My daughter loves tarte tatin. My sister, conditioned by having worked in Paris as an au pair for a year when she was eighteen and studying French afterwards, loves it even more. Upon their request I made tarte tatin several…
What I am about to share is potentially highly dangerous knowledge. I have always assumed that if a moment came when I wanted Danish pastry really really badly, it would probably be easier and faster to drive over to Denmark…
The above photo shows a typical September harvest from our allotment: kohlrabi, spring onions, Asian radishes, zucchini, lemon cucumbers, beets, beans and herbs. September harvests are still bountiful – the absence of frost so far means that even frost tender…
Judging by the number of views the hot tomatillo chutney recipe from last year gets these days, there are currently many gardeners somewhat struggling with the tomatillo harvest. Tomatillo falls in the same category as zucchini: vegetables that are so…
It’s always fun to see what search terms lead readers to strand on this little island in the vast sea of the internet. The most interesting recent search term was “how to grow a cook”. Though I might not really…
If you grow any type of squash, summer or winter, you probably know that it produces two types of flowers: male and female. The male flowers are on long slender stems, but under the female flowers the fruits are already…
A couple of weeks ago, following the post on growing edible flowers, I gave you a recipe for very pretty, very easy to make edible flower and cream cheese canapés. Guess what? These canapés are just as pretty and even…
You know what our most valuable crop is at the moment? Blackberries. Last week I saw organic blackberries for sale, the tiniest box (150 g) going for 2,35 Euro. That same evening I picked more than a kilo, which would…
As I confessed/complained before, tomatoes are a difficult crop for us. One of the vegetables we like the most, yet one of the most difficult to grow. This year I decided to stick with early bush types, in the hope…
We came back from our holiday 11th August and just about the first thing we did after unloading the car was heading to our allotment. Visiting your vegetable garden after more than four weeks absence, can be a little scary,…
Do you remember how everything was better when we were young? The summers endless and the sun brighter? I also clearly remember that wild blueberries were plentiful every summer. I remember how I went to the woods to pick them…
To be honest , canapés are something I hardly ever bother to make. Adding one more dainty dish to the menu when entertaining, is often the thing that can bring you one step too close to a nervous breakdown. But…
One of the main objections people have to planting edible gardens is that they think that a garden planted with just useful plants won’t be a pretty sight. Well, I think it’s perfectly possible to plant a beautiful garden filled…
Our summer holiday this year coincided with a massive heat wave. It was so hot during the day that we took to taking a siesta and any gardening (any outdoor activities really) was done either before 8 a.m. or after…
There has been a lack of vegetable recipes on this site lately, the reason is that we were on holiday in the Czech Republic and while we had access to lots of seasonal, wonderfully ripe fruit from my parents’ garden,…