What a Waste

January has sped by which is unusual for this long cold month. The weather has been mostly grey with the occasional frost and some very welcome blue skies but we've only managed a few brief visits to the plot. I was very pleased earlier in the month when I made this sausage and bean casserole with the dried Gigantes, Edamame and Soya beans, using Shaheen's recipe.

Just one problem.... I forgot to actually cook the beans, after I'd soaked them overnight, so it was all wasted - boohoo, it looked so delicious and was going to serve me for two meals! Hence the blogpost song-title.

On Sunday we spent over an hour on the plot, but only to do our bit for the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch. What a wet and miserable day! But I like this little slow motion video of one of our over-flowing buckets.

Most of the birds, sensibly, had decided to stay under cover, but these pigeons were enjoying the berries on the ivy.

So this was our, rather weak, count:
  1 x robin
  6 x wood pigeons
  4 x magpies
  1 x blue tit

Our cover was somewhat lacking... the polytunnel has a new sunroof...

Jamie ventured a bit further from the 'comfort' of the polytunnel - look at that weedy plot! Well, it'll have to wait a bit as it's so soggy and we've got a holiday to go on before we deal with that :-)

The wellie-boot remover that I retrieved from my Mum's house has been well-used so far this year.

I'm pleased that the sempervivum (houseleek) which I potted on last Autumn seem happy enough in the wet weather - I do love them.

Jamie and I enjoyed a fun weekend with two celebrations to hijack and make our own - first was Burns Night on Saturday. It's a good excuse for eating our favourite Stahly veggie Haggis with neeps & tatties washed down with a few tasters of whiskey (not my favourite drink). Followed by a Scottish film called Restless Natives from 1986.

And then on Sunday evening we celebrated the Chinese New Year - of the Rat. We had more of a pan-Asian feel to our evening with miso soup, Japanse saki and various oriental items to decorate the room and then watched CJ7 a Chinese film that I've been wanting to see since 2008, it was good.

So this blogpost is brought to you by the colour red - for luck, joy, and happiness over the next year and just a few rats, I'm sure! The song is provided by Ian Dury and The Blockheads.

Orange Crush

My first post of the new year is mainly about soup - a common theme for me at this time of the year. The soup I made today is Squash and Chestnut.

I used two of the remaining four Jack Be Little squashes. I read a previous post of mine and saw that I got away with leaving the skins on, so I just removed the seeds, sliced them, added a bit of chipotle rape seed oil and roasted them for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile the onions and chestnuts were cooking on the hob with a little oil and seasoning along with half an Oxo cube.

Everything was then simmered for about 20minutes before I blitzed it. It's rather sweet (not sure how I could make it less sweet given the main ingredients) but the taster I had makes me think it'll be a welcome lunch for a few days at work next week.

We visited the plot today; there were people working. Not us though, we just wanted to pick some carrots.

The plot is looking as expected; soggy, unloved and mostly brown. The weather has been so wet and mild that there's a lot of growth so we really need to get working on it, but although we're thinking about the plot, the activity is less appealing just yet.

But there were a few good signs. Our broad beans are looking better than this time last year (tempting fate here!).

But our bulb pot is looking sad - clearly a mouse took a fancy to those fresh new shoots. That was going to be a stunning display of crocus that Jamie planted up :-(

I received this interesting book for Christmas, from my sister. I love the cover and that the pages are coloured. I'm attempting to colour-theme each blogpost - well, there is a lot of orange on this one... we'll see.

An interesting fact about orange is that the word 'orange' as a colour was first used in the sixteenth century; before that, the fruit's colour was described as 'yellow-red'. Well, I thought that was quite interesting.
And the song is provided by REM.