Sorrel Soup

Hi Friends,
Well, it's a quick post from me this week, as it's Thursday already & my job list for the week is only about half done due to one thing & another. I thought I'd share my sorrel soup recipe with you, as it's that time of year when sorrel leaves are so bright green & lush, it's a shame to waste them.

I bought this sorrel plant as a job lot of herbs - one of those 4 for £5 type of offers - years ago. Sorrel is very easy to grow & doesn't seem to have any special requirements. It is perennial, so it dies down in the winter & grows back again ready to use in early Spring. It's so useful, I don't know why more gardeners don't grow it. I use the baby leaves raw in salads (they are like a lemony-flavoured spinach), it's good in quiches, frittata, as curry greens, & for many recipes as a substitute for spinach. Sorrel grows wild too, so if you are hot on plant recognition, you can forage it for free. I do a small amount of foraging, but I never risk eating anything I'm not 100% confident I've identified correctly. I used to gather field mushrooms, but have stopped since the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship informed me, "I trust you with my life, Babe, but I'm not eating any mushroom YOU'VE picked'! (Hmmm!)

If you find a little corner of your garden for a sorrel plant, it will soon fill out sufficiently for you to divide it up & give starter plants to friends. If you're one of those non-gardeners who could even kill bindweed, then this is a good plant. In that very cold winter of a few years ago, we experienced overnight temperatures down to -16 degrees here, but the sorrel still popped straight back up in springtime.

So, my soup recipe, which is what I most often make with our home grown sorrel. It doesn't require any weird ingredients.

Sorrel Soup

1 quite large onion, chopped.

1 smallish potato, chopped.

1 tbsp olive oil

1 bunch of fresh sorrel leaves - you want a generous handful - shredded.

300 ml vegetable stock (I use Marigold powder or Aldi veggie stock cubes which are great in soups)

300ml semi-skimmed milk

Salt & freshly ground black pepper 

Heat olive oil in a pan, add the onion & cook gently until softened, but not browned. Add the potato, sorrel, stock, milk & salt/pepper to taste. Bring pan to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Put the lid on & let it cook gently together for about 20 mins. The contents will look rather curdled at this stage because of cooking the milk, but don't worry, this is normal. Take pan off the heat to cool a little, then blend it until smooth with a stick blender (or put in liquidiser goblet...... if you like washing these up). Taste the blended soup for seasoning & add a little more salt & pepper if needed. Reheat gently before serving.

If you want to go a bit la-di-dah fancypants, then add a swirl of cream to the top of each bowl.

This soup freezes really well, so just divvy it up into portions & that's a few free lunches & pack-ups to enjoy in weeks to come. It's a very velvety soup, & quite delicately flavoured, so it makes a good 'starter' for anyone who wants to look a bit cheffy.

I find these quantities make about 3 portions, but it depends on size of appetite like everything else. For recipes which state 'Serves 4', I mentally add 'Or my husband!'

I made my last batch of sorrel soup about 2 weeks ago. The sorrel has already completely grown back ready for cutting again, so it's a nice productive little plant to cultivate.

For those of you who I know like a regular update on Albert Whiskers.....well, he's been busy testing a brand of cat biscuits this week. Burgess Cat Biscuits with salmon, chicken & chicken & duck. He thought they were worth waiting for..........

.....& threw himself into this task with his usual food-related vigour. After snarfing all three bags (just to make sure), he has declared them all most definitely fit for purpose. Burgess Pet Foods seems to be a UK company too, so I'll look into that, as may want to support a small British company more than a huge multi-national. Albert Whiskers won't care, as the only ethics that matter to him are the ethics of his hungry tummy.

Have a good week all,

Will soon be ready to share a little tour of our veggie garden to show how it's getting on for the new season.

Cheers,

C x

Rhubarb cake & yet more rhubarby loveliness......

Hello Friends,
Isn't it fab to see a bit of sunshine after what feels like 4 months of sort of indeterminate grey. I feel we need a theme tune this week, so who remembers this? Surely one of the best theme tunes ever, & most appropriate today when I'm going to be boring you all with rhubarb! 

On Easter Sunday, I lifted the forcing crock & harvested our crop of lovely pink rhubarb, the first significant food from our garden this year. When people leave their jobs, they generally like some kind of commemorative or personal gift, but practical to the end, I decided that a forcing crock was what was missing from my life. This year, it was sending signals that it was more than ready.........

