The easiest way to make your garden look even prettier, and the life-enhancing concept of Substantial Snacks

A crowd-pleasing menu from someone who hates cooking!

This is not hard to make

We had excellent weather at the weekend, which meant, amazingly, that a long-arranged birthday celebration could take place outside.

So the parasol went up, I shoved some flowers into a vase, and made platters¹ of Substantial Snacks, which I SWEAR are the way forward. Of course, I forgot to take a photo of them, but these were so good and so easy - and actually I reckon they tasted even better because they were so easy- that I’m going to make them again next weekend and will this time take a photo, so watch this space.

I really need to tell you about the concept of Substantial Snacks: I promise you they will change your life

but let’s just get back to those flowers for a moment:

There’s nothing special going on here in this vase, mainly because I can’t ever bring myself to cut many, if any, flowers from the garden. But I did snip a bit of hebe, a couple of stems of wallflowers, a rose a sprig of geranium, and some lady’s mantle, along with a few stems of grass. These really were literally shoved in, and plopped on the table.

I know this is stating the obvious, but flowers really do jollify everything, don’t they? My friend and Rhubarb Rhubarb co-author Mary Jane has always stuck a few roses on top of a birthday cake: even a Victoria sponge will arrive on the table with a sprig of rosemary and a perlagonium plopped on:

From Rhubarb Rhubarb - bad photos were intentional!

And to state the obvious even more, a table looks extra special with flowers. BUT, through sheer laziness, I discovered something else on top of that: that on Sunday and even today, with the weather greyer and that weird rain-that-isn’t-rain devilishly threatening in the air, that vase that got left on the table on Saturday night, because I couldn’t be bothered to bring it in at midnight when I was clearing up, is STILL making an otherwise empty table look really pretty. It just gives a dull flat surface a bit of life.

So from now on, as long as hurricanes aren’t forecast, there’ll be jugs of flowers adorning my table. Try it - it’s so simple.

Now back to those Substantial Snacks

You won’t find much if you try googling this term - I made it up:

I’m a reluctant cook who loves entertaining, which is how the Rhubarb Rhubarb book came about, and if I can ever find a culinary shortcut or an easy way, I’ll take it. So when I realised I had a dozen people coming,