It’s bloody freezing outside. The snow melted and froze into ice, and then it snowed on top of the ice, which melted a bit, and now it’s freezing outside. Not good. Time then, for a little ray of sunshine.
But before that, some outstanding business to wrap up. Last week saw the inaugural Drooling Vegetable competition, and my underlings are still picking through the postbag. Some heroic suggestions, along with some truly awful gags from Mal, and a discovery that in the States the swede is known as Rutabaga.
The winner, though, is Amy, for her identification of a whole page of swede recipes, and in particular the Indian Spiced Swede Cakes. Hurrah!
Anyway, back to the sunshine. Back at the beginning of October I had a day off and took myself off to Chelsea Physic Garden. I’d read about it for ages but never quite managed to visit.
It’s a little garden square just over the road from the Thames, founded in 1673, and dedicated to growing medicinal herbs and plants. It’s also only open four days a week, nowhere near a tube station and ringed by traffic wardens. Unsurprisingly, when you finally get there you’ll find it’s quite quiet.
It’s £8 to get in, which when you cost it up as a price per square metre of garden probably makes it the most expensive garden in Britain. It’s also full of posh old people. I know! Posh people in Chelsea! I was gobsmacked!
You do get a handset with your admission, which has a commentary narrated by John Snow, but most importantly, it has a very nice café, staffed by some more posh people, and selling a range of very tasty cakes.
Now you may have noticed that this is a gardening blog, and we’ve got this far into a post about a garden, and there’s nothing mentioned about the…um…actual garden. Well, truth be told I didn’t find it that inspiring. Yes, the setting was beautiful, the beds were packed full of plants and the labels suggested they were all hugely important or extremely rare, but as a visual spectacle (shallow, shallow me) it didn’t really do it for me.
Still, nice cakes. And full of posh people.
On the ipod while adjusting the monocle: Pulp / Common People. I said pretend you’ve got no money. She just laughed and said “well how are we going to get into the garden then?”
December 22, 2009 at 9:38 am
Yey! I think that is the first time I have actually won anything 🙂
I had my first swede of the year last night, roasted for simplicity but I am really looking forward to trying those swede cakes.
I enjoyed my visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden but you’re right about it being a very long way from the underground and also very expensive to get in. I think the highlight for me way the old olive tree in the middle. And also the inspiration to use herbs and flowers to heal.
December 22, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Congratulations to Amy. I have heard a lot about Chelsea Physic Garden, (though in my head I keep calling it Psychic) and hope to visit it one-day for therapy, but £8 is quite a lot, but I guess its worth it.
Anyway, onto the vegetable swede. As a little Welshcake now planted in the West of Scotland, I often find myself getting into arguments with fellow Scots that the ‘swede’ aka rutabaga is not a swede, it is a turnip (neep) in Scotland, so what’s a turnip I ask, oh its a baby turnip. I hush, I bet you wouldn’t…
By the way if you like Amy’s recipe for swede, I think you will like my creative recipe for Clapshot haggis tikkia, made with left overs from St Andrews day.
December 25, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Happy Christmas to you and your Drooling Vegetable clan.
January 11, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Happy new year from Maine!