I dragged in the thoughtful gift from Anne Mary’s Caledonian pine tree and started to pull off the needles. They came off reasonably easily but they had a little brown husk on the ends that attached...
I was thinking the other day about the time when I collected my first colony of bees. I had been helping out on the Cambridge Bee Keeping Association stall at a country fair. One of the gang of...
I can be a bit of an ostrich when it comes to animal cruelty. I’m happy to donate but I can hardly bear to see or read about the plight of animals trapped in a hellish world. So many humans can get...
This is another in our skinflint soup series. This delicious soup was run up with leftovers that could easily have just been thrown away. They made an elegant soup. The two key ingredients are...
I love the light in a lot of Carel Weight’s paintings. He often favours dusk – the time the French call day for night – the brief drift of minutes when everything seems to shimmer in a strange...
It was Danny’s turn to buy the Balsamic vinegar last weekend. Someone had put an expensive bottle of Balsamic beside the cheap ones in Tesco and he ended up paying five times more than he could have....
We’ve had a secret challenge at the cottage this past year. In the old days when oil was cheap we were wanton with our central heating. Our 900 litre tank was filled up four times a year. In October...
“I bet we’re the first in the world to be having broccoli soup and flash fried squid for breakfast.” Danny dunked a chunk of crusty bread in his soup. With me still at home we tend to have a late...
One of the best cakes that I’ve ever tasted is my mum’s sponge cake with a wicked filling of strawberries and whipped cream. In fact when she was making this filling she discovered how to make butter...
One of the things that I’ve always longed for is to spend time with someone who can teach me about foraging in depth. There are courses but rarely local to me. Also some of the best ones can be...
