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Feeling like a gooseberry

I never intended to step away from blogging for so long. Before I knew it, a few days of ambivalence stretched to weeks and then a month. The exciting prospect of talking about my daily exploits was gone and with it my inclination to take photographs and the stories that have so freely danced in my head simply dried up.  All of a sudden I found myself with nothing I wanted to say.

It was only the other day when I popped one of these lovely gooseberries into my mouth did it dawn on me that I’d lost my blogging confidence because I felt awkward reporting on the minutia of life.  I had come to be the metaphorical gooseberry on my own blog.  Like being at a crowded party with people speaking loudly and energetically but I was the shy bystander hovering at the edges waiting for the perfect moment to escape to the solace of my own company. So I did.

I’d like to pronounce I’m back!  But I’m not sure I am.

But with a long stretch of holiday in front of me I’ve decided it’s a make or break experiment.  Get back blogging or admit that I’ve done my dash and it’s time to move onto other things.  With time on my hands to embrace things I really enjoy I’m hoping it will kick start my blogging juices again.

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Away from blogging, things have been pretty busy here at Domestic Executive HQ.  The garden is blooming but behind all the glamour there are hours of back-breaking effort to keep the weeds at bay and maintain some semblance of order.  It didn’t help that our new monster all terrain mower was doing wonders on our long grass banks but failing to trim our lawn.  Let me tell you there is no fun in pushing a mower up and down for over an hour even if the exercise is good for me.  After some smart re-engineering we’re back in ride-on mowing business though which is a blessed relief.

I’ve extended the kitchen garden with two new beds and one of them is filling up fast with a wealth of salads.  The other is waiting to be filled with soil and compost which is neatly piled up by the barn and starting to sprout its own vegetation during the delay in moving it the 150m down the garden. I’ve fallen out of love with artichokes and will be digging them up this week and instead installing more root vegetables, pumpkins and winter greens.  As soon as the strawberries have done their dash this year they are destined for a move to one of the new beds and in their place I shall be building up our berry stock.  Maybe even couple more gooseberry bushes.

Our new conservatory is almost complete.  Just the flooring and lighting to be installed.  A stark reminder that New Zealand is a small country at the end of the earth with retailers who have “just-in-time” stock control systems that involve delayed reaction of 6-8 weeks.  This hasn’t stopped us moving in and enjoying the wind free indoor-outdoor flow experience.  Even on a dull cloudy drizzly day like today, sitting in the conservatory is a light lovers haven.

Aside from major projects and keeping up with work, I’ve had some fun in smaller ways.

  • I “read” Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner on audio book.  A stunning book that makes you realise the complex beauty in human relationships.
  • I also really read The Man Who Ate Everything – a wonderful collection of essays on food and eating which was November’s book of the month on The Kitchen Reader.  I shall do a better late than never review on the blog over the coming weeks.
  • My dear husband brought me back a rather special present from his recent business trip to US and Canada. I was never a fan of the iPad until my iPad mini arrived.  Small and beautifully formed.  The perfect device for nocturnal web surfing and will save me lugging my laptop around town for business now I can access key documents in the palm of my hand.
  • Although I missed Sweet New Zealand in November, I stepped back into the wheat baking vortex and made biscotti for my work Christmas gifts.  I aim to showcase the delicious wheat free version here on the blog soon.
  • I’ve been enjoying the photographs of a local photographer on Instagram for a while but she recently launched her own website and is now selling prints.
  • Basset hound lovers are really some of the most generous and hilarious on the internet.  @Gustbear has given me a huge number of giggles with #bassetfacts.  My own dear hounds are as lovable as ever although I regret I have yet to publish my 2013 basset calendar but there is still time left before the end of the year to get onto that!
  • I’m having a careful think about whether to stick with Instagram giving all the brew ha ha over their terms and conditions.  In the meantime, here’s a link to the new web view of my iPhone photographs
  • I love Twitter for real time fun and its capability for me to curate my own personal news feed. Turns out now you can download your twitter feed and look back at what a twit you might have been.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life and Cherries

Life is rattling by and I’ve not yet found the right laxative for my creative constipation hence the lack of blogging in the last couple of weeks.  Instead I’ve been busying myself with other things – good and wholesome things – but distracting and tiring.  It’s that time of year when there is so much to do and so little time to do it all.  Normally I’d be celebrating the coming of Spring, the fresh bounty from the garden but an unseasonably cold snap has me grumpy and resentful towards nature instead.  I need sunshine to be most inspired and it’s been a little lacking of late.

