Today's Harvest and 101 Ideas for Courgettes

I love this time of year, everything in the garden is growing so fast and most days we can harvest a huge basket of produce for our tea. At the moment we have courgettes (lots!), squash, french beans, lettuce, beetroot, artichoke, tomatoes, cucumbers and the first chillies.

I squeeze veggies in wherever I can, I think these minature ones (munchkin) look beautiful weaving their way through the fence along the back of one of the flower borders.

This is a munchkin, lovely baked and just enough for one person.

I prefer to grow unusual vegetables, different colours, different shapes and types that I can't buy in my greengrocers or supermarket. This year I have grown yellow courgettes (soleil) and also these which are my favourite courgette.



They are a climbing Italian variety called Tromboncino. They will grow up to 2 metres tall and I grow them over one of the archways in our vegetable patch. I just love their colour, and the way they curl around, and I think the texture of them is much nicer than a standard variety, and they crop really well! I'm not joking, tens maybe over a hundred from just a couple of plants! Also if you leave them to ripen on the plant, they will form a skin tough enough so that you can store for a couple of months after harvest.

This is todays harvest of squashes and courgettes, and these were just the bigger ones! There were stacks more that need picking, and I am going to pick some more and take them along to my WI meeting tonight to our "Recycle Table".



I am sure those of you that grow courgettes know just how quickly they grow and how soon you table can be groaning under the weight them all, especially given all this rain we are having! There's only so many you can give away to family and friends, but I just can't bring myself to throw the excess on to the compost, and I'm not a huge fan of courgette chutney :-(), so over the last few years I've collected what I think are some fab ways to use up courgettes which I'm going to share with you. This is the first one.

This is a really easy tasty courgette salad. I originally got it from Delia's vegetarian cookbook but upped the herbs slightly. The original recipe is here.

Courgette Recipe No 1 - Marinated Courgettes and Herb Vinaigrette

About half a kilo of courgettes

Maldon sea salt

For the herb vinaigrette

A handful of some or all if possible of the following herbs Chives, Parsley, Tarragon, Rosemary leaves all finely chopped.

1 clove of garlic

1 teaspoon sea salt (I use slightly less but its down to your taste)

1 heaped teaspoon of wholegrain mustard

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

4 tablespoons of olive oil

black pepper

1. Prepare the courgettes according to their size. If they are small halve them, if they are slightly larger cut into four, if they are larger then thinly slice. Steam them until lightly cooked.

2. Prepare the dressing by pounding garlic with the salt in a pestle or mortar until a paste. Work in mustard, vinegar, black pepper and then lastly the oil. Whisk together then add the herbs.

3. Add to the courgettes, allow to get cold and refridgerate to marinate. This will keep well in the fridge for up to three days.

This is so tasty, we eat it a lot with fish or chicken in the summer, do try it.

So that's one idea... I would love to hear yours too!

Before I go I had to post these rainy day play photos...
A fab tea party...

and a very competitive wacky race...

See you tomorrow..

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cakes and lakes

We're back! We've just spent a lovely holiday in the Lake District but boy was it wet!

When it wasn't raining too hard we did some walking, the little people loved climbing up the rocky paths to see the views. We climbed Latterbarrow, that's Lake Winderemere down there!

We climbed part of Stickle Ghyll in the Langdale Valley, (we had to bribe the little ones with a kinder egg if they made it to the bridge which they did!).

When it was too wet for walking we spent quite a few sessions at one of my favourite places..

where they do the BEST CAKES in the WHOLE of the Lake District!

So we had a lot of these...

and whiled away some rainy spells browsing their shop of lovely things.. (a few purchases were made - I'll share tomorrow...)

And of course all the rain meant I could spend some time doing a lot of this..

All that rain means I am halfway there now with the blanket!

That's it from me for now. Best catch up with the enormous amount of washing and ironing and tidying that always needs to be done after a trip away :-(

Will share more photos tomorrow...

Hope the sun is shining wherever you are xxxx

Jungly growth everywhere!

