Veg Plotting

It's been great to have some quality time on the patio this week culminating in yesterday's partial eclipse. With the live stream to hand, we had fun with our hastily made pinhole projector (a piece of card pierced with a paper clip), playing with the image on our hands, then NAH decided to carefully take a direct photo of the sun. 'That won't work', I said, and I was right... and wrong, with the sun behind its mackerel sky veil blazing forth as usual, but the camera lens flare revealing a perfect image of the sun bitten by the moon. * = I've had Midnight Oil's Earth and Sun and Moon on the brain all week; especially appropriate for yesterday's celestial event.

If there's one flower which shouts 'Spring is here!', then daffodils must be it, and with perfect timing Daffodils  also did the same last week when it hit the bookshop shelves. I was lucky to receive a copy to review and tempt you... and temptation is easy when comes in huge dollops of gorgeousness as Daffodils does. This is thanks to Georgianna Lane's exquisite and bountiful photography accompanied by Naomi Slade's cheerful, evocative and informative writing. A book that's both useful and looks ravishing is one of the hardest feats to pull off and here we have one that looks effortless in this achievement thanks to the hard work by author, photographer and publisher alike. It's a book that deserves to be left out permanently, for both frequent referral for key information as well as reading purely to lift one's mood. The book has three main sections: the first gives us a short tour of the history and botany of daffodils - aka Narcissus to give them t...

  It's time to start documenting the heart friendly recipes I've created or adapted over the past few years. First up is the aubergine bake I made last week which gave us two yummy hearty meals served over a couple of nights with a large salad. Here's the recipe card I created as the original recipe  I adapted is looking rather tired and scrappy with scribbled notes and well-thumbed use! I hope you enjoy this simplified version; it's especially nice as a summer recipe when aubergines and courgettes are in abundance. I rescued some chopped aubergines and courgettes from the freezer for a lovely throwback to summer days to help cheer up our January blues. Let me know how you get on 😋