Quick Lunch

Toast from homemade bread, gouda and a chuck-everything-in-kinda-chutney.

Patricia xxx...x

Courgette Fritters

The courgettes are growing,  plenty and fast. So, here is the first of my courgette recipes.

Fritters are easily adaptable depending on your mood or style of cuisine, by adding different spice mixtures. 
Courgettes do not give you an explosion of flavour on their own, so they do need a kick up the backside from time to time.

Ingredients

• 2 green courgettes and 1 yellow, grated
• salt
• 1 small onion, grated
• parsley, chopped
• tiny green or red chilli, finely chopped
• zest of 1 lemon
• plain flour, 2 to 3 heaped tbsp
• corn flour, 1 heaped tbsp
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• sunflower or olive oil

Preparation

• Put the grated courgettes in a colander, sprinkle with some salt, put a plate over it with something heavy on top. Leave for 30 minutes standing in your (clean) sink.  This is to draw excess water out of the courgettes. If you omit this step, your fritters will turn soggy quickly.
• After about 1/2 hr squeeze some more of the water out of the courgettes and toss them into a bowl with all the other ingredients, except the oil.
• Give it a stir with a wooden spoon.
• Heat some oil in a frying pan (a non stick works best for this)
• With a large spoon bring about four dollops of the mixture into the pan (depending on the size of your pan, more or less dollops)
• Press them down slightly, frying them over medium heat. 
• Turn them over and fry on the other side till golden.
• When they are ready, drain on kitchen paper and repeat the process with the rest of the mixture and keep the others warm in the meantime.



Variations

Mexican style  Add sweetcorn, chopped red pepper, ground cumin, chopped coriander, chilli powder .....

Indian style  Replace flour with chickpea flour, add  grated ginger, ground coriander, fresh coriander, turmeric, cinnamon,  garam massala.....


Patricia xxx...x

Beetroot and Feta Salad

I just couldn't wait any longer to have a taste of the beetroot we are growing.  They were therefore on the small side, but it didn't take away from the flavour.

I love that sweet, earthiness of the beets and the colour and it works well with the saltiness of the feta.



Ingredients  (which I used)

• 10 small beets (smaller than a ping pong ball)
• 150 grs feta (from sheep milk)
• 1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• 2 tbsp chopped mint
• 2 tsp honey
• Juice of 1 lemon (the zest I used in the courgette fritters)
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• salt and freshly ground black pepper 

Preparation

• Wash the beets thoroughly and cut off the leaves,  leaving stalks of about 3 cm (btw, you can also eat the leaves in a salad or sauteed like spinach, but this time I gave them to the chicks and they were very appreciative)
• Put in a cooking pot covered with water on the hob. Cook until tender (al dente)
• In the meantime make your dressing with all the other ingredients and crumble in your feta.
• When the beets are cooked, you can drain  off the liquid, cut the beets in half and add them to the dressing whilst still hot.
• Toss and leave to cool, put in fridge or a cool place till serving (I know ! You can use this as a warm salad too)

I served this salad with courgette fritters, panfried pollock and salmon.

Hatched !

Oh, how proud I am !
Arthur II and Gwen have babies ! 
This morning I noticed 2 black cotton balls peeping out from under Gwen. 

Sitting there for half an hour, I managed to take 2 pics. Not a lot, but they need theit peace and I had to get back to the ironing board.
It certainly made my day !

Patricia xxx...x ;-)

Green Olive Tapenade

So simple to make, I'm almost ashamed to admit it.  Full of natural umami, it is a great ingredient to use in a variety of dishes. 
I like to spread some over my homemade pizza base, before I add the passata di pomodoro.  Also lovely on bruschetta, a spoonful in your pasta, as a seasoning for soups, salad dressings ....

ingredients
300 grs pitted green olives
1 tin anchovy fillets
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 small chillies
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

preparation
Put everything, but the olive oil, in a measuring jug.
With your hand blender, blend until you get a smooth-ish paste. 
Lastly stir in the olive oil.

You can store in a glass jar with screw top lid in the fridge for about a week. Pour some olive oil over to seal off.

Eh ?
Of course you can use your food processor! What a question ! ;o)  Pestle and mortar should also do the trick.  Heck, you could even use a chopping board and sharp knife.

Patricia xxx...x

Rhododendrons

Ever since the time we lived in Ireland, I have a love - hate relationship with rhodos.

I hated them, because they invaded Killarney National Park  and beyond, showing no mercy for indigenous plants and trees.

I love them, because come May, they will bloom in al their glory and delight me with an abundant display of colour.

Now, in our own garden, well established rhododendrons show off their lovely flowers and atract all the bees from the neighbourhood.

 You can't but love them !

Buzz, buzz, buzzing !

 One of my all time favourites (I have many) is the Foxglove.
The picture below shows some that grew wild last year in the woodland just 'behind' the fence.
When they appear in our garden, I nourish them (psychologically - they don't need to be wrapped in cotton wool) and I abide my time until they grace me with their beauty.

Where ever you may be, I hope you enjoy the late spring flowers as much as I do.

Patricia xxx...x

Garden Impressions

It looks like everything in the garden needs seeing to, all at once.  And I have been trying to keep up.
Turning the attention to the vegetable garden.  it certainly looks like a blank canvas now, but I have been sowing lettuces, chard, peas (mainly for pea shoots), carrots, parsnip, radishes, beetroot, runner beans ......

 In a couple of months time the soil won't look so bare and our raised beds will hopefully be choc-a-block full of greens.

The  greenhouse is doing it's job nicely, even if it is standing halfway down the woods.