Still, there are cherries growing in the orchard. There might even be enough to fill a bowl this year if I manage to get the bird nets up soon and the wild Wellington winds don’t blow them away.  We have miniature pears coming too, full of promise for autumn and if I’m not mistaken the signs of some medlars.  Just a few, but enough to get me anxious about when they’ll be ready to pick and the complexities of bletting them to bring them to perfect condition for eating.  Down in the kitchen garden things are shaping up too having spent a full day planting out seedlings and constructing bamboo frames to help the peas and beans climb their merry way.

All in all, life is good.  No complaints, just a lack of writing inspiration.  I can feel a breakthrough coming soon, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share with you some of the things that have brought a smile to my face of late.

  • I’ve actually ordered my photo Christmas cards so there is half a chance that family and friends might actually get them in the mail to arrive before Christmas.  Now that would make a change.
  • I took a day-workshop in calligraphy which was fun and resurrected a skill I first learned as a sign writer in my first job (endless posters promoting events in a leisure centre in days when personal desk top publishing and word-processing weren’t even invented)
  • I finished another audio book (the perfect accompaniment to weeding).  I thoroughly recommend Midnight in Peking a sad tale of intrigue that brings out the best and worst of human nature.
  • New Zealand is gearing up for the premiere of the Hobbit.  Air New Zealand have once again pulled out all the stops to make a Hobbit entertaining safety video.
  • We’re on the home stretch with our veranda to conservatory conversion.  The bassets and I are loving it already.
  • I found a great food book blog and enjoying this month’s book The Man Who Ate Everything – a wonderful collection of essays on food and eating.
  • Sue – aka Couscous & Consciousness was October’s host of Sweet New Zealand.  Sue did a wonderful round-up on her blog with heaps of lovely things to make and eat.
  • I finally found out who did it in the Mousetrap after it played to a packed audience here in Wellington to celebrate its 60th anniversary.
  • The rewards of the new eating regime are paying off.  Those smaller jeans I’ve had languishing in the wardrobe for years fit me again.
  • One of my favourite food bloggers has published her book – can’t wait to sample some of Maddi’s recipes for myself.
  • Following the exploits of my friend Heather as she studies at the Wellington Le Cordon Bleu school.

I can feel a creative breakthrough on the horizon just like I can feel summer peaking it’s nose around the next cloud. I suspect it will involve dusting off my camera, a ton or two of compost and a long summer break. Not to mention cracking the baking code for no wheat bread and cakes.

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Spring Greens and Other New Starts

There is something rather elicit about a long weekend created by a public holiday.  It feels so much more of a gift of an extra day off work than those long weekends created from your holiday entitlement. Not that I get paid holidays of course, self employment doesn’t quite have that perk.  Technically speaking I have a long weekend every week but the work ethic in me maintains those days for domestic labour so weekends still have a special place in the calendar and I can still generate those luxurious feelings a weekend generates.

Like Easter weekend in the northern hemisphere, Labour Weekend in New Zealand is a watershed moment in a gardeners diary. Traditionally time to flock to the garden centre and stock up on annuals, vegetables and lug bags of compost home with dreams of what the growing season will bring.  Now I am growing much of my vegetables and annual flowers from seed I can skip the crowds and make better use of the time in the garden itself.  Or I would be if it was pounding with rain and blowing a gale again.  Still, there are plenty of seedlings to pot on under cover and hope that tomorrow I will actually be able to plant out my peas, beans and gourmet spuds.  I fear my new bed building project will be delayed for another week.