After a winter of pretty much bare soil, the pink stems & bright lime leaves are always a welcome burst of colour.

Surprisingly, there was sufficient to make a few different things. I started by trying a new recipe from the Waitrose 'Spring Harvest 2015' booklet. 

These are free booklets, & are nice enough to collect & give as a gift if you know someone who loves cooking......if I didn't live near enough to a Waitrose to pick them up for myself, it's the kind of little gift I'd be happy to receive, tied up with a bit of arty-farty raffia, of course, with a couple of new pound shop wooden spoons. Anyway, back to the all-important life-giving subject of cake. I used 400g of my rhubarb in Rhubarb & Custard Traybake. 

What can I say? Oh my days, it was fab! I've made other rhubarb cakes, but this was different & special. First, the rhubarb had to be lightly caramelized in a hot oven.

The cake mixture is a sponge, made infinitely more interesting through the addition of ground almonds, custard powder & about a cupful of Waitrose Seriously Creamy Madagascan Vanilla Custard (no, definitely NOT the stuff you had slung in the general direction of your jam roly-poly at school in the 70s!). The cake mix is smoothed into a lined tray, then deep craters are made with the back of a tablespoon, which are then filled with the remaining custard. This seems counter intuitive, as it seemed to me, as an experienced home baker, that the cake mix would be too wet to cook through properly. If you try this recipe, don't worry, just follow the instructions & make the custard craters.....

When all the custard has been applied, add the rhubarb and bake. The custard sets a bit, but still retains a lush squidge on cooling. 

All it requires now is a sprinkle of sugar before devouring a piece with a really decent cup of coffee. Not sure if you like it a lot or love it immensely? Best have another piece. Seriously, this is the best rhubarb cake I've ever made.....or eaten. It's not difficult to make & it offers the deep therapeutic qualities of the cake that is just the right balance of squidge & crumb, sweet & tangy. Go on, bake one, you know you want to! 

So that was the fate of some of my pink rhubarb. The rest of it was turned into compote, a rhubarb, apple & ginger cake and a batch of rhubarb & cinnamon muffins. 

The muffins, which have now have a layer of lemon icing, are in the freezer waiting for a picnic opportunity. While the Big Hairy One & I are known for picnicking in all weathers, including 4 inches of snow, it's always great to be able to sprawl out in the sunshine so as to be able to combine a bit of serious communing with nature..........& cake.

For fans of Albert Whiskers, I am pleased to report that after a slow start, he has really taken to his cardboard claw sharpening pad. He hasn't stropped his claws on the rug for over a week. I still think that the catnip is the main pull, as he can enjoy inhaling it from his paws all evening. It's a result, though. Not often that there is helpful behaviour to report where Albert Whiskers is concerned.

Hope you are all enjoying the sunshine......& if I've tempted you to make a Rhubarb & Custard Traybake, I do hope you enjoy it.
Until next time,
C x

Happy Easter Wishes x

Hello Friends,
Spring is here at last! In our garden here at the People & Cats Republic, everything is busy germinating, bursting into bud, tweeting, buzzing & pecking people's prize purple & white stripy primulas to shreds with naughty vandal beaks.

The 'Ice Follies' daffodils are looking fab & I must have bought mine on the day the bulb counting machine had a melt-down, as my sack of 30 bulbs actually contained 45, enough to plant an extra couple of pots. 'Ice Follies' are a tall strong variety, with very pale lemon yellow petals & frilly darker centres. 

Over the last week, they have put up with all-day rain, gales, hail, not to mention the ever-present delinquent sparrow army & sporadic cat spats, & they are still standing tall, so I can recommend them for anyone wanting a good show this time next year.

I always like to make an Easter Tree, an easy sustainable project, as I just cut a few twiggy branches from the garden, arrange them in a vase & decorate with a motley assortment of spring decorations I've made or collected over the years. 

Some are looking a little the worse for wear. This poor chick moults off a load more feathers each year & will soon be bald, but we have an Equality of Opportunity Policy here at 'Hagstones', so bald mange-suffering poultry are as welcome on our tree now as the legless robin with the staved-in head is at Yule.

