First day of Spring?

Imbolc or St. Brigid's day is deemed to be the first day of spring in the Celtic calendar, falling halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, like so many Pagan festivals this one has also been adopted by the church although the festival dates back far before Christianity. Many homes will make a St. Brigid's  cross from rushes, said to protect your home from fire and evil.

St. Brigid's cross.

As it is too cold to do much outside I also made my own although we had to hunt for a clump of rushes, by keeping them cut twice yearly we are just about free of them now.
  I must  say it does not feel much like spring at the moment, we have had several falls of snow over the last week. Yesterday was my birthday and normally we would go out for a meal but the thought of having to drive for an hour or more to get to a decent restaurant was not appealing so I settled for fish and chips from our local town. It wasn't bad, in  fact the fish was very good but the chips are not worth talking about. Hopefully this weather won't last too much longer and then we will have our meal out.
When we first moved here there was a great restaurant only two miles away, good food, all Irish, good atmosphere , it even had a decent wine list, it always seemed to be busy. Why it closed is anyone's guess.

From earth to plate, how does your food get there?

I received two books for my birthday, both should be a good read.

'Teaming with Microbes' tells the story of what goes on in the soil, I have only dipped into it so far but it is fascinating.
With the weather being as it is it seemed a good time to redecorate our bedroom, it is one room that we have not done, in fact I doubt it has been done since the previous owners built the extension. We had bought the paint for it some time ago but the garden always takes priority. As it will now have colour, it was just plain white before, I have decided that I will also need to recover the bedhead, the nearest place to get material is an hours drive away, but, we also need butter! Yes, we can buy butter in our little town, normal butter but we only use that for cooking not for eating. There is only one place that we can buy organic butter and that is the dreaded Tesco. Now I hate shopping, I especially hate Tesco, badly stocked with the most unhelpful staff you will ever meet, but they sell English Organic butter. So every three months we  make the trip, normally clearing out their supply of butter. We always manage to combine this trip with other things that we need and are only available from a large town, this coming week's trip will be for the material to cover the bedhead and  gas cylinders which we can get for nearly seven euros less than in our local town, so the trip will be worthwhile.
Once again we are in an egg glut situation, and it's too early and cold to start hatching eggs, normally I would make lemon curd, but we still have two large tubs in the freezer

Patata de Tortilla freshly cooked.

so I made a  'Patata de Tortilla'. Most Spanish cafes serve this as a tapas, each one would have their own special recipe, our favourite one was made by 'Mama', the mother of our favourite local café owner,

With sweet peppers.

she always added sweet peppers,  in some cafes it would be peas and in some parsley, but the pepper one was always our favourite. Unlike a normal omelette which takes at most ten minutes to make,  'Patata de Tortilla takes an hour and a half, but it's worth it. Lovely, and freshly cooked as a change from normal potatoes it is also good cold for a picnic.