Seashell Trust abseil and zip wire challenge

I did it! And yes it was scary - or at least going over the edge at first was but then it was fantastic and I loved it! We had a wonderful day out, the weather was lovely, the family all came along to support me and I have already raised over £300 so a BIG thanks to everyone who has pledged money so far - it will all go towards a new sensory room for deafblind kids at the Seashell Trust. And if anyone else would still like to sponsor me you can donate online at www.justgiving.com/michelehart.

I am very proud of myself today.

Enjoying the fruits (or veg) of our labours

Our first proper growing season (apart from a few herbs in pots in previous years) and we are now starting to enjoy our first few meals made with wonderful fresh produce straight from the garden. It seems Martin is not only a great chef but a great gardener too - who'd have thought he had green fingers?

Am tucking into a lovely salad of lettuce and spring onions (pulled just 10 minutes ago) with tinned mackerel and some balsamic dressing and feeling very smug and healthy as I write this. But what else have we been feasting on of late?

The First Supper - see above - a lovely salad from the garden (apart from the tomatoes) with fresh home grown herbs and warm potatoes straight from the earth.

Our first baby carrots

Fantastic supper - great piece of rump steak with home grown potatoes, baby carrots and sprouting broccolli (all from the garden) - and a big dollop of Dijon mustard - yum!

Mr Green Fingers himself surveying his kingdom

Treacle and Thierry eyeing up the lawn - which clearly needs some more work!

Cheers & Bees

What a fantastic day I had yesterday. I was honoured to spend it with three fine gentlemen - Goerge Philiskirk, the Beer Doctor no less, the lovely John Axon of The Cheese Hamlet in Didsbury and his father, the BIG Cheese himself, Arthur Axon.

So with good company sorted, we then set out to educate food and drink writers across the North West with our fantastic cheese and beer matching roadshow - a selection of fine beers from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and of course good old Blighty, paired up with some amazing cheeses from The Cheese Hamlet. And what a revelation it was! Blimey, even those cynical boys at Manchester Confidential were blown away with Gordo declaring the choice of cheddar to be the best he had ever tasted and waxing lyrical about Worthington's White Shield and Brakspear Triple, perfectly matched with a fine Colston Basset Stilton. My own personal favourite? The stunning Frambozen raspberry beer from Belgium tasted alongside the divine, soft, runny, delicate flavours of St Felicien, an unpasteurised cow's milk cheese from France.

A great day was had by all - well apart from when I managed to lock my car keys in the boot in Manchester's Northern Quarter. Spectacular service from the RAC sorted us out in good time though. And then a hairy moment when I got stuck in some kind of nightmare scenario wandering up and down the metal fire escape at Manchester Confidential Towers only to find locked doors on each floor and thinking I could be trapped there forever.

And guess what - I get to do it all again today. Rowena Forbes, Neil Sowerby and the teams at both Smooth Radio and Key 103 are in for a right treat - as I kept saying yesterday, there's nothing like putting some cheers and bees together!

My first meal from the garden

What a great month it's been for the garden - lots of lovely sunshine and plenty of rain too - with the end result being that our first attempt at growing our own veggies is so far proving to be a huge success. My colleague Guy Watson of Riverford Organic would be proud of me!

We have an abundance of produce in various different stages of growth - spuds, tomatoes, radish (all munched, more on their way), lettuce, spring onions, broccoli, carrots, butternut squash, chillies, peppers and all sorts of different herbs in pots.

And last night was a cause for celebration - I enjoyed my first meal from the garden! How healthy I felt as I sat down to a delicious salad of Cos lettuce, spring onions, basil, coriander and hot Pink Fur Apple potatoes (with some tomatoes from Morrisons thrown in), all lovingly assembled by my 10 year old son who has long been someting of a gourmet but until last week showed no interest in learning cooking skills from his chef dad - suddenly after making scones at school he wants to do everything. Didn't he do a cracking job plating up my salad - and serving it with a glass of chilled water in a champagne flute?!

See if google knows what YOU like to do....

I have Twitter friend Whoopsie (http://z00ts-space.blogspot.com/2009/03/friday-fun-what-do-you-like-to-do.html) to thank for this bit of Friday fun. Give it a go:

1. Go to Google
2. Type in "(yourname) likes to"
3. Copy and paste the first 10 search results back into this email, and share the love

Here's my results (abd some personal comments which seemed necessary):

Michele likes to dance (true
Michele likes to sew (can't even sew my son's Beavers' badges on straight - husband has to unpick and redo!)
Michele likes to pile on the flower brooches (not really)
Michele likes the music (depends what it is)
Michele likes ball park food (? Is this dodgy pies and hot dogs?)
Michele likes to eat (of course)
Micheler likes hammers (scary!)
Michele likes to say that you've got to use your fun tickets (hear, hear)
Michele likes to shop (especially if bargains are involved)
Michele likes to do everything but she doesn't drink if you take her to a bar (the biggest lie of all!)