It wouldn't be Easter without baking, so this year, I made a big iced sponge to take along to yesterday's family fuddle. Even as a very keen baker, it was the first time I'd made a Genoese sponge. I can remember we had to know the difference between a Genoese & a whisked or Victoria sponge for O-level cookery........yes, we really learned to cooked back then........we didn't spend a whole term farting about with designing a sandwich & a marketing plan for its packaging.........cookery was a life skill, & one of the most useful, money-saving & creative things I learned at school. Anyway, I'd noted the general paling & twitchiness of 'Great British Bake-off' contestants when twigging that the recipe they'd been given involved a Genoese. Decided to give it a go on the basis that if it collapsed in a tragic heap of crumbs, I'd easily be able to knock up my quick bomb-proof chocolate cake. It turned out to be pretty straightforward, just a case of being organised & having the melted butter ready to drizzle in down the sides of the bowl. (Admittedly, I made mine without the gimlet eyes of Mr Hollywood roving over my batter, & with nothing more distracting than the continued attempts of Albert Whiskers to get into the fridge). I split it into 3 layers & filled it with home made plum jam & vanilla butter cream. I was pleased with the result. Everyone enjoyed it & wanted some to take home, so it was all eaten (just in case anyone was thinking of accidentally calling by for a spare slice........).

So, it's Easter. The Wheel of the Year is turning & everywhere I look in the garden, I see a task which needs doing. I'll try to catch up with some of those this week. Whatever you are doing today, I hope you had chocolate for breakfast. I have to hold my sticky hand up in admittance that I had both breakfast AND chocolate for breakfast, but that's kind of the law at Easter. 

So whether you are celebrating the welcome return of the Spring, as we do, the resurrection of your god, a pleasant weekend away from work spending time with your families & friends, or a mixture of all of the above, we three at the People & Cats Republic would like to wish you all a Very Happy Easter filled with all the promise of springtide. I would like to extend special wishes to all those people in essential services who have to work over the holiday weekend, often for wages which do not reflect the value of the work. Our country would grind to a halt without them & they deserve our thanks.

Till next time, when I shall mostly be boring you with rhubarb, but all being well, there should be an interesting cake......
Cheers,
C x

Belated Spring Wishes

Hello Friends,
I'd hoped to post this in time to wish you all a Happy Spring Solstice, but our laptop has developed a bizarre problem which makes typing almost impossible. Yes, a naughty homunculus living within is inserting square brackets after every couple of characters. When these are deleted, s/he takes umbrage & exacts revenge by producing scores more brackets, rows of the bloody things & on one occasion, a full screen! So far, the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship's inspired high tech response to this has been to remove the 'a' key. Result? Well, yes, if you were looking for the added frustration of being without a major vowel to go along with the chore of having to delete around 93,000,000 brackets every time you want to type an email, then that's job done! Grrrrr!

So a quick post from me this week, with some pics of our garden to celebrate Spring:

These pink primroses breed like Easter bunnies. The original plant was given to me by my Mum for my old garden in Nottingham. I potted it up when we moved & it has founded a dynasty. I divide them up most years for heaps of free ones.

More free plants (my favourite kind!) are our wild primroses (Primula vulgaris) which self-seed all over the garden, including in the lawn.

The bulbs are looking cheery too. 

And the flowering currant is livening up a dull stretch of hedge.

In the greenhouse, the sweet peas are pretty much ready to plant out............

.......and there are seeds sprouting up all over.

I've concentrated on flowers today, but the veggies are cracking on too. They can wait till next time.

Now, for those of you who may have been wondering how Albert Whiskers has been getting on with the bargainmongous claw-scratching pad he helpfully tested last time....... I'm afraid I have to report that he is still chiefly using it as a cat-nip delivery device. This means that instead of contributing to his bed & board by guarding my broad beans from the robbing beaks of wood pigeons, he's been spending rather a lot of his time like this...........

Oh well, I suppose at least to our knowledge, he's not going off to the all-night garage afterwards for carry-outs of crisps & dodgy pasties......
Till next time,
Belated Spring Solstice blessings to all,
C x

In which Albert Whiskers road-tests a bargain cat scratching pad........

