All The Things That Grew This Summer

Having been very excited about getting our little 5 rod patch of land in January, I am quite sad that this year’s growing season did not go to plan. I fully intended to visit the plot almost every single day during the summer holidays, but it turned into not having been there for almost two months straight and coming back to a plot full of overgrown squashes and thriving annual weeds. Why?

Here she is on our 20-week scan ♥
(at least at the moment she seems to be a she:D) 

Well, that is the happy bit – instead of veg we started growing a baby! J And I started suffering from such bad morning (and day and evening and sometimes night) sickness, that I could barely eat anything more than rich tea digestive biscuits and water crackers. Moreover, every smell, whether it was my husband’s deodorant, neighbours cooking with garlic or lavender or dry grass on the allotment site was making me run and shout “Europe!” at the toilet. It was a month and a half of hormonally induced digestive torture but now that I am back to normal and eating well it seems to have been just a small unpleasant rough patch in the grand scheme of things.

Talking about rough patches, the plot is definitely a big one to handle. I like to think that whatever we do, there's always two of us doing it - even though I am the one putting in muscle work and the baby is just sleeping, wiggling and packing me an occasional kick or a punch from the inside. So we have spent two days gardening together so far, uncovered some plants that were hidden in the weeds and gradually cleared one small area next to the gooseberry bush. 

Hubby helped me bring some cardboard from the school and I have used it to suppress weeds until I am ready to plant something in spring and the lovely allotment committee members have mowed my path so that I don't have to. They also keep telling me to take it easy. They clearly do not know me yet, as taking things easy is one of my hobbies - right after sleeping and eating! :D

Not everything has suffered during my absence. The mint that looked very poor in the hot summer has benefited from the rains and re-grew itself beautifully. I love brushing against it on my way to the shed and enjoying the fresh scent of the leaves and I look forward to drinking a lot of fresh mint tea on the plot later.

I am not overly sad about the state of the plot, just a little embarrassed when looking at it and comparing it to others. Next year I am expecting a lot of volunteer plants, especially Cosmos, Verbena and tomatoes as all of these were left to go to seed. I will be adding spring bulb plants, developing the minipond and planting a wildlife corner. And bringing along a pushchair with the Tiddler in it! ♥

Maundy (Green) Thursday with Nettle and Mushroom Quiche

Back in Slovakia Maundy Thursday is called Green Thursday. There are many traditions linked to "Green" Thursday. One that I tried to keep since I was a child is to eat something green in colour. This year I decided to use the green garlic and nettle tops from our garden to make a refreshing quiche.

My pastry is a variation of the pastry from foodlover.cz, which is a blog from which I learned to make quiche and since then made it many many times, although I must admit that I rarely measure out all the ingredients, I just throw things together and add flour/water depending on the dryness/stickiness and thickness/runniness of the pastry.

For the pastry you will need:

• 350 g of plain flour
• 185 g of unsalted butter (if you use salted to easier on the pinch of salt)
• 2 egg yolks
• a pinch of salt

You can roll it out and then place in the tin/baking dish or if you are - like me - reluctant to get another piece of equipment messy, just push it into the dish with your fingers. It looks less pretty and neat but tastes exactly the same. Bake for about 15 minutes on 180°C. Some recipes suggest covering the top of the pastry with ceramic baking beans to prevent it from rising but I find this step is unnecessary and the pastry doesn't rise that much.

My quiche is quite massive, so you may want to halve the amounts and masses above. Alternatively make two quiches or one regular quiche and a lot of mini quiches in muffin cups.

For the filling you will need:

• 2 large mushrooms
• 3 eggs (plus the two whites that you did not use when making pastry)
• 3 spring onions, bulb and leaves, chopped
• grated cheddar (or any other hard cheese you like)
• nettle tops, steamed
• 150 ml single cream
• 5 green garlics, bulb and leaves, chopped (to be completely honest here, my garlic wasn't traditional green garlic, it was garlic that survived the winter, thenw as given summer to grow and survived another winter and was still minute, so I lost my patience with it and pulled it out and sowed lettuce leaves in its place)
• optional - salt and pepper to taste

METHOD:

1.  Steam the nettle tops until they wilt and stop stinging.

2.  Prepare and bake the pastry.Take it out of the oven.
3.  Lay out sliced mushrooms on the pastry

4.   Lay the steamed nettles on top of the mushrooms

6.  Add the chopped spring onions and garlic on top of the nettles.

7. In a bowl mix the eggs, single cream and half of the grated cheese (you can add more salt or pepper to taste). Pour the mixture over the raw ingredients.

8.  Return to the oven and bake until the top starts getting golden and crunchy looking, but do not overdo it! (It usually takes 20-25 minutes depending on the thickness of your quiche.)

9.  Cover the top with the remaining grated cheese and return to the oven for 5 minutes until all the cheese is melted.

10.   When you like the look of it, take it out of the oven and serve with your favourite salad and a bit of vinaigrette.

