Peek-a-Boo

We’ve had our first frost this morning. I haven’t ventured out but the sky was interesting - better than the grey we’ve had for the last week or more. We have actually visited the allotment and sowed our over-winter Aquadulce Claudia broad beans. It feels a bit late, but hopefully they’ll grow enough so we can harvest ahead of the bean weevil.

As usual they have their little cloches for protection from rodents more than weather. They’re planted into the soil below a cardboard (mostly rotted) and mulch layer and we soaked the beans prior to sowing to give them a head start.

The leeks at the front of this bed look a bit dodgy, hope they don’t have leek fly larvae like last year. The onions have sprouted as have a couple of the shallots but I haven’t spotted any shoots on the garlic yet.

I had another baking session - using one of our pumpkins to make these tasty biscuits, with plenty of cinnamon. Jamie even gave me a ‘Paul Hollywood handshake’ for them 😃 (The flash has made them look more yellow than in real life).

https://vilgain.co.uk/pumpkin-biscuits-with-oats

We’ve had a few trips out. We went to the Newbury Racecourse fireworks display. We took the train so there was a bit of a walk which was very tiring for Jamie but we had a tasty burger to make up for it. And we also had a trip to Salisbury Cathedral to see the Sarum Lights. Unfortunately the evening didn’t quite go to plan. We queued round Salisbury’s roads several times trying to find a car park, which was rather stressful. Then we walked to the cathedral, although we were late for our allotted time they let us in. We walked through the beautiful cloisters viewing projected medieval scenes, art and manuscripts which was fascinating.

Jamie needed a sit down so we stopped in the cafe. When we came out we weren’t allowed to access the rest of the exhibition as it was due to close! So disappointing! 

We drove home and I hit a deer 😱 I just tapped it, so not catastrophic for us but as our neighbour said of the deer “you didn’t do it any favours” 😮‍💨 What a bad day.

Anyway, we had a better day when we revisited Greenham Common which I’ve mentioned before on here. We had a snack at the old Control Tower which has been re-opened as a cafe and it has good views over the common.

It has old photos of the common when it was commissioned and when it was a USAF Airbase during the Cold War as well as information about the peace camps so it was interesting to visit. We’ll go back on a sunnier day and have a wander on that part of the common.

Back home I used the smaller of our butternut squashes for this meal last night.

Very tasty stuffed with chestnuts and rice. The squash hardly had any seed cavity! I’ll be using the other half to make soup later. 

The only other butternut squash that grew weighs 2.5kg, so I’m not sure what I’ll use that for yet. I thought that was pretty heavy, but the largest butternut grown in the UK this year weighed 1295kg 🤯  Here I am showing ours off along with my new hidden highlights - need a bit of extra colour for these grey months!

And those ‘peekaboo highlights’ - dreadful name - lead me to the song title provided by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Enjoy!