Snapdragon's garden

Rhubarb, carrot and ginger soup

I no longer eat sugar or wheat so I had been wondering what I would possibly do with all our beautiful home grown rhubarb now that crumbles and pies are off the menu.

Then I came across various soup recipes which use rhubarb to cut through the sweetness of root vegetables. - This is my take on them - a soup which went down well at a family lunch yesterday - eaten by octogenarians and teens alike!

It is an unusual soup - really savoury, sharp and light.

Rhubarb, carrot and ginger soup.

Ingredients

2 tblsp olive oil

3 onions - chopped

2 cloves garlic - crushed

3-4 sticks of rhubarb - diced

10 carrots - diced

1 inch ginger

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander

1 litre stock (chicken or vegetable)

1 tin coconut milk

2 tblsp fish sauce.

 

Fry the onions and garlic gently in the oil until soft.

Add in rhubarb, carrots, ginger, cumin and coriander and cook for 5 minutes - do not allow them to colour.

Add stock and simmer for 15 minutes until vegetables are soft.

Add coconut milk and whizz it all to a puree either in a blender or with a whizzy wand.

Stir in the fish sauce - this gives it a really rounded out flavour, stopping the rhubarb being too astringent.

When you want to serve heat it up gently and top with chopped coriander (or chives/basil/mint)

 

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A Nature Table Windowsill

Over the years the way I arrange flowers has changed - I used to create elaborate mixes of flowers, with lots of greenery and different types of flowers, designed to be displayed in a beautiful vase on a side table.

Now things are much simpler, my time is more valuable and I am usually looking for something quick and effective. I find my arrangements have almost become deconstructed - the finished effect owing a lot to the nature table.

My favourite is on my bedroom windowsill - shells, fossils and stones gathered on family holidays are interspersed with old glass bottles, each with a single flower or stem in it.

Each morning, as I sit in bed and drink my morning coffee, I wonder at how they change from day to day.

Making a nature table windowsill

To make a beautiful nature table you need.

1. A surface, while I say table I actually use a low bedroom windowsill at the moment.

2. Interesting semi permanent things to create a lower storey of interesting things - this is the ideal place or all those shells, stones and bits of sea glass that get brought back from beach combing walks.

3. Small glass containers - I use old Victorian bottles which you can pick up in antique shops or have a look at www.pedlars.co.uk in the vintage section. Old perfume bottles and small jars work well too. You want a selection of different sizes.

4. Things to put in your jars - twigs, flowers, seedheads.

5. If you are feeling particularly luxe add in some nightlights to put amongst your shells.

Tips on what to pick.

Now is the ideal time to snip twigs which will gradually open out into miniature leaves and blossoms. Lots of people do to with Forsythia but you can do it with almost any tree or shrub.

Tiny bottles - old ink and medicine ones are the best - are the ideal way to show off miniature spring flowers - crocus, snowdrops, grape hyacinth.

Later in the season you can cut those tiny side shoot flowers that get lost in the garden and display them in your bottles - my absolute favourite is Cosmos.

The bottles are also brilliant for all the flowers that break or fall over in the garden, and if you don't have a garden try some buttercups or poppies which grow on wasteland (sear stems)

Over winter I have a selection of seedheads - poppies, fennel and honesty - enjoying the low sun shining through their silhouettes.

Conditioning

1. Try not to site your table in direct sunshine - a north faint windowsill is fine but flowers will not last as long if it is south facing.

2. When you pick twigs sear the stem ends in boiling water for 10 seconds - this seems to shock them into taking up water efficiently.

3. Check water levels in your bottles each day - spring flowers especially are terribly thirsty.

 

 

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Snapdragon Online Ltd . . . a new chapter

Today is a very exciting day for everyone in the workshop;

Snapdragon ceases to be a sole trader business and becomes a limited company - Snapdragon Online Ltd.

In some ways nothing much will change - it is the same team, the same website, the same products - but in other ways it is a completely new chapter for us.

Snapdragon began life as just me at my kitchen table, pootling around making things I liked, selling them through my blog and at craft fairs, opening up my garden and setting up a stall in my greenhouse.

As Snapdragon grew, and it has grown much bigger than I had ever anticipated, I really struggled to keep up.

I found it incredibly difficult to delegate, worked silly hours and on 24th December 2012, after a month of 16 hour days, I was exhausted and pretty fed up. Everyone else in my family was pretty fed up too.

It was a turning point. Something had to change.

So last year I began to completely restructure how we do things - new staff, new responsibilities, no more working ridiculous hours on things that other people in the team can actually do better than me . . . . .

And once I had changed the structure - well it suddenly seemed that Snapdragon should be more than a sole trader's business.

And here we are in 2014 raring to go.

We have masses of plans for the next year to make our website and products better and better -

We would love to hear your suggestions so that we can add them to our list . . . . . so please comment below or email me [email protected]

Thank you for all your support - it makes all the difference to us.