Hi Friends,
Well, you may know that since we adopted Albert Whiskers in Summer last year, the state of our rugs & carpets have taken a distinct turn for the worse & a couple of them are now looking distinctly trampy. I declined to part with £20 for a cat scratching pad which was little more than a piece of cheapo carpet glued onto a twist of metal but the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship then spotted an environmentally sustainable & very affordable option, which Albert Whiskers will be putting through its paces. If it's any good, I'll finally be able to start choosing new rugs.

Well, he's ready & waiting, so here we go. The item being tested is the Catkins Compact Catnip Card Scratcher from Petface, Ltd. Cost £2.99 from the pet department at a local garden centre. I like the sustainability of this. There is no plastic, just cardboard, which can be composted or added to our household recycling collection.  

It's described on the packaging as 'Claw & paw-friendly' & comes 'complete with catnip for extra claw attention'.

The bag of catnip certainly got him off the sofa.

In fact a couple of seconds after this photo, he made a grab for the entire bag & if this hadn't caused me to drop my phone, I'd have had an action shot. 

The lid of the scratcher has a perforated edge for easy removal, & catnip is then sprinkled on top & shaken into the corrugated card folds.

So what did Albert Whiskers think of it?

Well, he......... 

....licked it, 

....leaned on it,

....played with it,

.....got stoned on it,

....sat on it,

......& posed on it (while slightly ripped to the whiskers).....but did he sharpen his claws on it? 

No, he did not! The only time those claws made direct contact lasted for about 5 seconds & that was only so he could spend the next 10 mins inhaling catnip off his paws. 

The next morning, I presented him with the scratcher again. He ran straight up to it.......then stopped approx. 2 cms away & PROCEEDED TO STROP HIS CLAWS ON THE RUG with even more gusto than usual. Aaaaggghhh!!  So the results of Albert Whiskers' testing of the Catkins Compact Catnip Cat Scratcher? As yet, we have seen no evidence of him using this product as a scratching pad. He has certainly had fun with it, but not in the way we hoped would save our rugs from further destruction. We will persevere, but if it doesn't happen, will need to accept that we may just have spent £2.99 on a big card bong.

Until next time,

C x

My February De-cluttering Challenge

Hello Friends,
I've been out in the sunshine digging over a border this morning, so I thought I'd illustrate today's post with some signs of Spring, rather than pictures of what I'm actually going to write about.....which is clutter!  So here's a lovely early iris to enjoy before I start talking tat.

During February, I challenged myself to a month of MinsGame  The idea is to start on the 1st of the month by de-cluttering 1 item. On the 2nd, it's 2 items, on the 3rd, 3 items, & so on, until the final day of Feb when, after 28 items have been chucked, the challenge is complete. I adapted the rules a little. The rules state that the de-cluttered items must be out of the house by midnight of each day, but this wasn't always practical for me, so I set up a 'De-cluttered Items Zone' on the spare bed & anything that had been officially placed in it, could not be reclaimed. I can report that during February, I shed a total of 406 items. 16 items were listed on ebay, 182 items went in the household recycling, 23 winged their way to the charity shop, 44 were given away, 55 were shredded up for the worm composter (nom nom) & 86 went to landfill. I'd have liked the landfill quota to have been a lot less, but there are materials which cannot be recycled & the only way to get around this is really to think twice about buying such items in the first place. Here's another tiny glimpse of Spring, while loins are being girded to talk rubbish:

Now, I totally understand that other people's clutter is not exactly up there on many reading lists, so if you've about reached your limit, do sign out & go & make a cup of tea or something, because I'm nowhere near done with rubbish yet! What I really hope to convey is just how much I enjoyed doing this challenge. As each day's growing batch of tat was sorted into charity bags, bin, etc, I felt a growing sense of achievement. Just halfway through the month, I noticed how much easier it had become to find things in my desk drawers, without having to move half a dozen inconsequential items each time. I kept a list of everything I de-cluttered. As the list grew, I was amazed at how much real TAT I was finding. I'm not a hoarder. You won't turn on your TV one day & see me on one of those programmes featuring homes so stuffed with horrible crud that the owner has had to resort to living in a square metre of space between the freezer & the half century of yellow newspapers. I like a clean house & I'm quite tidy.....which is why I was surprised to see just how many of my de-cluttered items were not even remotely fit for purpose. I'll just show you our first cheery clump of daffodils, then I'll tell you about the 406 items which were ejected from 'Hagstones' during February:

