Life seems to be getting on top of me at the moment, but the light at the end of the tunnel is..

*whispers* I think I will be adding 2 chicken friends to the flock this Summer!

Veggie progress

Oh dear. I remember thinking last year that it was a slow, disappointing start to the growing season, and being alarmed when I saw photos from a similar point in 2010 and seeing just how much more advanced everything was. This year I'm feeling the same way about June and July 2011 :(  OK, so I can tell it wasn't a great year, but by this point we had ripe cherries and 2 days later we were picking courgettes. Not a hope of that yet in 2012!

Things that appear to be doing well
Blueberries
Sunset and Broadholme Beauty apples
Gooseberries
Onions - I'm sure we don't have anywhere near as many as we planted in the Autumn, but many of them are HUGE
Rhubarb - drowing in the stuff. I plan to try and dehydrate a load over the Summer for use in crumbles in the Winter
Tomatoes - seem to be healthier plants than last year
Runner beans  - looking good so far
Broad beans, although not as good as other allotmenters as I didn't tame them with wires
Red cabbages
Redcurrants - lots and lots growing, waiting for them to ripen

Things that are  NOT doing well
Butternut squash, they look very sad
Carrots and beetroot - finally, FINALLY got some to germinate. It was about my 4th attempt!
Raspberries. Tons of new growth, hardly any fruiting canes this year. I pruned a bit too much last November.
Blackcurrants - bushes gone wild, not much fruit, need a good prune
Strawberries at home - chickens ate them so they're very slow
Artichoke, it died. Again.
Dwarf french beans - slugs just find them too tasty
Plum and cherry - not much fruit this year
All the other apples and pears - no fruit at all :(
Rocket - it just bolts straight away! Lettuce didn't even grow.

Jury's still out
Potatoes
Courgette
The orange squashes, name escapes me, last year they were smaller than satsumas when ripened!
Cucumbers
Sweetcorn, looks very small and yellow
Green cabbages and cauliflowers - small, some didn't survive the hot weather and slug attack
Elephant garlic and shallots - they flowered
Garlic - they got rust (although we did dig one up today and the bulb looks gorgeous)
Red onions - VERY teeny
Telephone peas - growing taller

I hadn't actually realised how much I'm growing! I've grown a lot of the above from seed but I'm a busy lady at the moment so feel less guilty about just buying plants. It's still cheaper than just buying the veg from Tesco, right? :)  I placed an order from Vegetable Plants Direct and am awaiting 5 broccoli plants, some beetroot (I ordered thse before I realised that my beetroot is actually growing from seed at last, but I only ordered £1.50 worth so I don't mind at all), a chocolate brown tomato, a yellow tomato, Hallow'een pumpkin, a squash that tastes and looks like Butternut but is bigger and green skinned, and a third cucumber plant. I'm not convinced it's not a little late to be planting stuff out but it's worth a go. We might have another Indian Summer :)

A half birthday

A day that would normally pass un noticed but, when you're a December 23rd baby, is wholly significant. This is my as-near-to-six-as-five year old, excitedly trying out her new light up Moshi Monsters scooter, which was presented to her yesterday evening after school, because she's at her Daddy's today, her *real* half birthday. She's got her big sister's 3 wheeled Barbie scooter, but has been coveting a big girl scooter for a couple of months now, and regularly comments on which of her friends have graduated to 2 wheels. She picked this one from The Entertainer website and it arrived on Thursday. On collecting her from school yesterday I did try to convince her that she the big surprise that was waiting for her at home was *actually* that she'd have to clean the whole house, weed the garden and muck out the chickens, but she didn't fall for it for a second.

The half birthday has become a really important event in our house. When I realised that I was going to be having a Christmas baby (well, she wasn't supposed to make an appearence until just after the New Year, but she had other ideas), I worried a lot about what that would mean for her birthday. I remember the excitement of childhood birthdays and - let's face it - adult ones aren't too bad either. Mine is at the end of August, and it used to be the last big, positive event before the doom and gloom that comes from the start of the new academic year. I've always loved planning for my own children's birthdays, baking their cakes and organising parties and buying lovely presents. I was worried that her birthday would disappear amongst the Christmas chaos and would become a disappointment of joint presents and birthday gifts in Santa wrapping paper.

