Back After A Blogging Break - With Tomatoes!

If you follow this blog regularly, you'll have noticed I've been absent for a little while. Apologies for that. I had some craziness going on with my writing and it ended up forcing the blogs to the back burner. But I'm hoping to be able to get back to blogging more regularly so for those of you that have stuck around - thanks! And I hope you enjoy the upcoming posts!

So! We've actually had a bit of a proper Summer in the UK which after last year's washout, and the fact that Winter seemed very reluctant to exit stage left, has been a pleasant surprise. The garden has been a bit odd though, as because it stayed so cold for so long, things have taken a while to get going. I have a bunch of tomato plants which are now doing pretty well, but none of them have got a heavy crop, and I think it's because they just couldn't get going early enough.

 

This was the scene back at the start of June. They were still looking a little pathetic and sorry for themselves. One of them in fact died off a short time after this was taken so a replacement was popped in his place. As you can see, I planted them in old chimney pipes. This allows me to put them in deeper (as the bed is fairly shallow) and also helps keep them from drying out too much. They don't look the prettiest but frankly once the tomatoes take hold, you don't see too much of them.

 

I also have a few in pots and they've all done pretty well so far, considering the very late start they had coupled with several weeks of 30 degree heat! We've had a few small pickings so far, mostly from the few 'micro' varieties but on Friday I got a bit more of a decent picking of both tomatoes and chillies.

 

 



The chillies are a jalapeno variety and the tomatoes are Red Alert, and Golden Sunrise. I'm still deciding what to do with them, but I think they may end up as soup today. I often use a Delia Smith recipe which turns out well each time.

 

One thing with recipes for tomatoes - they often call for the tomatoes to be peeled, or the mixture to be sieved after blitzing. I think this is a personal thing. Two main recipes I use call for them and I don't do it with either. I have done in the past but it's fiddly and I found, unnecessary. So long as you blitz it well enough, you're not going to have bit bits of skins floating around anyway. But, as I said, it's a personal thing. If you don't want seeds and skins, then sieve away!

 

Well, that's it for this post. I'll be back with some more updates on food, gardening and crafting soon!

 

As always, I'd love to hear from you and how your crafting, gardening and cooking is going!

 

Love, Maxi x

 

 

 





Bad Blogger!

I know, I know. I am a Bad Blogger! There's been rather more of a gap between posts on both this, and my writing blog (http://www.scribblermaxi.blogspot.com/). Life got a bit hectic (well, more hectic than usual) and this combined with some under-the-weather scenarios on my part, and a poorly laptop hasn't done well for my blogging.

So, please accept my apologies and I do promise to do better (I feel like I should be doing a Girl Guide salute, even though I only made it as far as Brownies, but I seem to think that the Promise was the same... I promise to do my best...).

I have been undertaking various baking adventures, so have some more pics of the results to upload. The tomatoes are coming on apace in the garden, although some flippin' Summer Type Weather wouldn't go amiss if any of the Weather Gods are reading this.

Sewing has been a little sparse lately due to me being 'between machines'. I have a shortlist of ones I want to try before I invest, but it's finding time to do that (and waiting for deals!) so in the meantime, I have been pondering on whether to get the prep work done on a bunch of various projects so that as and when a new machine is welcomed into the fold, I can just get whizzing. I mean, the cutting out is really the tedious bit, isn't it? Anyone have any other ideas how I can keep the creative sewing juices going until I can actually sew?

Thanks again for sticking round, and I'll be posting again shortly. And don't forget to let me know about those good ideas!