And here they are: 1 top, 1 money box, 21 magazines, 5 out of date catalogues, 1 make-up bag, 1 manky make-up brush, 1 pair rubbish tweezers (couldn't remove an eyebrow if their survival depended on it....which ultimately, it did), 1 prehistoric herb tea, 1 fridge magnet which wouldn't stick, 2 pairs of slutty tights, 1 hair band which wouldn't go round my head, 1 bra, 1 shrug (neither of them up t'job in the boob department, unfortunately), 1 useless hair styling spray (like spritzing hair with superglue), 1 dried out felt-tip, 3 ornaments, 1 tin, 7 frowsty lavender hearts, 1 (too titchy) washbag, 3 pendants, 1 bookmark, 1 shoddily altered (by me) velvet bag, 2 rusty pencil sharpeners, 1 unidentified piece of wooden dowling, 19 leaflets, 15 broken earrings, 1 badge, 1 scarf, 1 craft knife which didn't cut, 1 ribbon-curling gizmo which didn't curl ribbon, 2 gunky freezer boxes, 1 light-pull, 12 plastic bottles, 1 dry-cleaning bag, 91 photos, 4 news cuttings, 4 books, 1 pair of gloves, 4 old cheque books, 2 broken bird feeders, 1 blue bottle (glass, not dead fly!), 2 items of plastic cutlery, 1 candle with no wick, 7 postcards, 24 packets of seed, 7 empty film cannisters, 1 utterly irrelevant CDrom, 1 ancient concert programme, 54 unnecessary documents, 1 skankrous stained glass window sticker, 1 defunct loyalty card, 1 dried-out Tippex, 6 plastic wallets, 1 box, 1 broken choker, 26 old birthday cards, 1 brooch (never worn), 1 packet reindeer sequins, 1 disgusting foil baking tray, 1 grotty cash bag, 1 strange small plastic duck, 1 glue brush with no bristles, 1 unidentified metal gizmo, 1 business card, a pair of scissors which didn't cut properly, 1 Pritt stick (dessicated), 2 defunct vouchers, 1 craft instruction for something I will quite literally never make, 3 pictures, 4 old gift-tags, 1 motivational quotation, 1 horrid plastic book jacket, 1 pair of gardening gloves (with ONLY ONE THUMB, for heaven's sake!!), 1 joss stick holder which doesn't accommodate any size of joss stick I have ever purchased, 4 coasters, 1 frog game, 3 bottle stoppers, 1 odd length of chain, 1 salad dressing bottle, 1 lid-less mustard pot, 1 lah-di-dah fancypants hairbrush (for which I paid a shocking £18 only to find surprise, surprise, it was no better than my bog standard ordinary one), 1 ancient tea cosy, 4 equally ancient cloths, 1 pill box with a hole in the bottom so all the pills fall out, 1 remote control, 1 cracked spice jar, 1 aerobic step (not a friend to thighs), 1 manky bracelet, 1 non-working watch, 1 colour wheel & 3 letters.

And that, friends, is 406 items of tat de-cluttered by me from the People & Cats Republic during February!! The reason I've itemised everything is to demonstrate how, even as a non-hoarder & organised person, I still had all this stuff cluttering up drawers, cupboards, not to mention my head. So many of these items were broken, out of date or just plain unfit for purpose. I mean, gardening gloves with only one thumb, gizmos that didn't work, odd earrings....so much of this stuff was just rubbish. For those of you who remember The Rise & Fall of Reginald Perrin, I have to say that some of these items put me in mind of the Grot Shop! I found doing this challenge enjoyable & empowering. In fact, now that it's finished, I quite miss it. I'm now turning my attentions to clearing the remaining beds in the garden so that's helping my continuing urge to straighten & simplify. 

I should add that I have been very honourable during the course of this challenge. I have only de-cluttered items belonging to myself or the general household. I have not de-cluttered any of these.......

....and tempting though it was, neither have I binned this..........

........a favourite mouse which some very good friends of ours bought for Albert Whiskers. Needless to say, it's been well & truly ripped open & the stuffing is hanging out, but he really enjoys fetching it out for a game, so I hadn't got the heart to make it Item 407!

So, if you too are getting tired of seeing the same weary old clutter, I can truly recommend doing a month of this challenge. You've seen the tragic list of stuff to which I had inexplicably given house room, what will you find?