I think we've pulled it off so far, though. A December 23rd birthday girl is actually an excellent excuse to get the grandparents together, exchange birthday and Christmas gifts, and have a bit of a double celebration. So far nobody has given her a joint birthday and Christmas present. I set a budget for Christmas and birthday presents, and make a point of buying her 1 decent gift from this budget to give her in June. This year was the scooter, last year was a Playmobil paddling pool, and the year before that was a lovely Silver Cross doll's pram. Her birthday is still a huge deal with presents and cards and cake and a party food theme of her choosing (last year she opted for an afternoon tea, with lots of little cakes and sandwiches), but this way she doesn't get completely overwhelmed with toys over the space of 2 days. Throwing a party with school friends has been more of a challenge. She had her first one last year and I booked it for 12 days before her birthday, but people were still busy at Christmas parties and visits to see Santa and so on. This year her birthday treat is a trip to Disneyland Paris for the first weekend of December. Funnily enough she doesn't seem to mind doing this instead of having a party AT ALL :)

So there she is, my lovely, cuddly, temperamental, bright, imaginative, hard working, stubborn, expressive little girl. It's all downhill to SIX now!

Sorry for the rubbish photo, but I had to post it because it was all I had and.. today I went to my first ever Clandestine Cake Club meeting. It was amazing! We were only a small group today (this is the third ever time my local branch has met), with 5 cakes and 8 people. But that's still an *awful* lot of cake :)  The theme was Flower Power, but I took an Eton Mess cake. The plan had been to make flower shaped meringues for the top, but I ran out of motivation so I just bought some meringue nests from Tesco in the end. I also at 2 types of chocolate cake, cheesecake, and cherry bakewell cake. 5 slices of cake in less than an hour! Not bad for an afternoon snack! I'm definitely going to go again (armed with proper camera next time) and am looking forward to trying lots more cakes in future. The best bit of the group is that at the end, the leftovers get divided up, and you can take a load home. Not just your own leftovers but a bit of as many other cakes as you desire. It was like a grown up party bag! Brilliant. My girls are going to be in cake heaven tomorrow when they get home from their Daddy's.

We've been very busy lately, with a week's holiday at Camping Ca Savio on the Venetian coast in Italy. It was our first Eurocamp holiday and I'm certain that it won't be our last. I quite fancy going somewhere near Barcelona next time, having never been to Spain before. The weather and temperature were perfect and coming home to wet and dreary England was a real shock to the system. Although all this rain has encouraged my broad bean pods to swell, and on Thursday night we ate our very first homegrown broad beans (and the first produce from our allotment, not counting the raspberries last Autumn). All of us loved them! I do have a LOT of weeding and planting out to do now, though..

A Productive Day

I made my first ever dress!

It took 2-3 hours. I'm quite pleased with it, although I can see all the bits that went wrong, of course. I just hope that she's cute enough that people won't think to scrutinise the stitching! I made it in age 7 but I had to take it up AND in quite a bit. Admittedly she is only an average sized 5.5 year old so I probably should have stuck with the 6, but I didn't thnk it would be quite as enormous on her. Still, it's going to last her until she goes to secondary school I think!

This week I made icecream cupcakes..

They're a basic 3 egg sponge mix from my Cake Decorating magazine, topped with piped buttercream (am still learning!), icecream sauce, sprinkles and a third of a flake. Yum!

My U pins still haven't arrived but I've managed to weigh down any loose netting with rocks, and *touch wood* they seem to be contained now! They enjoy being out so much.

Millie and I went to the allotment this evening and marvelled at all the impact of all the rain we've been having lately!

