Red Alert

Day 70 indoors and Jamie & I have reverted to our former selves and spent yesterday playing video games - Landstalker, if anyone remembers that blast from the past! We'd rather be outside nowadays but will stick with the shielding plan, even if this ridiculous government doesn't understand its own vague advice "ooh, little bit of politics".

Today we have more gorgeous blue skies and sunshine. We really have had beautiful Spring weather, but I know our fellow gardeners are crying out for some rain. We had a tiny shower yesterday, but it was cleared away swiftly by the strong winds we've been experiencing in the last week. 

I've been playing with my 'microscope camera'. The images aren't as good as I'd hoped (not exactly microscopic!), but the spikey just-emerging tomato flowers are pretty amazing.

We now have two pepper plants in the kitchen windowsill too. Jamie is still hoping to visit the plot at some point, to plant them out. And he's said he'll sow some of my Gigantes beans too. Another fellow plotholder, Kate, very kindly offered to plant up our allotment now that Neal has dug it. It's a tempting offer, but it'll be good if Jamie gets up there so we've said no, for now.

A bit droopy on arrival. They're happy now

Both our allotment sites are fully leased now, with our biggest waiting lists we've had since the beginning. It's really good to show there's a strong need for communal growing spaces in Hungerford - I wish I was there to meet some of our newcomers, but at least I've seen some great photos of their activity, on social media.

I've done a bit of cooking, I used up some celery sticks to make cream of celery soup on Saturday. I used this recipe, using milk and flour instead of cream.

I fried the finely chopped onion and celery in oak-smoked oil. It's amazing, just like Campbell's condensed soup - it needs scooping out of the jug! Even Jamie likes it - he never normally likes my home-made soup :-)

We're still eating a lot of rhubarb. We actually have brown sugar to bake it and the syrup is delicious. We've discovered that chocolate icecream goes particularly well with rhubarb.

The title is highlighting the fact that this government think we can 'stay alert' to a virus, rather than stay home to protect ourselves and others - Basement Jaxx provide the great song.

Face the Crowd

Hungerford was at its busiest and best again yesterday - for Hungerford Food Festival.

HAHA had our usual spot upstairs in the corner of the Town Hall room as well as having a display on the landing.

This year, we were offering free samples of makes & bakes containing veg - it was a great addition to the stand as visitors stayed talking for longer while they tasted things with unexpected ingredients! Examples were Chocolate Aubergine brownies, Parsnip, Carrot and Orange cake and, my favourite of the unusual bakes, the Celeriac  & Lemon flapjack. Ted, Liz and Kerry even managed to win prizes in the cookery competitions for their offerings - that's how tasty they were!

Kerry's Cheese and Chive scones and Jamie's Carrot Lox (vegan smoked salmon) provided the savoury choice and Karen's Ginger, Lemon and Marrow jam was very popular. Elderflower cordial and Rhubarb cordial provided delicious refreshment. Here we are in our fancy HAHA aprons.

Downstairs, the Corn Exchange was so busy that they had to restrict entry for a while so that people could actually move round the hall.

But there was lots going on outside too.

We had a delicious wood-fired pizza when I took a break from the stand.

Such fun seeing food stalls lining the High Street. And the smells were very tempting!

I bought some tasty cheeses, an almondy croissant and some Oak-smoked Chilli oil and then back up to our stand for a few more hours. We were giving away dried bay leaves and wildflower seeds as well as the recipes - everyone definitely likes a freebie!

And at the end of the afternoon, we accepted donations for the veg. Of course, I came home with plenty - some was ours but other stuff I swapped - hooray! Now I have a butternut squash. And I have a beautiful bunch of dahlias which have done so well on the allotment this year.

I'm on annual leave today to recover. Using Ivan's enormous celery (which is very green and full of flavour) and a few of our carrots and shallots I've just made some soup, with added turmeric. 

I blitzed the carrots after removing the celery - it would have been too stringy as well as a bit sharp.

It's very tasty and should cover a couple of lunches even though I couldn't resist a bowlful of it whilst writing this. The whole flat smells of celery - delicious!

So that's this year's events finished - just normal ones like skittles and workdays now until next year. Oh, and of course we've got the plots to look after!

