Runner beans

As most people tend to be we have been inundated with runner beans. They always end up growing to big and therefore tough and stringy to eat. So we've decided to pop all the beans out of their pods which will then be added to stews and chilies.
The colour of them is amazing...

Allotment sort out

Things are winding down a bit at the allotment so it's time to start sorting out ready for next year.

The wild flowers are still looking great though, here's are pretty poppy.

We decided to create more growing space to join two of the beds together and extended out into the path a bit. We have gained quite a lot from doing this actually. More space for yummy veg. Have of the bed is planted with garlic, red onions and fennel. The other have has been manured ready for runners, courgette and squash next year.

Clearing the beds we harvested leeks, parsnips, a few courgettes and the lovely lady next door gave us some potatoes and a squash which looks like a mini pumpkin. Very festive

Also picked some rhubarb and some cooking apples going free for some puddings.

Courgette and Sultana Wine UPDATE

Here we go, seven bottles of Courgette and Sultana Wine. This will need to lay in the wine rack for at least 3 months before trying it.

Let's hope it tastes ok...

Garlic and onions are in

Today we planted garlic, which will hopefully turn into 12 wonderful garlic bulbs next summer and about 26 red onions which will be ready early next year through to spring. Very exciting.

That's probably it now for planting, apart from some flower bulbs which will go in in a few months time for next year.

It's all about harvesting our homegrown produce now. Today we picked some corn on the cob, the last of the tomatoes, a few chillies, lettuce, a marrow and a pumpkin. Unfortunately the pumpkin plant has died and all bar 2 of the pumpkins split and rotted. But we have 2 which are ok and will become soup later in the week.

Carrot and Parsnip Soup

Before we got our allotment a friend very kindly let us plant in his. The only crop we had left growing there were parsnips which have had to come up. They could have done with more time as they are little small but they are a fine looking bunch and damn tasty too.

Along with some of our carrot crop I've made a creamy carrot and parsnip soup for lunch today. Really simple recipe, so here it us for you to try.

Creamy carrot and parsnip soup recipe

Ingredients:
A knob of butter
1large onion, peeled and chopped
450g carrots, peeled and chopped
2large parsnips, peeled and chopped
Thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, grated
1 tsp of grated orange rind
600ml/1 pint of veg stock
125ml single cream
Salt and pepper, to season
Fresh coriander, to garnish

How to make it:
In a large saucepan melt the butter over a low heat. Add the onion and cook for 3 minutes to soften.
Add the carrots and parsnips. Cover with the lid and cook until the vegetables have softened.
Stir in the ginger, orange rind and stock. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for half an hour. Allow to cool a little and then blend until smooth.
Stir through the cream and season.
Bowl up and garnish with the coriander.

Enjoy with a nice fresh crusty loaf.

Original recipe can be found here

Tips from Cheltenham

We're enjoying a long weekend in lovely Cheltenham, in a gorgeous apartment in an Edwardian house rented out by the owners who live in the main house. It's like staying at your friends house, it's great. There are books everywhere and among them I found this beauty, 'allotment gardening', so I have been reading up.

Something we didn't know about was earthing up round your leeks. This is essential to blanch the stems. It might be too late for ours but we are going to start doing it. We know for next time.

Also read up on planting garlic. Garlic bulbs are available to buy from the allotment shop now so we will be planting them out soon. We were going to manure the soil but having read this we've found out not to and that they like quite sandy, free draining soil.

So much to learn. 

Classic Apple Pie

If you've got an apple tree and, like us, you have hundreds of apples laying around, you need to use them. Now you could make some chutney perhaps, in fact I have a delicious sweet apple chutney recipe I can share with you, or you could make a crumble or experiment a bit or press some juice or cider.

Why not do as I have done? I've just gone for a classic Apple Pie. You just can't go wrong.

Classic Apple Pie Recipe

Ingredients: 
For the Pastry-
350g plain flour
Pinch of salt
170g butter
6 tbsp cold water
1 egg, beaten for glaze

For the filling-
750g apples, peeled, cored and sliced
150g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
Sprinkling of ground cinnamon or ginger

How to make it:
Sieve your flour and salt into a mixing bowl.
Add the water and bring together into a dough.
Wrap in cling film and stick in the fridge for half an hour

Pre-heat your oven to 180°C.

