Tag: herbs

The new routine

On By geordieroscoeIn garden3 Comments

Way-aye, Roscoe here again.

Nowt much has happened this week. Except May finished.

We’ve had morning cuddles and cucumber, a run, and breakfast. Then we’ve had a snooze or three.

I have to say, the amount of breakfast varies. Sometimes we get just three bits of veggies from the fridge (it’s colder, and not as fresh) and sometimes we get lots of little bits, mostly tasters, from the garden. They’re fresh and warm. That’s because the sun’s been shining on them, Mam hasn’t heated them up or anything.

Things from the garden I’ve identified: vetch, dandelion, plantain, grass (sometimes Mam picks a few very long stalks to include in our breakfast), kale leaves (different from the fridge ones), carrot leaves, strawberry leaves, hawthorn leaves, and hazel leaves. I think Mam was trying those out on us, and since we liked them, she brought twigs of hawthorn the next day, soft new growth, which I rather liked. There are also usually a couple of herby leaves, like mint, rosemary, lavender, parsley or thyme. And sometimes basil from the kitchen, because that grows indoors.

  • Mam’s compost bay and the herb bed
  • Carrots in a big pot
  • This new kale is called ‘Ragged Jack’

It’s been hot and sunny, and we’ve been out in the garden every afternoon once it’s nearly shadowy. I reckon Mam cut down on breakfast because we spend the afternoon eating grass, but it doesn’t quite work like that, Mam, because we’d be eating hay if we weren’t outside. We get hay when we come back in, at any rate.

Mam says to make the most of it because it’s going to get cooler and rainy next Wednesday onwards. She’s a bit pleased because she’s run out of rainwater to water the pots with. She has to use the mains instead. You’ll probably understand what that means.

Mam’s been spending lots of time in the garden growing things and cutting things and making things. It’s good for her, I think. Apparently we can come out of this avirus lockdown a little, but Mam isn’t because the scientists say it’s too early. She seems a bit worried by something she learnt the other day, but she hasn’t explained it to me, save that she has to have someone nearby who can come in to look after her when she’s ill.

Well, Auntie Vikki always did that, so I’m sure she’ll find someone else now that Auntie Vikki (and Auntie Claire) don’t live near us any more.

And there’s no sign of some new boys coming yet. We just have to be patient. As long as there’s enough cucumber and hay, Mam, we’ll be fine.

Have a nice week

love

Roscoe xxx

What are these green leaves?

On By geordieroscoeIn Food3 Comments

Hi, all.

One of the things Neville and I have got used to in the year we’ve been here is funny food. Winter is much the same as we were used to, but in summer, we get all sorts of stuff.

When we arrived, I don’t think Nev and I noticed what we got, to be truthful.  We got fed, and we seemed to be in a nice place, and settled, like.  I suppose it took us a month to start to relax, thinking we might be here for even longer than the last place we’d been at.  We liked it there, mind, it was very nice.  We got veggies and pellets and hay, and went out on the grass sometimes, so it was good.

Bertie
Biggles
Neville and Roscoe in the garden

We got veggies and pellets and hay here, but it tasted different and so did the water.  Nowadays it’s just water, mind.  I can’t tell you what the difference is, and I’ve forgotten anyway, it just was different.  The pellets are fine, too.  Yummy, in fact.  I look forward to getting them in the morning after we’ve had our run.  Builds up strength to tackle the veg.

I didn’t really notice that the veggies we got were different to start with, until we stopped getting them from the garden and settled to what I would call ‘normal’ food in winter. You know, cabbage, carrot, swede, that sort of stuff.  I don’t think we’ve had swede more than once here, though.  Lettuce, of course.  We get lots of different types of lettuce here, which is nice, nosing through the different flavours and textures. And carrot tops!  Those are yummy.  Maybe they’re my favourite.

But Mam throws in weird things, like pepper. It’s mostly red, but sometimes it’s orange or yellow.  I see Biggles and Bertie wolfing it down and I nose it a bit, and maybe nibble it, and Nev does too, and we exchange glances and leave it.  Although last week I did spot Neville eating a whole slice.  I got through about half of mine, so maybe it’s an acquired taste and we’re finally acquiring it.

We’ve discovered broccoli.  I thought it was posh cabbage to start with, but the others say it’s normal, and what’s cabbage, so I go along with it. It’s pretty yummy, really. Mam realised we liked the cabbagey things, I think.  We get kale, which we all like, and sometimes she does an ordinary cabbage, which we like but Biggles and Bertie turn their noses up at.  Strange boys.

What’s best though, is the weird things we get from the garden. We’re getting them again, now.  Mam apologised when it had been hot for ages that all the home grown things had run out.  Now they’ve grown again and we’re eating posh spinach called chard, which has interesting colour stems, and posh lettuce called frizee, which has crinkly edges to the leaves. And we get loads of herby things and some leaves from the fruit trees and bushes.