The song title is provided by Beady Eye.

Celery Soup

We may not grow celery again as it's a bit hit and miss. Some of the bunches are really well-formed, others papery. However, this soup makes me think it is worth growing some - thanks to the 'Goodness Green' website.

Desk buddies looking on

Everything in the pot (except oil and pepper) was home-grown.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped roughly
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon thyme (optional)
1 head of celery, cleaned & chopped roughly
1 white potato chopped
1 litre of vegetable stock
pepper & salt

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a non stick pot and add the onion and garlic. Cook until softened.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Puree the soup using a blender. Hand held works fine.
4. Return to the pan, check seasoning and serve.

I do love a straightforward recipe and the result was delicious!

Not Quite September, Definitely Not October!

We didn't stay on the plot long, too cold, maybe that's why some of the pumpkins appear to be a month ahead of where we want them to be...

The rain barely stopped so we didn't get any clearing or weeding done. Maybe tomorrow as I've gone an extra day off for the bank holiday. We picked one of our two peppers and another stalk of celery, but this one hasn't grown properly; the stems are hollow, but still full of flavour so okay for cooking with but not for a salad. We were hoping to have a courgette but the one which was big enough was covered in a jelly-like substance - probably slug eggs. Yuk! That went in the compost bin :-(

The marigolds are still growing and looking beautiful even in the rain. The wildflowers have been flattened so aren't looking so good.

Celeriac a-no-go

The fog cleared, as forecast, as I made my way home for an afternoon at the plot. We got a few hours of warm sunshine to work in. It's so great when the weather people get it right!

I'm still mainly clearing and Jamie's digging. I pulled all the salsify and celeriac. We could have eaten some of the salsify, or kept it in the ground to produce pretty flowers (apparently), but the area is needed for the spuds so it got chopped up and put in the new compost bin on top of all the dry strawberry cuttings from last weekend.

This is the reason I'm not bothering with celeriac this year. A poor show. When I cut into these they were brown but they'd never looked appetising because the root didn't bulb up nicely. 

Jamie's having another try at growing celery this year - in containers so we can keep it good and wet (there's not going to be a drought, is there?!)

The birds are in full song at the moment, including this redwing. More bird visitors on my wildlife blog.

Our poor neglected plot

We haven't spent time on the plot for a couple of weeks, last weekend was so hot and there was grass seeding going on on-site so we went for walks in the sun instead. Jamie did pull some Kestrel spuds on Tuesday.
We went up yesterday though and it's desperately in need of some tlc! There are so many weeds and the Congo potato foliage has all died so looks a mess. We'll go up later and do a lot of weeding and clearing.
We picked 2 sweetcorn. Only about half the cob had formed proper kernels. Soo sweet and tasty though! We also had another cucumber, some little turnips and carrots for snacks while we listened to England footie.
Picked 2 courgettes which should have been picked a fortnight ago - they're giant marrow-sized now. Think I may be living on courgette soup all next week!


Not much room for anything else in our Ka boot!

We picked our first celery plant. We didn't really look after the plants as much as we should have and although they're tall and bushy the stems are weird. Some of the stems and just a shell, with no tasty fleshy bit. The rest appeared to have gone to see so we had some stem which was tasty but not spoon-shaped; more round... Still tasted ok and could have been used for soup, but not really properly grown. Celery needs much more water than we gave it; the ground needs to be almost water-logged apparently, so different plan for next year!

Another trug of goodies

We picked a radish - one of the 'Candela di Fuoco' ones. Lovely and tasty and HUGE!

We gave the celery a bit more room as the leaves were pressing against the top of the netting. Took the opportunity to pick a few stems (to add to some stuffing and soup this evening). Some of the plants look like celery from the shops, but the stems are weird - they're hollow... not sure whether this is to do with lack of water or whether celery is meant to look like this before it's fully formed! Will wait and see as it's got another month or two to grow really...

I'm having a stuffed patty pan for tea and some white/yellow/orange carrot soup for lunch for the next couple of days so had a lovely full/colourful trugful of veggies to take home. There's the celery, carrots, thyme, Orla spuds, onions and a little cucumber for Jamie's sarnies and the obligatory courgette in there to. Lovely!