 I harvested the rather slender leeks, but left a few to go to seed.  The flowers are beautiful and the seeds will be collected for the year after.

When we first moved here, just over 2 years ago, this garden had plenty  of high beech hedges, some azalea and a few rhododendrons.  That is not a lot to provide colour or to attract beneficial insects.

This has already changed, as one of the first things we did was cut back the monotonous drone that were the hedges.  Not all, just the ones that were most oppressive.

Now there are lots of other plants growing in between, like honeysuckle, broom, rowan and I even discovered some hawthorn. 

They can all stay as it will be more pleasing to the eye, says I.

We also stocked up a border with herbaceous plants.  It might look a little bleak still, but come summer it will be ablaze with colour.

Gardens full of colour are not fashionable at the moment, here in Belgium. The trend is to grow only white flowers and everything green needs to be trimmed into a regimented shape......

.....Not in this girl's garden. I love a good variety of structural plants and colourful flowers.  An abudance, a jungle like feel .....

My favourite vistas in the garden. 

Above : a collection of different shapes  and colours of leaves and flowers.  The rowan blooms will turn into bright orange berries later in the season.

Below : an azalea that I uncovered last year, a young American oak (which I should be cutting down, but I don't want to), willows (salix) and rhododendron together, looking very dramatic.

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed being led up the garden path.

Patricia xxx...x

Have a Sunny and Happy Easter Weekend

I'm Making Roman Blinds. What a slog ! Quick Preview.

This is not my first attempt.  I've made a couple of roman blinds before.  Now, they were for separate rooms, for small windows, in a country cottage.
The ones I am making now are for our sitting room, with 6 large windows, so they have to be a bit decent and straight. 
Gosh, I didn't want to do this job - it was not in my freshening-up plan for the sitting room - but the old ones had shrunk so much after washing them that there was no other option.

I just wanted to post these pictures here, to give myself a pat on the back.  Please don't hold back, you can all give me a pat on the back and give me the motivation to finish the sodding blinds.

Yep, still need to finish the hem, but that is no work at all.

Also, I have a striped pelmet in mind to tie in with the rest of the new scheme.

Hey, and I pre-shrunk the fabric !

Thanks for giving me a pat on the back.
Patricia xxx...x

So, we went to Ireland

... at the end of February , for 3 nights/4 days.  If you want to be in the Southwest of Ireland and your plane lands in Dublin, that of course means you have to drive a long way by rental car to where you want to be.  Sneem, Co Kerry, in our case.
It gave us 2 full days to visit only some of our  friends and have a jolly knees up. We also went to have a look at some properties, nothing definite as yet.  We'll keep our eyes peeled.

We arrived back home on the Monday night.  Tired, but happy to have seen some of the friends. 
Tuesday, took down the roman blinds in the sittingroom, sneezed and sneezed some more -- very dusty -- washed and air-dried them.  Took out the off-white emulsion and started painting the walls.
Bert was due in hospital for surgery on his foot on the 15th March and I wanted everything freshened up for his revalidation at home, you see.
But something went wrong ! On Thursday 3rd I came down with shivers, fever, achey bones ..... flu.  Don't really know how, but I managed to finish the painting and ironed a few of the roman blinds, only to come to the conclusion that they had shrunk.... a lot, in the width.
Oh, I might as well fall to pieces right now and die a slow death of flu. I felt anxious, needed to be in top form to take care of Bert when he had his surgery.  On Monday the 14 th, Bert decided to call the doctor as the fever was still rampant (39.8 C)
Decision was made to phone the surgeon and postpone Bert's op (that is now on the 3rd May).  I got some much needed sleep and rest, Bert finally realised that I also needed food - yes, my stomach thought that my throat had been cut, many times.  I got some echinecea, antibiotics (yes, I know, but desperate times...)
By Wednesday, the fever went, but I still felt weak 
Now I'm back in the land of recovering flu sufferers.  Bert went to Ikea to buy fabric for new roman blinds and that is what I am about to start with, filled with trepidation, but I suppose it will look much beter than the shrunken ones.

Murphy's Law, sod's law, I don'tknow.  What do you think ?

Thanks for reading
Patricia xxx...x

Natural Garden Fences & Devides

Our house is set in a 3000 sqm garden, surrounded by woodland mainly. Needless to say that come autumn we have leaves galore to rake. 
Now, we are not the sort of people that would love living with a regimented, pristine and super tidy garden. 
We like using what nature gives us for free and things that don' t look out of place in this setting.
These are just a few of the examples what is possible.

In the pictures above you can see how we made cilinders from wire mesh, which we can fill with leaves or other garden clippings. It is not that it will compost very quickly, but it will compact together nicely and break down over a longer period of time and it can be filled up again in the next year.

We have several of these babies dotted around the property and they make a great winter home for hibernating hedgehogs, little field mice, shrews and even toads or frogs.

Above you can see our wall of branches and twigs. There  were some spruce trees standing there, getting too big for their boots, which we cut down, but left a height of 150/200 cm trunks. In between the trunks we stacked loads of branches and twigs from clearing the woodland.

Another lovely home for wildlife.

Now in the picture that follows you can notice a project that is still very much a work in progress. 

We made 3 terraces next to the house, where there was just a slope before. Bert erected the retaining walls with plywood (not my ideal) and I used the stems of young trees that needed thinning and slotted them in place behind the uprights that Bert placed in front of the walls.
On these terraces I can now start planting shrubs and flowers and even vegetables. 
Once finished it will look great, don't you think ?

Thank you for reading.

Patricia xxx...x