Your basket is currently empty!
Category: Houseplants
Traditional Scottish pancake recipe
As a wee weekend treat, I like to make pancakes for breakfast and wake kate up with a big plate of pancakes, egg and sausage and a cup of coffee. We’ve been doing this for a few months and even created a youtube video showing you how to do this but only just realised that… Read more
The hotbin composter – so how are we getting on?
It’s been a while since I dropped the bombshell of our new garden gadget and ran but to be honest I didn’t really think I had anything to share as it just sits at the back of the garden and eats our kitchen waste. A bit of youtube surfing today, however, made me realise I… Read more
Planning for the new season, gotta start somewhere.
It may only be January and the weather is definitely still winter but the garden won’t wait for me, planning and preparation have to be started early so that we are ready to sow come spring. This year, work will have to start on the greenhouse, not for reasons of planting etc but purely because… Read more
Drying your own chillies
Much like beetroot and tomatoes, when you grow your own chillies you get an awful lot of the little blighters and can’t always use them up so the solution is to dry them, that way you have loads of dried chilli flakes to use at will and they last. I was a bit scared of… Read more
More hygge recipes to get you through the dark, cold nights: bakewell muffins
We mentioned in a previous post that hygge is a Danish word meaning roughly to enjoy the pleasures life brings and be content. So here’s another recipe to help you bring on the hygge this winter. Today I’m taking a day off from studies to have a bit of a play about with some recipes,… Read more
Garden gadgets: hotbin composter
Composting has been one of the long games for the garden here at Ar Bruadair, and I mean LONG game. As you can imagine, at certain times of the year we use a lot of compost for potting up, unfortunately though, our compost pile is slow and hard work. It just doesn’t keep up with… Read more
2016 review: Quadgrow, would I recommend it?
That’s the tomato growing season come to an end here at At Bruidair and so the green house has been cleaned up for winter. Those who have been following my adventure with the new watering system may be wondering what my final thoughts were, would I recommend it, was I happy with it, are there any… Read more
Hygge recipes to get you through autumn and winter: mushroom soup
The Danish, hygge (pronounced “HUE-gah”) is one of those words that just has no English alternative. Though there are many ways to describe hygge, we see it simply as the Danish ritual of enjoying life’s simple pleasures. Friends. Family. Graciousness. Autumn is truly here, it’s time for warm jumpers, soft scarfs and comfort food. I… Read more
Making a six strand braided challah bread
I’ve been eating challah since I was a kid and I used to bring it home from the kosher deli I worked in at weekends. It’s a sweet, enriched dough bread which makes the most amazing sandwiches and it looks super impressive because it’s braided but it’s actually really easy to do. The recipe I… Read more
Viennese whirls – joining in with the Great British Bake Off
We greet the return of the TV show The Great British Bake Off each year with giddy delight. We love it but we are rarely organised enough to join in the way so many of our friends do. Each year we marvel at the stories of our friend who bake with their kids each Wednesday… Read more
If you love Pizza, you’ll love making your own
I love pizza, I make pizza a lot, so when I had a random conversation with a colleague from work, Suzie, yesterday where we were talking about making bread and she admitted she’s never tried to make pizza, I promised to do a quick blog post with my recipe so she could try. For a… Read more
Can you go on holiday and not come home to a dead greenhouse? With quadgrow you can.
When I installed my new quadgrow watering system in the greenhouse, one of my questions was, “will I be able to go off on holiday for a week and come home to happy and healthy tomatoes or will everything be dead?” We’ll I’m happy to report that yes, we went off on holiday and when… Read more
Did the copper tape defeat the slugs and save my strawberries?
You betcha! So… strawberries, slugs, copper tape. I promised you an update after I put copper tape around the raised bed with the strawberries growing in it, hoping it would deter the slugs from eating all my strawberries like in previous years.Well I am pleased to say it definitely works. Definitely. Last year we maybe… Read more
Sweet potato satay: a slightly healthier option using sweet potato noodles
Being on a health kick or trying to lose weight doesn’t mean you can’t eat tasty, filling food. Anyone who tells you otherwise has their pants on fire! One of the simplest, quickest and tastiest ways we’ve discovered to reduce the calories in some of our favourite meals is to replace the high carbohydrate things like… Read more
More greenhouse gadgets – the quadgrow system
Today was quite a productive day in the garden, despite some heavy showers (really heavy – heavy enough that they drowned me out while I was filming in the greenhouse). The first job for today was to pot the courgettes up into their final pots to be put out into the garden in their final… Read more
Laying a lawn – turf
I had a query recently from a work colleague about lawns, whether to grow it from seed or to lay turf. This got me thinking about when I laid our lawn. When we bought the house, the previous owners had been elderly and were not able to keep the gardens as well as they had.… Read more
The traditional Cottage Loaf – bake it yourself
The cottage loaf is a traditional British loaf shape from the Victorian era and possibly even earlier although it’s rarely seen in shops these days. I use my standard bread recipe but this loaf is shaped by putting a small ball of dough on top of a bigger one to make something like a dough… Read more
Beef Ramen – the ultimate comfort food
Ramen is essentially noodles in soup with various toppings. However in the west we tend to think of this as instant noodles or super noodles. Trust me, it’s not the same and after trying this quick, easy and gorgeous version, you’ll never reach for the instant noodle packets again. I doubt there is anything properly… Read more
Grass, the hardest plant to grow. Honest!
One of the hardest plants to grow and maintain in our garden, believe it or not is grass. Although I should clarify, it grows brilliantly in all those places you don’t want it to; like between the paving slabs, in the flower beds and rockery, even in the greenhouse, but trying to get that beautiful,… Read more