Mick's cauliflower

Cauliflower fried rice is fantastic. grate the cauliflower in a food processer. Then nuke it for 10 minutes with a T of water. Check it after 7 minutes, you don't want it to turn to mush. Then stir fry whatever you have in the fridge green onions, peppers, bean sprouts, anything really. I don't bother with adding the eggs or meat. I add sesame oil, ginger, soysauce. Then I drain the cauliflower and add it to the fried veg. My friend makes it and adds so much veg and meat that her husband hasn't figured out its not rice!!

Philosophy for beginners

If a man is alone in the garden and speaks,and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

Chickens: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.


March isn't the only thing that's in like a lion and out like a lamb.- Probably May West

If, instead of talking to your plants, you yelled at them, would they still grow, only to be troubled and insecure?

The happiest gardeners have simply learned how to relax.

Pearse College Allotments Wildflowers

The orchard is looking great at the moment with all the wildflowers in bloom . We started collecting seeds from them to sow next year .

Willo's Sunflower

Ah, Sunflower, weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun,

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller's journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,

Arise from the their graves,

and aspire

Where my Sunflower wishes to go.

Pumpkin recipe

RONAN'S PUMPKIN

Recipe

Tomato paste and parmesan cheese are the secret ingredients of this luscious pumpkin soup. They add an extra element of sweet and savory that tastes delicious with velvety pumpkin.
Ingredients:

1 tablespoon butter 1 medium onion, finely chopped2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 pound pumpkin, peeled, seeded, cut into 1-inch cubes 3 cups chicken stock 1 tablespoon tomato paste 1 tablespoon grated parmesan cheese ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon pepper
Directions:
1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and garlic and cook until translucent, 3 to 4 minutes, stirring. 2. Add pumpkin and cook 3 minutes, until lightly softened. 3. Add stock and paste and stir to mix. Bring to a boil over high heat, lower to a simmer, and cover. Cook 20 minutes, until pumpkin is very tender.4. Transfer to a food processor and puree until smooth. Add cheese, salt, and pepper; mix and serve warm.

Pearse College Allotments , the future

A sea of heather

A sea of heather is what I saw on a rocky mountain at the break of dawn .
A landscape , naked ,save for a cloak of purple beauty and morning sunrise blazing .
Grey granite coming alive

glistening gently

sun seeping on silica .
Bog cotton , like will o the wisps merrily dancing down the day
A distant crow

caw cawed me awake ,

for one fleeting moment I was a child again .
Why is grass green ? Why is the sky blue ?

O Practical Potato

O practical potato,
vegetable most like earth,
among elegant asparagus, intellectual zucchini,
you are unpretentiously spud.
Tasting only like stone,you have nothing to hide,
are merely functional,a most puritanical root.
O wave your green flags,democratic potato
you are the equal of any other
potato.

Ode to an onion

Onion,luminous flask,your beauty formed petal by petal,crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew.Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared,and your leaves were born like swords in the garden,the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency,and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicating the magnolia,so did the earth make you,onion clear as a planet and destined to shine,constant constellation,round rose of water,upon the table of the poor.You make us cry without hurting us.I have praised everything that exists,but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers,heavenly globe, platinum goblet,unmoving dance of the snowy anemone and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature.