I have complained at length about our new allotment: it’s smaller, there’s too much shade, the soil is in a much worse state. But there’s actually one very good thing about it: the rhubarb plantation. Probably because a good part…
When spring starts 3 weeks later than normal (though what is normal anymore?), mid-April will find the gardener very busy – busier than usual in this busiest gardening month. Throw in an unexpected (but very welcome) writing assignment with the…
On Saturday I sowed the first seeds directly in the ground – finally!- and spinach was the very first vegetable I sowed. So no, this quiche was not homegrown, but hopefully will be in about six weeks. Because I am…
Probably the best investment you can make if you have a vegetable garden is sowing a packet of asparagus seeds. Yes, you have to wait 3 years before the plants are strong enough to take regular picking, but after that…
The only spinach in my childhood was a frozen puree. I had no idea what the plant looked like and it is a testimony to my parents’ cooking skills that they were able to turn the indiscernible khaki mass into…
Some of the questions I had to answer while typing the recipe: – How do you draw a snowflake? – If you could control one element, which would you choose? (Answer: water) – How do you say “strawberries” in French?…
Do you grow broccoli rabe (also known as crimi di rapa, broccoli raab, turnip broccoli)? If you don’t, but have a veg patch, however tiny, please, consider it. In Joy Larkom´s classic `Grow your own vegetables` which makes most other…
Because I was born in an Eastern European communist country, and my husband grew up in Western democracy, our childhood memories are sometimes rather different. To him, 1st May has always been just the day after Queen’s Day. But in…
The wonderful thing about perennial vegetables is that in spring they grow a lot faster than their annual counterparts. Because they start growing from well established roots instead of having to germinate first and make roots later, in our edible…
It seems that the two main harvest from the allotment at the moment are rhubarb and daffodils. No problem, I like both a lot. They both signal the start of a new garden season; daffodils are the first flowers that…
Isn’t it funny how when you have leftover egg whites all recipes you come across call for egg yolks and vice versa? Or does this just happen to me? A couple of recent baking projects left me with 4 egg…
Finally, there’s something else to harvest from the allotment other than weeds: rhubarb! I blanched one plant by covering it with a black bucket and it was ready for harvest on Sunday. Every year I carefully consider the first rhubarb…
I am very fond of quinoa. This tiny grain with pretty curlicues contains about twice as much protein as other grains, an array of minerals and vitamins and is gluten-free. But the reason it should be in every busy mother’s…
The way Easter is traditionally celebrated in the Czech Republic frequently shocks feminists from foreign countries. This is how it goes: guys go out and cut young, soft branches from willow trees and braid them into a kind of whip,…
Things are beginning to look a bit more hopeful at the allotment: the different kinds of mustard greens and radishes are growing nicely (but still just about 1 cm high), the cold frame is greening up again and just yesterday…