Look at my produce! I thought jam was a hassle (thermometers, muslin, big aluminium or not pans, rolling boils, saucers of cold water...) until I discovered the sugars with pectin in and now there's no stopping me. This week bought kilo bags of two types of the sugar (one for soft fruit jam, one for fruit with stones) Then got just over a kilo of apricots first, made that one in an hour. Then bought raspberries, made that one in half an hour. Will make one more lot from wild bullis plums later as these are my real favourites and just fall off the trees into my open carrier bag!
Following the vegetarian edition of OFM this weekend, will try to follow Paul McCartney's example and not eat meat for a week. And as long as I stick to curries this shouldn't be a problem as I am having a bit of a craving for a good Leicester dhal and rice, with puri's and samosas. So made a chick pea and potato curry tonight - one of the easiest and most delicious, with fennel and coriander from the garden.
Without knowing my plans for vegetarian and curry, Tanya has cooked me curry again - kerala fish curry - so delicious. Will have to excuse this fish as wouldn't strictly speaking be eating fish as a vegetarian, but still - no meat.
Forgot I was on veggie week and had bacon and eggs for breakfast, but made up for it by making delicious pakora with spinach out of the garden for lunch. Inspector X gave me her recipe - it's so easy - but it's on the gram flour packet too, if you can find any. I asked in Tesco just to see if they knew what it was, not expecting them to have any, and they bought me Rye flour. So went to Ipswich to the Norwich road shops where they have everything you could possibly ever want and spent too much on scotch bonnet peppers, plantain chips and frozen samosa's as well.
Vegetarian week is over but there is still nothing better than a new potato from your own garden with a big knob of butter.
My friend Joe and I are at Alder Carr drooling over the cheese counter when we hear that so is the food critic from the Telegraph. I am not quick enough to give her my suffolkfoodie card but I understand food critics don't like food bloggers much so maybe it's for the best. Great Ploughmans though - big chunk of Suffolk Gold and a home made scotch egg. And a special hello to the nice man buying cheeses beginning with g for his dinner party - we want to come! www.aldercarrfarm.co.uk
Such a quaint little tea rooom of the kind you think have long gone. Full of teapots on display and a reasonable menu of snacks and main meals. I had a cheese and ham toastie which was two slices of sliced bread toast redeemed by nice home cooked ham. They have a couple of foodie shops here in Needham, a good butchers and one of the best charity shops ever where they don't select out the junk first - you could set up house from here.
Hola! A new sign outside the Victoria in Thurston. Are they really Spanish? Love the sign and can't wait to find out.
Lovely food. I had their version of Welsh Rarebit with salad and the most delicious piece of lemon cake filled with home made lemon curd with greek yoghurt on the side. Mum had a bacon sandwich in ciabatta-type bread and a piece of plum and orange cake. They say they use their own produce and it shows in the moist yellow cake made with their own eggs. We both had their own fresh apple juice. And they have some really nice plants too. Not your usual garden centre. www.harveysgardenplants.co.uk
