Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Those neat little sprouts in my previous garden post are now great floppy plants, overflowing their boxes like leafy fountains.  Theo has been particularly keen on picking things, sometimes before they're ready!  So, what harvest have we had? Peas I was really pleased with the peas.  Every couple of days we could go out and grab a boxful of fat green pods - and it was fun popping them and seeing how many peas were inside.  The boys and their friends from next door happily ate them straight from the pod, and we had them raw in salads, cooked as a side, and even made into pea fritters.  Their season finished early so I've put some more carrots, onions and rocket in their place. Strawberries We only really had enough to pick a few and eat them one by one.  However, we went to Scaddows Farm and picked LOADS, so we haven't felt short of strawberries. Carrots and spring onions The spring onions have done well, and got lovely and ...

I was eight when the Berlin Wall came down. For many of my contemporaries, it was the first big political event they remember seeing on TV.  We didn't have a television then, so I don't even have that hazy recollection.  As I got older, I became aware that many European maps I looked at were no longer correct.  The big splodge on the right emblazoned with the ominous letters U.S.S.R. had now dissolved into smaller countries with unknown names: Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova.  Something called the Iron Curtain had disappeared.  And Germany was now one big country again, no longer split between East and West. Our history lessons at school focussed heavily on the First and Second World Wars, with odd excursions to the Romans, or motte and bailey castles, or Henry the Eighth.  It wasn't until I studied German A-level that I heard about the Berlin airlift , and my first reaction was: "Why did no one ever tell me about this?!"  Up until then I had alwa...