London Balcony Garden

In our old rented house, we had a lovely little garden, which was great. But it never got any sun. And was very boggy....so even the grass repeatedly died. So not the place for green fingers. The house, whilst lovely, didn't really have any windows, or window sills (it was a tiny cottage) so I couldn't even have any house plants.

So when we bought our flat last year, my main criteria were light, and outside space. And we ended up with both!! Our lovely flat has windows on 3 sides, with really deep window sills, and a decent sized balcony which gets the sun ALL DAY!!!

So when we moved in in December, I immediately bought house plants for every room in the house. And then make me so happy.

Then, in the Easter holidays, I went a bit mad on the balcony. I bought pots that sit either side of the railings, so that they didn't take up too much of our precious space inside the balcony, and then planted everything I fancied. My idea was, that I'd plant loads, and if even half of it grew, I would be so happy.

Turns out, my balcony is a prime growing spot. I planted:

Strawberries
Raspberries
Rhubarb
Lettuce
Peas
Courgettes
Cauliflowers
Tomatoes

I've since added in: Chillies, Basil & Mint

Here are some photos.......I am SO proud!!

The first thing I do every morning now is go and check on them, and water them, and I love going out to make a salad, and picking some lettuce, adding some basil, maybe a tomato or two! I love it!

Carrot & Oat Cookies - UK recipe

I had an urge last week, to make carrot & oat cookies. I quite often get an urge to bake, but will usually be in my pyjamas and very unwilling to leave the house (even though we have a few supermarkets within a minute walk of the house!!) and so will do a sweep of the cupboards and fridge to see what I have, and then try to find and tailor a recipe to what I have in the house.

Last week, I had a huge bag of carrots in the fridge, and an unopened bag of oats in the cupboard, and not much else in the way of interesting baking ingredients, and so I thought that carrot oat cookies would be a tasty, healthy (?) baking treat!

Unfortunately, all the recipes that I could find were American, and I just don't get all this 'cup' measuring.

In the end, I gave up with trying to search for an English recipe, picked an American on, and got busy translating.

So here is my recipe (also slightly adapted to what I had in the cupboards!!)

170g of butter or baking spread (I used Stork)
50g of dark brown muscavado sugar
125g of castor sugar
*note that the recipe called for 175g of brown sugar, but I used what I had in the cupboard, and though they were fabulous!
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
250g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
300g porridge oats
150g grated carrot
milk, to add until it makes a slightly sticky dough


1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees (180 for a fan oven, and lightly grease a couple of baking trays.

2. Beat the butter and sugars together until smooth and creamy. Add the beaten egg, and vanilla extract and beat well.

3. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda, and nutmeg. Stir into the butter and sugar mixture until well mixed.

4. Fold in the oats and carrots and add the milk until it forms a sticky dough.

5. Drop mounds of dough, around 8cm in diameter onto the baking tray, and flatten with the back of a spoon, until they are about 2cm high.

6. Bake for 10-12 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.

7. Eat!!! Mmmmmm!

Inspiralize Your Life!!

I bought I spiralizer last week, on the recommendation of my cousin and his girlfriend. I'd been slowly reading about them in more and more places, but as soon as I saw them and they raved about 'courgetti' I just knew I had to have one (courgettes were my vegetable of last summer with my courgette and lemon cake becoming my new cake speciality!!).

So I bought the Hemsley + Hemsley Spiralizer from Amazon and I think it is amazing! I'd read reviews that said upright ones were best, because the vegetables don't slip out, but then everyone who had bought one, seemed to have one like this so I decided to go with the masses. And IT IS AMAZING!!!

I have used it every day so far and without really trying have massively upped my vegetable intake. Plus anything spiralled looks really cool. I have always been a stickler for my 5 fruit and veg a day, but have recently upped this to 10, with the aim of eating more veg as a lot of my intake tends to be fruit which is not so good for me.

Since last Tuesday, when it arrived just in time for dinner, here's what I have spiralled....

TUESDAY: Thai red curry (onion, pepper, tomato, mushrooms, sweetcorn, aubergine) with courgoodles (courgette noodles). I did also try and spiral the aubergine but it just went a bit mushy and shredded and didn't really work.

WEDNESDAY: The classic, courgetti bolognese (with onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and carrots in the sauce)

Verdict = courgettes are super easy to spiral, if they're a bit wonky I just cut them on the bendy bit and spiralize them in sections which works perfectly. They are also nicely soft so very easy to spiral. And both nights we ate just one courgette spiralled between the 2 of us and a normal portion of the rest of dinner and were nicely full.

THURSDAY: Chorizo sausages with spiralled potatoes, spiralled carrots, mushrooms, onions and garlic.

Verdict = I thought the harder veg might not work as well but the blades are so sharp that the carrots went through with little more effort. The only downside is that you need really fat carrots to make proper spirals, but my thinner carrots gave nice arcs, and then I munched on the middles whilst cooking. Yum!

The potatoes worked amazingly and I just steamed them in with the sausages so they got a lovely chorizo-y flavour. Curly potatoes taste so much nicer than plain boiled potatoes for some reason, and we weren't tempted to add butter which we normally would have so well worth it!

FRIDAY: Wraps with humous, courgetti and peppers. Amazingly delicious!!

SATURDAY: Wraps with boursin and courgetti. Again, AMAZING!!!

I own a fair few kitchen gadgets which I do use fairly often, however, never have I had one that I am so in love with that I want to use it every day! I think the fact that it's not electric so you can dump the whole thing in the sink to wash it if you want helps too so I would recommend to everyone GO AND BUY A SPIRALIZER!!!!

Happeas!

I love knitting, I love smiling and I love vegetables.....so here are all those 3 things in one....