Friday, April 30, 2010

A garden day.
Having been away for a full-on long weekend in Melbourne, then arriving home to find that we were going to have to get immediately into a few, unexpected 12 hour days at work, we were pretty tired by the end of it! However, today has been absolutely lovely ~ just being home and gardening, cleaning and hanging out with the dogs. Bliss.
The work we did in the veggie garden before we left was lovely to come home to. I spent the day in there weeding, clearing and digging. Our winter veggies are coming along nicely. The peas are always great at this time of year, but I've been surprised at just how well all the beans are doing. The barlotti have flowers and teeny pods on them already. Silverbeet always grows quickly. We also got some cabbage, red cabbage ( yum!), more brussel sprouts ( the cabbage white's are having a field day with the ones I planted already) and cauliflower so I'll plant them out tomorrow ~ if I still have any feeling left in my back after all the digging today!
There are still chillis coming by the basket load. The ones in the photo are Thai ones. Lloyd made a sauce today with scotch bonnets, thai chillis, peppers and hungarian chillis.

Recipe for Sue
Take chillis ~ wash and remove stalk - 150 Thai chillis, 50 hungarian chillis, 20 habaneros. Cook them in about 200ml of tawny port and 200ml mix of cider vinegar and wine vinegar and some salt. Simmer until chillis are soft. Once soft put the lot through the blender, then mouli to get rid of seeds. Put sauce back into a pan and simmer for 20 mins and remove any froth/scum from top. Then bottle! Voila.





This is one of the wee chooks that Maude hatched on the 1st of January. She's a cross between a Minorca ( one of the black ones) and a New Hampshire Red. She's my favourite, her markings are really lovely. She's smaller than the rest and they chase her a wee bit at food times, so I sneak her round the back of the chicken house and feed her treats!
I've called her Sparrow
 

10 comments:

  1. Ooh can you share the chilli sauce recipe or a recipe if you have one! Ta!

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  2. I am so glad that someone else loves fresh peas. I cannot understand why recipes always menion frozen peas!

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  3. lovely to catch up with you on your blog, lovely photos.
    fresh peas are just the best .. looking forward to some from the garden here in about a month, sunshine permitting xx

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  4. Spending a day at home is so much more appreciated after a busy period!
    Teresa x

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  5. Anonymous5:17 am

    Sparrow is a beauty. What a lucky girl she is to get those extra treats.

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  6. Lovely photos, lovely garden and great looking chook - all so pretty.
    Good recipe too. I must have been inspired by you - I've just bought a vintage mouli hoping to do something with our upcoming tomatoes!

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  7. fresh peas rock!
    Wendy I hope your vintage one works better than the one I bought! I ended up having to buy a new plastic one :( as the vintage one was too rickety!

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  8. Now you have me worried Laura!
    I haven't got it yet - bought it on Ebay and didn't even think of rickety-ness!! Oh well, it's a gamble I'm willing to take. I really wanted it for tomatoes and also we have barbados cherry. They are a lovely fruit, but I've never been able to work out how to separate the seeds..... so I'll let you know how it goes.

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  9. Oh I'm sure it'll be fine! It was just the one we bought, it had probably been bashed around a lot!! last year Lloyd sieved everything to get rid of the seeds. Poor thing, it took ages.

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  10. She's beautiful! And the chilis look great too! Your garden looked gorgeous in the previous photos--you have done wonderful work in the space that you have and its been great to see it evolve. Thank you also for sharing the photos of your trip to Melbourne.

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I love it when you leave me comments, it lets me know there are folk out there reading my ramblings! Thank you, I appreciate them loads and loads
Laura x