GARDENING, SUNNY DAYS AND BAKING EXPERIMENTS / LIFE IN MY SMALL LONDON GARDEN

Finally show you the broccoli flowers because it has pretty much fully flowered now. Isn't it stunning? Such beautiful flowers and the pollinators love it. Guys welcome back to my Sunday diaries. My name is Emma. These are my Sunday diaries. I'm really glad that you're enjoying these. I'm actually loving filming them. I think I say that a lot. I think I say that more than I need to but the thing is is for like five years I've just filmed my allotment plot and I love my allotment plot but I do like being able to sort of show you different things and like especially like the baking and the cooking and I've got some really exciting things to cook and bake this week so I'm really excited to show you and I find it just, I find that I'm enjoying cooking more now that I'm sort of thinking of things to show you guys. Not that I don't cook like this normally because I do but I do definitely feel like I just get a little bit more excited thinking about what I'm going to cook each week because it can become a bit of a chore sometimes can't it? When you're planning every meal and all the bakes and stuff every single week it can sometimes feel a bit like a chore but doing this now I'm filming it, it definitely has added a bit of excitement to my week so I'm very grateful to be able to keep filming these and that you guys are enjoying them because it sort of gives me a purpose to keep filming them as well. It's a beautiful sunny blue sky day here in London. We are very lucky. It's actually quite warm as well. I've got my new yellow cardigan on. This is from, Miss Selfridge. I got it through ASOS. It's got these really nice, it's called scalloped, scalloped sleeves and it's just really really nice and oversized. I think I got it a size up. Yeah I got it in a size medium which is a 12. I'm normally a size 8 to 10 but I sized up in this and I thought it'd be really nice being a little bit oversized and it is and it's such a nice yellow it just makes me feel so springy and colourful and happy which is very fitting with the weather. So I got back from the allotment plot about half an hour ago. I need to put on some lunch and I'm making one of my favourite lunches so I thought I would show you what I'm making. Just one of those lunches that I just sort of go to on repeat really especially when I'm home on my own because nobody else likes it so whenever I'm here on my own I can eat the things that I want to eat which is lovely. Anyway we're going to pop the lunch on and hopefully we'll be able to get out in the garden today but I don't really have that much to do. I might sow some seeds actually having said that let's do some seed sowing. Oh and I just wanted to add we are a go with the kitchen extension now so the architect is coming around next week which is very very exciting so he's going to like design it and measure it all up. We kind of know what we want but then it would be nice to have like his feedback and then he needs to measure it and do it all properly for the builders so we're kind of a go and it means that at some point this summer I'm going to be completely interrupted with the garden so we're going to do as much to the garden as we can but at some point this summer for about three and a half months we're not going to be able to go through the back of the house so the garden is going to be alone. Luckily I've still got my allotment plot yeah we're not going to have access to the garden at all so it'll be worth it and I'm very excited for it all but it's going to be a challenge so hence the fact I'm not putting too much effort into the garden this year. I'm not planting too much into it and doing too much because I just won't be able to look after it. It's all very exciting I will be filming it as well and showing you the whole process. Anyway let's go and make some lunch. Right we go to very very simple lunch which basically you throw together and then leave in the oven for like half an hour and then it's ready. So we have got some portobello mushrooms, some tomato puree and some grated mozzarella but you can use any other cheese you want and we're basically going to make mushroom pizza. One of my favourite favourite things. I think I've said that like a hundred times. It's honestly so easy so I'm going to choose two mushrooms I think. It's very simple you most definitely do not need like a tutorial on this but can I just say about mushrooms because I learnt this the other day if you leave mushrooms out in the sun they absorb vitamin d so then when you eat them you get all that goodness you get all the vitamin d so you can leave your mushrooms out in the sun for a bit just to get some added goodness which I think is amazing. A little bit of cheese on the top when I say a little I mean a lottle because I love the melted mozzarella on the top is just it just turns it into a pizza. There we go so we'll whack that in the oven for about half an hour I'd say. It always takes a little bit longer than you think and then we'll put some salad with it. Right so what seeds shall we sow? I need to start my tomatoes at some point. I've got lots of cucumbers and courgettes here two different types of courgettes two different types of cucumber we could do that but something that's not working at my allotment at the moment is peas. All of my peas have sort of stopped germinating so I might have to sow some more of these. These are meteor pea meteors. I think I might sow some more peas today. Right I'm sowing them into this module which has got bigger sections this is something that I brought some plants home in ages ago and I've just kept for sowing seeds. I'm going to plant multiple seeds in each of these because the thing about peas is they don't really mind being planted out together so they can sort of stay with their friends so I can sort of gently tease them apart as they grow together or I think we'll put three in each or what I can do is I can sort of just plant them out as a clump and they do tend to do okay sweet peas are the same they tend to do okay with their mates. Right really weirdly I actually poured the exact right amount of seeds into my hand so that was just a sign that it's supposed to be three per module I think. Got to take signs where you can get them. Mushrooms looking lovely they sort of shrink a little bit when they're cooked. Look at that I promise you though they taste just like pizza in fact they taste better than pizza. If you like mushroom pizza even better because it tastes even better than mushroom pizza. Right I think I'm going to be quite boring with my plating up. Don't expect anything fancy and exciting so I've got our lovely mushrooms and then I'm just going to literally whack a little bit of salad with it and it's going to be the most boring salad in the world because I cannot be bothered to make anything. There we go quite an uninspiring lunch isn't it but um it looks really delicious to me so maybe to one of you out there it will also look delicious and also