The garden is full of stinging nettles at the moment, vicious little bastards. What better way to show them who’s boss than to make nettle soup. I collected a large pot full of the shoots and heads, which turned out to be about enough for two people:
This is the soup, with a sprig of mint leaves (also from the garden). Very delicious — we should eat nettle soup more often.
This is the lemon from the lemon tree:
Same as this leek potato and bacon soup except that I didn’t have any leeks so I used cauliflower instead. Very tasty!
MEAT! Or more precisely, 11lbs (5kg) of pork shoulder down to the loin. This cost me under £20 and should feed about 15-20 people, so it’s actually very good value (if you have 20 people that need feeding).
If Justin gets his act together and calls me then I may well cook this for his party tomorrow afternoon.
Not bad, a bit dry. Crackling was excellent.
I photographed a sparrowhawk catching, killing and eating a starling in the garden today. Well, the killing and the eating kind of overlapped. As you can imagine the starling was not too happy about this situation and made a lot of noise.
Click photos for larger versions.
I’m afraid that the ducks eggs and nest has gone. Something dug under the fence from the next door garden and swiped all the eggs. Only 2 days to go before they hatched as well :-(
The neighbour thinks it was a fox, although maybe it was the neighbour’s dog. You can see the hole and the broken nest here:
and from the other side of the fence:
There was no sign of any eggs or even egg shells.
Mother was OK, but shaken. She sat in the garden for about half an hour like this, just doing nothing:
And that was that.
ガーコ is still sitting on her nest. We’re expecting ducklings towards the end of this week. Here’s the latest photo of (an) egg, she covers them up before she goes out each time.
While you’re waiting, here’s a photo of our lovely long-tailed tits:
Here is M-kun playing Mario Kart Wii, which is bloody good fun:
Toad in the hole made with delicious sausages from the butcher in St Albans:
Note to self: Look over these Roman recipes for food and wine from Cato and see if there’s anything worth doing.
Recipe for libum: Bray 2 pounds of cheese thoroughly in a mortar; when it is thoroughly macerated, add 1 pound of wheat flour, or, if you wish the cake to be more dainty, 1/2 pound of fine flour, and mix thoroughly with the cheese. Add 1 egg, and work the whole well. Pat out a loaf, place on leaves, and bake slowly on a warm hearth under a crock.
One of the best bands of the ’90s, live at the Bull and Gate, Saturday 10th May 2008:
I was in the middle of making this recipe described as “Bubble and Squeak” when I came to the sudden realization that it is really コロッケ, so I quickly covered it in honey panko and shallow fried it. Success!
But in Japan, mere potato isn’t enough carbohydrate on its own, so they wrap it in bread (can you believe?) to make a kind of potato sandwich. Mmm carbs!
Looking at the duck’s arse:
The meat is from a great little butchers called JTB Butchers out in the back of beyond:
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