Give it a go, share the results via Twitter, Facebook or add your blog post's URL to the comments.

All's good in our garden today

What a lovely family day. Sunshine, a frustrating trip to Morrison's (okay nothing's perfect!) then back for sinful burger and chips with the kids for lunch (well it's better than Macdonalds!) then spent the afternoon in the garden preparing for our growing onslaught. Few fraught words over exact placement of new plastic greenhouse contraption due to arrive from ebay on Tuesday apparently - concerned it was taking up all my sun space on the decking for table and chairs and got cross! This was after had spent near on an hour with disposable gloves and a bin bag collecting stray dog shit from the entire winter season from grass and beds etc. Not pleasant! Back now aching furiously from this and lots of weeding. Boys spent most of the afternoon playing war between tree house and back door although a little help came our way somewhat reluctantly.
Dogs enjoyed being out with us all but Thierry has a serious problem with wanting to hump hs mum Treacle at the moment and there was at least one serious scrap on the the lawn as a result - can't say I blame Treacle.
So beds now all ready, greenhouse (plastic house) number one ready to go, Wilbur (God rest his soul, 10 years now since he left this earth and left me with an out of control bay tree via Dick Dock 'We don't have a Dick, we have a Richard') is back out sunbathing in the Spring sunshine, deck is brushed and awaiting a jet wash, tree house emptied on lots of sodden moulding books the kids had left in there all winter, grass clear of crap, new Forsythia (Dad, it's three years since you left us yesterday and this reminds me of you, sunny and yellow), washing line at the ready (including new nifty peg basket and pegs courtesy of Morrison's) and we're ready to go. Boys bathed, nice chicken roast dinner, bottle of red wine, kids finally asleep, paper read, Martin playing online backgammon, MOTD 2 about to start, retiring to bed with book, perfect!

What's growing?

This Spring sees the Hungry Harts venture into growing their own produce for the first time - well apart from a few cress heads on the windowsill with the kids and a few herbs in pots on the patio that is.
I grew up with growing so to speak. My Dad was an avid gardener, not only devoting much of our large family garden to veggies but also, I recently found out from my mum, owning two allotments when they were first married and had just built their house back in 1952.
Some of my earliest memories are of me making mud pies in the garden, picking peas and popping them in my mouth fresh from the pod and then, as I got a little older, actually helping out both by potting up tomato plants (I got a penny a pot) to be sold on in my parent's DIY and garden shop and also - oh how I hated this job - peeling endless shallots with my Nana who then bottled them and pickled them up so we had a fantastic supply of pickled onions all winter. I suppose the amazing end results were worth all the suffering and tears.
Have to say you couldn't beat being sent down the garden with a basket to pull spuds and carrots and pick a head of cauliflower or a cabbage, for example, to accompany a nice roast on a Sunday. Later in the day it would be back down again to pull a head of lettuce, some spring onions and a cucumber and some tomatoes from the greenhouse (is there any better smell in the world than a warm greenhouse full of ripe tomatoes?) to have with a nice bit of ham or a tin of salmon for our tea.
It's an experience I want my own kids to enjoy so we now have Pink Fir spuds chitting indoors, basil (the chef has big plans for pesto) and pepper seedlings growing on the windowsill, tomato seedlings taking root and ready to be potted out in grow bags in our own mini plastic greenhouse and a whole array of other seeds ready to go.

Other great foodie childhood memories:

Piggy potatoes - whenever we pulled potatoes we left the really tiny ones in the bottom of the basket then, where there were enough of them, they were washed, cooked in their skins and served just as they were with butter and salt. Amazing!
Freshly cooked and still warm beetroot - pulled fresh from the ground that day.
Stewed rhubarb and custard - we've got plans for our own rhubarb patch this year.
Home grown melons - very exotic for Northamptonshire in the 1970s believe me!
The first broad beans of the season - served with a boiled ham hock and parsley sauce.

And a far less pleasant memory was stewed gooseberries -always sour no matter how much sugar we used.

Away from the garden, I was also brought up on a diet of home cooking by my Nana Beal who incredibly produced everything on a two ring Baby Belling in her tiny kitchen. I mostly remember rabbit stew (complete with shot) thanks to the rabbits her neighbour Alan used to shoot and Tripe and Onions, a BIG favourite of mine as a pre-schooler. She also made a fine Yorkshire Pudding at our house every Sunday to go with the roast - and it was delicious cold for supper on Sunday evenings, sometimes with a bit of jam on but more likely with a bit of cold meat and a couple of those damn fine pickled onions I was talking about.

As we embark on our own growing experience this Spring and Summer, I hope to share our journey along with some recipes and more food memories along the way.