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Over the weekend we finally made it down to our neglected allotment. We went to see how it was looking and what we need to do over the coming weeks.
At the bottom of the allotment was one small, gleaming orange pumpkin! Isn’t it cute and such a gorgeous amber colour!
I also discovered that one of my Cosmo plants has gone crazy and is covered in hundreds of dusky pink flowers.
I managed to pick a good bunch along with a couple of jolly yellow Calendula’s that have finally flowered. I think this will be my last homegrown bunch of flowers for this year.
Most bizarrely our strawberry plants are fruiting again – in October! Quite incredible. Sadly, the rain we’ve had over the past week has reduced most strawberries to a soggy mush and the remainder have each had a nibble taken out of them by some hungry mouse or other creature.
After a long week with the little sister (who’s been staying with us while on work experience) things are finally getting back to normal in our house. The weather is surprisingly mild and you might even describe it as sunny!
N and I spent the day in the garden doing a number of jobs. N has been re-filling, re-sanding and re-painting our ‘new’ old front door which has been a nightmare (it’s a long story…) – this is what it will look like one day (but not left white – we’re going to paint it a lovely dark sea blue)…
I tidied my vegetable beds a bit and started to sand my new desk top which has been fashioned out of an old ledge-and-brace door.
I have been trimming the raspberry canes, cutting down sprawling mint (which is all over my garden), and digging up the remaining carrots and spring onions. Just look at those carrots – slightly overgrown and unloved…
And these are the Paris Silverskin onions I planted back in the spring, that have been utterly neglected with our manic summer – I’m going to try using them as normal onions, or perhaps in a salad, we’ll just have to see if they taste of anything…
The bunnies were both out and about today. Borage was in the run and Lovage had free reign of the garden…he was discovered in one of the raised beds amongst the carrots. Rather than munching on the carrot tops from those that I had dug up, he was sampling those on the small carrots that are still growing – grr!
And here is Lovage flying through the air as he leaps across a hedge of garden cuttings and a tangle of nasturiums!
This is Lovage’s new den…
Back tomorrow with a recipe – not sure which one yet!
I picked this pretty bunch of flowers and herbs from my allotment and back garden. It’s a mixture of pink and white cosmos, orange marigolds, yellow daisies, purple chive flowers, green mint, and delicate white parsley flowers.
I fear this may be one of the last sights of summer as the leaves are already beginning to change colour and fall.
Over the bank holiday we had a delicious meal with my family with trout caught by my little brother. You may remember this post back in May when he caught me a trout for my birthday which we barbecued on one of the only warm summer evenings we’ve had this year! Well, my mom had three that he’d caught when we went to visit for the weekend.
My mom and I served the trout with a herb butter, garlic roasted smashed potatoes, grilled tomatoes and green beans. The locally caught trout were cooked simply in the oven covered in foil. I disappeared into my mom’s garden to gather up a selection of herbs to make the herb butter – chives, thyme, sorrel, oregano, mint – you could use any mixture you wanted. I also picked a couple of calendula flowers and snipped the petals into the mixture, this flecked the herb butter with vibrant orange streaks.
The butter is easy to make – simple whip up some softened butter, add in the chopped up herbs and optional edible flowers, add a good amount of black pepper and salt. Add a dollop of the herb butter to your cooked trout and watch as it melts and oozes down over the delicate pink flesh.
My mom’s garlic roasted smashed potatoes were delicious – the softness of crushed potatoes, the crispy bits that had been roasted, and all of it infused with a yummy mild garlic flavour. Simply parboil your peeled potatoes. Drain and roughly mash up – just to break them up a bit. Pop the smashed potatoes into an ovenproof dish, sprinkle over some minced garlic, a couple of sprigs of rosemary, and drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Bung in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes until the potatoes are cooked and slightly crispy on top.
Following on from yesterday’s post, mom cracked open a jar of the freshly made plum jam for breakfast today. She spread a slice of organic white bread with some butter and topped it with a dollop of plum jam.
It was a gorgeous amber jelly, just holding together enough to be great for spreading.
We all had a nibble. It was just sweet enough, with a soft and subtle plum taste. Not too overpowering, with a lovely smooth, slippery texture.
My recommendation: find some local plums and get making your own homemade plum jam. Perfect for Christmas presents, and in the depths of winter you’ll be pleased of a little slice of summer for breakfast.
N and I are spending a lovely weekend at home with my family in the Cotswolds. Today my mom and I made plum jam from using plums from her garden. She has a tree that is positively groaning under the weight of plums, many boughs almost touching the ground.
With a large basketful we seated ourselves in a sunny spot in the garden and began the task of pitting all the plums.
The saucepan was laden down with nearly 7lbs of plums. The saucepan was popped onto the hob and brought to a simmer. This was then followed by long periods of checking to see whether the plums were turning into jam.
Once the jam had begun to set when smeared onto a plate, it was removed and placed into sterilised jars (they’d been put through the dishwasher). We made about 13 jarfuls. Not sure how it will taste – will have to let you know when we try it.
My mom insists I can’t share the recipe, not because it’s a closely guarded family secret, but because she’s not sure it’s very good. Will let you know how it rates on a crusty piece of grain bread with a good layer of butter.
So on the way home from work, N and I met up at our allotment to dig up what seems like ten tons of potatoes. They are happily stored away in an assortment of saved paper bags. I took a wander round the allotments and took some snaps of the lovely plots that other people have – none of mine this time, it’s looking more like I’m cultivated weeds…
The nice man who owns the plot next to us is growing these beauties…
And another plot that is stunning and designed like a garden complete with lawn and benches has a fence that is partly covered in a vine. In amongst that vine are these dark, glossy green squash…
There are purple beans…
Giant cabbages…
Yellow courgettes and their delicate flowers…
Greenhouses overflowing with ripening tomatoes…
…fattening cucumbers…
…and onions drying…
There is corn as tall as me…
Blackberries are turning in the brambles surrounding the allotments…
Apple trees are groaning beneath the weight of their laden bows…
There are pears plumping up…
And fat marrows discarded by the path…
One lucky plot owner has in one small space two types of apple and a plum tree at the back, all of which are sagging, heavy with fruit…
The final burst of sweetpeas are overshadowed by their neighbours…
Mallows, hollyhocks and scrambling nasturtiums are taking over where the poppies were…
And jolly sunflowers bob in the breeze…
My allotment offers up one final surprise of early summer – another crop of ruby red strawberries, sweet and juicy…
So when the sun briefly appeared last week, our stomachs grumbled for the delights of fresh summer salads and dinner on the patio. I whipped up three easy salads – I call them salads, but in fact they could also be side dishes, or part of another meal – some toast and cheese.
My three ’salads’: Piemontese Peppers, Marinated Green Beans, and a Mixed Tomato and Basil Salad.
Piemontese Peppers
*These are my version of Tamasin Day-Lewis’ Piemontese Peppers, minus the anchovies as we didn’t have them, and done under the grill…I couldn’t wait 40 minutes for them to cook in the oven!*
Feeds 2 as part of a meal
1 red pepper
couple of small tomatoes (cherry ones are great)
1 clove of garlic
some feta cheese
extra virgin olive oil
sprig of thyme
salt and pepper
Preheat your grill on a medium setting.
Cut your pepper in half and carefully remove the stalk and seeds. Halve them again and place on your grill pan.
Dice up the tomatoes and pop a few chunks into each quarter of pepper.
Next, thinly slice the clove of garlic and add a couple of slithers to the peppers.
Sprinkle over some thyme leaves, followed by a good drizzling of olive oil and season with salk and pepper.
Bung under the grill and cook until soft and starting to char at the edges (don’t forget about them like I did or you’ll have to remove some of the more singed bits!).
Remove to a plate and crumble over some feta cheese.
Serve warm or at room temperature – also a great dish you can prepare ahead of time and pop in the fridge until you’re ready to eat.
Up next: Marinated Green Beans
Have been super busy this weekend – primarily recovering from my terrible flu (just a bit of a cough remaining) and soaking up some sun. I’ve got some lovely food and recipes to share with you from the last week, including a delicious selection of summer salads and a scrumptious and super easy chocolate cake recipe.
I leave you with a picture of the super duper carrot I pulled from my veg bed – what a whopper! And very tasty.
I have always grown cucumbers, ever since I first had a garden of my own even though it was just a little yard. I lovingly tended the cucumber seedlings on our bedroom windowsill, but that lot didn’t survive our two weeks away in France…unsurprisingly.
Again, last year I lovingly tended another batch of seedlings, this time with a perfect growing space – our funny little glass lean-to at the back of our house. It’s perfect for starting seedlings off as it’s like a greenhouse. I thought I would finally grow cucumbers and enjoy the fruits of my labour…that lot grew huge, long tendrils that reached the roof, curling up the string that I’d provided for them…but I’m not great at nurturing, and I didn’t water them enough. All the cucumbers that started to develop just dried out.
So this year I have tried again. This year I decided I would plant them outside, and if they survived and bore fruit great, if they didn’t, oh well. I like plants that just get on with growing, I’m not really great with needy plants.
This is a photo of my cucumber and nasturtium bed. I have planted three cucumber plants into one of N’s beautifully built troughs. Along with them are two Banana Split nasturtium plants, and some odd calendula’s and white daisies that have popped up from somewhere.
And hidden beneath this mass of leaves and jolly orange flowers is this…
It looks like a well toned manly green thigh. Maybe a rugby players thigh….Anyway, I hope it tastes good. I will be so disappointed if it doesn’t.
Any suggestions on how to eat it – other than just taking a big bite of it :O)
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