Gaudete

The Lockdown Wood was planted up in Hungerford last weekend - more than 850 saplings. Another year. I would have joined in, but I’ll stay away from gatherings for a few months more... Our hazel tree needs to grow at least 3 times taller than this before it can join the wood, but I was pleased to see it looks happy with new buds just appearing.

We only visited the plot to add waste to the compost bin and to store our new honeysuckle in the polytunnel until we’re ready to plant at home. We got it free from Thompson & Morgan because they’ve published a couple of entries from this blog into their Favourite Bloggers articles recently, which is always nice to see 😊

While we were there I collected up all the Gigantes beans, which have been drying out in the polytunnel. I’ll pod them for storing in a few days.

And here’s one of the tasty meals I had using last year’s stored beans and some of the veg my sister brought over (swede, carrots, fennel, peppers). I made enough to cover three meals and added gravy to make it more like a stew for one of them.

Work continues to keep me far too busy, but we’re hoping it’ll wind down a bit as we get closer to Christmas. I’ve never had such a Christmassy office setting though 🤩

For the next few lunchtimes I have this scrummy chestnut and sage soup. Mmm, I could easily eat it all in one sitting, but I’m not getting any exercise so had better not! I used the River Cottage recipe because I didn’t want to add cream, but I did sauté the onion and sage in butter.

It's Gaudete Sunday today - the third Sunday of advent apparently. I'm sure this is the only time I'd manage to crowbar this song title on the blog :-) I chose Erasure’s version.