Soup

I seem to be spending a lot of time making soup at the moment. Cold weather is soup weather. It's warming, comforting and healthy. I like to have a few packs of it in the freezer for an easy lunch or  dinner with crusty bread or dumplings. Some time ago my daughter and I had lunch out and I had a lovely celery and mushroom soup. I thought I would make some myself. I've made celery soup before but not with mushrooms. So I looked up some recipes and adapted them to suit what ingredients I had in at the time. This is good and easy to make.  I'm sure I'll be making it again.

Celery and mushroom soup

1 head of celery cleaned and chopped
250g  white mushrooms, chopped
1 medium onion chopped
1 clove of garlic crushed
a knob of butter
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 litre of chicken or vegetable stock

Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onions and garlic and fry gently for about 5 mins.
Add the celery, stir round. Put the lid on the pan, lower the heat and allow the onion and celery to sweat gently for about 5 mins.
Add the mushrooms, season and cook until all the mushroom juices disappear.
Add about half a litre of the stock, bring to the boil, then simmer for about 30mins until the celery is cooked.
Turn the heat out and allow  to cool slightly, then put the soup into a blender or liquidiser.
Return the soup to the pan adding more stock if it is too thick.
Reheat and add the parsley before serving.

NB
I found I needed a litre of stock.
You can also add chopped fennel with the onions, but I didn't have any.
Fresh thyme could be used instead of parsley.
You could add cream  before serving too if you like.

Using up the rhubarb

When we went to the allotment recently I was pleased to see that the rhubarb was starting to grow. There were some lovely bright pink stems just showing and new green  leaves. We had moved three rhubarb plants from our old plot to the new one a few weeks before Christmas and the soil in the new bed wasn't as good as the previous one so we weren't sure how well they would do in the new plot. The plants had done really well last year and we had frozen a good amount of it. We love rhubarb crumble in our family, but when you have so much rhubarb you need to find other ways to use it up.  Which is why when I was making blackberry and raspberry gins before Christmas, I was pleased to find a recipe for rhubarb and ginger vodka.  Ginger and rhubarb go really well together and this drink is just wonderful. I made it a couple of months before Christmas. I found a few different recipes, so I just tweaked them a bit and used the basic method I use for the blackberry and raspberry gin.

Rhubarb and ginger vodka
600g rhubarb
300g caster sugar
3 inches of ginger root
Zest of one lemon
70cl bottle of cheap Vodka

Pour the sugar into the bottom of a large sterilised jar (it should have at least double the capacity of the amount of vodka you’re using, and be airtight). Clean the rhubarb and slice it into 1inch chunks and put it in the jar on top of the sugar. Slice the ginger (no need to remove the skin) into coins, and toss it in along with the zest of a lemon, pared carefully with a knife into wide strips.

Pour over the vodka, seal the jar and shake well until all the sugar has dissolved. Then give it a shake  every day for  a week or two.

Leave it at room temperature (it’ll be fine sitting on a shelf in the kitchen) for two months, at which point the rhubarb will look disgusting and grey, having given up all its juice and colour to the now pink vodka. I stored mine in a cool dark storeroom as I didn't read the recipe properly!

Strain the mixture through a sieve into sterilised bottles. This liqueur is even better if you leave the finished bottles to mature for six months or so, but can be also drunk immediately.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

 

I've been reading a few gardening blogs today and somehow or other I found my way to Carol at May Dreams Gardens  There I read about Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. To blog about what's flowering in my garden on the 15th of every month sounds like a good way to keep record of my garden progress. To start this in January is a bit of a challenge, but I thought I'd have a go. So on this very cold but sunny morning I went out with my camera.

The garden is still looking a bit white after yesterday's fall of snow, but it's gradually clearing. I found primroses around the borders, these are native primroses which I planted a few years ago.They have formed some big clumps now and I really must get around to dividing them sometime.

The viburnum tinus has some white flowers. I love this shrub and the flowers have a lovely delicate fragrance. The witch hazel is in it's second winter. I bought it with garden vouchers given to me by my daughter. I'd wanted one of these for ages for it's winter colour.

Another shrub just flowering is winter jasmine. I brought this as a cutting from my daughter's garden a few years ago.This is planted in the woodland garden where it drapes itself over the wall. The hellebores are also flowering in the woodland garden.

