The New Year

Two weeks in and Christmas feels long forgotten, what a shame. We had such a lovely break. Here's a post-Christmas snack I made, very tasty along with the home-made carrot and patty pan chutney.

"Sprout Surprise"! The sprouts were from our plot and these little puff pastry cheesy parcels were a very tasty snack.

This beanfeast was flavoured with Rose Harissa and smoked paprika - it covered a couple of easy meals. The leftover celery and olives were added to a can of shop-bought mixed beans (not as good as my home-dried, but did include green beans and sweetcorn) and a carton of passata.

Now it's back to work. Luckily the weather has been so foul - since November it seems! - that there is nothing tempting me out of doors. I have been out a few times this year and we did visit the plot a couple of times but it's just soggy and not very interesting. The rain has been incessant. All the tubs, ponds and rain gauges have been filled to over-flowing. We found a dead frog by our pond 😔

Jamie removed the bottle cloches from the broad beans but a week later the little plants had been blown sideways so we've put netted cloches over them now - normally we'd add them to protect from snow but any snow forecast for us seems to have moved on for the timebeing.

Eurgh, look how soggy it is. And it's been windy so the bench is blown over every time we've visited. The garlic and leeks need weeding but that's not possible until it dries out a bit. The leeks look rather sorry for themselves and the garlic is difficult to spot amongst the grass, but there is actually quite a lot there.

The tunnel is going to be a bean tunnel, rather than a squash tunnel, this year. We figure maybe the ground would appreciate a different type of crop. The squashes didn't survive the freezing December temperature drop and sadly I had to discard most of them. I'll try to eat them quicker this year. Planning and seed buying has begun. There are a couple of new things I've ordered which I'm looking forward to growing - more on them in later posts, I hope.

We just picked some veg this weekend on a quick visit. I was pleased to see that the parsnips don't have canker and the carrots may be small but most aren't slug/fly damaged. The cavolo nero is good, but still covered in whitefly that come back to life when they warm up.

And then we went home and I turned it into a chunky soup with added tomato paste, rosemary, thyme and smoked paprika. Delish!

As I tuck into the last of that soup it's a cold and frosty day which highlights some good things about working from home: no windscreen scraping required, no icy drive on the A34 and no need to go outside (unless I want to).
The song is provided by Death Cab for Cutie. Enjoy and Happy New Year!