Till next time,
C x

Yay! Free foxgloves!

Morning Friends,

Aren't these fab? 

Well, no, of COURSE I haven't got foxgloves flowering in my garden yet. It's way too early. I have been busy with foxglove plants though, ensuring we'll get a similar display of wild flower loveliness this June.
And, the best thing is that they are FREE! Once you have a foxglove in your garden, it's likely that you'll be able to have them every year for as long as you want them. I definitely do want them. I love them. They are definitely one of my favourite flowers. I can remember showing a visitor around my garden years ago, & when I commented that I really needed to do some weeding, she said 'Well, you can hoike that one straight out, that's a foxglove'. Needless to say it was not 'hoiked out'. It was nurtured into a beautiful specimen much like the one pictured above & when it finished flowering, I left it for the seed to ripen, then shook the seed head randomly over my flower beds. And so my annual fix of foxgloves began! 

I no longer bother wafting seed heads around. I find that foxgloves are very good at doing this themselves. At this time of year, I simply see where the new plants have come up & move them to better places in the flower borders. I also pot up all the decent-sized plants which have self-seeded into our veggie garden. As the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship has been making noises this week about digging over his potato bed, I have been busy on Mission Foxgloves Rescue.

I potted up 39 free foxglove plants from the veggie garden alone (plus one big stray primrose) and have made a start on re-planting them around my borders. Unlike a lot of plants, they do well under trees, so thought I may as well start there.

The remaining plants will sit quite happily in their pots for a couple of weeks while I gradually get them planted out. They are useful at the back of borders to give a bit of height or anywhere where you want a pop of colour.

Our self-seeded foxgloves usually emerge as the traditional bright/magenta pink, but there are often paler pink ones & I've even had a few cream ones with burgundy-coloured markings. I particularly love the white ones. I can just about tell from the leaves which plants will produce white & which will produce pink flowers, but not with 100% accuracy, meaning that I sometimes think I've planted a white drift, only to find a bright pink one standing proudly in the middle. I quite like that though.

When you look closely at foxgloves, you see that there are never really two that are identical. Even if the colour is similar, the markings will be a different colour or pattern. 

Every now & again, I try to widen the gene pool of my 'Hagstones foxgloves' by sprinkling a packet of seed (usually Foxglove 'alba') randomly around the borders. I don't know if it does any good, but it sounds sort of 'sciency'. I also enjoy experimenting with sowing different varieties. This year I acquired a free packet of 'Primrose Carousel', which I've sown this week.

These are beautiful pale yellow foxgloves with speckly middles, but I'll admit I don't have a lot of success either with full germination or over-wintering this variety, whereas the Hagstones Foxgloves are as tough as old boots. Anyway, clearing foxgloves out of the veggie beds & deciding where I'd like to enjoy seeing those fab flower spikes this summer has been a really positive job this week, & a sign of sunny gardens to come :-)

It's definitely been a little warmer this past week, as Albert Whiskers opted for some al fresco ablutions.

It was also the week that we decided Albert Whiskers is arguably the worst behaved cat we've ever owned. He is very funny though. I often catch the BHO having whole conversations with him. This week, I overheard the following regarding the imminent viewing of some old Dr Who:
     "OK, Albert Whiskers, which Doctor shall we watch? Shall we watch the First Doctor?" 
There was a pause, while he waited to see if there was to be a consenting meow. There was not. He then proceeded to list "The 2nd doctor, the 3rd doctor, etc......right up to the 14th or how ever many of the bloody things there are. There was NO MEOW, which I naturally took to mean that Albert Whiskers did not want to watch ANY Dr Who, but it turned out that I had misinterpreted this. Apparently, what it ACTUALLY meant that he was just unable to decided on a season or episode, meaning that the BHO had to choose for him. Hmm.

The sunshine is streaming through the windows of 'Cathy HQ'. I find something to enjoy in every month, but I'm ready for Spring now. Bring it on!
Hope you are all staying lergy-free.....& remember, if you had a foxglove last year or the year before or if you've seen them in your neighbour's garden, have a look in your own garden to see if you've got any free ones coming up. They're our native wild flowers, the bees love them & they're gorgeous! Go on, get your trowel out!
Till next time,
C x