Things here in Suffolk are beginning to get distinctly autumnal – the neighbours have been having bonfires and the leaves on the silver birches are tinged with gold and beginning to fall – so I thought I’d use up our Mediterranean vegetables in a comforting lasagne. It’s a nice thing to cook when you have a bit of time at the weekend and feel like pottering gently round the kitchen. Continue reading
I have just had the loveliest present drop through the letterbox – a packet of home-preserved olives from our friends Katie and Ben.
The olives come from their own trees in the Vaucluse in south-east France and they are delicious, fruity and salty and full of flavour. Continue reading
The kitchen garden is stuffed to bursting with fruit and veg and we’ve just spent a highly satisfactory afternoon harvesting the fruits of our labours.
Him Outdoors has slaved endlessly over the past four years to turn what was a nettle patch into a productive garden and it’s really paying off. Of course that means we have vast quantities of things like beans, courgettes, cucumbers and tomatoes. Continue reading
One of the best meals I ever ate was freshly caught mackerel barbecued on a beach in the west of Ireland. I was on a survival course at the time (that’s a whole other story) and the fish made a spectacular change from stewed nettles. Continue reading
It’s blazing hot and as we get so few days like this in the average British summer, it’s tempting to abandon the computer and leg it down to the veg patch with a basket, a trowel and a pair of scissors. Continue reading
Time was when you invited people round to dinner and they’d politely eat whatever was on the plate.
Now you have to check what they do and don’t eat, whether they have allergies ….
It’s not that I mind, in fact it’s usually enjoyable. We are unrepentant carnivores but we love our veg too. Continue reading