New things are appearing in the garden now, and with the warmer weather everything is springing to life.

From the dashing red squirrels to the wallflowers. All are making an appearance on the first few proper days of Spring sunshine we’ve had. The prunus incisa [kojo no mai] is flowering brightly in the middle of our lawn.

The lawn got mown today, stubby little Parmex carrots were planted in a trough, and the ones in the beds are finally showing their first baby-leaves.

I thought the wonderfully-aromatic Lovage had upped and left when it disappeared under the soil at the end of Autumn, but it was only resting before making a grand re-appearance.

A trip to the garden centre gave me ideas and seeds, little plants and interesting things to add to our garden. We found borlotti beans, cannelloni beans and some hardy aubergines. Perfect for our plot. This year it’s all about diversification. Growing some interesting things that I know we’ll love come summer.

And one of the most important plants of the season – the humble dandelion, made its first show of the season. Promising a bright summer ahead.

Whenever we go into a coffee shop or tea room, from the smallest independent producers to national chains there is one thing which proves to be a better litmus test than any other I know, and that is the little nugget of soft, unctuous set custard in pastry that is an egg-custard tart. This simple and incredibly tasty dish can be made so, so well or diabolically badly. And that gives me an idea of who made the food, when and with what level of artistry.

Indeed, it’s not rocket science, it is a simple process of love and care that makes the basic ingredients:- eggs, cream, vanilla, nutmeg and sugar come together to make something extraordinary.

I’ve been having issues recently with my egg-custards. In my quiches they’ve been watery with too many air bubbles in-between, making them heavy and not the creamy, silky idylls of vegetable, egg and pastry that a good quiche should be. And through tireless exploration (Tash-as-Heston again!) I’ve deduced that it is the tightly-bound egg-white proteins that are causing the problems. They simply need to be beaten to within an inch of their lives so that their molecules relax and go with the flow. Then you can make the perfect egg-custard tart and it will be perfect.

This was a recipe from a magazine I saw and instantly became friends with called Country Kitchen. It uses seasonal, local and hopefully organically grown food as its basis and makes recipes that are in-harmony with the seasons. As it’s almost easter, and chickens – if we had any – would be starting to lay around now, the magazine suggests some nice things to do with eggs. I did fiddle the amounts, quite a bit, as I’m prone to do, because I didn’t want to make one just like they had, I like to give mine a bit of individuality (I named it Fifi, too).

This is actually my first foray into egg-custard tart making, and like all things, the homemade is far superior to the bought equivalent. I might even go so far as to say I’m egg-static! (yes, I know!)

Ingredients for the sweet pastry:

• 4oz (100g) Doves-farm plain flour
• 2oz (50g) butter
• 1oz (25g) caster sugar – I used light brown soft
• a little water, enough to bring ingredients into a dough.

Method: Add flour, butter and sugar into a bowl, rub the fat into the flour until it has achieved a fine breadcrumb consistency. Add enough water to make a dough and roll out to line a 9-inch pie dish. Chill. Once chilled for 15 minutes, blind-bake at 180ºC/gs mk. 4 for 20 minutes. Leave oven on.

Ingredients for egg-custard:

• 1/2 pint (235ml) single cream
• 1/4 pint (120ml) milk
• 1 vanilla pod, cut lengthways and the seeds scooped out, keeping both pod and seeds
• 2oz (50g) Caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• freshly-grated nutmeg

Method:

In a pan add the cream, milk, vanilla seeds and pod. Keep stirring and heat until it starts to come to the boil. Remove from the heat. In a blender, blend the eggs and sugar, pulsing until the eggs no longer retain any of their springy-whites. It should all be an even-liquid. Strain the milk/cream/vanilla liquid and slowly add it to the egg mix, stirring constantly. Lest you should end up with scrambled eggs.

Add your mix to the pastry case and grate fresh nutmeg on top, plenty of it. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean from the middle.

Best served with a pot of Assam tea – however it is so yummy that you may just have to eat it straight from the dish, as I did.

Last night whilst flicking channels to get to my new-favourite Australian drama, Love My Way, I flicked past Channel4’s Animal Farm. I noticed Giles Coren, and although I can’t profess to be a fan of his, anything to do with farming always piques my interest. I started watching and to my horror they were discussing using cows blood as a treatment against bioterrorism – all the time they were talking, rows of cows were hooked up to machines, taking their blood. This reminded me of the most awful scenes I’ve seen in sci-fi films. I was aghast. So I stopped flicking channels and I watched as they went onto sheep who had their unborn foetuses removed, stem cells injected, and then be put back so that they would continue to grow into sheep that were 15% human. I called my husband in complete stunned amazement. Since when did we become so blazé about not only doing this sort of stuff – but showing it on prime-time TV?

My first emotion was horror, my second anger, and my third just plain sorrow. I don’t think the programme itself was that informative, and didn’t give a very unbiased view of vivisection itself (it was more “isn’t-this-just-amazingly-wonderful-if-a-bit-freaky?”) – even when Giles Coren said that he wouldn’t be happy for an animal that had a percentage of human DNA inside it, be killed just so he could receive its organs. And that was why they were doing it – so one day we could each have an organ “made” from our own DNA in a sheep’s body, thus negating the need for organ donors. Putting the farm in pharmacy.