Biggles eats a Bean
Neville

And beans.  Now, who on earth wants to eat beans?  Berties and Biggles, that’s who.  The leaves are great, mind, I like those, but the long pods and the beans inside, no thank you.  Mam even pulled a trick on us on Saturday when she gave us the pods without the beans in.  They were a bit crunchy, and again, those other piggies munched them down, but Nev and I tried it politely then peed on it. I mean…

There’s this new thing that came this week… paper outsides of corn cobs.  I’ve realised that the tiny corn cobs that haven’t grown up to be big and sweet are actually edible, but I never knew the corn came in a delicious wrapping.  I’m looking forward to some more of that, I can tell you.

Who’d have know there were so many nice things to eat?

And I haven’t even mentioned root celery and stalk celery… another time, maybe.

See ya!

Roscoe

O for Oregano #AtoZChallenge

On By PercyIn a to z challenge, Food3 Comments

Percy finds the lavender
Percy finds the lavender

Hello and welcome to George’s Guinea Pig World.  I’m Percy, and I run this place with Kevin.  George set it up in 2009, which is before I was born.  I live in a nice cage next to Oscar, and his brother Midge lives next to Kevin.

Our A to Z theme is “Our Favourite Things”

oO is for Oregano

Oregano is a green or yellow or green-and-yellow herb, and it grows in our garden in lots of places, but I haven’t found where yet. It smells and tastes lovely. It’s definitely one of our favourite things to eat.

All the boys love herbs.  I didn’t really know about them before I came here, but we get herbs most days, especially in the summer when they come straight from the garden.  During the winter Mummy brings a bunch in with her rustly bags and puts them in a pot of water.  That’s usually dill or parsley, though.  Maybe they don’t grow oregano in the winter.

Percy's birthday party in the kitchen
Percy’s birthday party in the kitchen

Sometimes when we have birthday cakes they have dried oregano in them that’s been soaked along with the pellets.  They are delicious!

Big Breakfasts

On By PercyIn Food4 Comments

Since I arrived in November, I got used to the things Mummy takes out from the white box for our breakfasts.  There’s usually celery, a few varieties of lettuce, or some cauliflower or broccoli, and there was dark green kale which was rather nice.  And carrots, and peppers and sometimes some other root vegetables. Sometimes Mummy would go outside and find us some fresh kale, which was really yummy.  And sometimes a few other leaves.

The last month we’ve been getting less and less from the white box, and more from the outside.  I have to say, I really like the leaves that come from outside, because they aren’t as cold and they’re much fresher.  Once we started going out in the garden I realised why.  They grow there!  They’re all around our runs, some of them under netting, some up poles and some against the fence.

The past three or four weeks we’ve been getting everything from outside.  And since Mummy said Midge and I needed to diet, we’ve not even been getting carrots, although there have been some carrot-like things on the end of some of the yummiest leaves we had.  I’m not sure what we’ve been eating, so I asked Kevin to explain.  Here he is with two breakfasts from last week.

On the left, the top leaves are runner bean leaves, which I love, but Percy and Oscar say they’ve had enough of.  There’s some lavender lying across, and some of one of the types of mint Mummy has.  There’s a pea shoot, and some oak-leaf lettuce from the garden, and an apple leaf, and I think we had a rudbeckia leaf as well.  That’s a big yellow flower with a brown cone in the centre (not a flat one that’s even bigger, that’s a sunflower).  We also had raspberry leaves that day but I must have eaten them.  The next day (on the right), Mummy rather overdid the pea shoots.  I think she pulled up a whole plant for us.  I ate quite a lot of it, but she eventually took the rest away.  We also have one of the other types of mint, swiss chard with its red stem, strawberry leaves, salsify leaves, lavender again (she knows I can’t get enough lavender if it comes in small portions) and I think she gave us a slice of carrot that day, which wasn’t from the garden.  The next day the carrot tops were from the garden with very tiny carrots, and we had curly endive, too.  Oh, Mummy also gave us a wildflower called nipplewort which grows wherever she wants to grow grass, but it’s very tasty and tastes a little like dandelion.  She gives us that too, when she has some nice leaves handy.  And a special treat is cucumber leaf, but at present she says there are cucumbers growing, so we mustn’t steal too many leaves or the plant will starve.

We also get fennel, parsley, oregano (two  types), and more wildflowers from the garden outside, like red clover and wild basil, and sow thistle (yum), and wild carrot, and vetch.

Is that okay, Percy?

Yes, thank you, Kevin.  With all that variety, I bet you’re not surprised I needed help describing it to you.