tea time two

the first homemade herbal tea of the season

with mint from my new herb garden

and lemon balm from the community garden that I helped out a bit

next year there will be home grown fennel seeds

it needs a few elderfowers for sweetness

I have some drying in the shed

it feels good to store the first harvest of the year

sunshine in a cup

xxx

a beautiful mess

I worked for most of the Easter weekend so I am having this week off instead. Mr AP has taken a few days off as well so that we can hang out together at home and do a bit of house stuff. As usual we have long lists of tasks and great plans - some achieved, some can wait for another day. I think it's really important to make something - even if it's just a mess. So here's some stuff my clever husband made for me…

a key holder -

Mr Smurf looks after the keys to my old house that we still own and rent out,

Cartman looks after our spare house key.

A shelf for my cookbooks,

(middle class - moi?).

a woodshed - new and improved, 'you beaut' Version III,

with foreground herb garden - I've been busy too!

I cleaned out the fridge and made random veg soup,

(tasted okay but bore an unfortunate resemblance to sick after some ill advised blending).

So I made a loaf to cheer up proceedings...

..Best One I've Ever Made!

Also we've been talking for a while about going down to being a one car family.

Last week the transport gods intervened,

the big car turned itself into a bag of spanners on the way home from the Gower. 

A quick trip to 'we buy any wreck' yielded £300. 

The new transport strategy involves Mr AP having a more reliable motorbike,

(his old one looked cool but refused to start).

One very happy hubby,

(but the helmet squashes his face into a grumpy pout).

Tiny hint of my little blue Panda frame right

- or 'the car' as it's now known.

I'll let you know how it goes…

harvest festival

We all breathe a small sigh of relief and loosen our belts a little at work when the school holidays are over. About a third of our annual visitors come through the door in those six weeks - a quarter of a million give or take.  So I've had a peaceful week in the September sunshine gathering produce for our Harvest Festival display.

One of our reconstructed buildings at the museum is a Unitarian chapel from West Wales. Every year we host a Thanksgiving service and the gardening team always decorate the chapel with flowers and produce from the Estate. Since 2010 we have also held a Food Festival, so it seemed like a good fit to combine the two.

The food fest is a great event that has really blossomed in the last couple of years. It feels like the entire Welsh food community come together to celebrate and showcase their work. The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly - the perfect way to round off the season. As a complement to the commercial stall holders, we have been working hard to build up the museum interpretation aspect of the event. In previous years I have done some kind of 'Traditional Techniques for Storing the Harvest' demo, but this was to be 'Year of the Teabag'.

Earlier in the summer, (and we did actually have one this year), I harvested and dried a whole load of mint and lemon balm from the cottage gardens. Just add some fennel seeds, dried elderflower, and the creative genius of the lovely Siân - and you've got the perfect recipe for a fabulously successful, Food Festival 'make and take home' activity. We bought a whole bunch of 'fill your own' tea bags, and Siân made a template sheet for everyone to make a cute envelope and tag for their bag. I ran the blending and bag filling side of the operation. We were so busy I didn't have time to take many pictures.

Siân made these pretty things...

..here are a couple of my efforts.

Didn't get a picture of a filled bag, but this was the herb blend we created.

It was an exhausting weekend but we had fun.

Go Team Teabag!

questions, questions

The builders are due to start ripping out our kitchen next week. Anyone who has been through this process will know that it means making a thousand decisions - some major, some tiny. Many are things that I didn't think I had an opinion on, turns out I do. Actually - I am required to have an opinion, otherwise I'll end up with something weird. It's no good saying 'Oh anything will do - but not THAT!!!'. Those who know me will verify that I can usually manufacture an opinion on almost anything at very short notice - but this is in a different league. Taps, tiles, toilets, handles, light fittings, flooring - the list goes on and on....

Also I find myself making faintly passive-aggressive lists for our builder:

• Three brick built steps - all the same size please.
• Retaining wall to have brick on edge capping course - no visible frogs*

(Ned - if you're reading this - Soz!)

Suffice to say, it's sapping my ability to think creatively about anything else. So here are some herb idents that I have been making for the Front of House guys at work. The visitors expect them to be able to answer questions on an enormous range of subjects, so I'm trying to put some stuff together to help them with the garden side of things. The idents are tri-lingual - English/Latin/Welsh, which is a tricky balancing act to keep clear and concise. I have a great new app called Over, that lets you put text on pictures in a fantastically user friendly way. See what you think...

*Big shout out to all the other bricklaying nerds out there!

tea time

A few weeks ago I cut some bunches of herbs and hung them up to dry in the toolshed.

Now they look like this.

Today I stripped the leaves off the stalks.

There's mint...

..and lemon balm.

I chopped them together...

..and made a caddy full of tea and a cup to try.

We have a Food Festival at work in September, so I'm trying to work up an idea for an activity based around drying herbs and making tea.  Whatever I do has to be interactive, robustly low tech and highly repeatable, (26,000 visitors over 2 days last year). I want something that kids, (and grown ups), can get their hands in for a bit of sensory experience. Maybe we can make tea bags to take home if I get some of those 'fill your own' ones. Hmmm - I feel a meeting with Miss Sian coming on...

Inspired by the success of this morning's batch of tea,
I went out and picked another wheelbarrow full of mint and lemon balm,
 and a basket of elderflowers.

They're all spread out to dry now - the shed smells like heaven.

Apparently if you drink tea made from lemon balm, you'll live to be 100.
(not sure when you have to start though....)