Buds are starting to appear on the fruit trees, ferns are bursting through the ground and there's the coconut smell of the bright yellow gorse flowers whenever the sun shines. We've made use of the sunshine by clearing the garden. It's stage two of the garden plan which should take us about five years to get looking presentable. This week we had friends to stay and they helped Gareth put in the chicken run. (These chickens are going to have one of the best views in the world.) They'll arrive once the passenger boat starts running in the next couple of weeks.
I've been working on the old entrance. I've been clearing brambles as thick as a 50p piece and as long as swimming pool. I'm constantly followed by a robin and a fat blackbird taking advantage of all the bugs and worms that are exposed as I pull rocks back.
Then this week the sunshine stopped. The forecast said snow (which we kind of ignored as it's so rare.) But it did snow and very heavily. Unfortunately it didn't stick. I had high hopes of building a sledge but there wasn't even enough for a snowball.
On our friends' last night we cooked pizzas in the wood fired oven. We had a few black bananas left and between them they came up with this recipe....which may become a post pizza tradition.
Wood fired bananas with fudge, chocolate and biscuits (serves 4)....
4 bananas
4 chunks of fudge (preferably Veronica Farm Fudge available here)
8 chunks of chocolate
4 chocolate digestive biscuits
Chop up the fudge and chocolate.
Make a slice down the middle of the bananas (leaving them in their skins.)
Stuff the bananas with the fudge and chocolate.
Wrap them tightly in foil. Pop them in the embers of the woodfired oven or barbecue for 5-7 minutes (or a 200'c) oven for 15 minutes (using oven gloves). Crush the biscuits in a bowl.
Carefully take the bananas out and very carefully unwrap the foil using oven gloves. Sprinkle the crushed biscuits over the top.
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