Prepare your apples one at a time and place in a bowl of cold water to stop then from discolouring.
Add the sugar and mix.
Roll out 2/3 of your pastry to line your dish, covering the bottom and sides.

Add your filing and sprinkle over about a tsp of the cinnamon or ginger, or both.

Roll out the remainder of the pastry for your lid.
Crimp round the edges and trim excess pastry. You can use this for decorations.
Beat one egg and glaze the top of your pie. Make a few slits in the top for steam to escape.
Pop in the oven for about 20 minutes, of until golden brown.
Sprinkle the top with sugar.

Enjoy!

The Usual Suspects

I love weird shaped fruit and veg, it's so silly that supermarkets have to reject these poor little guys. They are so full of character and taste every bit as good as their regular shaped counterparts.

Here's to weird shaped produce.

More giant veg

Things have been quiet at the allotment recently while veg has just been growing. Plus it's been a pretty wet few weeks.

But, today was harvest day. And very good it was too. The carrots finally came up. With a gentle tease of the folk up came some enormous carrots. There were a few ludicrously big and a few diddy ones.

We pulled up a few leeks and up-turned a monster of a potato. I did notice a few beastie holes in the potatoes so I think I need to read up on spud pests. Only one carrot had been attacked so that was ok.

And the best of the rest - The whole haul included: carrots, potatoes, a pumpkin, corn on the cob, leeks, tomatoes and lettuce.

Courgette and Sultana Wine

My brother bought me a book, Booze for Free, years ago and I came across this recipe whilst flicking through. We Still had a fair amount of courgettes to use up so why not hey? Let's try something different.

Courgette and Sultana Wine Recipe

Ingredients:
3kg fresh courgettes
1kg sugar
2 overripe bananas
500 g sultana
4 litres/7 pints water
1 tsp citric acid
a thumb sized piece of bruised ginger (that just means gentry squashed, but not broken. Use the side of the blade of a knife)
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 Campden tablet (optional)
Champagne yeast

Equipment:
Small saucepan
Fermentation bin
4.5 litre /1 gallon demijohn
Airlock and bung
Mincer (or sharp knife)
Siphoning tube

How to make it:
Chop the courgettes into 3cm pieces and put in the freezer overnight.
Allow to thaw (the courgette will be softened).
Bring 500ml/1 pint of water to the boil and stir in the sugar.
Mince the sultanas (or chop finely) and add these to the water too. Leave to one side.
Mash the bananas and mix it with all the other ingredients (except the yeast) in the fermentation bin.
Cover and allow to cool to hand-hot. If using a Campden tablet, add it now. Leave overnight.

Add the yeast and leave for four days loosely covered before straining the liquid into a demijohn and attaching an airlock and bung.
Rack* after a month and then again if needed. Allow to ferment out (the airlock will stop bubbling) then bottle.

This wine will benefit from at least three month's ageing.

*Rack(ing): siphoning the partially fermented wort into another vessel so it isn't fermenting on yeast sediment. Be careful to not disturb the layer of sediment at the bottom, stop siphoning before you reach it.

Original recipe from Andy Hamilton's,  'Booze for Free' 

National Allotment Week 10-16 Aug

So we just found out that this week has been National Allotment Week.

The theme this year focused on the benefits that allotments bring to everyone of all ages. Also to highlight that we should really value the plots we have and preserve them for future generations to enjoy.

Getting our allotment has been the best. If you are interested in gardening and being a little more self-sufficient, I would highly recommend contacting your local council to enquire about having an allotment of your own.

A trip to the garden centre

We had a lovely trip to the garden centre in Ware today. It's a massive place with a mini zoo there too. We saw the usual rabbits, chickens, goats but they also have raccoons which a beautiful, tortoises, meerkats, marmosets. It's was really cool.

Anyway, back to business. We got a few pretty perennials to go in the flowers bed, which the bees will hopefully like. David picked a monarda pink lace and a coreopsis early sunrise.

We also got a few different types of lettuce to go, and some broccoli, Chinese cabbage and curly red kale. These like nice fertile soil so we got a bag of smelly organic farmyard manure to dig into the soil. Not for the faint hearted. 

BBQ lunch at the allotment

A sunny Sunday calls for a BBQ. We had a nice healthy fish lunch cooked on the BBQ at the allotment. We did our weeding duties, of course, while the coals heated up.

