Butterscotch Sauce and Barbed Wire

Harvested my first batch of rhubarb yesterday. Not from the traumatised plants cowering behind the shed after they were brutally propagated over the winter months - I'm leaving those to recover and develop a good strong root system this year before I start amputating their stalks. These ones are from a patch at the other end of the plot that I will probably dig up and relocate next winter.

I followed a recipe by Denis Cotter from The Cafe Paradiso Cookbook for Rhubarb Shortbread with Butterscotch Sauce, which I've wanted to make since January, but rather than buying forced rhubarb from a supermarket, I've waited patiently till my own was ready to harvest.

Here's what I was trying to make (just take a moment to look at & admire that beautiful clear smooth & glossy butterscotch sauce):

And here is my effort:
Obviously you don't get to see the first batch of slightly burnt bitter tasting shortbread biscuits - I was totally engrossed in the new episode of Dr Who on TV so they were in the oven just a little too long. Those biscuits have been edited out of history and into the bin - but a 2nd tray that were on a lower shelf in the oven were fine.

Have to say it would've been perfect if it wasn't for the iffy butterscotch sauce. Followed the recipe very carefully, but as everyone knows, if you boil cream in a sauce (as I was instructed by Denis to do) it separates and goes all weird & splodgey.

Other than that, it was very delicious, so I might get the tippex & black biro out and modify Mr Cotter's book with a recipe for a butterscotch sauce I can work with, and try that one again.

Not a great deal of lottie action this week. I took a few days off work mid-week, & it's been warm & sunny for several weeks so the earth is hard as concrete - it's taking on that cracked crazed look that I remember really clearly from the long hot summer of 1976. Too hard to dig, so have just been watering stuff. But we've had a bit of rain in the night & this morning, so heading up there later on today.

But did get out and about on the Sussex Downs. Came across this near Wolstonbury Hill:
Do trees feel pain? My head tells me no, but my instinct & my heart very firmly say yes, they do. It wasn't just this one tree being slowly garrotted by barbed wire, there were a number along the side of the path. Poor things - if I'd had a set of pliers and some spare lengths of wire on me, I would've cut the wire & re-fixed the fence with a bit of give in it. Even if some landowner had come barrelling over the hill with a furious look and a 2-bore shot-gun pointed in my general direction.

But on a lighter note, the woodlands & hedgerows were looking utterly glorious & bursting into life after this long cold winter.


Just heavenly.

Crunch Point

My windowsills are now groaning under the weight of seedlings reaching for the light and I'm starting to feel like I'm looking at the world through a pair of green-tinted spectacles. Obviously space is limited (I don't live in a giant greenhouse, nor do I have a house with full plate-glass shop windows). So an interesting hierarchy of favouritism is developing. Tomatoes aubergines & chillies are all top dog in my house - right there living it up on the window sills. But I foolishly also sowed a few squashes & pumpkins - take a quiet moment to watch these, and they grow right in front of your eyes like stop-animation of the kind you see on a nature programme. Oh Lordy, I am undone.


I confess, the pansies (first time I've ever grown these from seed - previous years I've always bought these each spring as plug plants) are probably furthest from a window - indeed, they're currently sitting on a kitchen work surface in front of the boiler. These are (oh, how embarrassing to admit this) more leggy than Elle Mcpherson (or some other 6ft giantess 1980s supermodel type with pins insured for a million dollars). If my pansies were people they would look like this.

How will these survive? As soon as they go outside, one gentle hint of a breeze and they'll be over like a teen that's had one too many alchopops - stems snapped & dead as a dodo.

What to do?

Methinks a re-shuffling is in order. A trip to the pound shop is to be had on Monday, for half a dozen nasty plastic 12" pots. Squashes are going to have to take their chances down at the allotment shed. I call it a shed. Actually, it's more of a summer house affair with plenty of windows, frequently used as target-practice by the local yoofs roaming the allotments on a Saturday night (good grief - is that really the best idea they can come up with to entertain themselves?). Glass windows are pane-by-pane being replaced with perspex. Hopefully, before the final piece of glass is broken whatever the yoofs are lobbing at my windows will bounce off the perspex and donk them right back. Right back atcha.

Oh Yes.

It's been way to wet over the past week to go to the lottie, but dry enough today to have a close look at the back garden and admire this little beauty (Iris Reticulata) which opened up this morning. Spring is definitely here.

I bought 4 strawberry plants last October, each with numerous runners. I got these home & potted them up, all except one have rooted & taken, and have been out in the back garden all winter & survived all the snow & ice that winter has thrown at them this year. I'll take these up to the allotment & plant out in March.

This very early variety of Purple Sprouting Broccoli (called "Summer Purple") sown in January is still doing fine in the garden - now temperatures are above freezing, they're growing again & putting out true leaves. Will sow some more this weekend, but will try planting these ones out in late March. Should be ready to harvest from June onwards.