I love what a versatile dish this is, you can add any vegetables you have in your fridge or freezer and it will keep in the fridge for several days. It can be eaten cold or warmed up, with salad or on its own. It is great for using up seasonal vegetables and I would imagine it freezes quite well, too (although I haven't tried yet as I never have anything left over :) )

I made a version of this quiche for my family when they came over for our wedding. Stressed out as I was I forgot to add the cream! And - it was still delicious and nobody noticed anything!!! A very forgiving meal :)

Mothers' Day Gardening

Mothers' day is always a big family gathering over lunch in my husband's family, either somewhere out over a carvery or over a roast lunch at home. This year I wasn't looking forward to eating the meal or the cakes that I made, but I couldn't wait to take my niece Amy (almost three years old) out into the garden.

We built the experience up over a couple of weeks. She knew what she was going to do, she was given a choice of planting flowers or potatoes. She picked potatoes, so I bought two varieties of seed potatoes and out we went with them.

I dug up a hole for each one and she carefully placed a potato into it. At first she was just throwing them but she learned quickly and soon she became very careful. At least some of them were the right way up. After that we said "Bye-bye potatoes, we'll see you later!" and covered them with soil. 

The entire experience took no longer than 20 minutes (I forget how limited attention span youngsters have) but I think it was thoroughly enjoyed by both of us.

A bit more than two weeks later and we have our first sprouts poking above the soil. All the watering and earthing up will be up to me but I look forward to being able to present Amy with her very own home-grown potatoes.

Mother's Day Cakes

Tomorrow my English family is gathering to celebrate mother's day, so I made some little cakes (recipe here), one for each of us. With spring coming and so much fruit in the shops, it only made sense to make them extra fruity. And they look pretty, too.

Our Handmade Wedding

Photo by Laura Ashman

One of the most fantastic events in 2016 was our summer wedding. Planning a wedding has been... Well, let's call it interesting. Being from two different countries with different traditions, what we imagined as wedding had been quite varied. There were moments when I worried about how will certain aspects of my personality that will project themselves into the wedding be perceived by the "natives" of the isles, I worried even more about how the English bits will be perceived by the non-natives belonging to my family (which is in itself a patchwork of Slovakian, Czech and Hungarian).   With the family flying in from afar and staying in our flat, it was sure to be a bit of a bumpy road, but all with a good old happy ending :) 

Wanting to not spend a fortune, we decided to do many things ourselves. Apart from many "me" touches to the wedding like the moss and fern, there were also many "us" touches. After all the wedding was not mine only. The wedding favours were one of these touches.

When we first met, our first conversation was about tea. In spite of being freedivers who generally stay away from caffeine, we both had a taste for black tea, which has brought us together. Therefore love tea favours were a must. Amazingly, we got all the little jam jars for free from a coffee and bagel shop where we both go so often that the owner knows us and agreed to save us these little jars. They are unbelievably cute (alnd also super expensive when you try to buy them in craft supply shops). I really enjoyed mixing the little sugar hearts into the tea.

 Childrens' wedding favours were slightly different - filled with gummy bears. Hubby did the brown paper tops and string tying. Proper teamwork!

Photos by Laura Ashman

Since hubby has hundreds of metres of brown paper in his workshop, I used a lot of it in decorating. The bunting was made by my sister-in-law and her die-cutter and I made the seating plan and table numbers myself, with help of one image from Shutterstock which we also put on our wedding invitations and order of service booklets at church.

Photos by Laura Ashman

I have been saving glass jars from absolutely everthing all year and spent many hours decorating them with hessian, string and ribbons. One of the drawbacks was that because of the fire safety regulations we could not use real candles, but we bought masses of the little electric safety tea lights. We still use them at home - romance at a flick of a switch! :)

Photos by Laura Ashman

The chairs and tables belonged to the village hall where we had our reception, the tablecloths, crockery and cutlery were rented but the flowers, jars and hessian were all prepared and set up by us (well, a dedicated team of groom and a team of helpful family members and friends who worked on it for ages whilst I was having my hair and make-up done).

My flower girl and maid of honor both received a special set of biscuits which I got on Etsy from CookieArtLondon.

Photos by Laura Ashman

The cake was a Christmas-like fruit cake baked by my lovely father-in-law. He had it professionally iced and made the cake toppers himself - a snail and a piano! It was his super secret wood-turning/carving project and there couldn't be anthing better to put on top of a cake for us - a piano technician and a trained malacologist. :)

Well, that was the first day of our married life and I dare sa it left us completel shattered, even though it only lasted until  10 p.m. We tend to be a bit spontaneous and agreeable when we make plans, but we have never planned an event of this magnitude and importance, which meant there were a couple of disagreements on the way, but I am so happy we made it all the way here. Seven years have gone since we first got to know each other, five since we started going out and the rest of our lives is ahead!  I bet it's going to be wonderful :)

Amy's New Red Octohug

I cannot believe that until now I have not had the time to make my niece an octohug. Of course, I have made other toys for her, like the blue owl, blanket for her doll or biscuits, but no octohugs. So now I sat down and made one. She took some time warming up to it, but I think they're pretty good friends now :)

Easter

This Easter holiday has been exceptionally good.When else do you get to eat chocolate eggs and Easter biscuits for breakfast?