I didn’t grow broad beans through the winter this year but we still have a plethora of spring vegetables from the garden on the table.  Last night I harvested artichokes, leeks, asparagus and celery much of which were made it into a tasty bouillabaisse or if you prefer, fish stew.  I am hatching a plan to bake bread tomorrow which requires copious amounts of egg whites so naturally I shall use the egg yolks for a rich hollandaise sauce to pair with the fresh artichokes.  I may or may not also trial a no sugar ice cream to celebrate the long weekend.

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Talking of things to celebrate, I heard this week that I have been accepted for a place on the Le Cordon Bleu Master of Gastronomic Tourism.  When I say accepted, what I really mean is that they verified that my BA (Hons) and MBA weren’t fake and are now ready to take my fees.  So from mid January weekends will no doubt include lots of studying but this is one Masters Degree I am going to relish from a purely personal point of view even if I am hatching plans for the longer term to shift my own professional work into a new space.  What that means fully I’m not quite sure.  I have ideas, some a little crazy, but grounded in soul searching and long conversations with myself about how I see life panning out.  No doubt that this is all part of a seven-year itch since it was a little more that seven years ago that we made plans to shift to New Zealand and now having made that leap it’s the way of nature that I should start another cycle of life adventure.

For a while I toyed with the idea of studying at the Le Cordon Bleu here in Wellington and had fantasies about opening a bakery that specialised in vegetable cakes and breads.  And maybe one day I will when we have completed grounded our wheat free, low carb, no sugar dietery regime.  In the meantime, I am living the experience vicariously though my friend Heather who has just started and is writing about her experiences and taking lessons on making such choices from others such as the lovely Emma who writes at Poire Au Chocolate.  To some extent I am going full circle in my formal higher education since my first degree was in Leisure Studies although back in the early 1980’s I was fixated on sport instead of food.

The course I’ll be studying is delivered on-line and I’m no stranger to the lonely life of self study having completed my MBA with the Open University in the UK.  No doubt the experience will be different as the advances of technology makes collaboration and the multi-media experience so much easier through the Internet.

There is something very potent about making life changing decisions.  I see it happen all the time in my work as a leadership coach and it gives me courage to make choices that I might otherwise I’d find hard to make.  Slowly but surely my personal and professional interests are coming closer together and I’m excited about the prospects ahead.

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The long haul

I’ve been having the longest bout of creative constipation in a while.  Not inspired to write nor take photographs.  This can be a problem if you’re a blogger.  Or sheer relief to some depending on your point of view. If the past is anything to go by this is a classic symptom of me being stuck in a comfort zone or overly distracted by other things more interesting or rewarding.  I fear that it this time it may be a little bit of both.

The good news though is that I have finally relieved the kitchen garden of it’s winter carpet of weeds, grasses and other infestations, all the result of a hell raising warm and wet winter party. My finger tips and nails may take weeks to heal from hours of scratching and scraping but the reward of seeing the garden ready for planting makes my heart swell. The chickens are deliriously happy too with the spoils of my excavation providing rich peckings for them.  The hard yards done I can treat myself with the construction of two new raised beds.  A mini extension to the garden for salads and strawberries and place to experiment seed raising on a larger scale.

The kitchen has become less of a battle ground of late with the arrival of a new and rather special baking book. Or I should say books.  After weeks of grazing a wealth of gluten free, paleo, no sugar, guilt free and natural food blogs I finally bullet and invested in books that truly cover off the no wheat, low carb, no sugar requirements of our eating regime.  So I’ve been knocking out breads, cookies, cupcakes and biscotti that feel like the treats that baking goods are supposed to be.  With my baking confidence returning I finally feel that I can start some food blogging again and also feel more optimistic about keeping up with the new lifestyle for the long haul.

I’ve settled my restless mind over recent weeks with a couple of books that I thoroughly recommend for others to read.  Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.   They really are as good as the hype and publicity.  It’s been a long time that I’ve read books with such intricacies and flow that keep you turning the pages.  Except in my case I was listening to them both as audio books.  We have the real books and in time I shall enjoy them all over again and turning the pages for real.  I’ve just started reading The Corrections on my kindle which if is as good as Franzen’s more recent novel Freedom I know I am in for another enjoyable read.

