This year we planted borlotti and runner beans.
They’ve survived the onslaught of snails this year, and improvement over last summer.
They’ve produced nice flowers.
Pale pink on the borlotti, scarlet on the runners.
But few beans.
So far I’ve counted 10 borlotti pods and 1 runner pod.
From 10 plants.
I guess its a better return just than money in a bank account, maybe.
So what shall I do with my 11 beans?
The parcel postman just delivered these.
He said ‘someone’s got a lot of reading to do….’
And he laughed (in a nice way).
I think maybe I got a little carried away on the Book Depository site.
What do you think?
I got some late Kent cherries at the farmers market at the weekend.
I keep sneaking a few each time I go past.
I just allowed myself a handful after lunch.
But now they are all gone…
Shame, they were so good.
Other posts have revealed my fondness for books and printed matter generally. Over the years I have had to invest heavily in IKEA Billy bookcases to help keep this predilection from taking over the house. Its sort of worked but I know there are many books I have that I have looked at only a few times and then moved on to the next must have item. Some of the books cast aside were great, some mediocre, some utter rubbish. But mostly when it comes to food related books I still have every single one of them. I have made attempts to catalogue them all so that at least I can find them when needed, I have thought about selling those I rarely use or didn’t hit the spot for me, after all one girls junk is another’s dream item.
This love of printed matter takes on a new slant when, on Twitter, publishers are offering review copies to bloggers and at events generous souls are popping them in goodie bags. What is a girl to do? Well clearly one thing is to review them. And I did one full review of a book I got from a publisher, and I enjoyed it: both book and review. But the others that you can see above have created a little conundrum so I haven’t yet managed to review them. Why? Well its not that I only want to write positive things on my blog, but essentially I do want to mostly write about things I enjoy and can enthuse about a sort of ‘goodshoeday recommends’ approach. And some of these books I do heartily recommend (as you will eventually see) but I couldn’t always find much to say. I don’t want to simply repeat a press release and I don’t want to be bland or negative unless I’ve read a book cover to cover and as you will guess from the intro I don’t always do that with books I pay for!
I also don’t want to be obliged to cook a recipe just to be sure the it works (or doesn’t). There is endless debate about this with many saying if you haven’t cooked a recipe how can you properly review the book and those who, like me, think its in no way essential. I guess it depends who’s going to read the review and who the book is aimed at. If its “the basics of cooking in 100 pages” then yes it should all work if its “this is mostly full of pictures and ideas” well I guess they should still work but then its more about the inspiration than the exact quantities, after all who follows recipes exactly (except possibly when baking).
So I have a pile of books I have garnered for free. To date I haven’t reviewed them. Well all that’s about to change because I’m ready to launch my all new patented method of book reviewing The GSD flip-thru (TM) . In the interests of objectivity I will be reviewing the books in individual blog posts in the order I received them, which is from the bottom of that pile upwards……
Bet you can’t wait for the first review ;0
Today I went to the local farmers market in Wanstead high street.
It’s once a month and been going for just over a year. I go pretty much every month.
Today one of the things I got was some eggs.
They were called mis-shapes. So they were only £1.40 a dozen.
The man said its mostly because they are not brown and most people want brown eggs that they are cheap.
I mean they don’t look very mis-shapen to me. The shells are rougher and some have marks on but hey I’m not eating the shells.
Nearly as much of a bargain as when Ocado sent me 24 eggs I’d not ordered and weren’t on the bill.
About a month ago I went to my first ever real live auction hoping to bag some bargains.
I remember going to viewings at the local auction room as a child but I don’t recall us ever being there when the auction took place, I think my parents left their bid with the auctioneer. I don’t even know if we ever won the items in question.
This time I’d looked at the catalogue on line and my friend Lynne (@josordoni) had been to the viewing and checked the items over for me along with the lots she was interested in.
I set my maximum prices and off we went the next day. We took a quick look around, registered me as a bidder (getting my own personal number, excitement) and then as there was a wait for our first lots we went and had a coffee and a natter.
Back at the auction I was fascinated by the whole process especially the very low key bidding on some rather nice pieces of furniture.
Then I got the jitters worrying I would not stick to my prices once bidding got going. So I handed over to Lynne.
I got all three lots. For a song.
Heres my Susie Cooper tea service.
Nice isn’t it.
And the bargains to be had made me wonder why anyone shops at IKEA…..
Okay so everyone already has Hipstamic (well everyone with an iPhone).
And they’ve played about with it no end.
And every other picture on Twitter has been taken with the Hipstamatic app.
Why. Well because it creates curiously old looking photographs. Like ones you find a in a dusty box in your Grandma’s attic.
Well sort of because it depends what the photo is of but the look of the photo is pure nostalgia even if its content isn’t.
I kind of like the look so I thought I’d do a collage.
Same shot. Once with each lens and each film that comes with the basic version of the app. There are of course further lens and film options you can buy.
Not sure I’ll be doing that any time soon.
It was fun though.
