pumpkinstrokemarrow

That is to say the mother in law sort rather than that that you can eat. A dish which was a regular item on my school menus but which I do not recall eating since. The pink/brown bumpy - pimpled if you like - skin was a bit off putting then and I think it would be even more off putting now: maybe in this more squeamish age the butchers take more care to skin the skin off.

I think that this sort grows out of doors in the fine botanical garden at Puerto de la Cruz but this recently relocated specimen has grown well in our indoors. It even looks to be on the point of flowering - see the shoot at the bottom left.

Much discussion just presently about repotting, having managed to head off the idea of dividing, which I think would be a shame.

We celebrated the flowering with a round of cheese scones, the construction of which was unusual on two points. First, the only butter to hand was frozen, so I grated it into the flour with a cheese grater, the peelings being very sticky and in shape not unlike the sort of shavings you might get from a soft mahogany with a plane. Second, being a bit unsure about the quality of the cheese that I was using, I fortified it with a dash of Lincolnshire Poacher from Waitrose, a cheese which they manage quite well. Scones were good, although we did not manage all 13 in the one sitting, leaving 2 for breakfast. And I think I might have done better to have cooked them for 11 rather than 10 minutes - the trick being for them not to go a matt dark brown. They should be a bright, speckled, orangey brown.

PS: I wonder now about the 'than that that' at the beginning. It sounds OK but what about the grammar?