to the person who commented and said about my seasoning I have mentioned this before I'm not much of a seasoner I just sort of don't really add it to many dishes mainly because I forget but secondly I just don't feel like food needs it sometimes. I'm quite happy to sort of have it without the seasoning but obviously to any dish I make you can add seasoning. I don't think you have to make it like me it's to your taste. Right I'm gonna eat this. Right I'm gonna do a little bit of baking now it's such a nice day it just makes me want to bake something summery um so I've got this cookbook and I wanted to show you it for ages I got sent it last year um for free just uh because I guess because I'm on YouTube I don't really know they didn't ask me to share it or anything they just wanted to send it to me but it's Sarah Raven's cookbook and it's sort of um it's a garden cookbook and it's all through the seasons with things that you can grow yourself so it's just got sections and all these different sort of vegetables or ingredients and then it will sort of tell you all these different recipes for it and it sort of follows the seasons as well and I just love it it's such a good if you've just got like random ingredients in your cupboard you can definitely find a recipe in this book and it's such a gorgeous book it's so beautiful and I found this which is a pear and almond tart and it looks amazing it looks really really delicious but I'm sort of going to make it up a little bit because instead of using pears I'm going to use peaches instead of making the pastry I'm going to use puff pastry which I've already got so basically it's just going to be completely different except for sort of the pie filling which will be peaches and then the almondy kind of filling as well so we're going to kind of experiment with it so yeah we're just we're going to give it a go but it's going to be an experiment it's going to be very fun okay this is going to be fun it's going to be a bit of an experiment but that's always fun so this is all butter all butter puff pastry from M&S I'm going to have to sort of cut it a little bit okay so we've got to prick some holes into this and then we're going to pop back in and I don't have any baking beads but I do have some rocks that I have cleaned so we're just going to pop those in and we're going to blind bake it for I think what does it say to blind bake it 10 minutes is it 12 to 15 minutes okay I'm starting to fear this really is going to be an experiment so we need 100 grams of butter, 100 grams of plain flour, three eggs I did actually just read that you can use rice instead of stones so you can just pull rice onto paper but hey ho we've done what we've done we're going to leave this to cool down completely yeah so we'll leave this to completely cool down and then we'll pop in our filling and then our peaches will go on top how pretty okay pop that in the oven for another 10 minutes here we go okay yeah it looks good oh my gosh it looks amazing oh smells incredible oh my gosh it's like the prettiest the prettiest little tart whatever it is I think it's a tart peach tart um it looks amazing I'm going to cut a slice and I'll let you know how it is that looks really good okay let's try a little bit really good it works with the peaches as well as pear just because it adds a bit of sharpness to it I think it would have been nice with a bit of apricot jam on the top or some icing sugar but I didn't have those um but it doesn't like desperately need it it's really good nice bit of baking on a spring day good morning guys it's the next day it's such a nice beautiful day today excuse me I'm going to get my sweet peas out I think I need to make a structure for them and get them out so that's what we're going to do this morning yeah let me show you them these are the sweet peas that I've sown at home so I put them into toilet rolls but you can see they are looking not the happiest to be honest I think they really need to go out now they've also got a little bit of an infestation which I think is leaf minor but we'll get them out anyway because I've just had some seeds sent to me by seed craft which is that seed subscription box which I go on about sometimes they send you seeds and the seeds they send you each month are ones that you can actually sow and start so I've got some parsnip courgette radish and beetroot I'm thinking of putting in some parsnips radish radish and beetroot into one of my raised beds sorry my neighbor's outside so I can't talk outside um in terms of what I'm growing this year at the back of the garden because we're getting um some work done so the kitchen extended not sure if I've mentioned that a thousand times um but we're not going to have any access to our back garden for about three or four months anything I'm putting into the beds at the moment have to be like self-sufficient and be able to kind of survive or have a chance of surviving on their own and which to be fair is everything with my gardening it will all do so much better if I just leave it alone but I'm thinking parsnips radish might be done radish might be done before then so I might be picking radish way before then but beetroot and parsnip in particular take a very long time to grow so if I whack those in now I don't think I have to do much to them um and I really just think that they'll just survive so we're going to stick those into the raised bed okay let's do it well I think I'm going to leave it there I actually have no idea what I filmed this week um I've been picking up the camera so sporadically I'll try and sort of slot it all together into this vlog we've had such nice weather that I've just sort of like spent most of my time at the allotment plot so nothing wrong with that but it does mean that I've sort of neglected this vlog a little bit so anyway I do hope you've enjoyed what I've put up today um we put the sweet peas outside made a structure for them we've sown some seeds um I've protected one of the beds with the with the trellis just so the cats don't dig it up and um we've given it a sweep I think I'm going to go outside now and sit down read my book for a little bit I'm reading a another Frieda McFadden book um called The Tenant it's because I've not been into reading recently I've just I've found it really hard to pick up a book um I just find a million other things to do so whenever that happens to me I always find that going back to kind of a really simple kind of like an easy page turner book like any of the Frieda McFadden thrillers it's just so good because it just gets you back into reading and I'm already eyeing a couple of other books that I've got that haven't started yet anyway hopefully I have some books to share with you uh next week that I've been reading because I have got back into it and I am reading so we'll see how we go with next week's vlog anyway I hope you've enjoyed this one I'll see you again on the allotment plot tomorrow or back here in my home garden next Sunday thank you so much for watching see you next time bye