Planting Alliums

Allium Big Impact from Thompson and Morgan 

On Wednesday I make the mistake of thinking that I will go for a bike ride later in the day.  It rains later and I am annoyed with myself, so as looked out into the garden yesterday and spotted a box of white papery bulbs on the side I took my trowel and spent ten minutes popping them in the ground.  After a day of cleaning and paperwork it felt good to get my hands in the soil planting splendid summer promises.  

Let's make Christmas

I have two simultaneous reactions when I hear the word Christmas.  The first reaction is sheer excitement and joy.  I just LOVE Christmas.  Open fires, holly, mince pies, sherry, Christmas dinner, carols and laughter.. lots of laughter.

My second reaction is a sober moment when I think of the cost and that creepy feeling that comes over me when I realise how much money I’ve spent.  What really gets to me is that much of what I buy is so unnecessary.  So many of the gifts I buy are discarded two days later as the children seem to have had their thrill of opening the presents and I am left feeling that the commercialisation of Christmas has stolen the joy that gift giving it is meant to bring.

Then I have such trouble choosing gifts for some of my family too.. I mean who actually needs anything? My dad for instance has more scarves, hats, gloves, books and toiletries that you can imagine and my sister said just the other day said enough is enough and that her house is totally cluttered with gifts she just doesn’t need. That said ..  I still love giving.

So this year I am taking a stand.  Yes I know that it’s October .. but that is entirely my point .. this year I am going to plan it and make Christmas.   I know it will save a fortune and so I am going to make the best food gifts imaginable and wrap them beautifully.  I’ve several classic recipes in my book Prepped and I’ve bought a copy of Dan Lepard’s Short and Sweet which has got a whole chapter on making sweets in it it's fabulous and I can’t think of anything better than a homemade gift.

So my first gift that I am making is Sloe Gin. I’ve been out and about picking sloes each time I walk the dog.  I have a secret ingredient in my recipe.  It's very subtle and you only need the tinniest amount of star anise to lift warm undertones into your liquor.  

Ingredients 

450g Sloes

350g Caster sugar

750ml Gin

Method
Prick your Sloes with needle. If the first frost hasn’t hit then freeze your sloes, even an hour helps as it breaks down the fruit slightly to get a fuller flavour.

Fill a bottle with the sloes, add the sugar and the gin and pop the lid on.  Shake gently to mix up the sugar and gin.  Keep turning the bottle each week until the sugar is dissolved. It can take up to 3 weeks.  Your gin will be ready to decant about a week before Christmas.

I’ve read in a recent article that cheap gin is fine to use.  I couldn’t disagree more. If you want a floral fragrant and complex flavour then use a good quality gin.  For the few pound extra I think it gives a far superior taste, so I’ve chosen a gin made quite locally to me from Waitrose called Greenalls Bloom London Dry Gin. It's created from juniper, chamomile, pomelo and honeysuckle and I feel using this particular gin adds notes of orange and honey behind the robust sloe for a far superior finish.

So there’s’ my first gift sorted .. I think that says so much about the say that you feel about someone and so I am inviting you to take part in Let’s Make Christmas 2011.

There is a prize for the best post.. a - a new K- mixer from Kenwood .. please see details here!

If you’d like to participate .. 

1) Use the Let’s make Christmas logo in your blog post and link back to this page.

2) Please make a comment in the box below to tell me that you are taking part. 

3) Tweet this page with the #LetsMakeChristmas

4) Remember to email me your blog post to Recipes@VanessaKimbell.com

I’ll do a round up of everyone’s post on the 15th November .. which hopefully will give us all a truly fabulous collection of inspiring idea’s to make Christmas in plenty of time. .. but do keep sending your recipes in  .. I will keep on adding them !

You must spend a day at Borough Market

You must spend a day at Borough Market! It' amazing ..

One of the things I love the most about France I spending a morning at the market. .. and I think I’ve found a much most cost effective solution than a trip abroard at Borough market. Just over ten years ago it was brought back to life and I can tell you that it has become a haven for anybody who is a foodie.

I was amazed to find such a range of food It is an exceptional source of British and international produce and would rival a French market any day of the week.  As it is it’s open Thursday Friday and Saturday I’d recommend going on a Thursday as I can imagine it would be very crowded on a Saturday. The food prices were comparable to my local farmers market in Northamptonshire .. so I took a trolley and my weekly food money and stocked up on cheese, cured ham, sourdough bread, figs, mushrooms and chocolate.

It’s vibrant, busy, innovative and full of the most amazing people who are totally passionate about what they do.

