We love to grow fruit and veg. After converting our garden to a kitchen garden many years ago, we also look on a local allotment plot in 2010.
Rhubarb
First of the year’s rhubarb, harvested from the allotment on Sunday morning. ... Read more »
Plum Jelly: Sunshine In A Jar
Although we’ve not achieved as much as we’d hoped over at the new allotment (which we took on this time last year) we have enjoyed harvesting fruits from the existing trees and bushes. Our plum tree gave us a fair crop of juicy sweet fruit. I’m glad we picked nearly all of them on one ... Read more »
My Beautiful Fruit Tart with Blackberries, Golden Raspberries, Bananas and Chocolate
The yellow raspberries I harvested from the allotment recently were so beautiful I wanted to make something pretty enough to do them justice. Having filled a couple of tubs with blackberries too, a fruit tart seemed an ideal way of putting both to good use. I’ve peered through the windows of countless patisseries, admiring the ... Read more »
Berry Delights
Every few days, Pete harvests a handful of plump sweet raspberries and tiny wild strawberries from the back garden. The raspberries have that perfect balance between tart and sweet and that special flavour that distinguishes them from their fellow Rubus fruits. The teeny tiny wild strawberries in particular are a revelation; the flavour is very ... Read more »
Small Fruits
Popping over to the allotment yesterday to show it to a visiting friend, we harvested a small box of fruit and some pretty borage flowers, for use as a salad garnish. (The lettuce is growing in the kitchen garden at home and is very nice indeed now it’s hearting up, meaning lots more crunch). Fruit ... Read more »
Honey Goats’ Cheese Toasts On Little Gem Leaves
Incorporating home grown produce into your meals needn’t be complicated. This recent lunch used romaine lettuce picked fresh from the garden and served as it was, without any dressing. This is a very quick and simple lunch using just four ingredients. You could make a simple dressing for the salad if you wish. If so, ... Read more »
My Hallowe’en Courgette
You’ve seen my (first ever) Hallowe’en Pumpkin. Now, please put your hands together for my Hallowe’en Courgette! We grow courgettes in our back garden most years and usually choose the spherical yellow ones, just because they’re a bit different. This little guy, though much smaller than most carving pumpkins, was a little long in ... Read more »
Hix’ Baked Parsnips with Lancashire Cheese
Why are we eating parsnips in the summer? Well… we grow our own vegetables and, last year, we planted parsnips for the first time. Early January was rainy and miserable and we left much of our winter crop in the ground for longer than we should have. So we urgently harvested a bumper crop of giant ... Read more »
Pickled Gherkins, How I Love Thee!
I have always loved pickled gherkins. Many’s the time I’ve come to the chagrined realisation, as I munch one straight from the jar, then another and then one more, that I have eaten an entire jar in one sitting! Over the last several years, Pete and I have gradually converted our back garden into what ... Read more »
Urban Farming with Celia Brooks Brown
Books on growing your own fruit and vegetables seem to be ten a penny at the moment, as publishers leap onto the latest bandwagon, keen to milk the home farming phenomenon. Often dull and weighty tomes, they add little to the existing excellent literature already available. Celia Brook Brown’s New Urban Farmer makes a refreshing change, ... Read more »
Kavey Nibbles
The Place of Onions, in old Lille
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]