream emanating from them. Anyway to cut a long and rather tedious story short, I'm not quite happy with Feedly and so still open to suggestions for a better RSS reader if anyone has one.


 And now for the Bloglove roll:

Tea with dried limes from Taste of Beirut

The spinach is in  at Plants and Stones, I like the look of that variety which is available from Vilmorin.

Wildlife through the eyes of my forebears is a really thoughtful and saddening article on Wolf Tree Farm. I couldn't see a place to leave a comment but the entry is well worth reading.

Tubonic

These are four little ulluco starts that I was sent in a swap earlier this year. As you can see they are strong stem rooters and part of my new strategy with these rather difficult to perfect tubers will be to earth them up deeply in September or October. I'm hoping this cover will hasten the initiation of the ulluco and provide extra frost protection  for the forming tubers. My pessimism leads me to suspect that all that lovely loose earth over some delicious starchy roots will be a mouse and vole new starter home billboard and the problems will merely lurch into another area.

I have some tubers of my own saving to plant too, but they're not started yet. Don't think it's too late but I'm beginning to get twitchy about the very late start to the season caused by the dreadfully cold weather. If we don't have a wonderful Indian summer then we're doomed.

Bloglove today:

Horrible vandalism is a problem on many allotments. So sorry for people this happens to.

A vegan recipe that I must try Vegan Basil Chicken although not everything this chef cooks is vegan.

Renae is in Northern Virginia and has been eagle spotting.

Catatonic

My visitor arrived and so it seemed rude to shuffle off into a corner and write a blog when there was real life to be lived.

We did take a trip to Ryton Gardens to see what was coming up now the spring has begun to slowly warm everything up

Garden Path by Jeannie Hart

but actually not all that much was showing that had more than a hint of what was to come. Which was a little bit disappointing. We drifted around, enjoying the unusual sensation of sun on our backs and I was again reminded how useful it would be to have and how much I would like a polytunnel to extend the seasons.

Now we are back to our usual numbers and can slip back into normal routines. Here are a few of the blogs I missed reading over the weekend.

Bloglove roll:

Brams is investigating some Chinese 'broad' beans. I didn't leave a comment there because Wordpress hates me.

Karl is out for a duck .

A Kitchen Herbwife has lots and lots of recipes for nettles.

Embryonic

Actually I don't think seeds are embryos are they? I'd better look it up.



Well, yes they are, but the seed includes the embryo so it's more complicated than that. Shrug, whatever. I'm in an awful rush today because I've had nearly a week to clean and tidy the house for an important visitor this afternoon and I've done nothing, nothing at all. So now I have four hours to do it all in and I'm blogging instead. Which is also my excuse for the dodgy snap of peanut seeds from Franchi above.

These aren't really my seeds.  I bought them as part of a xmas present for the man, who loves his coffee and peanut butter biscuits so I bought him the seeds to grow his own. But I expect bringing up the babies will devolve to me and I'm quite looking forward to it. It must have been more than 20 years since I last grew peanuts from a handful of raw monkey nuts unusually available in the local Safeway in Worthing. It was a good summer and the plants did well in my small but perfectly formed cold greenhouse. It wasn't a great crop but it was a happy time so peanuts have good vibrations for me.

I'll be keeping these under glass too unless we have a heat wave. They take a bit of space as the seed heads burrow into the soil around the plants so it will mean big pots but I'd rather do that than risk losing everything to slugs and the cold.

Today's links for #bloglove :

First, Niles who is trying an entirely carb free diet for reasons I'm not quite sure of. Wouldn't do for me at all.

Lucy is pond planning for wildlife.

and Joan is making her own miso, which is very inspiring and I must try it myself because we eat a lot of miso here.

Chayotic

The Christophine, chayote or mirliton to give it but three of its names is a Caribbean vegetable that excites the same sort of responses that Marmite does. In the Deep South of America they have become embedded into Cajun and Creole cuisine as inextricable essentials loved by all, in Australia they are despised as the Dunny Vine and considered a food of last resort or a prime con artists material for imitating more valuable fruits.

