TARRAGON & THYME

 The Spring Equinox today and the day has been dull, slightly warmer but still chilly although the nights now seem to be stretching out that little bit more each day.  Next weekend we put forward the clocks so our evenings will be even lighter.  The sap is rising, birds are nesting, trees are starting to shoot.   And me I am looking to the wild larder for stashing away some goodies. I am after nettles and garlic with which to make goodies for the pantry shelf but so far have been unsuccessful.  Nettle tops are traditionally eaten at this time of year as during the winter months traditionally in this country we survived on salted meat.  The nettles helped purge your system of any toxins not just salt and gave your system a good clear out.  I want to make nettle soup, and wild garlic pesto and dried ramson leaves, as well as nettle green powder and dehydrated nettles for future use in teas or in green powder form.  I also want to make wine....

I managed to get an early night last night and slept all the way through for a change without having to get up.  I literally just crashed out.  However I am now feeling more with it and more compus mentis. I intend having another early night tonight. Today we have had more packages arrive for OH, but for the best part I have been able to take things steadily.  I have pottered about in the house and then we walked her Highness for her constitutional.  I called in to a  local  shop on the way home as I needed some salad stuff for tonight's tea.  We had decided to have the Rib Eye Steak for tea from Stilton Butchers whose meat delivery arrived yesterday and which I got packed into the fridge.  I served it with boiled potatoes, mixed salad, Green Peppercorn sauce, fried onions and mushrooms and it went down very well. I bought the Garden New Magazine the other day and there were six packets of seed in that magazine as a freebie.  The seeds includ...

To those of you who do not craft, I apologise but I am after quite some time finding my mojo with my crafting again. For many years I have been making stuff and putting it up without finishing things off.  I have lots of pieces of needlepoint and embroidery that have still not been made up.  The majority of the pieces I do have are intended for cushion inserts.  Most of them are of a floral nature. I have this theme of a posh front room in pinks, dark and light and green and cream at the end of the day with these colours being the predominant colours but the aim is to have a cohesive but very different front room where a lot of the stuff has been made by myself.  I am still making stuff and gathering patterns and projects together for working at a future date.  A recent discovery for me has been pdf patterns and I am still finding patterns and projects to do.  Little by little I am adding patterns when I can to the stash.  At the moment though do not h...

Ladies and Gents for not posting a full daily post today, although I have posted an update on my embroidery project update. We had an early start this morning due to a commitment of OH which needed me to babysit the dog and with me being and her being chucked out of the study! I have felt a bit peculiar and a bit under the weather since and fell asleep early afternoon (and that always throws me out too) as a result.  When I feel "wobbly" I have to take things steady as I get like this and extremely tired just before I usually have a blackout.  I have therefore slowed down and am listening to my body.  It may just be a fatigue attack but it certainly throws my system out of kilter. I have sat for about 3 1/2 hours embroidering but am having an early night to try and get myself firing on  all pistons again. Hopefully normal service will be resumed tomorrow. Take care and keep safe everyone. Pattypan x

This is the first part of the Progress on my embroidered Lap Quilt.  I will take this through to Thursday night 18th March 2021 and then weekly thereafter.  It will be good to get all the embroidery done on this project, and then when completed I can get this all made up and into the Christmas Box for this year.  I have some other projects too. I am not sure whether any of you are interested but thought that I would post a timeline on my efforts at working this huge cross-stitch which is a Plaid Bucilla kit.  When I first looked at this kit I was totally overwhelmed and so the way I am working it is to simplify it for me to get the most I can out of the threads available.  I always in the past have ended up not having enough thread, but fortunately with this kit they give you the colours and their reference numbers.  I also thought that it would be a useful exercise for me to keep tabs on the time that I have put into this project.  Sometimes these tak...

  For tea last night I had managed to pick up a small joint of pork for £6 .77 a nice little joint that will do us a couple of meals. This time I dried the pork down and salted it a little.  I do not always do this but yesterday I chose too.  I also had some sausages that needed using up and so using a packet mix I made the crumb up and then split the sausages from their skins and then mashed it into the cold mix.  I also added in extra raw onion and some butter.  It is then pressed into a greased pan. I also add some tiny bits of butter to the top. The joint half cooked with the crackling starting to form.  Instead of roast potatoes today I did smashed roast new potatoes with garlic.  You basically part boil the potatoes as you would for normal roasties, drain them and then put them into your roasting pan, squish or smash them down by pressing the potatoes into the pan so that they crush.  Add some whole cloves of garlic and then roast as you wo...

In many respects my blog is like an ongoing diary of things I have been up to or having a go at or just being experimental and playing around.  It does not however record every single thing that goes on in my life a lot I choose not to tell about and keep to myself.  Such is life and each of us are very different.  I share what I want to share, as do so many of us.  It is another outlet for creativity on either the home front with the cooking and preserving or on the creative side itself. Sometimes the greatest creativity is achieved by using those things that are around us or indeed using new and different techniques with which to do something.  However feeling the joy of everyday or indeed in just enjoying the crafting for the pleasure that it brings.  To me it is a much needed outlet as I need to be useful and productive.  That is me, and with what I do, I do not mean to make people feel "useless" that is far from the contrary.  I am not p...