This is son no.1’s absolutely, without a doubt favourite salad and as soon as the weather turns warm, he begs me to make it for him. So of course I have varied the recipe a little over time.

The original recipe and the one I have taken piccies of today, although I did add a second packet of feta cheese, (the original recipe requires 9 oz) as this is demanded by the hungry hoardes is..

1 medium red onion
4 limes
1 medium to largish ripe watermelon
2 packs of Feta cheese.
3 – 4 tables spoons of Extra virgin olive oil.
I medium jar of Black Olives
bunch of flat leaf parsley
bunch of mint, chopped
black pepper.

Slice the onion into half moons and steep in the lime juice whilst you prepare the watermelon, cutting it into nice chunky triangles. Break the feta up. Add them to a large bowl or a large platter can look nice. Tear of leaves of parsley and chop the mint up and scatter over. Pour the onions with their juices over, add the drained olives and black pepper, drizzle olive oil over, toss gently.

This makes a lovely, sweet, salty, sour and very refreshing salad, which is delicious when the weather turns warm.

A variation we have tried and agree we prefer, we use watercress, which adds a peppery/spicy note. We then don’t add the parsley and mint and we like to use olives stuffed with anchovies and sometimes a little salt mixed in with the lime juice can be very nice, it just depends on how salty your feta is.

I know that I am probably the last one on the planet (in knitting circles) to find out about this book, but find out I have. Yesterday, Son no.1 and I took ourselves off to Coventry for some R & R. We had lunch at The Noodle Bar, which is yummy, (and they do rice noodles for me) and then off to look around gaming shops for him, wool and bookshops for me. I found “The Friday Night Knitting Club” written by Kate Jacobs. Well, as soon as I saw the front cover I was hooked! I read the first page of the story, it made me smile, as images of a certain wool shop and its owner floated through my imagination. I’ve had a quick scoot around the net and their making a film about it! Wouldn’t it be lovely, if we (as in Tuesday night knitters) all went as a group to see it.

I’m just off to the plot, if the weather keeps fine. My knitting has sadly been pushed to one side as the demands of my vegetables grow. April is one of the busiest month of the allotmenteers calendar. If you can get through April, (well its really end of March to mid May) with limbs and back intact, without having lost it all to the weather, you should be in with a chance of having decent crops, at least in something.

I’m slightly concerned that my courgette seeds haven’t sprung into life as yet, so I may need to ‘check’ or in other words wiggle a pencil around in the pot to see if the seed has rotted or has germinated. (or even if the mice have had another free feed!)

I’ve more pea plants to put in, which will be done hopefully today, depending on how soggy the ground is and I suspect I shall find a few other little jobs up there.