It may be a while since my last post, but I haven't been idle...

There's been lots going on since my last post.

In the garden, I have planted out lots of Spring bulbs, tulips, daffodils, narcissi, muscari and crocus. That was really hard work, as most of them went under the trees in the front garden, which is a mixture of tree roots, clay, chalk and hardcore! Classic!!

I've harvested lots of Achocha from my crazy vines...

This little group look like a family of hedgehogs...if you have a good imagination...and hedgehogs were green!!

I planted out my baby leeks (it was probably faaaaaar to late, but what the heck), and the Ailsa Craig onions I'd grown from seed in spring. I'd sort of forgotten about them, so they've been in modules all summer. I'm not sure they'll survive the winter (they are an exhibition variety rather than a tough over-wintering type), but they've been in open ground for about a month now, and seem to be okay.

I planted out my pot grown brassicas, including brussel sprouts, white sprouting broccoli, normal broccoli, cauliflower and a couple of cabbages.

 

...the girls have been impossibly cute!!

My glut of beautiful green tomatoes got made into a huuuuge batch of 'Green Tomato Chutney' in my lovely new Maslin pan (Thank Crunchie for Wilkos!!)

Today I planted out my garlic and shallots, with varying degrees of pleasure...

My garlic bulbs, 'Solent Wight', purchased from Kings Seeds was pretty disappointing. They say that 2 bulbs should give you an average of 30 cloves to plant, hopefully equating to 30 bulbs of garlic by June time. However, one bulb (the one on the right) was looking a bit squishy. I wasn't too worried, thinking maybe I'd lost one or two cloves max...

...but as I took off the outer layers of papery skin, I realised it was worse than that.

...I ended up with four iffy cloves, that I am giving the benefit of the doubt, and the rest (however many there were) were a squishy, mouldy mess :-(

The second bulb was the complete opposite. I got 14 good sized cloves, and 5 small ones (which you would normally cook with rather than plant, but bearing in mind the disasterous first bulb, I've planted them too).

See the difference between a 'good' clove from the 'good' bulb (left) and the 'best' clove from the 'bad' bulb (right). Though it's a good size, the bad one is a sort of brownish colour, and didn't feel as firm as the good one. I think I'll be very lucky if they come to anything.

Here are some of the Banana Shallots that I planted out today too. They are from Wilkinsons and are firm and a really super size. I have great hopes for these for next year.

...and finally for today, I wrapped up the brassica beds, with fleece, to protect them from the mob of local wood pigeons, who can dessimate brassica crops just by looking at them!

This will probably be one of the last trips to the lottie for this year, so I want to be sure my little brassicas will survive through to the spring.



Cheap lunches for work - Souper!!

I've grown some really fantastic Squashes and Pumpkins this year, and I like to put them to good use. My Squish soup is notorious at work, so here's me making a batch yesterday.

I started with a large Iron Bark squash (approximately 3.5kg). I put it in a roasting tin in the oven at 160 degrees for 1 hour 10 minutes, til it was soft when gently prodded. This is it with the skin being stripped off after cooking:

Meanwhile the stock veg (carrot, celery and onion) were softened in a stock pot in some olive oil, then about 500ml of stock added. Sometimes I use homemade chicken stock, this time it was a Kallo organic stock cube - they're not too salty. The stock volume isn't a fixed thing, it depends how thick you like you soup and how watery the rest of the ingredients are. I like to use less liquid at this stage because I can always add it later, once its been pureed.

Once the squash has cooled a bit, I peel off all the skin, halve the squash and scoop out all the seeds and add the flesh to the stock veg. I also add a teaspoon of turmeric, half a teaspoon of cumin, a pinch of chilli powder and some freshly ground black pepper.

Then it gets blitzed down with my trusty Sainsbury's Basics stick blender (£4.99 - bargain!!).

This time I ended up with 10 servings for the freezer, that's two weeks worth of work lunches for the price of some seeds and a stock cube - another bargain!!

Very pleased with the results

Well, I'm back from the Garden Society Garden Show, and I've been surprisingly successful:

Four 1sts
Three 2nds
One 3rd
and a trophy for aggregate points in the cookery class - I'm really chuffed

Here's some photos of the highlights:

Apparently the judge was very complimentary of my Yule Log and my method for tying off my onions and shallots (thanks for that go to Vegmandan from the Vine)

The Holly on top of the Yule Log is made out of Royal Icing sugar. I mixed it with cocoa powder. Piped the outlines in a soft-peak mix, then flooded the centre with a runny mix, then made a soft-peak white mix and piped on the veins while the rest was still soft, so it sort of flowed into the runny mix. They were then stuck on with more royal icing after the cake had firmed up in the fridge over night.

Oh yeah, I put a nip of whisky in the butter icing...no wonder the judge was raving about it!!!!