My Chillies are Ripening!

My chillies are ripening and I am so thrilled (a little sad I know). I think it is really exciting to see these little fruit turn from purple to orange to... nearly red! 

I can't wait until the first one is ready to pick so I can see how hot it is.

This is my super hot chilli plant, they are suppose to be hotter than the bird's eye chilli, I think they are suppose to turn red before you can eat them though. The lady I bought them off said you can eat them whenever you want, but before they are ripe they taste like green pepper *eugh* the worst sort of pepper in my opinion. 

I hope the warm weather, we have been enjoying, means I have a few of these to try soon! Its also funny to tempt Ed with them because he is a total wuss with chilli heat hehe. 

My 2 New Chilli Plants and Lovely Market Food.

I am really lucky to live in a place where twice a month (on a Saturday) we have an abundant farmer's market. Today I was excited to see some new stalls, one was even selling unusual chilli plants. And here they are (well two of them), unfortunately I was too excited to actually write down the names of these two chilli plants so I can't introduce them to you properly.

I was drawn to the first one because I thought the colour of the flowers and the leaves are breathtakingly purple. 

I also admired it because this plant is not afraid to make it obvious that it is part of the Solanaceae family. So this beautiful thing is closely relation to the deadly nightshade plant and I think the flowers are nearly identical.

The second plant I bought because of my greedy side, I saw this plant groaning under the weight of all its baby chilli-peppers and I thought *yum*. I really love hot food and I can't wait for these little beauties to turn a blazing red so I can add them to my cooking and maybe even make some chilli oil and Harissa paste.

The stall holder said that this purple will fade to yellow and then ripen to a fiery red. 

I also picked up a few other bits and bobs from the market. I picked up some raw milk that is produced from local 'happy' cows. I like to try and support the local farms, one way for dairy farmers to make a decent living is to sell milk like this straight to the customer. Its been all in the news lately about how the money that farmers spend producing milk is actually higher than the price that is being paid for it, which in turn is slowly killing the industry. I was raised on raw milk so I know that it works for me fine (Ed can also drink this milk whereas he can't drink pasteurised). But you may want to do your research before trying it.

We bought garlic from the market too, this one is called Bella Italiano and apparently the flavour is really strong, it smells lovely and I have promised Ed that I will make some garlic bread with it, so we will probably be stinky after eating that.

You have got to love Wobbly Bottom Farm cheese. The name is just fabulous and always makes me smile and the cheese from here tastes so good that you could easily eat enough to make the name ring true. This is pesto cheese, I have never seen this before but the taste is amazing, it is really basilly and tastes like green (my friends always laugh at me for saying things taste like colours). I can't wait to try and cook with this lovely cheese, I bet it will taste amazing in summery salads too. Food always tastes a million times better from the market.

Hope you are all having a good weekend.

Book Review - The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar.

I picked up this book in a wonderful little bookstore that stocked an eclectic mix of sic-fi, fantasy and graphic novels in Edinburgh. it was up a little cobbled street and the book shop owner was very quiet and book-wormish, I am a confessed bibliophile so I rationed myself to just one book! After a couple of laps around this little shop this caught my eye. I love anything to do with fairies and when I spied that the introduction was my Neil Gaiman my excitement grew. The deal was clinched when I read on the back that "It is a book for every girl with home-dyed hair and fairy wings...". Well for anyone who doesn't know I have fairy wings tattooed on my back and well this may be a shock but I am not a natural red head.

I picked up this book this morning and didn't put it down until I had finished it this afternoon. This book is a real gem, it characters are a mix of fairies and humans that are loveably flawed. The book is set in New York to a backdrop of run down apartments and the main human characters trying to make ends meet. I loved the juxtaposition of the grimy surroundings and the touching goodness of the fairies, even though the kindness is very well hidden at times under lashings of whiskey and bad language. I really enjoyed the hint of dark smut that was sprinkled throughout the pages as well as it gave it a real delicious edge. 

I am going to give this book 4 stars out of 5. This is because I loved this book and I thought the little details that helped to thread the plot together were really well thought out. The Fairies of New York is a surprising book and at times I was left thinking that Martin Millar must have had help from the fairies to manage to entwine all of the characters and events together in such a satisfying and diverse way. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because, even though I enjoyed all the characters and their relationships I didn't feel too sad to leave them behind, when I closed the last page of that book. But maybe that is down to Martin Millar tying everything up beautifully. So you'll just have to read it and decide for yourself.