After the quick trip to ikea yesterday for my excellent new drawers, we dropped into the fruit + veg to grab some celery. On my way to the celery section, I noticed chillis, but not just any chillis – fresh jalapenos and habaneros!

This made us both wild with excitement because both are VERY hard to find here in fresh form, and we’ve eschewed a lot of recipes calling for both. So of course we bought them!

Now I just need to track down those recipes. Meanwhile I think I’m going to sacrifice one of each for seeds and freeze the remainder.

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Last night we made chicken pot pie for the first time. We had a recipe which Don had sourced from somewhere on the InformationSuperhighway. I won’t share this because we barely followed it except for quantities (it had some wild and crazy notions which would have resulted in some very mushy vegetables).

It is a rule in this Palace(OfLove) that all pies must have hearts:

It was spectacular, really spectacular. I should write it up because we’ll definitely have again.

This was really pleasing as it followed on from wildly successful first time at Jamie Oliver’s brown windsor soup with pearl barley on Saturday night.

I think the key to the success of the pie was Don’s stellar homemade chicken stock (and of course my Ace! pastry) and the soup, Don’s stellar homemade beef stock.

Why yes, it is the height of summer and we are eating soups and pies – such was the weekend weather.

The best news, Don’s finger is healing so well (seriously I am amazed at how quickly he heals in general) that we could share the cooking! I’m still doing the prep/chopping duties because I’m not letting him near anything sharp (plus the wound is still pretty enormous, so we can’t be too cavalier)!

This makes us both very, very happy.

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Yesterday, I was out on the lower balcony feeding the wormies. I reached down to pull some weeds from the sage plant and spotted something red in another pot out of the corner of my eye. At first I assumed that I had been a little reckless when dumping stuff into the worm farm on a previous occasion.

I was wrong. WE HAD MAGICALLY GROWN A STRAWBERRY in the surprise strawberry plant:

There was nothing for it but to pick and eat it. It was fabulously delicious!

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Rye-an Seacrust is doing really well. He has a good many bubbles and passes the float test (he appears to be at the vibrant stage). He’d probably be ready to bake with, but my preferred recipe happens over 3 days, so I’m coddling him until Friday when all systems will be go!