I even got to painting some of my blown eggs. The food colouring and wax process did not work well, so I used acrylic paint to do the job. Next year I will know what to do and what not to do and probably choose some better colours. By the way, I have been getting a lot of inspiration from spending ages by staring at Elspeth McLean's painted mandala rocks. See how bad I am compared to her?? :)

 I made this bunny out of my new acrylic yarns to guard my Easter eggs. It took me very VERY long time to finish him, but he is here. And he is staying with me :)

We visited a little farm near Guildford and purchased some gorgeous goose eggs and made an omelette. That colour is simply gorgeous, don't you think so?

The garden got a lot of my attention, but the most beautiful flowers just sprouted on their own without my help.

Now I am experiencing a classic dark and rainy English day, warm tea and crocheting a very colourful blanket that I started in summer. At least the garden is getting watered.

Happy Birthday !!!

Big "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" for my birthday man!!

I will not be there, but I hope the birthday parcel (no matter how late it arrives) will bring a lot of joy.

Love and hugs!! x

Lawyer!

My big brother (one year younger than me, but taller) raced me and graduated first this summer. So I came to watch him receive a red diploma (= with honours) in a big fancy awarding ceremony.

The whole family gathered, we had a huge lunch and indulged on a lot of law-themed sweets afterwards :) Even though my bro barely speaks a word to me, he was extra tolerant to big hugs from his old sister on this day :)

So - big congratulations to Tomáš! :)

Great cake. Mum's plan to save half of it to freeze for later did not work out. It was great as little afternoon snack...
or... you know - big breakfast!! :D

And then thewe were cupcakes... They disappeared almost immediately :)

And here comes Mikuláš

Today is a special day for all the kids and many adults in Slovakia, Czech republic and many other countries. Mikuláš is a Slovak/Czech name for the Greek saint Nikolaos of Myra – who is believed to bring sweets to children during the night from 5^th to 6^th December. Even American Santa Claus is based on this historical figure, although he brings presents at Christmas (in my country we say that the Christmas presents are brought by little Jesus).

According to Wikipedia, there are many versions (some quite rough, not really for kids) of the legend which resulted in this custom. The one told to me when I was a kid is this one:

There were three daughters in a very poor family. Because they were poor, the daughters could not marry. Every night the daughters cleaned their shoes and put them into a window. One night, as bishop Mikuláš passed their window and filled the shoes with money. The girls found out about this when they woke up, on the morning of the 6^th December. Therefore the girls did have enough money to get married and they were happy.

So nowadays every kid should put their shoe into the window on the evening of 5^th December and as Mikuláš will go around, he will fill it with sweets (usually he knows well which ones you like and even though he does not fly, does not come in though a chimney and does not have a reindeer, he will usually get to you, even if you live in a high floor of a block of flats).

Mikuláš is pictured dressed as a bishop with tall cap. Santa dressed in red and white is often getting into his place but I personally prefer to buy chocolates that look properly bishop-like.

He comes to people with two helpers : "anjel" (angel- the good one, usually pictured with wings and in a light dress, mostly with long light hair) and "čert" (the opposite of angel, he lives in Hell, has horns and tail, sometimes also hoofs and sometimes is pictured with long tongue), who is supposed to give coal to the bad kids. When I was a kid, we used to go to my Grandfather’s work and when Mikuláš came, we had to say a short rhyme, sing or play something to him and we were rewarded by a bag of candies, chocolates and nuts. “Čert” was spitting fire and everyone was scared of him, some even cried (even though we knew exactly which Grandpa's colleague it was).

Here in Prague, you can even order Mikuláš to come to your home, he puts many leaflets on bus stops and similar places.

This year, thanks to me, Mikuláš will come to England too (I gave him my boyfriends address). However, can you please give him my new address too?? He is probably lost, because I move so often now, so he always leaves my sweets at my parents place.

Merry Christmas to all!!

So, my dear friends, it's Christmas once again. And Christmas always makes me realize, what a great and comfortable home we have. I hope all of you had a great time with your families and the people that you love. I have arrived to Slovakia on December 19th, managed to send out a few Christmas cards to old friends, meet my high-school friends and tonight I had our traditional dinner with my family and we opened our presents. In Slovakia we eat cabbage soup and fish for dinner and open our presents right after we finish eating. Also, I have given myself to a Christian habbit of fasting through the day in order to fully appreciate my mother's wonderfull cooking skills. And the result? Ended up with an overfilled belly sticking out in a preagnancy-like manner because I was too greedy (actually, I was the last one still eating, while my brother was giving me the "GRRrrrr, hurry up 'cos I wanna open my presents already" looks over the table). I will have to work on that during next few years. Also, I'm thinking of improving my eating habbits, but that is a matter of New Year's resolutions and does not belong into this short blog entry. So - Merry Christmas once again, I hope it met your expectations.