Sally Vincent’s Diary of Food and Life on a Devon Farm.
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Bread
Last week brought a huge treat. My dear friend Felicity invited me to bake bread in her wonderful bread oven. Having cooked for years enthusiastically both professionally and for friends and family, my knowledge of bread making would fit tidily on the back of a large postage stamp. The reasons are twofold, or maybe three;…
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July in Jersey
Gentle rain and the valley is green again. Soft weather mists the air, grass begins to grow at last. The sheep come home. Donkeys, sleek in their summer coats flourish on such meagre fare. Bantam chicks grow up fast and new hens settle in. A fine cockerel has gone missing, a feast, I fear, for…
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Seville Orange Marmalade
My favourite marmalade recipe, the one I use year after year comes from Jane Grigson’s beautiful “Fruit Book” first published by Michael Joseph in 1982: the simplest, easiest and best-flavoured marmalade, she says, I agree. Scrub 1 ½ kilos of Seville oranges and put them in a pan with 3 ½ litres of water. Simmer…
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Heat Wave and Summer Food
Day after day the sun beats down unblinking from a cloudless, rainless, azure sky. Grass has long since stopped growing and crunches brownly underfoot. The garden quietly fries and the fields are barren. We continue to move sheep from field to field as we imagine we see a tiny haze of green appear. Each day…
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Open Garden
Our garden at Bramble Torre will open next weekend, June 12th & 13th, in aid of the National Garden Scheme. This is our second year. We passed the test again last year after following those strict instructions to “weed, weed, weed” and here we are in the Yellow Book once more. Oh my, have I…
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Grey May
A warm wonderful week in France raised our hopes for a clement month of May at home. Alas we were mistaken. We sailed from Roscoff in sunshine and 26 degrees, passengers sunbathing on the deck. Then, as we approached English shores, a thick mist engulfed us, swirling, whirling, twirling, it wrapped itself around the ship.…