Broad bean blossom.. who'd have thought it would be so pretty?! My crimson broad beans have also come up, and the Autumn ones (above) are starting to grow tiny French bean sized pods.

Little gooseberries. I'm not a big gooseberry fan to be honest, but I can't wait to try these. I think they might be red ones in the end. They're doing so well.

Redcurrant buds!

Blackcurrants

"An Umbrella Of Rhubarb"

Rainbow Cake In A Jar!

I've been dying to try rainbow cake in a jar for.. ooh, at least a week. My 7 year old has decided that she wants a rainbow cake for her birthday, and Google led me to these little beauties. They seemed like a sensible way to test out the theory of dyed cake, and the effects of neon colours on the already-prone-to-hyperactivity children, and - let's face it - they're really really pretty!

So I started with a basic 3 egg sponge recipe:

175g self raising flour
175g baking margarine (or butter, if you're feeling less frugal)
175g caster sugar
1.5tsp baking powder
3 eggs

After whizzing it all up in the food processor I divided it between 6 appropriately coloured bowls and added the colouring. I used Sugarflair pastes in Baby Blue, Mint Green, Egg Yellow, Tangerine, Christmas Red, and a combination of the red & blue to make the purple. It didn't take much to achieve the desired effect. Maybe a quarter of a teaspoonful at most, per bowl.

Next came the task of getting the mixture into the jars! I used 5 jars altogether. It was easier than I'd expected to put a dollop of each colour into the jar and spread it evenly before adding the next one.

So pretty!










I placed the jars in a roasting tin, added about an inch or so of cold water to the tin, and put everything into a preheated oven at 180C. Helpfully, I can't actually tell you how long it took for the cakes to cook. After 15 minutes I turned them round, and after a further 12 minutes I checked again. They weren't done. I think they may have taken another 20 minutes in total, but keep checking - my oven is useless!


And finally..

CAKE!

I must admit, I was  bit disappointed when I saw them. The colours had run into each other quite a lot and they looked a little sludgy rather than lovely and vibrant. They shrank quite a bit after I took this photo, too. There's probably a scientific reason for that but I don't know what it is!




After cooling, I made up a batch of buttercream. I based it on the Hummingbird Bakery recipe, but in the end I winged it. So basically, start with 80g of unsalted butter and 250g of icing sugar, add a splash of milk, mix, and adjust as necessary.

Lots and lots of buttercream! And sprinkles!

In the interest of science, and despite the fact that it's dinnertime in ooh 30 minutes or so, I had to give the cake a try really, didn't I!?

                     

 IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!! And it's still lovely  and vibrant!!

Crazy rainbow crumbs

                    See the lovely colours?!

I could only manage half a jar. I guess that's about one cupcakes worth. But I am pleased to report that you can't taste the colouring at all, and 20 or so minutes in I am not suffering from hyperactivity ;)  I'll test it on the children tomorrow!

 

My imperfect little beauties

I'm a bad chicken mummy. They've done a lot of free ranging in the Autumn, Winter and early Spring months, and have had a fabulous time, but now it's growing season. And the children will want to play barefoot in the Summer without getting chicken poo between their toes. The chickens have been eating anything that's green, including potato plants and rhubarb leaves, which I'm sure can't be doing them any good at all. My strawberry plants have pretty much disappeared, and I caught one of them eating the lettuce seeds I planted. So I shut them in their run and ordered some netting and various fence pins, and on Wednesday I put it all up to extend the area they inhabit while still keeping them contained. Only they keep escaping! I've been out countless times to shift pins around and check for gaps, but I've not been well and Bellatrix and Hermione do NOT want to be caught when they escape, so I've had to admit defeat. They're confined to their run until I receive some more U pins to hopefully make the fence a bit more effective. They do NOT approve. I don't approve, really. I feel horrible about it. When they see me they start pacing and clucking at me. I really hope this fence does the job because I don't think any of us can face keeping them cooped up in their run until the Autumn. I do have the allotment, of course, but I want to be able to grow things in my own back garden too!