Air Fryer New Potatoes

 We had our first early potatoes 🥔 😋 for tea last night.

They are Homeguard potatoes.  Developed during WW2 and named after the Dads Army civilian soldierss who guarded Blighty by day and night.

I once heard of a local Homeguard volunteer in Lancashire on night manoeuvres shouted:

"Halt.  Who goes there?"

The recipient replied:

"MOO!"

Any road or any way:

We cut the new potatoes in half and placed them in a plastic zip lock bag in vegetable oil, garlic granules, a chopped up one of our homegrown Japanese winter onions and a couple of sprigs of freshly cut Rosemary.

J popped them in the air fryer basket and cooked them until the potatoes were soft yet crispy.   They were beautiful:

New potatoes imbibed in vegetable oil and mixed with Japanese onions, garlic granules and sprigs of Rosemary.

Air fryer set for twenty minutes or until they are cooked how you like them.  We just stopped it now and again, gave them a shake and decided between ourselves that they were ready.

A feast for a queen or a king.

Complete with a Lidl tin of corned beef.

It was beautiful.  We still have some new spudatoes and half a tin of corned beef in the fridge.  So we are going to have the same meal again tonight.

Do you cook your new potatoes in the air fryer?  Have you made bread in it?  Aren't air fryers brilliant?

"Here's Some I Planted Earlier".

 I remembered that I had planted some seed potatoes a couple of weeks earlier than the one's I harvested.

My trusty long handled fork and me found this hidden treasure:

Newly discovered buried potatoes treasure.

Enough to fill a plant pot.

Newly washed and ready to be steamed or placed in the air fyer.

Our first meal of new potatoes at the end of May.

Normal service is resumed.

Are you eating your new 🥔 potatoes yet?

Not Ready Yet!

Very small new potatoes in a plant pot.

Usually we are digging and eating  our homegrown new potatoes 🥔 by the end of May.

Yesterday when weeding I unearthed a few potatoes 🥔  from under a flowering potato plant.

To my disappointment they are far too small to harvest yet.

They have obviously not had enough rain or water when I watered them during the very dry spell.

We will just have to wait or take the frozen 🍟 out of the freezer 🤔. 

 

Heavy Horses And Songs From The Woods

 Tasker from A Yorkshire Memoir wrote an excellent post on Jethro Tull yesterday.

One of Blackpool's finest and a super prog rock band.

I have seen Jethro Tull five times and the Martin Barre band once in 2019.

I last saw Jethro Tull in 2022.  Ian Anderson can still play the flute magnificently but unfortunately his voice is a whisper of what it used to be.

They still keep the Jethro Tull name but without Martin Barre they don't seem to be that great band I loved.

In 2019 I saw The Martin Barre Band at A New Day Festival in Kent.

I particularly like the vocalist Dan Crisp who reminds me so much of a young Ian Anderson.  

Here's two songs from probably my two favourite Tull albums:

Leek Planting Time.

 

Leeks dropped into holes and I puddled them in with my watering can with no rose attached.

Wood dibber.

Holes made with wood dibber to drop the leeks in.  The holes create girth and a wide white sock.

Leeks in plastic modules ready to be planted. 

I couldn't find any leek plants at the flower show but we managed to source them from a garden centre.  

My new greenhouse/potting still awaits it's construction and I haven't been able to sow my own leeks this year. Bought vegetables plants are still very inexpensive especially when you get at least fifty meals out of the trays of leeks.

It's monsoon season again this week here and also very windy.  At least the vegetables and plants will like all this very much needed rain.

Leeks originate in Egypt.  Saint David told Welsh soldiers to wear leeks in their helmets to ward off evil.  There are also tales of Welsh archers  fighting in fields of leeks. This is probably why the leek is a national symbol of Wales?

I bought two trays of them and of course I purchased far too many.  Just for a change.😀

We counted over fifty of them.

Any surplus ones will be fed to the pigs.  I fed some going to seed leeks to them yesterday and they devoured them.  Nothing goes to waste.  Even the green onion tops are ate.  In return they provide us with copious amounts of fym.

What winter vegetables do you grow?  

I can't wait for our home grown and home-made leek and potato soup.

The plastic modules trays cost me 3 Euros each.  Where else could you get fifty leeks for six Euros.

I will give them a couple of handfuls of poultry manure pellets and hand weed them and water and maybe some of our fym when it's ready to use in September.

Organic vegetable gardening is a very inexpensive hobby that you reap lots of homegrown and pesticide and chemical free.

A Visit To The Garden Festival.

 We went to The Home And Garden Festival at Cork Racecourse at Mallow on Friday.

It cost me thirty Euros for the two of us and Bronte got in free.

Here's  some photos for your perusal dear readers:

I showed the ticket staff my photo on my phone and they knocked a fiver off the entrance fee.  J did the same saving a tenner for both of us.

Alpacas.

Who needs Facebook when you've got Facecook?  We had a tray of jockeys whips each for four Euros a tray. 

A carved deer.  Some of the animals cost 5000 Euros.  A carved race horse cost that.

The landscaped gardens.

This oratory construction reminded me of stone monks cells I have seen on the Slea Head near Dingle in County Kerry.

Peppermint Farm greenhouse.  They are based here in West Cork. 

How is that for a water feature?

Japanese/ Chinese tea house.

Very nice.