Ahhhhh. Yesterday there was a break in the rain, so I went outside and pottered round the garden. Breathing in the lovely fresh air and soaking in the sunshine, and taking in the garden that seemed to have gone wild with all this rain we have had over the last couple of weeks. This is our veggie plot.

The pumpkin patch has gone mad!

It was lovely to see just how many butterflies and bees we had buzzing around, they really love this verbena bonariensis.

Pausing to stop at my sons creation in the flower bed! Hmmm, what could he have been thinking here!

And picking a bucketful of flowers for the house.

And turning them into this!

I love bringing the outdoors inside, doing creative things like this really give me a lift, and it did yesterday.

I am so pleased that things are back on track now and we are all really looking forward to the weekend. Some swimming, a long run (for me!), a little bit of shopping, a car boot sale (weather permitting), and setting up a shoe shop in my daughters bedroom - she has already appropriated all of my best shoes, with the idea that I buy them back!

Anyway whatever you are doing have a lovely weekend everybody, I hope the sun shines for you wherever you are!

Looking forward to the holidays

Hello everyone! It's been a little while since my last post, and oh I have to say I have missed it! Lets just say we have been going through a bit of difficult situation at home at the moment, and I haven't been able to find the motivation or words for cheery blogging, but hopefully all of it will be resolved shortly and we will be able to start the summer holidays full of the joys of summer (if it ever stops raining here!) and a spring in our step. I have so loved reading all of your blogs though, seeing what you have all been up to, it really brightens my day.

I have to show you just a couple of things though! We had a lovely shopping trip to John Lewis on Saturday. There was a sale on! A lovely red polka dot tablecloth was purchased (I'll show you this in situ soon!), lots of lovely yarns and ribbons in the haberdashery department,
a beautiful mozzerella and tomato salad for lunch (their food hall is sooooo good!), and a few bargains in the clothes department!

And look at these, cut from the garden. Don't you just love the vividness of this lily.

And these sweet peas, carefully arranged by my beautiful girl - I wish you could smell them!

Look at that - the sun is coming out at last outside, and theres some patchy blue sky. I think I'll go and do a bit of mindless pottering this afternoon, snipping and deadheading and enjoy all the lovely new growth brought on by the rain (and probably weeds, but I think I'll try and ignore those till next week!)

Summer days & outdoor living...

What a beautiful weekend it has been. I hope you have had a lovely weekend too. Doesn't the lovely weather just make everything jollier? Everyone here has been so happy, we have spent the weekend dipping our toes in the sea on the beautiful South Coast, enjoying lovely alfresco dining, sipping cold drinks and chatting outside to the small hours, but more of that tomorrow!

Today I have to show you my Sarah Smith bunting, totally copied from Emma at LavenderHouse.

I am so pleased with it! I love the colours and how easy it was to make! Emma you do have some amazing ideas, thank you!

Doesn't it look so lovely fluttering in the breeze, against a lovely summer day?

It was so easy to make - once I had mastered my sewing machine again. I am ashamed to say it is probably five years (!) since I have had it out of its little jacket to stitch anything. I am not much of a seamstress at the moment, although I would love to learn more :-), and it took me a good 20 minutes to remember how to thread it! But once we got going there was nothing stopping us and we raced through the bunting! We are having some friends and their children over soon for an afternoon get together I think these will look lovely draped around the patio and amongst the trees, to really make it an occasion!

I think I am just going to have to purchase a lovely tablecloth to go with it. I am thinking red and white gingham would be perfect, with one of my lovely hand embroidered tablecloths (one of my boot sale finds) draped pretty over the top. Perhaps I could make a tablecloth, that shouldn't be too hard should it? Just a bit of hemming? Yes, I think that might have to be my next project!

And on top of the table, I think I will have to copy Lucy's lovely idea over at Attic 24 and use my bonne maman jars, prettily adorned with ribbon as tealight holders. Thank you Lucy! I can see it all now! It will look perfect!

I have a dream....

Today was the day of the school fete, and yesterday I was busy beavering away making cakes for the school, and picking flowers to make up some bouquets for our WI stand. By bedtime last night, the cakes had been made and iced.

