Out with the old...

In February I reviewed the Purple Sprouting Broccoli. It looked sad and weak as the wind battered stems lay across the ground. The plants looked worse because the pigeons had started to strip off the old leaves a few weeks before hand and they were now shielded underneath a force field of netting. However, I couldn’t help think that this was yet another brassica crop that was doomed to fail. After all, I was due to start harvesting it in a couple of weeks but there was nothing but old leaf. I gave it a late feed of poultry manure and let it be. I checked my planting schedule for ‘bed 21’ to find that the broccoli was to be replaced by Garlic at the end of March. Well, I’d give it as long as I could, but I wasn’t expecting much. By early March new leaf growth had started. Probably stimulated by the additional feeding and the milder weather the young greens where quite prolific in the centre and small broccoli heads were starting to develop. I didn’t really have time to let them develop any further. Once the central head is cut, the broccoli would start to produce side shoots and more greens. I cut the heads there and then, hoping that the few weeks remaining would be enough for another crop.


Purple Sprouting Broccoli

The young heads were very small, and not purple at all, but a pale creamy green. From the half dozen plants that I had harvested, I had enough for a meal for 3, plus enough greens for the same again. I walked down towards the house with my harvest – the last crop of 2004. Always one for trying my produce, I popped a leaf into my mouth. ‘No, this can’t be right!’ I thought as I chewed away, ‘ Spring greens are tough and bitter, but these are tender and sweet – like the heart of a good Savoy.’ I immediately tried one of the broccoli spears – ‘Unbelievable – sweet, creamy, subtle. Almost like.. asparagus!’. I couldn’t believe it – just a couple of weeks before hand I was considering consigning these to the compost heap as a bad bet. But now, after 11 months of cultivation I would have been satisfied if I didn’t get another harvest from them, this one cut had made it all worth while.

How best to show off this wonderful crop… Not really a difficult question. With Pauline around I was on for cooking a vegetarian dish anyway, and the best way to promote these would be in a broccoli and mushroom risotto.

I’ve taken 2 subsequent harvests from the sideshoots. These were purple and much more abundant. Although the flavour was nothing to rival that first cut, but still better than you can get from the supermarket. The bed has since been fed with a high nitrogen fertiliser and the plan changed to plant the garlic in a new location. The broccoli has been given a reprieve – potentially until the middle of May when it will be replaced with Celeriac, although I’ll be surprised if I get any more cropping past the end of April.


Broad Beans Flowering in April

My Broad Beans have obviously developed something of a cult following. As you can see, they are flowering away quite merrily and the majority have survived the mixed winter weather with a tolerable attrition rate. Hopefully, we should be on for a good crop in a couple of months.




Mushroom & Broccoli Risotto (serves 3)

This is an excellent way to use up those old mushrooms left over in the fridge – they have an excellent full flavour, but a dreadful texture. Alternatively, replace them with a packet of dried porcini, finely chopped and soaked for 15 mins in boiling water. Retain the liquid to use instead of some of the stock. Fresh broccoli only requires a minimum of cooking to retain the flavour and texture. When cooked, it should be dark green in colour and retain a degree of crunch.

1 onion, chopped
1 oz butter
1 leek, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
6-8 oz old mushrooms, cleaned
4 oz fresh mushrooms with a good flavour, e.g. shitake or brown chestnut, sliced
mixed herbs, bruised & chopped
9 oz Arborio Rice
1 glass dry white wine
1 ½ pt hot vegetable stock
8 oz fresh sprouting Broccoli spears
freshly ground black pepper to season


· Melt the butter in a large pan with a drop of oil, to prevent burning.
· Add the onions and sweat off until translucent.
· Add the garlic & leeks and cover, continuing to sweat gently.
· Place the old mushrooms in a food processor and chop very finely. Stir into the onion mix, along with the sliced shitake mushrooms and herbs. Season with some ground black pepper. Continue to cook for a couple of minutes with the lid on.
· Remove the lid and stir in the rice. Ensure that is it coated with the buttery mushroom liquor and cook gently for 2 minutes.
· Add the white wine and boil hard for 1 minute until all the alcohol has evaporated.
· Add about 1/3rd of the stock, bring to the boil stirring regularly, then turn down to a simmer.
· Regularly stir the rice, adding additional stock as necessary. Do not let the rice stick to the base of the pan.
· The rice will be almost cooked after approx 20 minutes. Add a little more stock and stir again. Place the broccoli on top of the rice and replace the lid. The broccoli will cook in 3 – 5 minutes in the steam. Stir once or twice to prevent sticking.


