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Raspberry Seed Biscuit Cakes
I’ve called them biscuit cakes because they’re a hybrid between the two. A crunchy biscuity outside, with a soft cake-like inside. But whatever their name the gardeners mate and I have decided they are the best biscuits we’ve ever tasted! We grow our own autumn fruiting raspberries, the variety is called ‘Polka’ and they are very productive. In fact once they start fruiting, we can hardly keep up with the picking, eating and preserving of them. These biscuits came about because we hate wasting food, especially when we’ve gone to the trouble of growing it! I was making a raspberry cheesecake, so I’d briefly stewed up a pan of raspberries…
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Spiced Cucumber Cake
If you grow your own cucumbers, there comes a point during the growing season when your plant produces more fruits than you can eat. This is the moment to preserve them for the coming months and there is no better way than turning them into cake, slicing it and freezing it. You can never have too much cake! Those of you that follow the garden’s process will know by now that the gardeners mate and I make quite a lot of low sugar fruit and vegetable cake that we eat with yogurt for breakfast. Cake made with vegetables, especially with nuts added for protein, make a great and nutritious start…
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Garden Diary – A week of surprises, not all good!
As I was walking down the garden, I just noticed some little pink flowers almost buried under the heucheras, I bent to take a look and it was a bunch of cyclamen flowers. I always forget about them, then get a lovely surprise. Last week was full of surprises. I was so lucky to spot a strawberry, in September! It’s been a funny year in the garden with the multiple heatwaves, how many? Who’d have thought that we would loose track of how many heatwaves we’ve had in one uk summer. The world’s gone mad! Talking of going mad, why can’t I grow Aubergines? My niece grows so many she…
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Garden Diary – Does the sky look bluer this week?
Last week, in between the pretty good balance of sunny spells and showers, I kept feeling that the blueness of the sky seemed much more intense, so much so that I googled it. I know we say this all the time now, but, what did we do before googling? I suppose we just wondered! Anyway it turns out that I am quite right, the sky is bluer in autumn and it’s all due to the temperature dropping and humidity levels falling. This drier air means less scattering of the blue light, allowing more of it to reach our eyes and making the sky appear more blue. I thought that was…
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Garden Diary – Turning the harvest into Curry & Pear Cake
The first week of September had the house smelling of curry and pear cake, as the harvesting continued. We make other ready meals for the freezer but we do love curry and cake. Not necessarily at the same time, you probably know by now that we eat our low sugar fruit and vegetable cakes for breakfast. Although, the gardeners mate would happily eat curry for breakfast, he rarely has! After hearing on the radio this week of how, what you consume affects your mood and mental health, I felt really sad that as a nation we’ve moved so far away from scratch cooking being the norm. It’s not that many…
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Garden diary – Cheers! The garden finally got a drink.
Just as the borders were starting to look incredibly sad, the rain finally came and the garden had a drink. We still need more, but it certainly does look better for it! I’m so glad though, that the warm sunny weather lasted over August bank holiday especially for those still holidaying. It is quite a rarity! As I’ve previously mentioned the white garden has suffered the most, mainly because it is underneath our enormous walnut tree, which casts its shadows over the whole area. And also must require a huge amount of water. We’re actually quite worried about it as it is looking very droopy! Unfortunately the bit of rain…
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Garden Diary – I’d rather be in the garden!
We’ve reached that time of year where I spend as much time in the kitchen as I do in the garden, turning all the produce into ready meals for the freezer. Don’t get me wrong I do really enjoy cooking, but when the weather is lovely outside, I’d rather be in the garden! But with more ripe raspberries on a daily basis and a basket full of pears that ripen so quickly once they are picked. There is lots of baking to be done! When out picking yet more fruit the ‘gardeners mate’ shouted me over to see a butterfly he thought looked smaller than usual. I said, “oh it’s…
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Garden Diary – Is it a record breaking tomato?
I’ve been watching this tomato get bigger and bigger, thinking, ‘this is definitely going to break my existing record’. But sadly it was 20g short. The original record was set back in August 2017 by a ‘Brandywine’ tomato. Although they do get rather large, nothing has come close to that huge fruit. Last year I ordered some seeds for a tomato variety called ‘Gourmansun’, but they were not what they claimed to be. Luckily the plant did produce some huge orange tomatoes that I named, ‘Orange Sunshine’, and they were delicious, so I saved the seeds and grew them again this year. The plant has grown tall and thin like…
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Garden Diary – From escaping Aubergines to rescuing Dahlias
I don’t know what’s going on with my Aubergines, but both plants have set fruit so low that they are having to grow outside the pot, it looks ever so funny like they are trying to escape. Also in the greenhouse, the variegated chilli plant that I mentioned a while back has turned out to be quite a stunner, with purple in the variegated leaves. The chillies are growing vertically, initially black but then gradually turning scarlet, which we all know is a sign of danger! I’ve been spicing up my food with the reasonably hot, and beautifully purple ‘Buena Mulata’, but the ‘gardeners mate’, – his new title after…
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Garden Diary – Grateful for good health & a tidy greenhouse
Last week marked the twelve month anniversary of a rather nasty fall I had, involving me cracking my vertebra. I felt extremely lucky at the time that no long term damage had been done and a year on I still feel grateful. Without good health, nothing that people think of as important actually matters, but sadly most of the time we take it for granted. The ‘under gardener’ got his promotion this time last year, up from ‘garden apprentice’ with having to take on many more gardening jobs than he’d done before. Some of which he’d not actually been allowed to do before! Lol. Anyway he’s now having a steady…