As I looked out of the window seeking an inspired thought for this post the winds are pounding and the rain is pouring again.  Spring in New Zealand has acute meteorological schizophrenia. Two days glorious, one day grey and then comes the big hitter with enough misery to drive you indoors and around the fire.  And then the cycle starts all over again.  Although it happens every year it still feels like an injustice.  A good time though to knuckle down and sort the photographs out, do some editing and heaven forbid actually prepare some images for printing.  Or I might just curl up with the bassets with a hot mug of tea, a cookie and my book.

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Kitchen garden dreaming

When it comes to gardening I fall into the hopelessly romantic camp.  Even crawling along hand-weeding and hating the drudgery of it all, it isn’t long before I fall into day dreaming about the beauty of large walled kitchen gardens with fruit, vegetables, herbs and cut flowers jostling for attention.  I dream of a garden sheltered from the wind and the worst of the horizontal rains.  A garden not inflicted by gorse invasion nor stalked by Pukekos who pace the borders looking for a chink in the fence to waddle through.  A garden not flattened by big basset paws.

Day dreaming is a soothing way to keep some of the gardening monotony at bay.  That and a good audio book.   Without such distractions I’d fall into despair and continuously overwhelmed with the herculean efforts it actually takes to build and manage a successful kitchen garden.   It’s the attention to detail that matters and thereby hangs my greatest failing.  I’m  a big picture, see it and dream it kind of girl so meticulous planning and good gardening habits fall by the wayside replaced only by frantic panics about what I haven’t done and what might have been.

Last growing season was poor.  Not just for me but for home kitchen gardeners generally.  Not enough sun for growing and too much rain that washed away the seeds in the first place.  But that was last year and we’re now looking forward to what the new growing season will bring.  That’s the great thing about gardening – you always have next season to dream about.

The seeds trays are planted out and after only a week the broccoli are eager to win the growing race.  It’s a nerve wracking time though waiting to see if other seeds are going to co-operate or play hard to get.  In the meantime, there is much hard graft to be done.  Aside from the blessed weeding, we have two new beds to build and fill with soil ready for new crops.  I’m moving strawberries out of the main garden so we can grow more soft fruit bushes under the fruit cages and creating new salad beds.

I am hoping that this being our fourth growing season since we first  built our kitchen garden patch. Since those days my initial rotation plan has been revised each year as I understood what all the crops needed and my best endeavors to keep a garden journal have failed.  I tell myself this year will be different.  I shall be more meticulous about labeling things, recording things and doing things as planned.  But I suspect I shall slip into more day dreaming and just see what nature delivers to us.

Pestle and Mortar from Le Manoir

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Magnifique

The first time I heard his characteristically French “oo la la” I was almost suffocating under a mound of coats piled into my arms by VIPs at corporate function.  By the time I had dumped the offending garments into the arms of one of my staff and I’d regained my executive composure the moment to chat with Raymond Blanc was gone.  I was lucky to exchange pleasantries often enough though as he was a regular guest to the University where I worked but in those days I hardly had time to eat let alone develop an in-depth interest in food.

Watching his documentary The Very Hungry Frenchman earlier this year that I was once again charmed by Raymond Blanc’s enthusiasm and philosophy for simple and flavoursome food. Knowing I’d be back in the UK I vowed to save up enough to visit his flagship restaurant in Oxfordshire to satisfy my curiosity. At the weekend we celebrated 17 years of wedded bliss in the finest style staying at Le Manoir and eating our way through a gourmet dinner in the restaurant that holds 2 Michelin stars. From the personal tour of the manor and our room at the start to finish of our visit when we saw Chef Blanc chatting enthusiastically with the delivery driver of one of his suppliers the whole Le Manoir experience was charming.  Friendly staff were attentive to your every wish and extraordinarily knowledgeable about all aspects of the manor, gardens, service and detailed questions about the menu.