Add the Broccoli to the risotto

· Once cooked, the rice will retain a little bite – it shouldn’t be soft and fluffy. The risotto should be creamy in texture, but not wet. There should be no excess liquid in the pan.
· Season with ground black pepper and serve with a strong grated cheese.

By Special Request

Alex

Nag, Nag, Nag…

Since Alex was born, all I seem to get from certain people (yes, you know who you are,) is whinging. “What’s happening? What’s she been doing? Where are the photos? Why haven’t you updated your blog?”

Advanced data mining techniques have determined the demographic profile of these people to be single white females who have no children, working in the Finance sector, named Michelle.

My response to these questions is quite straightforward, although the uncensored version is probably not publishable. I had committed to maintain this blog on a monthly basis, and this I have continued to do. We appreciate everyone’s interest in Alex’s progress, but over the past few weeks we have been concentrating on more pressing things, all baby related, and have struggled with such luxuries as sleeping and remembering to eat. Consequently maintaining this blog on a more frequent basis hasn’t really rated. However, as things are starting to settle down into something of a routine I finally find myself with time to provide an update on what’s been happening over the last few weeks.

We couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital. We had planned to come home a day earlier, but overnight complications with the breastfeeding highlighted another day would be beneficial to all parties. Unfortunately our plan for an early get-away on the Wednesday was scuppered by the fact that half the hospital wanted to be discharged at the same time, so we didn’t leave before 5:00pm. This is, of course, just a money spinning trick of the local hospital, encouraging you to pump extortionate amounts of money the ‘pay and display’ in order that they can subsidise their inadequately funded health services.


Coming Home

As we left the hospital, I was struck by 2 surprises. I had anticipated feelings of fear & trepidation – how could they just let you walk out of the maternity ward after a couple of days with a real live baby? But no, I was overcome with a feeling that everything was OK, and how natural it all felt. This was very unexpected. The second surprise was just how heavy a car seat is to carry, even for a short distance and with no baby. Obviously a gap in the market here to be exploited.


The first couple of weeks were, well let’s just say ‘up and down’. You really are thrown in at the deep end of a very reactive situation, and boy, is that learning curve steep! 20 minutes to change that first nappy, 30 minutes to get her properly dressed, every minute of the day (and night) is spent focused on the baby, and you have no time for anything else. You’ll do anything to stop her from crying, and are so grateful when she finally falls asleep.



Great When She's Asleep

Of course, this kind of existence is not sustainable, and you must ‘Evolve or Die’.


Not so good when she's awake...

Fortunately for all concerned, the former prevailed, thanks to the assistance of friends & relatives.


Help from Grandad

When things were at their lowest, we were forced to do the one thing that we had been dreading – go out. For 2 weeks we had been shut away inside, but now needs must (we had run out of milk), we must face the outside world. Of course, in a way I had been looking forward to this moment for 9 months - at last I could legitimately claim my ‘Parent & Child’ premium parking space at the supermarket. But how were we going to cope? Alex wouldn’t stay quiet for more than a few minutes and needed feeding and changing so often we should have put her on a conveyor belt. This was one of those situations when your fears are totally unfounded, and ‘problems’ that you foresee are blown totally out of proportion. This happened to be the most relaxing day we had had for 2 weeks. As soon as she got into the car, Alex was fast asleep. She was paraded around Tescos, collecting comments from admirers on the way, waking up every now and then for a few seconds just to fall asleep again. That evening she fell asleep at 9:30 and slept solidly until 3:00am – a record which she still hasn’t broken.


We Like Shopping

We were quite surprised to find that Alex actually liked her bath times. Our research had indicated that she would scream her head off until she realised that bath time was an opportunity to splash water all over Daddy, and only then would it be fun.


And We Like Bath Time

With all the skill of a finely honed Formula One pit crew, nappy changes are now happening in seconds. Unfortunately (and to continue the F1 analogy), the FIA are about to change the rules again, doing away with the high-cost disposables and bringing in the reusable ‘cloth’ option, sacrificing speed and race predictability in favour of environmentally friendly option with the long term cost savings. Unlike the FIA changes, this will introduce greater downforce and make Alex look like a diminutive sumo wrestler.


New Surroundings

In the last week things have definitely moved on a pace. Alex is now rapidly approaching 8lb and has outgrown her first sets of clothing. Some of the screaming has been replaced by cooing, and she starts to take interest in things around her. However, she has already indicated that she is fed up with the electioneering and retains some of her best screams for the evening news.

