TARRAGON & THYME

Last week I ordered some Strawberries together with a selection of mixed annuals which hopefully will be with me shortly.  I lost the Strawberries last year so need to replace them. I am buying bare rooted again (30 plants) over the seasons and hope that I have more success with them this year.  Put it this way it will not be for the lack of trying.  I have purchased these from Sutton Seeds. That is another couple of items off the list. I also am after Hydrangeas also for planters in the garden.  Will keep my eyes out for those.  I do not intend to pay through the nose for them. I have also ordered in some Blueberry plants (six to be precise) and also some trailing Fuschias for my hanging baskets.  These are coming from Thompson and Morgan. G has been talking about going fishing tomorrow - not sure if he will actually go or not.  Failing him not going tomorrow (weather is supposed to be good) he is definitely going on Sunday coming (Easter Sunday) as h...

I have a simple outline so far this year for the garden.  I am determined to get some things sown, grown and planted even though I do not feasibly know whether will be here to garden or not.  Depends whether we can get down to Cornwall.  Fingers crossed I am very much hoping we will do. However, equally I do not want to miss out on some home grown items either, especially when it comes to the salad items, the Beans and everything else I have been reading a lot recently about people's approach to gardening and what people have planted in the past from what I can ascertain there are a few items that traditionally will help top up the food pile a bit.  They consist of the following: Spring Onions Radishes Beetroot Turnips Swedes Parsnips Leeks Kale Cottagers/Keepers Kale Savoy Cabbage Brussel Sprouts Mustard Greens PSB Broccoli Broad Beans French Beans Borlotti Beans Runner Beans Peas Mangetout Marrows Courgettes Cucumbers Carrots Potatoes Tomatoes Lettuce/Mixed Leaves ...

I am itching to get out in the garden and start sowing seeds, predominantly to start with some herbs and salad stuff.  Thinking along the lines of items such as radishes, spring onions, different lettuces and salad leaves and some beetroot.  Have a lot of seeds to choose from and some compost although will need more in due course.  I need a proper compost bed and am hoping to get this started soon. On checking my garden the Fig trees seem to have survived and are budding as have my Purple Sage, Lovage, Chocolate Mint, Black Peppermint, Apple mint, my two tubs of Chives which I also want to add a couple of more planters of these to the garden.  Very useful fresh but also to dry and this year I hope to have flowers so that I can make some Chive vinegar.  There is then Lemon Balm, some of the Lavender, and Rosemary.  However have lost my Lemon Verbena (cannot see any shoots at the moment it may surprise me yet), my French Tarragon and my Thyme plants.  I ...

  As a precursor to the weekend and bearing in mind that I have not been to the CS for nearly three weeks I popped in to see a friend who works there as I hadn't seen her for a while as she wasn't there the last time I went.  I had a look whilst I was present and came across a couple of hand-worked cross stitch Sampler pictures which took my fancy for £3.50 each.  They have unusually both been worked by the same lady and she has worked her name into both pieces. I am not too enamoured of the frames they are in, however I do have a selection of frames to re-frame them with.  I am going to see what is available with them and find the best fit for each individual piece.   I also found a beautiful picture of a ginger cat which was £5. When I looked on the back the piece has the Artist's name and label on and it originally cost £60.  It looks like an original as I cannot see a numbered item on the piece.  Equally it could be a print. The find is in a b...

Just before Christmas the TV packed up.  We have been without it since, and probably will be for another few months.  To tell the truth we can access Radio, films and programmes that we want to watch via the Internet.  Despite initial concerns from G, neither of us seem to have missed it much.  I think it is like most things if you do not have something then you find something else to do in the meantime.  For us at the moment the TV is not a priority.  There are other more urgent things to attend to.  Each family has their own ideas of what a priority is and no doubt this differs between families.  However for me, although it needs doing,  so do other items especially if we are to make it down to Cornwall this year. Similarly in the last few days we have been having problems with the Internet with no access for periods throughout the day which has been frustrating in one way or another.  When we have checked with the provider there has s...

This week has not gone totally to plan, but at least a little bit has been done and I have been focusing more on priorities than any one individual thing.  In reality I have often found that starting or doing something often leads to me being side-tracked as something else has to be done before can finish what I had started. Wednesday Fridge   Fridge cleaning day today, in anticipation of next week's planned food shopping.  The fridge needed a good "bottoming out" and is part of my regular cleaning schedule, however it is also Spring and part of my planned "Spring Clean" to make sure everything is clean, aired out and ready for the new season. Well I did not quite hang the fridge on the clothes line, but hope you catch my drift. Managed to get the bulk of the cleaning done, just the bottom part of the fridge to strip and clean out and then the fridge is all ready for topping up next week.  I shall finish the fridge on Thursday.   A Little Shopping The Pantr...

The Plans This is likely to be not this coming week but the week after.  There is nothing quite like planning, and I like to get in mind the items that I am after and out of, which often decides where I am going to be going to ensure those items are put back into stock again. I must clarify that until my different food areas are stocked up to my satisfaction I will not necessarily be adding to that stock again until the stock is low again.  I am trying to keep a float each month to be able to take advantage of various offers and also obtain the ingredients often seasonal for preserving my own food.    This last month (February)  I have stocked up on a lot of meat items for the freezer, and stocked up on cleaning materials. Freezer contents will probably last for the next 6 months apart from those items like sausages and bacon which we seem to be quite heavy on.  Cleaning materials should last for the next 3 to 4 months apart from the soap powder and the fab...

 which was very much needed. Within a two week turnaround period since our car was written off, we are pleased to have received compensation to purchase a new car with.  Not the top of the range Ford Mondeo Vignale that we had, nothing available in the price range we had available. However the next model down from the Viagnale, this time the Titanium which will also pull our double axle caravan without damaging it.  So hopefully will get down to Cornwall soon now that we are  back on the road. Big shout out to Hastings Direct for a speedy and prompt replacement process. The damage was not our fault and we have not had to pay any excess.  They have been excellent to deal with. Now that saga is over with, hopefully G will calm down a bit (he has been a bit wound up which has taken some dealing with but we have got there). Hopefully he will be able to go fishing now and relax! On other matters, I have had to replace one of my coats - not something that I like doing...

 with what I have available here to me in Peterborough.  These days I tend to go where the prices are good for a specific range of goods, like meat, vegetables, cleaning items and consumables, tinned goods and baking ingredients.  I do not rely solely on supermarkets and certainly do not do big shops in them like I used to do.  With the increase in prices and only a limited budget something had to give and so for the best part I cook all our meals from scratch. My shopping habits have changed.  I predominantly buy only ingredients and then make something from them. When you buy pre-prepared food, you end up paying a premium on them; often it is quite a big mark up. Now in my reality a lot of the food shops have something about them a lot of it comes down to personal choice and what you actually use in your own kitchen. No rhyme or reason to buying in items that you are just not going to use. I tend to buy the items I like and will use often going into a supermar...

Well we are at that time of the month when the pennies get a bit tight!  Tighter this month because the car was MOTd, needed two new tyres which we have paid out for only to have the car totalled and written off.  I also did a major shop in a couple of tranches of meat for the month.  I should not need to top up massively on the meat front unless we run out of a particular ingredient.  I am so glad that I concentrated on stocking up so much this month.  I tend to do this when I can do it. I also did a major cleaning materials raid as well this last month.  Next time probably middle of the month, I will stock up on tinned goods as I am getting low on some items. So what do we do to get by?  Well I start diving into the Freezer and the Pantry ingredients and the fresh items that I do have in the fridge.  I make use of what we have and do what I can within the time frame before the next pay day.  This is one of the main reasons that I try and ma...