Now don’t get all disappointed and think I’m going to start warbling on about my beautiful tomatoes, or lovely cabbages. We’ve tried both of those and a) they rotted and b) nature ate them.

No, I’m afraid our “growing food for the kitchen” takes on a rather smaller scale than that. Which is why, today, I’m going to tell you all about some surprising Pesto, a facepalm moment regarding garlic bread and a tipsy jelly – all of which involve something we’ve grown ourselves.

We have had a Sorrel plant in our garden for around two years or more now. Last year, it got terribly broken after it was squashed by a workman's toolbox and then sat on (regularly) by a dog that decided it would make a comfy bed on which to enjoy the sun.

So, before the winter, we uprooted it and put it in a pot and hoped for the best. This year, it has come back with great vigour and was just begging to be used for something.

The obvious use for it would be as a salad leaf, but unfortunately neither son & heir nor I are particularly keen on bitter tasting leaves in our salad. Our Sorrel, being a species known as Blood Sorrel (because it has dark red veins through the leaves) is particularly bitter, by all accounts.

When we were trying to think of a fairly easy meal for a Monday evening, hubby hit upon using gnocchi with some pesto made from the Sorrel. What a great idea! Well, it seemed to be a great idea. Hubby set to on the Monday morning and following a serious Sorrel harvest, with much whirring and stirring, made the pesto.

He appeared beside my computer desk here, with an "I'm really not sure about this" look on his face, a bowl of green - very green - pesto and a spoon. My initial reaction to the flavour was "yeuk!", followed by "salty!", followed by a slightly more positive "oh, I dunno?", rounded off by "garlic!".

I tried again. Same flow of reactions.

If I could just get past the initial "yeuk!" that was caused by the intensely bitter flavour, followed by the mental message of "hmmn, weeds!", I thought I could get to like it. However, in quantity, on gnocchi? No - I had no confidence about that. Hubby was the same.

So we abandoned the idea of using the pesto on the gnocchi and made a cheese sauce instead.

However, we were determined not to abandon the pesto entirely and left it until the following day - when we tasted it again. Aaah, it had lost that "weeds" taste, the garlic had mellowed and it was a lot better.

So we bought some filled pasta (gorgonzola and walnut, to be precise - which is my favourite) and had it for lunch - with the pesto.

Do you know, it was very nice indeed. No, seriously, it was! We both ate every little bit and following some initial suspicion, enjoyed it. So there you have the lesson - make the pesto the day before you're going to want to use it!

Now all we've got to do is figure out a use for the other half - or get more pasta on Tuesday!

Sorrel Pesto

Speaking of pasta – what do you think of, whenever you consider pasta for dinner? Red wine? Mmmn, possibly. Garlic bread? Often!

Which begs the question “why on earth didn’t we think of this earlier”? How come we’ve only just thought to make our own garlic bread now?

We’d scheduled in a Tuna Pasta Bake last week. Hubby was in charge that day and realised that we really should have thought about garlic bread to go with it. So, thinking laterally, he took the leftover half of a French Stick, cut it into slices, whipped up some garlic butter with our home grown parsley, grated on some cheese, baked them in the oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas4 for around 10 minutes - and we had the best garlic bread we've ever had.

The oven is on already - it's not as though we're having to put the oven on especially to bake the garlic bread. It only takes a moment to make and if you've got the herbs in the garden already, then there's no excuse.

So long, supermarket garlic bread - hello home made!

All of which brings us to dessert – and the re-appearance of rhubarb on the menu. What with Ruby the burgeoning rhubarb plant and her children, all that lovely rhubarb has to be used up somehow!

The weather, having taken a turn for the summery (which didn’t last, as I’m sure you noticed!), was responsible for turning my thoughts away from things like Rhubarb Cobbler towards cooler, more refreshing desserts.

Now I’ve not had a great deal of success in the last few years where jelly is concerned – especially jellies made with sheet gelatine. So when I began to consider rhubarb jelly, you can understand why I opted for a good old block of strawberry jelly – which is what gave me the idea of involving strawberries.

I’m not sure what gave me the idea of using up some of the dessert wine we had left over, other than an innate desire to use up leftovers.

Hence, the Strawberry & Rhubarb Tipsy Jelly was born – and boy, was it good.

I took three good sized sticks of rhubarb and cut them into small chunks, which I put into a pan with 100ml of water and a couple of tablespoonfuls of caster sugar. I stewed the rhubarb until it was just softened, but still holding its shape.

I then broke up the jelly into the bottom of a measuring jug and poured the rhubarb through a sieve onto the jelly. The solids, I put into a bowl for use later.

I then made up the liquid to 300ml by adding the dessert wine and poured it back into the pan to warm through and properly melt the jelly. I suspect some of the alcohol evaporated during this procedure too – which was good, as it was going to feed some children!

Once the jelly cubes had dissolved, I returned the mixture back to the measuring jug and added the reserved rhubarb solids, then made up the quantity to 600ml with cold water.

I then quickly quartered some strawberries into the jelly mould and added the rhubarb jelly liquid. Once it had cooled a little, it went into the fridge to set.

I can’t recommend this recipe enough, for a hot day that needs a light and refreshing dessert. Just perfect!