As of Tuesday, she was officially registered as Alexandra Elizabeth Bonfield – in ASDA, of all places. I mean, I know that supermarkets are branching out, but this is ridiculous!


Dressed To Go Out

A Month In...

I remember my first driving lesson as though it were yesterday (…this is, of course, an exaggeration – over the past few weeks, time has become somewhat blurred, especially the night time, and I no longer know when yesterday really was…).

I was sitting in a red Metro with my AA driving instructor. He had collected me from my house and we had taken a quiet back road into Harden. We exchanged a few pleasantries on the way, talking about the weather, my previous driving experience, etc, and after a few miles, he pulled over. “Do you know what a clutch is?” he said. It was clear from his tone that I needed to show some degree of rudimentary automotive knowledge before he would let me behind the wheel.

For the next 10 minutes I lectured him on the fundamentals of the manual clutch operation, including my opinions on its inefficiencies, particularly in relation to the ‘human element’, and my surprise that after all these years of improvement in other areas of torque transfer and control mechanisms, such as differentials and viscous couplings, that a more appropriate solution hadn’t yet been adopted as a standard for everyday driving. I followed this up with my opinions on the benefits of automatic transmission and my lack of comprehension over its adoption in the UK, unlike in the States, where manuals are virtually unheard of. (A naïve view this may have been with the additional cost implications of an auto, but a view that I back to this day. After all, I’m currently driving 18,000 miles a year, mostly on a combination of dual carriageway and inner city roads at rush hour. Although I love to drive, this constant stop-start motoring isn’t exactly relaxing, but switching to an auto made the trip an absolute dream, and the benefits far outweighed the additional running costs. After all, is there really a point to driving a manual unless you have a performance car? I really don’t think so. Give yourself a break & trade it in for an auto next time. You’ll be glad you did. I digress.)

After I had finished answering that one question, my instructor, looking rather shell-shocked, decided that he didn’t need to ask me any more of his questions, put down his clipboard and indicated that it was time to start driving. We swapped seats and I carefully followed his instructions. I had been practising with Kath for several weeks – cruising around quiet car parks on Sunday mornings, random pop quizzes on the Highway code, that kind of thing. But somehow, this was different. I was driving in a different car, on a road, with an instructor. Somehow this made everything more real, and more scary.

I was focusing hard. Remembering everything that I had previously learned and read. I was so pleased that I had pulled away so smoothly – no bunny hopping down the road for me, oh no! My instructor would quickly recognise that I had potential. I was zipping down the road at 15 mph and constantly making steering adjustments. I thought I was doing quite well, but it was like driving a dodgem.

“We are going to speed up in a moment” said the instructor. Speed up? I was struggling to keep the car on the right side of the road at this speed. This was all a lot harder than I had expected. I was doing fine practising in the car parks, but somehow this was very different.

“How far in front of the car are you focusing?” he asked. This was not something that I had actually considered. I thought about what he had said and then realised that I was staring down the bonnet on the car and focusing on the road about 5 yards ahead.
“Try and focus a little further down the road. In a short time you’ll automatically focus 30 yards in front of the car. You need to loosen your grip on the steering wheel” I looked at my grip on the wheel – my knuckles were white. I tried to relax my grip and continued on.

Down the road was a sign for a sharp turn to the right, and painted on the road was the word ‘SLOW’. As a law-abiding learner driver, I duly applied the brakes. “You really don’t have to slow down for this corner – I know that’s what the sign says, but it’s aimed at drivers travelling faster than 10 mph. I know there’s a lot to think about, but you are trying too hard. What you need to do is relax. Take one hand off the wheel”

My instructor spent the next 10 minutes getting me to relax. If I focus on things further down the road, I have more time to respond and have a much smoother driving experience. I don’t need to worry about what’s happening immediately in front of the car – those minor speed and steering corrections become second nature. In that instant of realisation, my driving lesson changed. All of a sudden everything became more relaxed and easier. Everything just flowed.

No doubt you are wondering why I’m recalling these experiences, Ronnie Corbett style, as I sit here in my armchair, wearing my golf sweater and big glasses.

