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Salad time

It's amazing how quickly you can start to make use of some plants after planting. We planted some lettuce about 18 days ago and today we made our first little salad with it. Looking forward to when more of the salad can come from the garden :)

It's growing

The wind last week strained the little plants that we planted. But most are strong fighters! I think that we have lost 2 little basils and possibly 2 peppers, but I think the peppers have been killed by natural causes (i.e. snails!)

The coriander seeds are doing great!

I deliberately planted way more than I want, but as they grow I will pull most of them out and leave just 1 or 2 in the place that I want them. I clearly didn't have much faith in them to grow..

Starting our vegetable and herb garden

- See this post on our new website. -

So last weekend we decided it as time to get some veggies and herbs planted. I have always intended to be someone who has useful plants growing in my garden, so we will see how it goes :)

We bought some of these amazingly cool stacking pots. I intend to plant strawberries in the majority of the space, but the nursery didn't have any decent looking plants when we were there.

The amazing thing about planting is how different plants either help or hinder growth of the plants around them. Luckily nothing that we bought disliked anything else that we had, but we wanted to get the most benefit from how we planted. This is the companion planting diagram that we came up with:

Yes, we are nerds like that. Good couple right?

So the strawberries and some of the lettuce and spinach as well as coriander seeds have gone in the pots, with the rest going in the ground.

 Unfortunately for us, it seems to have the windiest week we've had in cape Town for a long time. Apparently flimsy little basil seedlings don't do too well in the wind..

I don't think this little guy is going to survive, but the others seem to be doing better after a calmer day today.

Follow the progress of our little garden and learn from our mistakes as we go :)

Everybody makes a mess sometimes...

New design

I'm busy working on a new design, hopefully released soon :)

Jolly jammer biscuits - vanilla + strawberry {recipe}

- See this post on our new website -

Vanilla biscuits sandwiched together with strawberry jam. This recipe is based on the recipe by the owner of Queen of Tarts, a cafe and bakery in Cape Town that I am still waiting to go visit.

200g butter
100g icing sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla essence
250g cake flour (+ extra for rolling)
1 tsp baking powder
strawberry jam

Preheat oven to 180C

Beat the butter, egg yolks and icing together until you have a thick, creamy batter. Add vanilla essence,  flour and baking powder. Beat until a dough is formed.
Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
Roll out the dough to about 5mm and then cut out your desired shape. Use a smaller cutter to cut out the centre pieces from half of the biscuits.
Place these on a baking tray and bake for about 15 minutes. Keep a close eye on them. I left both rounds of mine in for a little bit too long. Even so, they were still yummy :)
Once cooled, spoon jam onto the base biscuit and then top with the cut-out biscuit. Sprinkle with icing sugar.
I got about 16 double biscuits, but it depends on how big you make them.

Lemon icing variation:
Mix icing sugar with lemon juice until a thick but smooth paste is formed. Spoon this onto the base biscuit and then sandwich as before.
Enjoy :)