A busy couple of days

We seem to have had a busy couple of days. On Wednesday we finally got to the garden centre. The visit clarified some of our ideas of what veg the Fox is going to try growing this year, and how. Planting the veg in the garden seems a bit of a waste of time. Half the time the ground is just too wet which means we can't get up to monitor how they're doing, or sometimes even harvest them. Last year's carrots he did in a trough on the patio part of the garden, near the house. It was far more successful, & more satisfying for the Fox as he could keep a careful eye on their progress. He's thinking of doing a similar thing this year, perhaps having a go at spuds as well as carrots & maybe a few other vegetables.

Meanwhile we bought a few extra herbs to replace the annuals that had died last year & the few casualties of the harsh winter. So yesterday I was busily planting up in the front garden. I was particularly pleased to get some chervil, which I've never tried, & some bergamot & borage to give a bit of colour to the garden in summer.

Yesterday we had a trip into Lancaster, where there is a specialist shop for Chinese & Thai foods. I've never been in before. The Fox had been a couple of times when I was having my empty chair sessions.

It's quite an amazing shop. Here there were shelves of soy sauce of various varieties. The mixture of sauces, noodles, flours etc was incredible. The fresh veg had unusual Chinese veg. There were pickles of all sorts, frozen Korean & other eastern fish. We eventually escaped with just three items, some chilli bean sauce (which I needed for a recipe & was the reason for the trip), a large bottle of light soy bottle (you can only get dark soy sauce in our local supermarkets) & some fresh lemongrass. The lemongrass is so much fresher than any I've seen elsewhere, still a bit green with a fairly tender centre. The latter I'm aware of as I've just used some to make us a Thai green chicken curry for dinner tonight.

I wish I could feel the same buzz doing our weekly shop at the supermarket. The only time I usually regard food shopping as fun is when we go to the Farmers' Market or when we use a corner shop such as our local fishmonger or the butcher. It's exciting to see such an unusual range of products, half of which I boggle at what you do with them.

Today we're back to the Pub. It's birthday celebration time once more, the birthdays being Fran (last Friday) & mine (tomorrow), so there should be a good turn-out.