Mildly Outraged!

A trip to the supermarket on Saturday was yet another illustration of soaring food prices here.
$3.98 for a lettuce! In the middle of summer! Can you believe that? I told another shocked woman beside me "I'm not paying that for a lettuce!" (in my best indignant voice). Although reluctant, she did buy one of the golden lettuces, where as I opted for a menu change and went for a small head of broccoli.
My grand plans for successive lettuce sowings has been hampered by bad weather and laziness - if I'm honest.
So needless to say, I scurried home and sprinkled a whole tray with lettuce seeds, which in the current humidity have germinated in a day and a half!

How single income families manage to feed their children on modest food budgets without producing some of their own food, I'll never know.
Well I do know - nutrition suffers! When you can buy a bag of frozen chips for cheaper than the cost of a bag of dirt covered potatoes!

Anyhow, I need to go an rescue my tomato plants that were battered by the gale force winds we had over the weekend. They are laden with fruit, so I'm watching out for blight and other nasties.

Till next time x

From the Kitchen

We've had a busy time trying to cope with the glut of vegetables from the garden, but have been enjoying the fruits of our labour!
We've made, marrow and banana jam, cucumber pickle (which is one of the most delicious pickles I've ever had - if I do say so myself!), home cured bacon, 3 flavours of sausage plus some pickled walnuts. Also our water kefir grains have been bubbling away nicely
The walnuts were a total experiment and since I've never had them before I've got nothing to compare them to, but they are very strong and salty and go well with cheese.
There are 2 very large walnut trees on the farm and they are groaning with walnuts, so it's nice to be able to put some of them to use.