The programme went on to say that ‘yay! this is fantastic!’ but there are risks. Apparently when messing with chromasomes at a base-level, and as the scientist put it “copying and pasting” bits hither and thither, something called cellular fusion can happen, meaning that the lamb who is 15% human, could be born with a lamb’s body and a human head, or some mix thereof.

I don’t believe in animal testing, and I’ll go so far as to say that it is one of the worst possible exploits that we as human beings currently undertake. Because the animals that are vivisected have no say at all. There are hundreds of studies saying that animal testing doesn’t work, because animals are just too different to us. And some may even justify their pro-genetic-modification stance saying that a lamb who has been genetically modified to produce a donor kidney is no worse than a lamb who has been killed for food. Which is the age-old question of what is the worth of a human life? But it also raises the question as to whether ethics has any standing anymore – in today’s times, what are ethics? And who controls these studies, who says “That’s not ethical – stop”.

Can the girl they showed in the footage, a teenager with spina bifida who was born without an adequate bladder, and who had one “made” from her own stem-cells, can we deny anyone that? Although her bladder didn’t, as far as I know, have anything to do with an animal – is it ok to “mess with nature” if we benefitted?

I was almost turning the whole thing off when they started talking about giving humans the ability to re-grow limbs after they have been severed. This is my snapping point, when they talked about humans being able to reverse cellular ageing and almost live forever. Then I knew that this had gone too far, way too far. Those who were funding the research into limbs re-growing? The US Military.

I’ll leave you with a little quote from Mr. Coren himself:

With your food critic hat on, do you prefer organic food?

[...]So I was, and remain essentially, organic in terms of animals. But soya is different, for example; although I confess it doesn’t play a huge role in my diet. But in the US, where we filmed, 80% of all soya is GM, and look at the Americans, there’s nothing wrong with them. [laughs][...]

Yes, Mr. Coren, indeed.

I was going to call this post “Whacky Science”, but that title seems to make it sound fun, hilarious. And I fear it is very very much the opposite. If this is so-called progress, then I’d rather not be a part of it.

The concert was amazing. Honestly, we couldn’t have spent a more wonderful Friday night. I’ve been a huge fan of Thea Gilmore since I could remember – and it has been one of my ambitions to see her live. The setting for this intimate little gig was the Sage in Gateshead which is a truly awe-inspiring building, especially at night. This is the Millennium bridge linking Newcastle to Gateshead, one of many bridges doing so, but arguably one of the prettiest. In that photo, behind the bridge is the Baltic a contemporary arts centre.

What I didn’t realise when I booked the tickets was, that the supporting act was one of my new-favourite-singers, the hugely talented Erin McKeown. Not well-known over here, Erin has a huge career in the US and is starting to become popular over here, thanks to 6Music. The whole night was just amazing – Erin really stole the show, and was brilliant enough to have had the stage all to herself. Her songs are really fun, happy songs to listen to, one of my favourites being Slung Lo (link to sample here). Thea did an amazing set, her politically-charged tracks are what have defined her music style throughout her career and are what make Thea, Thea.

We met Erin after her set where she signed some CDs and I got a couple of photos. She is the loveliest person to talk to and is so friendly! Audience participation was definitely a big thing – especially through Erin’s set – which meant that through Erin’s song ‘La Petite Morte’ our fists were raised as we sung at the top of our lungs “Oh, Estelle!”. And I now have me a wonderful, brand-new crush :-)

This is a rather blurry photo of Erin signing our CDs – and having a chat (the better photos have us in them!) .

Thea sung songs I could sing to, clap to and click my fingers enthusiastically to. We heard brand new stuff, old stuff and some amazing renditions of songs that only come alive when heard live. The concert ended at a reasonable hour (I had visions of 2am!) and it was much easier than anticipated making our way back to Newcastle and the car home. All in all, the most wonderful time!

I hope your weekend was as good as ours.

Or in other words, half way through the blanket. It’s so warm – I’ll confess that I’ve already been using it as a knee-warmer for the last few cold nights. It might end up being a bit larger than 10×8, depending on how I feel after another 40 squares! I have just bought another River Cottage DVD (series 3) so I’m in good company when crocheting!

The skies of late have been spectacular. This photo snapped just before the snow of last week – snow always brings amazing skies just beforehand.

The garden is looking rather verdant and lush at the moment – the daffs in the “wild” bed are just starting to appear, the crocuses are all but gone and the dicentra spectabilis (or bleeding heart) is now poking its little stems through the soil – as is the peony.

Today whilst hanging the washing out, I saw one of our little squirrels. And she was tiny. I could’ve fitted her into the palm of my hand. Bright, brassy-red little thing who was being eyed-up by a jackdaw, whom she proceeded to vocally tick-off before running for the cover of the hawthorn trees.

The magpies are all pairing up, and the aerial fights I’ve witnessed have been rather exciting. All claws and beaks in mid-air. They love our garden because we have plenty of chafer grubs – their favourite food.

And then there’s me – just pottering on as before. Crocheting square after square and being a bit nervous about tonight’s concert but glad that I’m getting easter-sunday off for a lovely four-day weekend in a mere two week’s time.