Questions and answers - I've been tagged

Maa over at Maas Life Journal has tagged me. So here goes with the questions and answers:

1. If you could be any historical or current character who would you be?

I'm not sure I'd want to be anyone else but in terms of notable people Florence Nightingale would be up there, she really did amazing things to bring up the standards of care for the sick and also raised the status of nurses.


2. Name an interesting fact about yourself.

When I was young I found something. It was a hand grenade in our back garden at home...and Dad had to call the police and the bomb squad came to take it away! Exciting stuff!

3. If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

I wouldn't have wasted so much money buying 'stuff' I didn't need

4. Which character traits annoy you?

Overblown self importance and a tendency to patronise others


5. Name one thing that you would change in yourself?

I'd be less selfish and give more time to others


6. What do you consider your biggest achievement?


Can I give 2 answers? Giving birth would be up there, but I guess moving away from the UK too.

BIG fish and a few garden notes

The one that didn't get away...!

Hubby caught his biggest fish ever, 18lbs (8kgs)!

We had lovely fresh snapper for dinner with homemade chips, and we now have some more delicious fish in the freezer.

It was nearly 2 1/2 ft (75cm)long!

Weighing in

75cm from tip to tail

The biggie compared with a normal sized catch

Other things that have been happening are, getting the garden planned - garlic going in soon. Have just harvested the last of the Topepo Rosso capsicums:

We had some BBQ'd tonight along with some pork chops and homemade kumara fries.

Other garden notes:

I still have some chillies on my Thai chilli plant, although they are taking a while to ripen.

I will be planting my garlic soon, have it in the fridge at present.

I also have some tulips in the fridge, must plant those in my flower garden - I am planting out a bank with all sorts of flowering plants, will take a photo once it's done.

Coriander is coming up everywhere!

Weeds are coming up everywhere too!

G has dug up more potatoes, Rua and the Maori potato Urenika.

We've eaten the last of the raspberries but I squirrelled some away in the freezer.

Broccoli and cauliflowers are growing well.

Carrots are coming along albeit slowly!

Marshmallows and a bit of an update

It's been a while since the last post, sorry folks, been busy and also slightly lost my blogging mojo! But I'm back now!

Some time ago I watched an episode of River Cottage where Hugh makes beetroot tinted marshmallows. We recently tried some raspberry and rosewater marshmallows that I bought from Bennetts of Mangawhai This great place mainly make delicious chocolates, but on a recent visit I spied cute little bags of their marshmallows for sale. After trying these I was inspired to try my hand at making my own marshmallow. I used Hugh's recipe but as I didn't have any fresh beetroot on hand, I used a little natural pink food colouring:

Here is the mix being poured into the cake tin:

When set (took about 3 hours) I "turned" it onto a board heavily dusted with the corn flour and icing sugar mix. Actually it took quite a bit of prying out with a knife as it is very sticky until coated with the flour/sugar but at least it came out all in one piece!

 The finished cut and dusted mallows:

And they taste delicious of course. Fluffy, light and very very sweet! I also had some in my hot chocolate last night.

On the gardening front, we harvested the kumara (sweet potatoes) recently. We got some very large ones, over 1kg in weight! They were really easy to grow to, the kumara sprouts don't look much when planting, so it's rewarding to see such large ones at harvest time. The supermarkets (or their customers) must prefer the tiny ones which take forever to peel if you need a lot of kumara! Anyway, we are sure that the Maori would have grown them as big as possible to use and store until the next season came around.

3 big kumara growing together

They are left to dry a little in the sun and stored in large paper bags out of the light just as you would with potatoes.

Last autumn harvest of strawberries

Amazingly we are STILL getting the occasional strawberry, it's been pretty mild up here in Northland - during the day anyway - nightime is getting a bit cooler, we're down to about 10 deg C at present.

Here are a few pics from around the farm:

Nerine in flower

Bird of Paradise

The last of the capsicums