In the front garden I spotted some flowers on the mahonia. This is another shrub with a lovely scent.

Although there are no flowers yet on the snowdrops there are  plenty of green shoots pushing their way through the soil. That's something to look forward to in February.

January

The Christmas decorations are down, the sparkle and glitter has all gone. I'm a bit sad about that as I like a bit of sparkle and glitter. But it had to go.  Sometimes I can still see bits of glitter on the carpet, I don't think I ever  get rid of the glitter completely.

It's back to normal for everyone this week, the schools are back and the council recycling wagon was busy the other morning collecting everyone's Christmas trees. The trees looked a bit abandoned on the pavements outside peoples' gates, lying in a pool of pine needles and with semi bare branches, but still a reminder of the last few weeks' festivities. 

We've had some fine weather in the last couple of days and looking around the garden I've seen signs of new growth. There are primroses flowering and shoots of bulbs appearing in the borders. There are flowers on the winter jasmine and the  witch hazel.  We managed a few hours at the allotment at the weekend it was lovely and spring like. I'm looking forward to being able to get outside more, clear up the borders and make a fresh start with the vegetable plot.

The house can look a bit bare once the decorations are down, so I always buy daffodils for the house after Christmas. They're a lovely change from the reds and greens we have at Christmas and bring a lovely freshness to the house with their colour and smell.

January can be a miserable month, when it's gloomy outside sometimes the best thing to do is curl up with a good book or some knitting. When I'm not doing that this month then I will probably be planning what vegetables to grow this year on the allotment, ordering seeds, onions and seed potatoes.

A New Year

I've read so many blogs recently on new year resolutions that I thought I should do one myself. But I don't do new year resolutions. I do make plans though. Sometimes plans have to be shelved for a while because other things get in the way and that's OK by me. Resolutions can be hard work and you can be so disappointed if you don't keep to them.

I looked back on last year's plans and some I didn't manage to do because I was too busy with other things. I managed to do more walking and keep up with my healthy eating to maintain my weight loss. We finally made the decision to have a big tree cut down in the garden, which gave us more light and I was then able to redesign the border around it. I'm pleased with that. We were going to have a new kitchen and redo some of the paths in the garden, but none of that happened because we were offered a 'proper' allotment after having a small starter plot for the last three years. This new allotment needed an awful lot of work doing on it, so all our spare time and energy was focused on this. We didn't mind, it's been hard work, but we've enjoyed doing it.

My plans for this year will include the allotment which continues to take up a lot of our time. I'll blog about those plans soon when we've worked out what they are.  I definitely want that new kitchen this year and the garden paths still need doing.

Anything else? Well I just want to enjoy life, and my family.

What are your plans for this year?

Moving

We haven't done much work at the new allotment during December, the weather has either been very frosty or very wet. But everything is reasonably tidy, the beds are topped up with manure and the sprouts, leeks, broccoli and cabbage are growing well.

What we have done is clear our old plot which we are giving up at the end of this month. A few weeks ago Helen and I went down and lifted the blackcurrants, raspberries, gooseberries and rhubarb.  They are now replanted in the fruit beds at the new allotment. We've cleared away all the rubbish and pulled up the remaining cabbages. I also lightly forked over each raised bed so they are now tidy and weed free ready for the new tenants. It felt a bit like moving house.

When we first got offered our new plot--a proper allotment, I felt a bit sad to be leaving the raised beds plot. But as we started work on the new allotment I saw how much better it would be with sheds, a growhouse and more space. A space with a fence around and a gate we could lock. A space which wasn't encroached upon by other peoples' weeds, this was a major problem on the other plot which was a communal area.

So I'm happy that we've moved to another plot, but I do hope the new tenants look after our old one.

Happy Christmas

This time of year is so busy and I have done so much but not blogged a lot. I get so busy and everything has to be perfect for Christmas. Well it's now Christmas Eve and I have done all my jobs, baked loads, decorated the house, and that is it. Later on tonight I will be going to the midnight service at church. Then tomorrow and for a few days  it's family time.

I hope you all have a lovely time this Christmas, thank you for reading my blog  and for the lovely comments.

May the peace of Jesus be with you this Christmas time.