It didn’t take me long to wander the acres of gardens which included a lavish kitchen garden, orchard, Japanese garden and mushroom grotto which are carefully tended by 8 gardeners.  Although the kitchen garden is 2 acres it supplies only 20% of the restaurant’s fruit and vegetable needs.  You can read a fascinating series of articles following the garden through the seasons.  I took plenty of mental and visual notes of ideas for our own gardens back home plus a hankering for garden sculptures which added artistic charm and created a few surprises as you meandered around.

Naturally I was  little worried about how we might deal with the peculiarities of our new dietary regime but it was clear that with one glance at the menu we would be fine.  Nevertheless his Lordship was fed gluten free bread on which to slather the gorgeously creamy butter and similarly tweaked canapes and dessert allowed him to enjoy the full culinary experience. Every course was full of flavour and a wonderful balance of colour and textures.  Each course was impressive but not showy, truly classy.  I’ve eaten in a range of eateries in my life, including some in London owned by other celebrity chefs, but no doubt Le Manoir takes the prize for the best restaurant eating experience ever.

If  you pardon the pun, I’m still digesting the intricacies of the menu. I remember once hearing Raymond Blanc say:

“The good does not interest me. Only the sublime.”

This is a perfect summary for what I experienced at Le Manoir.

No doubt there is something magical going on in deepest Oxfordshire.  Le Manoir is certainly a haven for special celebrations and the perfect retreat for people who love food and appreciate the finer things in life. @Lemanoir wins the prize for making me feel extra special with a special twitter friend gift left for me at my dinner table.  I look forward to perfecting Maman Blanc’s vegetable soup or Raymond Blanc’s Coq au Vin using my new Raymond Blanc recipe book.

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My love-hate relationship with Pomme D’Amour

It may be call the love apple (Pomme D’Amour) but for now I have a love-hate thing going on with my tomatoes. I am overcome with delight that after years of struggling to grow tomatoes outdoors my poly greenhouse has been the perfect haven for growing them but after harvesting about 50kg and about the same amount still ripening on the vines I am almost at my wits end about what to do with them all.  Admittedly I was slightly enthusiastic in the number of plants I have grown but I had no idea that tomato plants could be so prolific.

The freezer is groaning with tomato sauce and with ketchup, relishes and chutneys neatly lined up on the pantry shelves I am now looking for new culinary ground to use up my tomato glut.  Soup and juices are the next with bottling and simply giving them away as the final resort.  It’s going to be wonderful to be enjoying the fruits of summer all through winter but I can’t help frustrated that I missed out on all the wonderfully summery culinary experience.  Partly because we haven’t had a summer to speak highly of this year but mostly because these fruits of love haven’t really come into their own until autumn set in.

Despite the pains of growing tomatoes I feel very proud to have finally grown a crop that will keep us fed throughout the year.  I shall start my tomatoes off earlier for next season and try and get a better succession going to avoid the barrow loads of tomatoes I am lugging back up to the kitchen in one go. This Easter weekend it’s perfect tomato growing weather with sunshine like we’ve not seen all year so I’m going to pretend that it’s summer after all 😮

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PS – here’s someone else who loves a tomato. Who could begrudge little basset a little sniff even if I did have to wash the tomatoes all over again before using them!

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Seasonal adjustment

Fair weather may be back again this week bringing some much needed sunshine but all it’s done is deepen my denial that autumn is here.  No doubt that the tell-tell signs are here in spades – morning mists, golden light and pumpkins taking over the kitchen garden – but I’m not ready to give up on summer yet and have self diagnosed an acute case of seasonal adjustment disorder. Whilst the leaves are turning and temperatures plunging I’m left with moments of gloom and bouts of fidgeting not conducive to a peaceful mind.  So deep has been my malaise I’ve stopped cruising my blog reader as the voice of the northern hemisphere is hailing the arrival of Spring which only deepens my resentment towards the inevitable cold, wet and windy weather to come.