Most of the stallholders I spoke to are the producers – these are the people who grow, rear or cook the food that they sell. There are importers but they seemed to have an intimate knowledge of their products and were equally as interesting to talk to.  There is superb street food and the area is very clean and tidy with places to sit and eat. It’s a place to spend the day, to explore and chat and eat your way around over 130 different stalls.  It has one of the most vibrant feels of any market I’ve ever been to  .. so if you’d like a delicious day out and can use your housekeeping money to buy your food for the week then this is an absolute winner for any Goddess on a budget!

Old Fashioned Blooms

I love flowers in the house and especially on the table as a centrepiece.  Beautiful blousy romantic blooms that draw you eyes across the silver and glass of a table with promises of deliciousness to come.  I watched Nigella tumbled petals and flower heads into saucers with floating candles on a re run of one of her programs just a few weeks ago and as she said every domestic goddess knows fresh flowers are fabulous at setting the scene. That said, after I’ve spent most of my budget on the food I haven’t always got allot left over for splashing out on the sort of flowers I want to have adorning my table, so I am getting prepped for next year in the garden by planting the sort of flowers that will make my garden look gorgeous and that I can dreamily walk out into and cut armfuls of blooms dropped into vases just before my guests arrive.

I decided on a really old-fashioned green and white variety called Annabelle from Thompson Morgan.  I just love the romance and thorough British pedigree of them and they are over 150 years old.  I’ve been buying their vegetable seeds for years from them and yet I just hadn’t realised how many other fabulous plants they supply until I had a really good look at their website. Delighted to say that they deliver superb plants quickly and fairly priced (I checked out the prices at 3 other garden centres local to me and they are very competitively priced.)

Each week I do the Kitchen Garden show on BBC Radio Northampton with Kevin Sadingnton and this week Johnny came with the crew to my garden to help me get going.  With three gardens which need some serious TLC we started with Johnny testing the soil  ..  and it has a Ph of 7 .. which I am told is great. So here is Johnny’s expert advice on Hydrangea’s for you to listen to in case you feel like economising on flowers and beautifying your garden too.

If you'd like to win three of these hydrangea plants you can enter the competition by sharing your favourite flowers to use as a table centre piece in the comment box below.

RULES
This giveaway is open to all readers over 18 with a UK mainland address. The winner will be chosen using an online randomiser and announced on this page on Tuesday 20th of September. You need to leave your e-mail address in order to comment, I am the only person that can see it. Please do not include your email in the actual comment as well.
This competition on behalf of Thompson and Morgan and they will be responsible for sending the prize to the winner. Their decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

There is one main way to enter  .. just leave a comment below. There are 3 more chanced to win .. . and you must leave a separate comment for each bonus entry otherwise they will not be counted. For a chance to win please comment and tell me what  your favourite flowers are to put on the table.  For a second chance to win please tweet this post using the button below and you MUST comment with your twitter ID telling me you have done so.For a third chance to win please follow me @VanessaKimbell on Twitter and comment below to tell me you have done so.For a fourth chance to win please like my facebook page and comment below to tell me you have done so.Each Comment counts and an entrance and you can have a maximum of 4 entries to win this plant.
Closing date: Tuesday 2pm 20th of September

What would you buy ?

 I am terribly fussy about items I buy for the kitchen.. especially because I tend to keep things for years and grow fond of my belongings.   I love British products, and feel really passionately about supporting our own designers and manufactures.  When this isn't possible  ( which is sometimes the case )  I like things that are built to last, that are iconic with consistent, fair customer services -  it goes with out saying I like things to be beautiful.  I have so many plans for my new kitchen and garden  ... what else does a girl do when she moves house?  

Well, seeing that most of the clutter has been cleared out and I really do need some new bits for the kitchen I thought I'd go and have a look at what there is in the shops.  For a start my kitchen clock broke in the move and I want to make ice-cream for two families that are coming for a meal next week.. and yet  my fabulous Cuisineart ice-cream maker isn't big enough to make the amount of ice-cream I need in one go .... and how am I meant to time making ice-cream with no clock? And what about the cups of tea I drink whilst I am writing up the recipes? I need some new mugs and my kettle is playing up  .. so I popped into my local kitchen shop Abraxus on St Giles Street in Northampton on Sunday and took photo’s of all the essential things I have ear marked to buy .. soon .... so I thought I'd share the photo's whilst deciding which I should get first! 

I must admit it feels delicious to be able to update certain things!

I'm not sure which of these lovely things I shall be treating my household to in the kitchen in the next week or two  ... 

So if you are reading this now I'd love to know ..  Do you freshen things up every now and again .. or are you a dies hard keeper of the things you initially bought? 

Do you hanker after a particular kitchen gadget or a new set of crockery .. or is it just me who loves to shake things up with some new bits? 

What exactly would you buy if you could?

Do tell me .. I'd love to know what makes you tick... tock in your kitchen!

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