Here is the view of the allotment while we ate and an update on progress: The corn is very nearly ready for picking, the butternut squash are getting bigger, pumpkins are looking good, the wild flower bed looks delightful and today's picks included loads of runner beans, shallots and a big courgette.

Lavender Shortbread

After our trip to Hitchin Lavender I thought I'd would try experimenting and cooking with it. We has friends over for dinner today so I made lavender Creme Brulee originally. It was all going very well until I forgot there were in the open. Burnt Creme Brulee.

Undeterred, I thought I would try something else. I came across a nice simple recipe for lavender shortbread. We love shortbread so I just had to try this. The lavender in it is really subtle, but a nice little addition.

Lavender Shortbread

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups butter at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar (granulated is fine if you don't have caster)
2 tbsp very finely chopped lavender florets (fresh or dried) - freshly picked from Hitchin Lavender
1 tbsp chopped fresh mint - from the allotment
2 1/3 cups plain flour
1/2 corn flour
pinch of salt

How to make it:
Preheat your over to 160°C

In a big mixing bowl cream together the butter, sugar, lavender and mint.
Mix until it is light and fluffy (or until your arm hurts).
Add the flour, corn flour and salt and beat until it is all mixed in.
Divide the dough in half, flatten it out a bit and wrap in cling film. Stick it in the fridge to chill until it is firm.
Sprinkle a little flour on a surface and roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. use a cookie cutter or whatever you want to cut out the cookies
Lay out on some baking paper lined oven try leaving about an inch between each cookie to allow for expansion.
prick each a few times with a fork. you can create a pattern if you want to maybe.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until pale golden, but do not allow to brown.
When cooled a little place them on a cooling rack and sprinkle over a little sugar.

Original recipe can be found here

Hitchin Lavender

Today we visited Hitchin Lavender. A beautiful field of purple. For £4.50 you can visit the field and pick as much lavender as you want to fill your bag.
We went a bit mad and picked loads, so now it's in every vase, and I'm looking for different things to use it for. The flat smells nice though.

Herb garden completed at last

I had the afternoon off work so today I finished off the herb garden at last. Weeded and edging put in, it looks really neat and tidy now and the plants are all doing well.

The butternut squash are getting bigger. I'm looking forward to them being ready to pick.

Today's harvest consisted of four big courgettes, you could class two as marrows probably, some runner beans and some French beans.

Courgette and Cheddar Soda Bread

To go with the risotto, which was pumpkin, chilli and sage (from the allotment), I have made a rather hansome looking loaf of courgette and cheddar soda bread.

Pumpkin for the risotto

Picked the first of the pumpkins today. I don't think it was quite ready actually, but I wanted to make a bit of space for all the others growing. The variety is Summer Ball, which you can apparently pick early like courgettes or leave to grow bigger to around 1kg. This one weighed in at about 800g, but it hadn't hollowed out and ripened yet.
Also dug up one lot of shallots and hung them up to dry.

Sausage And Herb Stuffed Marrow

Still got marrow to use? Fear not, there are plenty of great meals out there you can cook up with your giant courgettes. Here is another nice stuffed marrow recipe.


Sausage And Herb Stuffed Marrow Recipe

Ingredients:
1 marrow, halved and deseeded
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
100g breadcrumbs
100g mature cheddar, grated
25g fresh parsley, chopped
175g Cumberland sausages, squeezed from their skins (I used lovely herby Toulouse style sausages)
salad, to serve


How to make it:
Preheat oven to 180°C.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and saute the onion for 6-8 minutes until soft.

Stir in the garlic and cook for another minute.

Remove from the heat and tip into a bowl with the breadcrumbs, chees, parsley and the sausage meat. mix together.

Put your marrow in a baking tray and fill with the mixture. Cover over with foil and cook for 30 minutes.

After half an hour remove the foil and cook for a further 15-20 minutes until the filling is golden.

Serve with a salad if you like.

Original recipe can be found here

Wild flower bed

At last the flowers are coming out in the flower bed. David sprinkled so many wild flower seeds in there, it's nice to finally have a bit of colour and somewhere for the bees. The nasturtiums are looking gorgeous too.

Also a small harvest of fruit, French beans and courgettes.

Little bean, big bean

After a slow start because I thrust them out into the cold without warning, the runner beans are covered in pretty red flowers now and sprouting little beans. I was excited when I saw them. Then I got really excited when I found a massive bean lurking in the undergrowth.