Way back in 2006, Nairn had just arrived and I had got it into my head that we needed to move house. It’s worth noting here that I come up with ridiculously impractical hair-brained schemes on a fairly regular basis and end up completely convinced that it’ll happen (recent examples include: buying a bus and driving around Europe with the kids for a year and ripping apart the lower half of the house in order to build a new kitchen) when they are so unlikely that it’ll never happen. So when I started musing on moving house, in the back of my head I had it sorted that it was never going to happen.

Except…

Except I found this house. It was charitably described by the estate agents as “in need of internal decoration” which was the understatement of the century. The chap who lived here previously had been a heavy smoker and after his death, his son had ripped up all the flooring and thrown magnolia paint over the entirety of the house to get it ready for sale. Unfortunately, the nicotine had seeped through the paint leaving the whole house tinged brown and greasy to the touch. The kitchen consisted of two cupboards and a sink, the bathroom was a hideous browny pink monstrosity and the central heating needed completely overhauled.

The one thing it really had going for it was the garden. These are the original photos we took on our first viewing:

and I was sold. For some reason – maybe eight years of living in flats – I was obsessed with the idea of having a garden for the kids to play in and when I stepped out the back door into this wonderland, my mind started doing calculations to work out if we could afford to live here. We left the viewing with me amped up and energised, Bob quietly enthused but cautious and with Findlay having made some friends already. To cut a long and dull story short, we bought the house, sold our flat and completed both sales within five weeks so that Findlay was in situ ready to start Primary 1 at the local school.

Four years on and the garden doesn’t look like that lush green paradise anymore. In my infinite wisdom (again), I directed Bob to pull up all the shrubs that ran the length of the garden without considering the effect this would have on the drainage. What happened was that our clay soil couldn’t cope with the rain and snow and we ended up with a swamp-like mass where our lawn used to be. Added to this, the hens are not exactly what you’d call garden-friendly and over two years they devoured every single green thing left in the garden. After this year’s snow, we have been left with not a single solitary blade of grass in the garden and the worst thing is that it’s all our own fault.

When I looked at our home on google maps recently, I nearly died of embarrassment. All of our neighbours have beautiful gardens and then there was our barren swamp with our bright orange Eglu Cube. Combined with the loss of our hens and my fear that letting the children play outside will mean squished babies, Bob & I decided that it was time to make the garden a priority.

In an ironic twist, Bob’s parents had decided to take a leaf out of our book and grow vegetables again and offered us many of their plants which we collected earlier in the week. Bob dug them into our swamp and I took a few snaps. Apologies for them being cameraphone pictures:

This one probably demonstrates our clay soil the best. In this picture there’s an apple tree, a pear tree and the plants that Bob’s parents gave us (Hostas, Irises and others which I’ve forgotten already!)

Greer’s placenta Cherry Tree

I can’t remember what this is – possibly a lilac?

I *think* this is a blueberry bush

Apple mint

Rhubarb

Blackcurrant bush (which Nairn destroyed last year by sitting on it)

So as you can guess by my exemplary explanation skills, my gardening knowledge still needs a lot of work but I’m really feeling enthused by the possibilities open to us by having this wonderful space available. I’m really embarrassed at the state we have managed to get this beautiful space into by sheer lack of knowledge and so I hope in time that we can turn this garden back into the masterpiece that drew us here in the first place. Wish us luck!

For any of you with disasterous gardens and no time/energy to deal with it you may want to consider Landshare,  a scheme devised by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to match up unused growing space with people who want to grow their own veg but have no access to space. It’s a great cause and one which has my support.

Posted under interior decorating

Today it’s my wonderful husband‘s birthday. Not a particularly special age, but a very special man.

In our house, it’s almost always Bob who makes dinner. In fact, I think I could count on both hands how many times I’ve taken a turn while we’ve lived here because we cook the vast majority of our meals from scratch and Bob is very quick at putting meals together whereas I am distinctly not. The usual exception to the “Bob cooks” rule is birthdays and Father’s day because really, that’s only fair. I asked my dearly beloved what he wanted and he told me, “lasagne and crème brûlée”. Easy enough, I thought, before remembering that I also needed to make a birthday cake. Hmm. I had decided on a pavlova because Bob had mentioned in passing that he really liked it but I had NO IDEA it was going to involve so much work! Luckily for me he changed his mind about dinner and decided he wanted pizza instead so I didn’t have to spend the entire day in the kitchen!

The most time-consuming and annoying part of this entire process was having to separate nine eggs. I hate separating eggs but luckily this time I managed all nine without breaking any yolks. Hoorah! Following this pavlova recipe I made the meringue first, put it in the oven for the alloted time and opened the oven as recommended to allow the meringue to cool down and dry out before realising that it was only cooked on the outside. I turned it over and put it back into the oven for another hour but I suspect my error was that the egg whites weren’t whipped firm enough before I shaped the meringue (perhaps worth noting here that I used nine regular sized egg whites from our own hens and not the nine large whites called for in the recipe). Delia Smith recommends baking your meringue the day before and leaving it in the oven overnight to cool and dry out, I may do that next time.

In the meantime, I was extremely happy with how the crème brûlée worked out! I made it after I put the meringue into the oven and it was easy as pie. The one aspect I wasn’t happy with is that our grill isn’t really good enough to caramelise sugar so I’m going to have to get my hands on a little kitchen blowtorch. Which seems kind of pointless when I can use it on one thing that I don’t make very often!

Recipe – Lemon Raspberry crème brûlée (makes 8 )

750ml double cream
Grated peel of one lemon
170g caster sugar
9 egg yolks
2 tsps vanilla extract
pinch salt

8 tsps brown sugar
punnet raspberries
Chambord or crème de cassis (optional)

Preheat your oven to gas mark 4/180C. Mix the lemon peel with the cream, put in a saucepan and heat until the cream is simmering. Meanwhile whisk the egg yolk and caster sugar until thick – using a handheld electric whisk this took roughly two minutes for me – then add the hot cream gradually. Take your time at this juncture – I just about redecorated my kitchen at this stage! Add the vanilla extract and salt, then set your custard aside.

Get the largest roasting dish you can find which will fit in your oven and put eight ramekins in it before filling the dish with boiling water to roughly half the height of your ramekins. Pour your custard into the ramekins through a sieve to remove the lemon peel then carefully lift your roasting dish into the oven. Bake for 55 mins-1 hour before taking them out of the oven. Chill uncovered until your custard is firm which will take at least three hours.

About an hour before you plan to serve your crème brûlée, put your ramekins on a baking tray and sprinkle 1 tsp of brown sugar over each one. Put under the grill (or use your blowtorch at this juncture) until the sugar has melted and browned. Put back into the fridge to harden. Put your raspberries into a bowl and add enough chambord or cassis to let your raspberries soak then leave for the rest of the hour. Spoon your raspberry mixture onto your ramekins immediately before serving.

Posted under baking, dyeing wool, family, recipes, sewing