A Surprise in the Garden

I was walking through the garden today, checking out the newly-planted tomatoes and herbs, when I spotted these mini irises tucked in between larger, more-established irises plants.  Such delicate and pretty!

There are 4 of them and each one is about 4 inches tall.  You can see the larger irises leaves in which these miniatures hidden.  Those larger ones are white.  We have deep purple ones across from the white.  These tiny ones seem to be a combination of the two-- I wonder if our irises cross-pollinated?!

Regardless of how we have them, we do and it was such a lovely surprise this afternoon!

Gnocchi!

Gnocchi!  We love it and after we watched another episode of "Ciao Chow! ", we decided to make it.  We got baking potatoes, roasted them the day before, and put in the fridge to cool over night.  One of the many keys to gnocchi is that the potato has to be cold.  

After an over night in the fridge, I scooped out the inside of the baked potato.   In a  standing mixer, I had  three pounds (almost) of potato, 2 cups of flour, and one cup of shredded parmesan cheese (you are really supposed to use grated, but I picked up the wrong kind at the store). 

 

I put in the cheese, flour, and a bit of nutmeg into the standing mixer first and gave them a swirl.  I added salt and pepper, and then, all at once, I added the potato.  As Fabio says, you will think that the ingredients are going to combine and you might be tempted to add some water or other form of moisture.



Don't.



It will take a few minutes, and I thought that my standing mixer might throw in the towel-- it is harder to mix together than my great grandmother Mammy's pound cake.  Eventually, the ingredients do combine and make a lovely dough.

I cut off small hunks of the dough, after I slapped and kneaded it around a bit to get any air bubbles out.  Once I had my hunk, I rolled it out like a long cigar.   When the roll was about a thumb thick, I then sliced it into nuggets.  My sou-chefes (Will and Kelly), having already prepared the cooking pots: one for boiling the gnocchi and the other to crisp it up a bit with some olive oil, garlic, more salt and pepper, and crush red pepper flakes.

 

Once the gnocchi were in the boiling water and started to rise, we pulled them out.  They cook really fast and when I make this again, I will only use 2 potatoes instead of 4 and freeze any extra dough after I had cut plenty of pieces.  

After the boil, we started to brown the gnocchi in the sauté pan.  Since my three pounds of potatoes had made so many nuggets, we were doing this for a while--and I might have used too much red pepper flakes when putting a 2nd or 3rd batch of gnocchi into the pan. Ahem.  

We browned the gnocchi and then plated with freshly grated parmesan cheese.  Served with a salad, and some nice read wine, we had ourselves a lovely, albeit spicy, plate of homemade gnocchi. Delicious!

Cathedral Flowers

Will and I took Stirling and Friday (the dog) to the Cathedral the other weekend.  It was a misty morning but we hadn't been up to the Bishop's Garden in a while and we wanted to see what was in bloom.

Rows of tulips, irises, peonies, and daffodils were out.  Narcissuses and Paperwhites, and an orange bell-like flower I wasn't familiar with.  The dogs romped, jumped, rolled in the green in the amphitheater.   Stirling chases Friday up and down the rows and stairs.  

The flowers in the Bishop's Gardens seem to be a few days ahead of the ones in our garden, as we are only now getting irises ready to open, though our tulips have now gone.   Our azaleas seem to be ahead though--with several of the buds opening.   But the Cathedral's redbud tree was stunning, whereas our trees have finished flowering entirely. 

Taste of Scotland

After the rugby (below) we went local for dinner. A lovely haggis from the butcher at western corner. Sadly these beauties can't be imported into the states (since 1971 they've had a problem with one of the ingredients - sheep's lung) however I think I will have a go at perfecting our own recipe once I get back. Any takers...?

My visit coincided with an important rugby match. Edinburgh were up against Toulouse in the Heineken Cup.  So mum and I decided to tootle over for a look. The stadium was busy with 37k in attendance and fortunately there was space for us. We enjoyed a thrilling match against one of rugby's heavyweights and Edinburgh pulled off a famous victory!

Murrayfield has changed a bit since I last took in a match there but the home of scottish rugby is a terrific venue with a great atmosphere. Hopefully I'll get around to seeing an international there sometime.

Match article - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/17639378

Edinburgh moment

I've had the pleasure of spending the past couple of days in Edinburgh. The city is stunning, as always, and if you haven't been, get here - even on a grey day.


The city is still dealing with the building of the trolly system. So far it's been a lot of money with minimal result.....Princess street below is totally dug up and only passable by foot. Locals seem skeptical of the entire project - we'll see...



Sylvia and Edward have been busy in the garden and we're now enjoying the news and golf on a quiet Saturday night. The house as lovely as ever.

Getting the Garden Ready

The garden is springing back to life with the season turning.  The days are longer and warmer, and the plants are waking up from a nice winter's doze-- cuz let's be honest: it never really got cold enough here to truly be called "winter." 

We have vegetables and fruits poking their heads out of the soil or starting to bud.  The newest rhubarb plant is enjoying its new home. 

 Our fig tree is starting to produce lots of figs again and our grape vine has the smallest of leaves. 

The strawberry plants are starting to take over the ground in the lower garden, which is fine by us.  A few plants even have buds on them. 

The big rhubarb, also in the lower garden, already has produced huge leaves.  We just need to let the stalks get a bit longer and we can have an early harvest for pie or crumble. 

The grass is looking quite lush and green (ignoring the chickweed and crabgrass of course) and we have several new bulbs coming up: lilly of the valley, chinese lanterns.

Indoors, we have our seedlings, some more ready than others to be put outside.  We will have to get most of them in the ground shortly-- they are getting too tall for the growing tray. 

8PRIL!!

MY KENTUCKY WILDCATS DID IT!  They are national champions in college basketball!  What a season!  What better way to celebrate a victory than with an Ale 8.  But what if we combined Ale 8 with the Wildcats??!!  How AWESOME would that look?

THIS awesome: