Cooking with runner bean beans

Howdy all, bit late but, happy 2016!

Life at the allotment has been quiet over the winter. Beside monitoring the red onions and garlic, which are growing well, there has been little for us to do. But with the days lengthening it's time to start getting back on the land.

The manure has been rotting into the ground, so that can be dug in soon, and there is some weeding to do to prepare the other beds.

One of the first jobs we need to do is prune and stake up the apple tree. There are a lot of low laying branches where we lost a lot of fruit last year so we need to see what we can do to straighten the little tree up a bit.

Job 2: Herb patch. Some of them have gone mad, the chamomile has spread to cover half the bed, the curry plant is more of a bush and there are a lot of weeds to get rid off.

Job 3: Potatoes can start to be planted out next month so we will need to get our seeding potatoes soon to chit and then plant out once there will be no more frost. I once overheard an old gent say that you should always get your potatoes in before Good Friday. So that's the plan.

Job 3: We need to plan what we want to grow this year and get the cold frame ready for seedlings.


The jobs will be endless so I will leave it there for now and update you with progress once we get going. We just need a dry weekend.


On a side note, we had a ridiculous amount of runner beans last year and we couldn't eat them all. So, the ones that grew too big we popped all of the beans out of their pods and froze them. You can see from my last post they are pretty pink beans. Well, we got them out this week and added them to a stew and they were damn tasty.

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.

And then we had paths

I've been collecting wood chip from the WGC allotment to use here. All but one bed created now, wood chip down and we have nice neat paths. 

The compost area is level, wood chipped and the storage box and bin in position. It all looks very tidy.

We also planted the herbs out. We'd grown a few drinks seed and others we bought while on a trip to Leicester. We have got: thyme, marjoram, curry, camomile, sage, rosemary, lemon balm, chives and lavender.

Here are a few dodgy photos as there was a smudge on the lens.