The flowers had been picked and were resting in our garage ready to be arranged in the morning.
I don't know if 've mentioned this before, lol, but I LOVE GROWING THINGS, flowers and vegetables, things that I can pick and bring into the house for us to eat or to make it look lovely and pretty, is what I really LOVE to do.

I have a small vegetable patch and cutting patch, and over the last four years or so I have been learning myself how to grow vegetables and cut flowers, how to extend my growing season, which varieties to grow, how to condition them and so on. I like to give bunches to friends and family but have never done anything else with it (I haven't had the time for one thing!), its just something that I love to do.

If I'm being honest though, I do have dream of developing it further, but I have been waiting until the children start school, which is now only in a few weeks away. I had been a bit nervous about taking my flowers to the fete as it would be the first time that people would be "buying them", but having just joined our local WI and being asked if I could bring something to the fete it seemed like the perfect thing to bring, and the money raised would go to the school.

Here are some of the flowers. What do you think? The first of this seasons dahlias went into this one.

Some of my favourites Ammi Majus, scabious, black cornflowers, beautiful black poppies, mint and white dianthus.

Other bunches of flowers included my favourite sweet peas, (so fragrant!), salvias, calendula, dianthus and alchemilla mollis.

Finally the flowers were ready to go. Two boxes of them! I have to say I was very proud of them, and I LOVED every minute of doing it, from the growing, to the picking to the arranging them in their lovely coloured cellophane! Really LOVED it!

And here they are on our WI stall.
And yes, they all sold! Very quickly! I was so very pleased, and I received such nice comments from people about them it really made my day, it truly did. I was very, very proud!

My daughter hooking a duck.

So there you go, a really brilliant day and who knows? Maybe I could do something with my flowers, I SOOoooo loved doing it, and it would be so exciting if I could make it work somehow. It has certainly given me food for thought and something to dream about tonight ....

Got to Earn a Copper or Two...

What a lovely morning we had today! Warm and sunny and whilst hubbie left early for work this morning to earn pennies for us, we eased ourself into our Saturday morning with milkshakes, toast and talked about "earning pennies" to spend on our Saturday morning shopping trip.

I have been a bit cross lately of the "I wants" in our house. "Mummy I want a Humungasor" is the latest request that I hear from morning til night at the moment. (It's a Ben 10 toy in case you didn't know!). Both our two are very lucky and probably have been a bit spoilt of late, and it is getting a bit difficult to walk from one side of their bedroom to the other sometimes. Little bits of everything, polly pocket, playmobil, bits of I don't know what that we have seem to have accumulated from car boot sales, things everywhere... )

(this was after the big tidy up!)

So, for a while, no more things are going to come into the house, unless they have earnt them themselves. We are going to encourage them to earn pennies by doing jobs around the house and save up for something that would like. They are only 4 and a half, so as we have only just started the "working for money" concept, I figure that I am going to have to show the work/reward principle fairly promptly so the message works. I decide that we will earn the money and then go straight out and spend it this morning on whatever they choose.

My daughter is the first to cotton on. She likes this idea. I say I will give her 10p if she makes her bed. She does and asks to make ours too. Another 10p. She asks for something else to do. She can tidy her room. Soon she has earnt 50p and is eager to go and spend it. It takes a lot more explaining and cajoling to persuade my son to tidy his room, make his bed (of sorts, but its a bit tricky being a cabin bed), and then get dressed and put his shoes on himself, soon he also has 50p.

Right! We're ready.

First to the market. I buy some red ribbon to make my Sarah Smith Bunting (I will show you this soon!). Then we look around the charity shops, known to my two as "the shops where the Grandmas work". After long deliberations, toys were carefully selected.
Both proudly told "the grandmas" what they had done to earn the money and handed over their hard earnt pennies. A lovely lunch and a coffee and then home to a nice surprise for me. Want to see?


It looks like a parcel for me!

What could it be!

A treat for me! I figure I've earnt a little something too!

So everyone had a good day. It will remain to be seen how long the spirit of entrepreneurship remains...