Autumn Pleasures

Good morning everyone!

Happy Autumn rain.....! Not to everyone's taste and pleasure I know...

However, for our garden - and in particular the vegetable bed - it is very welcome right now. We decided last week to get a skip and cut/trim down all the trees, bushes and hedges. Good shot! The weather was amazing in the weekend - sunny and 18/19 'C - and we got it all done by Sunday late afternoon. Skip was measured by skip company on Monday and it was 1 ton of garden rubbish in total...! It looks very neat now - a delight to see from the warm and cosy house.

So....all veggies gone. All tomato pots emptied. Only things left are the rhubarb, rhubarb chard, cutting celery and of course my beloved Dahlias! We even had a 'new Dahlia kid on the block' a couple of weeks ago, this deep red one - it must be my favourite colour:

Because of the stormy weather last week, I cut out some very large and heavy branches from the older Dahlia plants before they were hitting the ground. I guess it's only a matter of weeks now before they will all be going so trying to enjoy the bright colours as much as I can before 'doom & gloom' time in the garden ;-).

Back to the rain. Can you hear it...? We found that after clearing the veg patch of all the veggies that were left (parsnips, carrots, onions) the soil was actually quite dry - almost dusty. Our summer was not as wet as the English one so the current rain is very welcome before we put in the onion & garlic sets and sow some winter seeds (spinach and winter lettuce).

This was our last harvest. The onions (from seed) have not done that well. They're ok but too small really. So I have decided to use them for Boeuf Bourguignon and/or pickle them.
The parsnips we roasted last Sunday (with olive oil, lemon, honey) to go with a roast chicken and roast potatoes and the carrots and kohlrabi are still in the fridge.

Going to put onion sets into the (wet!!) veg patch this weekend - 'Electric Red Autumn' and 'Radar' organic onions. Also putting in 'Vallelado' organic garlic. Apart from the onion & garlic department, I am sowing two winter lettuces: 'Rouge d'Hiver' and 'Winter Density' as well as 'Super Aquadulce' broad beans. 

I am waiting for The Organic Gardening Catalogue to send me the 'Giant Winter' spinach early next week so that those seeds can go in as well. This is the box of goodies that arrived from them earlier this week (always a happy moment!):

You can probably spot another treasure in there....! Can you smell them when you think of it...?! Sweet peas! 

After having followed Monty Don and his sweet pea project on BBC2's Gardener's World, I have decided to put the sweet peas in much earlier than I did this year. I bought 'Spencer', 'Little Sweetheart', 'Old Fashioned Mix' and 'Chelsea Scented'.

Sweet peas always remind me of mum who used to absolutely adore them and grow them herself to put them in the house.



So back in the garden on Sunday afternoon after my guests have left!

That's another theme this Autumn. Guests! We're pretty much 'fully booked' up until Christmas. 
As I mentioned last time, my sister was going to be over with her new(ly) constructed family - all 6 of them! Well, that was great fun! The weather gods were totally with us still as the kids even went for a dive in our oversized paddling pool on Sunday afternoon. 

They arrived Saturday lunchtime for a bowl of 'my mum's tomato soup' and cupcakes for afters ;-). That went down very well....

I made Mary Berry's Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Butter Icing and Nigella's Blueberry Muffins with Violet Icing. I think that most of us even had two cupcakes after the soup.... One of each... Piggies!!!

The remainder of that Saturday afternoon was spent outside, playing ball games (curb ball became very popular again that weekend...remember that?). 

We had planned Duncan's chips in the evening, with roast za'atar chicken drumsticks & thighs and roast veggies from the garden. The latter was the fun bit as I got some of the children involved in digging out and cleaning the root veg. They did a brilliant job!
Here they are:

Beetroot, carrots and parsnips! Roasted them with olive oil, honey, lemon and cumin seeds. Together with the chicken and the chips, the kids absolutely wolfed it down. I think that when you involve them in all the prep (especially in growing the veg too) that they will be much keener to eat things like this. It's sort of 'cool' to pick your own crop, clean it, cook it and eat it.

We also harvested our pudding: rhubarb! For a crumble with apple. 
Of course we had to make hats again of the rhubarb leaves, although this time they were so big they became a bit (too) floppy!



The rhubarb crowd:

Sunday was pretty lazy and relaxed after relatively short nights for some.... Chatting, hanging out, more curb ball and a walk around the woods nearby. I had made a chocolate coffee Bundt cake to go with late morning coffees to keep everyone going and that went down a treat! A funny, 'golden shine' picture I took of it before it was demolished looked like this:

So that was the weekend with my younger sis and her gang!

Since then Duncan and I did embark on a bit of a detox (8 days of no coffee, alcohol, wheat and dairy) which of course came with the 'necessary' head aches.... OUCH!! 

Delighted that we were able to eat and drink 'normally' again last week, we made our own pizzas again - Friday night is now pizza night here with the boggins off to hockey and footie at different times. 

In honour of @EnglishMum (who I follow on Twitter) I created an 'ARSE' pizza, after having admired her 'BUM pie' and 'ARSE cake' creations! Hilarious! A right laugh! Arse pizza:

Yes, there's a lot of fun to be had on Twitter - for those of you who are not following yet...! If you fancy following me, my Twitter name is @BeezzzzzBee . You will probably get more regular and smaller snippets of info on family life, cooking, baking and gardening there.

I have finally made some proper sourdough bread again as well. The previous lot were too flat (collapsed when slashing the dough as it went into the oven). And I am delighted to share with you that I am back on track with some beautiful loaves, proper oven spring and good air pockets. Result:

I think that this is the most competitive I have ever been...but competitive with ME! Having to improve on my sourdough every time again. It will have to be perfect one day.... If there is such a thing.. It is slowly becoming quite an obsession. The sourdough project. Am also thinking of creating another starter. A white one. Currently have a rye starter which is now nearly one year old.

For the white starter I am probably going to use Dan Lepard's recipe from his book "The handmade loaf". He's my sourdough hero, who's just come back from San Sebastian where he did the amazing 'Loaf in a Box' project all summer.

On that note...

And with this Autumn arrangement on our garden table...

... I shall leave you to be cosy and warm. Wishing you everything wonderful that this season and your family and friends can bring.

I will be back soon with more bread, garden, guests, cooking, baking and other family stories!

Love,

X Bee