For the heritage varieties of Louisiana there is an excellent site at mirlitons.org which is full of advice, recipes and pictures of interesting traditional selections. Unfortunately, the advice is suited to a warmer climate than Northern Europe but the love and enthusiasm shines through and it's a good resource for general information.



I've been unable to locate an equivalent Australian site.

I'm not sure where my Sechium edule specimen above originated but it was bought in a shop with many vegetables from the Indian sub-continent so it's probably from somewhere over there. With luck it will sprout from that rather forbidding closed end and make an interesting climbing vine with the possibility of more fruit at the end of the year but mostly I'm just growing it for amusement.

Bloglove roll:

The Old Foodie has a recipe for Choko which seems appropriate for today.

Marcia Bonta writes a nature article a month and this one is about frog spawn in a vernal pond.

I found Cathy Ashley via Emma's blog and stopped to comment on a link to a book of whacky recipes for making dye and so on but this article on changes to the tax credit system will be of interest to anyone running a low income business.

Yaconic

Opressed as I am by a devastating feeling of doom over the coming season I was encouraged by my fragrant husband to splash out on some new stock to try to get back that growing feeling again. He paid too, so that's alright.

There are many new seeds, and I really didn't need any of them since I am overwhelmed with sad half-empty little packets rattling lonely and unloved around my storage boxes, but more of them later. I also secured some starts for Yacon. I did have the potential for these back in 2009 when a very kind correspondent sent me a plant and some eating tubers from Germany but an overly casual approach to winter storage stopped me before I ever got started and I've been too embarrassed to try again until now.



Here are the little babies, sent from Realseeds . The picture is a bit blurry and the tips a bit wet just after I'd unpacked and given them a drink but you can see all three have shoots and I'm hopeful for three good plants, two more than promised!

The little bit of Yacon I've eaten was interesting enough. My worry is that like the Jerusalem artichokes the indigestible inulin will make us fart. However they seem a prolific crop and I quite like the idea of reducing them to a sugary syrup; vegans don't do honey and so all forms of self sufficient concentrated sweetness involve long simmering processes to concentrate the loveliness.

Our bloglove links for the day:

Rhizowen picks his moment to harvest his yacon.

Diamond Geezer does Little Holland House which looks absolutely stunning, although more arts and crafts than horticulture.

Antipodesgirl is Pushing up Daisies and sounds nearly as cold as I am.

Share the love

Emma Cooper, who is a very kind and giving person, has had another good idea.  She's suggesting that we all make an effort to comment on each other's blogs this month. It has dual benefits, downhearted bloggers get a bit of appreciation and spammers get pushed off the page.  I'm going to try to join in, although I think 5 comments a day might be a bit much for me so I'm going for 3. Because I read a lot of blogs they won't all be gardening blogs, I'll include a few cooking writers and maybe even one or two of the more off the wall places I like to look at. Whatever, I'll link to them each day and perhaps you'll find something of interest there too.

And because I'm going to write a links post each day this month I should try to get something out about the garden too.



We went back to France just before Easter and discovered it was bitterly cold in Normandy too. In fact, we had snow on the second day although that had melted away into an almost balmy spring warmth by the afternoon. So much to do and very little time to do it in.



The first digging was completed though, on a patch which has been covered with black plastic for nearly 2 years now. It dug over relatively easily with a fork, was full of worms and has now received 200 onion sets and 50 shallots.  We also put in a short row of Swift first early potatoes. Ran out of time and space for garlic though. I'll do a few in pots but it looks like we'll be buying our supplies this year which is a pity.

And now those links:

Emma's second day of blogging for this month.

Patrick talks about the loss of Google Reader (which I use and find essential)

Michelle keeps fantastic stats on her vegetable patch in rather more equitable temperatures than I have here.