In spring a young man's fancy...

...turns to thoughts of wild garlic pesto.

Well, OK, I'm not a young man any more but the line almost works. Yes, it's the time of year when the patches of woodland the skirt the little railway going up into the Juras - and even the patch behind my local supermarket - are carpeted with wild garlic. What a treat!

What is garlic pesto? Simply pesto made with wild garlic leaves instead of basil. Where do you find the leaves? Well, here in Switzerland you can getthemt in the supermarket (you can also buy the pesto ready made) but if you go to any woods where the soils are reasonably dry you're likely to find it everywhere on the ground. You can tell it from the smell as you walk on it and from the pretty, star-like clusters of white flowers. Make sure the leaves smell of garlic, though. There is an outside chance that you could be picking wild arum, which is poisonous. You would have to be pretty stupid, though. Normally its mature leaves are like arrowheads, whereas garlic leaves are oval. Besides, nothing else smells of garlic (another hazard here in Switzerland is that you get lily of the valley in the woods a little later in the season and its leaves look very like garlic leaves but, again, they don't have the garlic smell - which is just as well as they too are poisonous). You have to move quickly, though. Once the trees overhead put out their leaves fully and the forest canopy closes in then the garlic fades out.

How do you make the pesto? Simple! Use a food processor or a blender to mix equal weights of wild garlic leaves, pine nuts (almonds will do just as well) and grated parmesan (or gran padano or such like). Add enough olive oil for the mixture to coalesce properly and for it to be easy to spoon - and add salt and pepper to taste. The mixture will keep in sealed jars in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Have it with pasta - just like basil pesto - or with mashed potato, or as a condiment for chicken or oily fish (lunch safely - always use a condiment!). Or simply indulge yourself and spread it on bread.

What's coming up later in the season? - why elderflower lemonade of course!

Reflections on writing - with two reviews

Hello folks

This is my first post and it's likely to be "the voice of one that crieth in the wilderness" as no-one even knows I have a blog yet.

I'm just back from the Festival of Writing in York and I'm all fired up to get back to my MS and trim it back a bit. It's at the stage noew where there's some flab that needs liposuction (a bit like me really). Still, although the comments I got on it from the professionals were mixed, they were consistent and that gives me hope.

I've already read the two YA books I bought at the festival - The poisoned house by Michael Ford and Wasted by Nicola Morgan. they were both good but definitely Wasted was the one that stands out as being edgy and really different. It concerns Jacj, a teenage boy who is obsessed with bad luck because of a freak accident that killed his stepmother. he tries to cheat fate by the habit of tossing a coin and acting on whatever choice the toss throws up. This habit has become a dangerous addiction to risk-taking that comes to a head when he meets an exciting girl called Jess. She also has her problems, which include an alcoholic mother. The story manages to switch between points of view without confusing the reader, which is a rare feat, and is suffused with an impending sense of doom all the way through that keeps the reader on edge.

Michael Ford's book is an historical thriller set in Victorian London, told from the point of view of a teenage servant girl. It has a very strong opening and some dramatic set pieces, and is well-researched without being over-burdened with information. However, overall I think it's for a younger audience than Wasted.

Both authors were very nice and I learned a lot from them, as I did from the two agents I met. I had more interaction with Julia Churchill because I attended two classes that she gave. In the one-to-one she struck me as being incredibly business-like and focussed - not easy to impress.

Well, that's it for my first shot. I don't know how I'll follow this up but I expect that wildlife, food, history, writing, books and movies will be topics for future blogs.