These memories hadn’t crossed my mind for years. But after Alex was born, all of a sudden there they were. To me, a clear parallel (to others, maybe not so clear, but after all, they’re my memories…). You know bringing up a baby for the first time is going to be hard. Everybody says so. You’ve read it in all the books. You’ve ‘practised’ on other children. You know what to expect – the sleep deprivation, the lack of routine, the anguish, the stress, the disruption, the change. You’ve done everything that you can - you are as prepared as you can be. But you can never be prepared. It doesn’t matter what people say or how much support they give, you’re there all alone, staring down the bonnet, trundling along at 15 mph, holding on to the wheel as tightly as you can. You know you need to go faster, but you just can’t do any more without losing control. Fortunately, as with the driving, all of this starts to pass when you feel that you can start to relax. Start to accept some of the change and loss of control. Only then can you move on.

Alex is now a month old. Over the past week things have begun to turn. A pattern of behaviour is starting to emerge, and with that the opportunity to plan and get on with the day-to-day things in life, all the things that were taken for granted only a few weeks ago. The support that we have received over the past few weeks has been unparalleled, and without it things would have been harder. But the new realisation of parenthood is something that you’ve got to adapt to yourself in your own time, and anybody who tells you that bringing up your first child in those early weeks isn’t going to be that bad really doesn’t know what they’re talking about!

Who's The Daddy?

Alex Bonfield

We are finally pleased to announce the arrival of our Baby girl, Alex.

Born just after 11:00pm on Sunday, 6th March 2005 (yes, Mother's Day) weighing 6lb 9oz


Mother & Baby doing well

Kath is recovering well from an eventful labour which, from waters breaking to final delivery lasted 19 hours.

Alex is feeding well, and already starting to show the predictable traights of a combined Bonfield - Evans gene pool.


I am Environmentally Friendly

It is apparent that Alex shares many of her parent's characteristics, such as her father's lack of hair and dodgy complexion, and her mother's impressive lung capacity & loud voice.

Go! Go! Go!

The immortal words of Murray Walker. Not exactly Formula 1. Probably closer to Formula milk. But Cunning Plan no. 365 was invoked last night with surprising success. After the number of failed attempts to induce labour this week, any success was going to be surprising.

The first week of the Formula 1 calendar. A weekend's motor racing at Albert Park, Melbourne. The early and late season races are so annoying -you can't seem them live because of the time difference and you end up overhearing the results on the news the following day before you've had a chance to watch the re-runs. The new qualifying rules and mixed weather had thrown the grid into turmoil with Schumacher at the back, and the first couple of races always throw a few upsets with new cars and new drivers. If only I had an excuse to be up at 3:00am....

After a couple of false alerts towards the end of last week, I had concluded that dog walks and curry alone just weren't cutting it. But combined? I'd planned an afternoon's walk, followed by a trip to B&Q. Pushing a trolley up and down the aisles was bound to have an effect. All followed up with another curry. Surely this must do the job. So the plan was set. Kath would finish the Murgh Haleem and roll around in fits of ginger induced contractions. By 3:00am, she'd be in full swing and I could watch the Australian Grand Prix, whilst fetching extra pillows and making cups of tea.

However, I was overruled and Kath weighed in with a plan so subtle, that it would never have crossed my mind. So cunning, that Baldric would have pinned a tail on it and called it a fox. Having said this, she still wanted the curry.

"What we need to do", she said in a matter of fact sort of way, "is change the bedding". This went completely over my head. I couldn't under stand - was is it the colour or the pattern that the labour objected to? Or maybe it was the smell....

"Psychology" she said. "If we put on clean bedding, my waters will break and make a horrible mess. The clean bedding will have to go straight in the washing machine. It's obvious!"

Inspired. I was speechless. Although I did adapt the plan slightly by allowing her to change the bedding herself. The extra stretching could only help, after all.

I was awoken with a sudden gush. Well, not exactly. The plan had worked! As the waters cascading across the bedroom floor, I checked my alarm clock. It was 4:00am. An hour late. Ah well, I suppose you can't have everything. I can always catch the Grand Prix in the afternoon's rerun.

Kath phoned the hospital. "Oh yes, come in as soon as you can and we'll check you over". At 5:45am we arrived at the maternity ward. The midwife confirmed the events of the morning, and that Bump was well. "We'll keep an eye on how things progress over the next couple of hours. Just lie back and watch the TV". The TV was duly switched on, only to display the final Grand Prix results on the News.

After a period of monitoring, it was decided that Bump was in no hurry to make an appearance, and the best thing to do would be to wait it out at home. "If nothing happens, come back in at 9:00am tomorrow and we'll induce you", the midwife said.

Now the clock really is ticking. Here starteth the longest day....