Getting ideas for Christmas

 

I always start December with lots of ideas for making fantastic Christmas decorations, but sadly usually run out of time and energy. Our Christmas visit to RHS Harlow Carr always gives us lots of ideas for decorating our home at Christmas. Last year we thought we could easily do the twiggy Christmas trees. We saw them again on our visit  this year and thought how lovely they were.  I think we need to plan well ahead to make these.

One of the reasons for our visit to Harlow Carr this December was to see again how they do Christmas  In the greenhouse at the kitchen gardens there is always a lovely display of natural decorations. As we entered we were greeted by an amazing array of greenery, dried flower heads, oranges, pine cones, crab apples, cranberries, chillies, pumpkins and squash and some fairy lights too. It was wonderful.

I returned home bubbling with ideas for decorating my home this Christmas. I may run out of time and energy though.

Macaroon mince pies

I'd not baked for ages until last week.  There was a Mothers Union coffee morning after church, so I decided to bake some things for the cake stall. It was good to do some baking and it got me into the right frame of mind for making things for Christmas.  I made a chocolate cake and some macaroon mince pies.  These are good if you don't like too much pastry.


Macaroon Mince Pies 

Stamp 18 pastry rounds and place in 18 hole bun tin.
Mix 175gr/6oz golden caster sugar, 175gr/6oz ground almonds and 25gr/1oz flaked almonds
Stir in 3 stiffly beaten egg whites and half a teaspoon of almond essence.
Put 1 teaspoon mincemeat in each pie, top with 1 teaspoon macaroon mixture, finish with 50gr/2oz flaked almonds.
Bake in a preheated oven 180c/gas 6 for 12 to 15 minutes.

Harlow Carr--the Christmas visit

It's becoming a tradition  that we visit RHS Harlow Carr in December. We like to visit several times during the year to see the seasonal changes in the gardens. In December I like to go for several reasons, one being the peace and quiet during such a busy time of year.

The last time we went  we took the grandchildren during the  school holidays. It was very busy. This time there were  very few people there.  We enjoyed the peace and quiet.

There was a magnificent Christmas tree just outside the reception area decorated with red baubles, dried oranges, pine cones and ribbons. I loved it. Outside some trees with white bark possibly silver birch, had silver baubles hanging from their branches.

The gardening staff were very busy tidying up the borders. The gardens were still very colourful even though most flowering plants have died back now. There was plenty of green from the evergreen foliage,  golden and bronze from the dead seed heads and grasses which were still providing interest in the borders. The red and yellow stemmed dogwoods were really colourful.  I have often thought I would like a dogwood in my garden but I would only have room for one plant and when I see them at Harlow Carr, a whole border full, they are so effective that I think maybe it wouldn't work in my garden. In another part of the gardens we saw the purple berried callicarpa. I have seen this in garden centres and thought the purple was too gaudy and unnatural looking, but here it looked great, so I am considering it as an addition to my garden for autumn colour.

In the woodland area perhaps because it was winter and there was no distraction from other plants (and children) we were more aware of interesting bark colour and twisty tree trunks.  There were also the occasional Christmassy touches like some twiggy balls decorated with coloured ribbon and a big tree with huge coloured baubles hanging from its branches.

I'm wondering now whether to decorate my garden with baubles.

Ways with leeks

This year our allotment grown leeks on plot 10b have done fantastically well. We have never before been harvesting our leeks before Christmas and they are huge too! We also have more of them growing on plot 8, we should be pulling those up in the new year. I don't know why they have done so well, maybe an earlier sowing, better soil now we have a new allotment, a good source of manure, but whatever the reasons, we are really enjoying our leeks.

Leeks are one of my favourite vegetables, there are so many ways to cook and enjoy them. Sliced thinly and stir fried they go well with fish or chicken dishes. Leeks are also a good addition to vegetable soups, leek and potato soup is especially great at this time of year.

One of my favourite leek recipes is leeks and bacon in a cheese sauce:

Fry some streaky bacon pieces until crisp, then cut the leeks into chunks and fry gently until softened. Put the leeks and bacon in an ovenproof dish, add cheese sauce and top with grated cheese. Cook in the oven at gas mark 7/425F/220C until the cheese topping is bubbling and golden.

This week I made a cheese and leek flan using an old Cranks recipe. If you're as old as me you may remember the Cranks vegetarian restaurants. I have a couple of their recipe books.

Leek and cheese flan
Serves 4--6

10oz/300gr wholemeal shortcrust pastry
2 large leeks
1oz /25gr butter
large pinch cayenne 
large pinch ground nutmeg
3 eggs
3floz/75ml milk
3floz/75ml soured cream
large pinch salt
6oz/175gr cheddar cheese

Line a 9"/23cm flan tin with the pastry.
Clean and thinly slice the leeks.
Saute the leeks in melted butter until tender. Season with cayenne and nutmeg. Leave to cool.
Whisk the eggs, milk, soured cream and salt together.
Sprinkle half the cheese over the base of the flan.
Spread the leeks on top and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
Pour the egg custard over the flan.
Bake in the oven at 200C/400F/gas mark 6 for about 30 to 40 minutes until risen and golden.

