One of the reasons why I make a trip once a month down to New Ferry and The Wirral Farmer’s Market is to get myself another one of the good organic/free range chickens with giblets that are sold from the stall on the right just as you walk in.

The chickens are good however you cook them but there is some pressure to do something different every month or so. This evening I thought it right to shove a can of beer up its backside and see what happened.

I knew that there was a recipe in a Jaimie Oliver book that I had seen and after that it all seemed like an application of common sense.

This meant meant making up a rub of salt, pepper, cumin, coriander and paprika, all ground down to a fine powder and rubbed well into the bird. That was all left for a couple of hours.

Later I lit the BBQ and drank one third of a can of beer to set the bird up. It was all very finely balanced  and as always with a chicken there were hark backs to the first half of Erashead.

Having got that done it was left for an hour and a half. As promised it was beautifully moist and all touched with the taste of beer. I was able to resist the temptation to swill out the dregs in the bottom of the can.

We ate it with salad and spinach cooked and mixed with yogurt and garlic.

All done listening to The Allman Brothers.

The sun is out again this morning and it is threatening to be another hot day. Walking down the garden and fighting my way through the growth in the veg patch it seems a shame, in some ways, that we are going away next week end for two weeks.

After months of looking as if they were going to fade away the six courgette plants have gone bonkers. There are dozens flowers and courgettes most of which will be ready next week. We will be able to have some before we go but most of them will be turning into watery monsters whilst we are away.

Behind the courgettes and up next to the greenhouse a great bank of nasturtiums have grown up from the seeds that were deposited last year. They have taken over the salads that were planted in that bed. I know that I should clear them away and plant something we can eat but they look so good and the flowers will brighten up the salad we will be eating this evening.

It is a Friday night and youngest daughter is the only company at home. She has pizza and is sat in front of the television  She cannot be tempted by lamb, mint, chilli and garlic burgers wrapped in flat bread and covered in salad, chilli sauce and yogurt. She will not know what she is missing.

I think I have now worked out the secret of a good burger. The first thing to do is make sure that you add some breadcrumbs. The second, and important part, is to add your flavourings as you make your breadcumbs. So this evening the mint, garlic and chilli went into the chute of the Magimix as the blade went round pulverising the stale bread. This way the flavourings are half mixed in before you start to get your hands dirty.

Cooking them on the barbeque helps as well, just as night falls.

Looking in the fridge last night there was a punnet full of the remains of the strawberries picked on Sunday, a pot of double cream seven days pasts its use by date and two egg whites.

There would have been a temptation to leave it all for another day but I knew that if I did that it would probably all go to waste.

So I spent tem minutes whisking up the egg whites to soft peak stage, mixing in the only white sugar we had in the house before spreading it all on a mixing tray and putting it in a low oven for an hour and then leaving it to sit there overnight.

It was still a bit sticky when I came to cream it up this evening but that didn’t matter by the time I came to mixing it up with the strawberries and double cream.

It went down well with the children.