A slate of work appointment cancellations today brought an unexpected opportunity to quit the office and tame the garden.  As I mowed, strimmed and clipped the edges my joints may have ached from unfamiliar activity but my mood lifted and positive thoughts flooded through me again.  It was a marvelous feeling and I’m hoping for more of the same over the coming days as the promised good weather continues.   Whilst I can do little about what weather nature hurls at us I can tame the gremlin in my head and live a little louder the mantra of positive psychology I’ve adopted over the last year or so that whatever the weather #lifeisrich.

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Garden bling

The popular opinion in New Zealand is that this summer has been a washout.  Since New Year we’ve been blighted by bouts of furious wind and driving rain making it the worst summer weather since we arrived in New Zealand six years ago. The only upside I can see from such disappointment is that it’s been wonderful for the garden which has loved the wet and warm weather.  A most definite downside has been the vicious wind which has given our trees whiplash and shaken them to their very roots.

The kitchen garden has been in full bloom.  Generating heaps of wonderful produce for our table and a mass of flowers that have brought all manner of birds and bees to feast on their nectar.  I admit that I went slightly over board with the companion planting but I like the psychedelic vibe, i like to think of it as our garden bling .  Like elsewhere in the garden everything has taken a beating with brassicas contorted and twisted as they fight the wind and peas and beans leaning precariously.

Although this is my third growing season I’m still experimenting and learning as I go.  Each year I learn more about what works, what doesn’t and which of my ideas can be too labour intensive for them to be viable.  It is such a pleasure to steal a few moments in the garden taking in the view from a bench.  It’s the perfect spot for plotting ways I can protect my precious crops and plan what I’ll grow where next.

My stash of seeds for winter crops have just arrived and I’m looking forward to all manor of heritage varieties.  I’m also going to intensify planting a little so I can provide a regular supply of goodies to our neighbours who give so much to us in terms of support and stock our wood shed every year. Having the greenhouse makes such a difference and increased our potential success growing tomatoes, aubergines and chilli peppers and when summer is over will be overhauled before restocking all manner of winter salads.

For now though there is plenty to enjoy and the bassets continue to help themselves to their favourite things – courgettes, strawberries and low hanging broccoli.  Who’d have thought the hounds would have such gourmet tastes.

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Gooseberry goodness

With a taste that can be as sharp as their thorns gooseberries are not to everyone’s liking. I love the  crisp bite and piquant flavour that livens the palette whether you eat them straight from the bush or wrap them in a luxurious blanket of cream and sugar. Last year the birds raided our pickings before our new fruit cage has kept the pests at bay giving us several kilos of fruit and each berry has been given special culinary treatment their deserve in their first outing in our backyard pantry.

A deliciously light but definitely show off gooseberry fool was pride of place as our Christmas Day dessert.  It was also the fruit I used to christen my new ice-cream maker creating a frozen yoghurt that was most definitely the fanfare of gooseberry taste experiences so far.  Turning some into jam will I hope bring back the bitter sweet taste long after summer has gone.

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There are plenty more berry adventures to come this year with raspberries, blueberries, worcesterberries (that are apparently taste like a cross between a gooseberry and blackberry), tayberries (cross between blackberry and raspberry) and blackberries all starting to show their colours alongside the red and blackcurrants.  There is nothing more comforting to be reaping the rewards of your own growing efforts.

I spied a punnet of gooseberries tucked away on the top shelf in the supermarket and gasped at the price.  A small punnet was almost $6 dollars making me realise once again of the long term benefits of growing your own berries. We’ve recouped our initial investment in the plant already and I suspect treated our berries with more reverence than I ever would have with something I’d bought from the shop. That said it dawned on me that I might need to buy some strawberries to buy for this year’s jam supply after the recent rains have ruined the possibilities for a continued home harvest.

It’s was the strangest feeling recognising that I felt a disappointment to not be self sufficient in strawberries for jam.  If I were a a person truly committed to self sufficiency I’d be doing without strawberry jam this year but instead I’m wrestling with levels of self indulgence I’ve not recognised in myself before.  As a next best thing to growing my own strawberries I could buy locally sourced fruit or perhaps I should buy locally made jam.

If you were me what would you do?

A: do without home made strawberry jam this year

B: buy local strawberries and make my own jam

C: buy locally produced jam?