The Sun's back!

What a contrast! After yesterday’s weather we were expecting Noah’s Ark to float by any minute, and today… Beautiful sunshine, calm as you like. So we had quite an active one. Went out to Arcola, doing some weeding, sowing peas and rocket and picking some more willow to finish the basket, some rocket for dinner and the last of the kaki to experiment a bit further with my country wine making. This year, or should I say season, we actually managed to get the kaki all ripe, without losing too much to rot. And above you can see my foot treating the kaki to the traditional ‘méthode à pied’. Now I don’t want any smart remarks about cheesy notes with fungal hints in the wine!

With the willow I finished my log basket. I still have to practice doing handles, but it seems sturdy enough. The trouble of course compared to the plastic basket is, that this basket has a fair weight by itself, but it should last a while. I’m very proud of it anyway. Once you get the hang of it it’s not that difficult, it’s getting it started is the tricky bit.

We also sowed some seeds indoors, namely aubergines, peppers, chillies, cucumbers and melons. For dinner we had pasta with rocket pasta, one of my really simple and cheap recipes. Just chop a handful of rocket finely and mix it together with ricotta, olive oil, the juice and zest of a lemon, some grated parmesan and some pepper and mix it all together with the cooked pasta. Takes all of 5 minutes and is delicious!

The Great Ugly Basket Competition

Here it is! The great ugly basket competition! No, not ugly bastard… Who said that? Now which of the above baskets is the ugliest? Is it
A) top left
B) top right
C) bottom left
D) bottom right

A basket will be made (none of the above!) for one (un)lucky winner, which will be drawn at random amongst all participants in the survey. As a hint, 2 of them were made entirely by myself, one entirely by Susan and one was a joint effort, so there is pride at stake! Please let us know before Saturday the 15th December.

Finally my tip of the day, a new and irregular feature on these pages. Today’s tip concerns cooking with chillies and has two parts to it.
1) During the winter it’s a good idea to add plenty of chillies to any dish, you will save a fortune in heating bills
2) When cooking with chillies, forget about washing your hands beforehand, wash them afterwards! Should you not wash them afterwards, at least make sure you do not pick your nose, rub your eyes or touch any other sensitive body parts (I leave that one to your imagination…).

basketry

It was a grey, miserable, drizzly and cold day today, so I thought I could teach myself a new indoor skill. And a skill it is! According to John Seymour you just walk into a wood with a knife and you come out with a basket. Well may be a bit of practice will do the trick, this was my first attempt. We cut of the willow rods a couple of days ago and you must admit the end product looks vaguely basket-like. Although note the grim expression on my face while I’m wrestling with those sticks. We’ll make a few of them, filling them with Christmas biscuits and jars of our homemade jams or chutneys as presents for our lovely neighbours in Ponzano Superiore. Surely it beats wrapping paper and it doesn’t cost anything…