Wednesday 24 April 2013

Tuesday April 9th...


At the moment our strawberry crop is about as prolific as Jane and Trevor's hens!  Today we picked one small but beautifully formed fruit which was to feature highly on John's breakfast plate!  It may have been small and it may have been the only one but boy did it have the most fantastic flavour.  We are now very hopeful that the strawberry tower will do the business and provide us with a good crop.


Encouraged by the thought of puddings to come, together with the fact that we have a pineapple that we failed to sling on the barbeque on Sunday I looked through my recipe books and the tintyweb and came across a recipe for grilled pineapple with honeycomb ice-cream which did not need an ice-cream maker and, having all the other ingredients to hand, I decided to have a go.  The finished result is sitting in the deep freeze where it has to stay overnight.  John is full of anticipation - ice-cream is a real favourite of his.  I will report back on the results.


It was a fairly grey and miserable day today - in fact it felt like winter had made a return and we spent more or less the whole of the day indoors.  When we did venture out we were pleased to see that the lemon tree looks to be about to flower - this is good!  Maybe this year we will have our own little lemon to dunk into a gin and tonic.  The lime tree looks to be ok too and the clementine, even though we have moved it, has put on new growth (unlike the crispy Australian bottle brush which John insists is not dead).


The plants which we believe are some sort of jasmine and which we are trying to grow around the corners of the decking in the front garden have also put a spurt on and are sporting fresh new growth and what looks like the beginnings of flowers.  It is all so much more positive than last year so it looks like some of the choices we made for planting have come good rather than some of the expensive mistakes we made in our ignorance the year before.

The weather enforced day indoors meant that we made some inroads into the vast library of films we have.  

Our first viewing was 'Man About Dog' an Irish comedy about greyhound racing - fairly predictive slapstick stuff which Mum and Dad would struggle with as the accents were so strong it was sometimes a bit hard to work out what they were saying except when it came to the 'F' word!

The second choice was 'The Rocket Post' which was a gentle Scottish film (see how inclusive we are with our countries of origin!!) based on a true story about a German Scientist working on a small island before the Second World War.  The accents were not quite so difficult to decipher on this one and not an 'F' word in sight so got awarded our SP rating (Suitable for Parents).


We had been invited out this evening for a curry at Crafty Jane and Marks.  It is so difficult at this time of year to work out what to wear as it can still be pretty chilly in the evenings.  Jane and I had the same idea with tights and boots although to be fair it wasn't cold in their house even though Mark kindly offered to put on the heating!!!


We had been invited for Chicken Curry - I said yes on the understanding that it was not one of the 'ladies' that had been consigned to the pot and Jane confirmed that it was not.  The original four are laying but as older battery hens they are not prolific but they are obviously doing enough to stay - either that or the fact that the one which Trevor and Vicky did eat was gopping!


The newbies are settling in - one has had a bit of a problem with its tail feathers being pecked out but apart from that they seem fine.  These should be hens and they should lay given time although apparently it is quite hard to sex a chicken when it is that young!  This sounds like an arrestable offence to me!

We had a lovely meal and I did not feel in the slightest bad about eating chicken even after seeing the Pano Arodes chattering of chickens (chattering is apparently the collective noun for female chicks).  The strawberry meringue desert was lush and I spent the remainder of the evening with that awful feeling you get when you have eaten too much - you wish you hadn't but boy you did enjoy it at the time!

I went straight to bed on our return home as I felt the need to relax my waistband and lie down flat.  John came to bed in deep depression as the not so Mighty Blades managed to get stuffed 2-0 by Crawley Town - hopes of promotion seem to be fading - time to support Agia Maria and only Agia Marina methinks.

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