Too many emotions go through my mind when I think about the last 4 months and how life has changed. It would be impossible to sum it up in any few words.
But I am a glass half full person and if I can find any positives , survival skills seem to have kicked in at our family home.
My daughter and I have always like to bake, in fact too many cakes in the past are to blame for my pre lockdown waistline. So post lockdown, I can only say..they were worth every calorie!
I have to admit, when everyone was stocking up on loo rolls back in March, I never imagined that one staple in my pantry was going to be in short supply. Disaster struck when we had gone to make a batch of biscuits and found there was no flour! Oh horrors of horrors, we then discovered the supermarket didn’t have any either. Everyone it seemed had been baking their way through lockdown.But resourceful is my middle name and I found something else to bake… and even healthier…vegetables !
I love carrot or courgette cake with the spiced cinnamon flavours, but with so many brilliant recipes on the internet, all you have to do is just put in those magical words RECIPE with whatever fruit or veg you have going spare, off you go. It’s like a gourmet lottery!
We had some disasters, but also had fun and loved trying new recipes. So I thought as we were getting back to basics, why not try growing our own veg?
My daughter, who is a sloth like creature, took a bit of persuading, but with the promise of carrot cake, she cracked eventually
Now we have 3 tiny pumpkin plants growing and hopefully they will be ready for a Halloween carving competition. If you can nip down to a garden centre or order some on line, you might get your pumpkins ready in time.🎃
A useful tip is to use your old toilet roll tubes…just cut in half, fold over the end , pop some compost in and your seeds and leave in a plastic tray whilst they germinate.
Leave in the tube and plant in the soil when they start to show. The card disintegrates and you don’t have to disturb the fragile roots. We even made some with newspaper – so easy!
Interesting fact, if you plant a carrot in stoney soil, you could end up with something which resembles a witches nose…as they won’t go straight . They grow around the stones.
So just 4 months on from digging over a veg patch, we have peppers (dead easy to plant from their seeds), carrots and broccoli, potatoes…just chuck in the old ones you find in the cupboard with their roots growing , lettuce, tomatoes and a cucumber.
Plus a beetroot!…which makes me laugh as nobody in the house eats them!
Fellow gecko mum did the same and planted radishes…another odd choice, but they are excited to try eating these as they are a fabulous colour and her chilli seedlings have taken over the kitchen.
I even managed to persuade a friends kid to eat our lettuce as it was home grown !
So try it out..you don’t have to have an allotment sized garden, pots are just as good.
There are many new things we have tried during quarantine, but quizzes with friends on Kahoot and growing our own are both topping our list of favourite activities.
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