Wholemeal pastry may not be to everyone's taste, it is a bit heavy, but I'm sure that this recipe works just  as well with normal shortcrust pastry.
I used normal double cream and Lancashire cheese because that's all I had.

Do you have any good recipes for using leeks?

A cold day at the allotment

We managed a visit to the allotment at the weekend. It seems ages since we last went and I was desperate to get some tidying up done. It was a cold sunny day so we wrapped up well and took a flask of hot water to make drinks with.

 Richard went over to plot 8 to put taps on the  water butts which are connected  to the shed, whilst I worked on plot 10b. I cleared the peppers out of the polytunnel and emptied the growbag onto the soil. All the annual flowers had gone over so they got pulled up and thrown on the compost heap.

The chard just keeps on going no matter how much I cut it back. We realise now that we planted far too much even for our two families. I cut back some which looked like it was going to seed and cleared away some of the tatty leaves at the base of the stems. The stems are a deep red which makes a lovely splash of colour at this time of year.

The rhubarb has died back now so I cleared away the dead leaves and weeded the bed. It now needs a good mulch of manure.

The massive sycamore tree which hangs over the plot has shed most of its leaves now. Every time I go to the allotment I sweep up about two wheelbarrow loads of leaves. They don't go to waste though, they go in the leaf bin on plot 8.

Looking around the plot there were plenty of vegetables still doing well, brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli, kale, swede, chard, fennel, parsnips, beetroot and leeks. Before we left I picked kale and purple sprouting broccoli.

There is still lots of  clearing up work to be done on plot 8, but that will have to wait for another day.

Plans and things

 At this time of year I start to ease up on the gardening and allotment work, move indoors and get busy preparing for Christmas. That means lots of cleaning, cooking, baking and shopping.  For the last two weeks we have been decorating our breakfast room--a job which is taking a lot longer to complete than we anticipated.  But with a house as old as ours you never know what will happen when you start peeling wallpaper off the walls.  And what happened was that a lot of plaster came away with it, so that meant lots of holes to fill.  But we are now nearly finished (I think, I hope).

I have been longing to get down to the allotments to do some work, because there is still much to be done before I can feel happy that all is cleared up and beds manured for the winter. And I really miss not being there.  When I pop down briefly to feed the cat or dig up some leeks I look around, making a mental note of what needs to be done. The place looks very lonely, damp and dreary--"I'll be back soon",  I promise.

Back at home I have made the Christmas cake; I have blackberry, raspberry and rhubarb gins and vodkas maturing in a dark place; in the shed there are pots of white hyacinths  waiting  to be brought out nearer to Christmas and all sorts of twigs and seed heads drying out for my wreaths and flower arrangements. I can't wait to get started on making some twiggy wreaths, I have lots of ideas bubbling away in my head.

This all sounds very organised, but it isn't. I do have plans, lots of them, whether they will happen is another matter.

Cheap shed, chic shed

For the past few weeks Richard has been building a shed on plot 8.  There were two sheds when we took the plot on. Both were very ramshackle and the first thing we did was pull them down.  At first we thought we wouldn't need a shed on the plot as we already had two on plot 10b which is only two plots away.  But as time went on we changed our minds. It became a bit tiresome to keep going backwards and forwards to our other plot to get tools or bring brew making stuff over.  I thought we could look out for a cheap secondhand shed, but my husband had other ideas. He said he could build one with some of the good wood remaining from our old shed and other wood we had around on plot 10b. He thought it would be much more substantial than a cheap bought shed.

The challenge was to spend as little money as possible on materials. It was amazing really how once he started working on the new shed we seemed to acquire things to help build it. Like the wood and exterior door from a local building company's skip--who gave him permission to take anything he wanted. Then there was the double glazed window which was just the right size, it's quite big so gives us plenty of light and a lovely view of the plot.  The interior doors which one of our allotment neighbours gave him became the sides of the shed  The front  is covered in cladding to hide these doors using wood from the old shed.

Some money still had to be spent on a small amount of wood and nails--about £50.  Other expenses were guttering for the water butts and paint for the exterior cladding, but these would have been extras if we had bought a shed.  So we consider our shed to have cost in the region of £50 and is probably a lot sturdier than any other cheap shed. How many other sheds have a double glazed window and a fire door?

The inside of the shed is a dream.  Richard built a bench along one side, again using free wood. Our hairdresser gave us an old desk which Richard adapted and made into another bench. It looks a bit strange inside with the walls made from those interior doors--doors which lead to nowhere.  But when I walk inside I am in shed heaven. It is so lovely and I have already started to arrange tools, seed trays and of course somewhere to make a brew.