I love the stone round tower.  There are quite a few in Ireland.  Some very old ones. Sixty five to be precise.

Very nice.

Decking and Bonsai type planting.

Yellow Peony.  The aroma is divine.

White Peony. 

Japanese  raked sand.  Someone's got it off to a fine art.

Round drystone tower again.  It's  a beauty!

A rascal up a tree.  

Hansel and Gretel type house.

Bonsai.

More Bonsai.  Only 5000 Euros.  "I'll have two please".😀

It was a good half a day out and Bronte got lots of strokes and cuddles.  

Why go to Chelsea when you can go to Cork Race course?

Bronte Returns To Muckross To See The Summer Flowers and A Bride And A Groom.

We visited Muckross estate and gardens again on Thursday.

"One Of Those Days In England" (Ireland) by Roy Harper began to play on my mental jukebox.

The weather was gorgeous and we went for a walk with our beloved Golden Retriever Bronte.  Here's some photos for your perusal:

Jerusalem Sage.

The old glass house or the place for the hot house flowers.  I have seen them play twice.  The band that is.

Alliums.

Muckross Abbey.

It was like a princesses wedding.  The bride looked stunningly beautiful.  J asked if we could put the photo on social media and the bride said: "Of course!"

A surrey with a fringe on top in Killarney.  Not Oklahoma but good old County Kerry.

Muckcross Abbey graveyard  in the distance.


 

Parched lawns like the summer of 1976.

Beautiful Rhododendrons.

The old lad who writes this blog and his four legged friend  Bronte.

I hope you enjoyed the photos?

Presents From A Northern Irish Supermarket.

Newcastle Brown Ale and Vimto.
 

Number one son and his girlfriend went to Balmoral Show near Belfast on Friday and Saturday.

They stayed in a hotel overnight and we pet sitted and checked and fed and watered the livestock and vegetables and plants.

They came back with northern English goodies from Sainsbury's supermarket.  All things we don't seem to get here since Brexit.  

I do some times source Newcy Brown from a off licence in County Kerry.  They get it from the north.

Bill Wyman said when he moved to France.  The one thing he missed is Piccalilli.  I miss real ale and bitters like Newcastle Brown.

Vimto was invented in Manchester and it's a cordial and I have seen it for sale in Dorset and Kent.

Perhaps next time they go up there they will bring us some proper meat and potato pies?

A Semi Wild Part Of The Garden.

 Companion planting with garden cultivars and Mother Nature's free plants.

It's a constant battle with nature when your gardens are in between fields and there's always something self seeding in the gravel in the drive and garden.

I don't use weedkillers and I don't mind a Daisy or ten and also the Buttercups and Foxgloves.

Some times I strim the grass and weeds/ wild flowers.  I planted shrubs like Hypericum, Fuchsia, Hebes, Rugosa roses and perennials like Shasta Daisies and Osteospermums Daisies.

I took the photo above and quite like the informal and pretty nature of the garden.  

It's also our pets cemetery where our beloved four legged friends have their eternal rest.

Do you let the wild flowers live with your cultivars?

Japanese Winter Onions Pizza.

 I bet you can't get Senshyu winter onion pizzas in Domino's?

You can if you live at our humble abode in the countryside next to the next sea:

Winter onions growing happily.  The yellow plants are a variety of Sedum.

Four freshly picked and peeled winter onions.

Blog readers of this blog will remember I posted about onion pizza back in 2018.

I bought some wood fired onion pizza 🍕 at The Night Of The Prog Rock Festival at Loreley in Germany 🇩🇪 in 2017.  I enjoyed it very much.

When I got back to the Emerald Isle we had a go at making our own onion pizza.

It's easy to make.  We didn't use any tomato puree and we used a supermarket bought base.  It's a good way of using up your onions and it's completely vegetarian:

Onion pizza 🍕 topped with cheese.

It was very tasty and we only had to buy the base and the cheese.

It's good to eat and make something with no preservatives that makes your skin itchy.

I liked the onion pizza.  J pulled her face and said she didn't like it 

You can't win them all.

A Ride Out Around Beara And A Dog Walk In Kenmare.

 It was scorchio again on Sunday.  Two of us and Bronte the Golden Retriever had a ride out over to the Beara peninsula opposite us and we stopped for breakfast in Castletown Beare.

Bronte particularly enjoyed the cooked sausages we saw.

Then we drove over through Ardgroom and Lauragh and on to Kenmare.

The wild purple ponticum Rhododendrons seemed to be putting on a floral display for us.

They love the acidic peaty Irish soil and become a pernicious weed problem in Kerry and Killarney especially.  Costing millions of Euros to try to eradicate this beautiful invasive shrub.

Then we drove to Kenmare and walked a short saunter next to Kenmare bay.

People were swimming and walking and cycling and a big John Deere tractor had a tedder making hay in MAY.  The dust rose from the parched dry fields.

I took a few photos for your perusal:

Bronte wanting to go for a swim.

Kenmare Bay.

Swimmers and paddlers.

A Happy To Chat Bench.

No camping but your welcome to enjoy the surroundings.

I have never known a Spring like it.  There's supposed to be some very welcome showers tomorrow and a deluge of rain at the weekend.

My pot plants are suffering from a lack of rain and my attempts at watering is not achieving very much.  

If only it could just rain at night.