September - Cooking and Growing

Mmmm, if you could only smell this cooking!

French bean chutney, one of our favourites! We use the same recipe each time we make it. Only once did we make it with runner beans, that were a bit old. Eurgh, we won't make that mistake again! Stringy bits in your Christmas chutney are most disappointing!

Turmeric, mustard, cornflour in vinegar

We went to the allotment earlier - it was pouring with rain, but we wanted the onions and Speedy Dwarf beans for the chutney and the other veg for the halloumi meal tonight.

I'm pleased that the peppers changed colour as intended. The red one is halfway there, but just the orange and yellow ones for tonight.

The Indigo Rose black tomatoes haven't had enough sunshine to completely turn. Their green backs have turned reddish. They're not as tasty as the red plum Aviditas tomatoes, which would be my tomato of choice next year. It's prolific and delicious!

Talking of prolific... the Disco Patty Pan have come into their own. These two were particularly beautiful! Several have grown huge so I've been taking them to work - but even my colleagues can't face any more Summer squashes! They are delicious stuffed.

Our largest sunflower is now seeding up. I may take some of the seeds for nibbling, but most we'll leave for the birds. Our cucumbers have also had their day, but Rocky performed brilliantly as always.

And soon it'll be time for the Winter squashes....

Jack Be Little

Jack of All Trades

We picked one of the Lark sweetcorn cobs yesterday. The kernels were very small and not quite ready, but we ate a lot of it raw as it was so sweet. Looking forward to them in probably a week's time...

Organ Donation Week 2016

As it's Organ Donation Week (previously known as National Transplant Week) I was thinking about what my life would be like if I hadn't been fortunate enough to have my kidney transplant in 2008.

I would have been on dialysis for 12 years. Dialysis options have improved significantly in 8 years so some of these thoughts may be unfounded. Also, at the time, I had some good friends at the hospital who made the sessions a little more bearable. And you have to make the best of whatever life throws at you.

No allotment - Eurgh! Imagine that. As a dialysis patient the idea of digging an allotment would not have entered my head! Everything we've learned, grown, seen on the plot over the last 7 years wouldn't have happened!

Blogging - I only started the blog as a record of what we were doing on the allotment. Now if I ever have to return to dialysis (fingers crossed that never happens) I might blog about it, but it would be a bit dull, with no nice photos (like this post!)
Food - the strict dialysis diet makes food rather dull and kidney failure impacts on appetite anyway. My (slightly)  increased interest in cooking has only been as a result of growing our own.

Vegetables Only small amounts were advised - a bit tricky when you're a vegetarian, but my appetite was so small anyway. Fresh vegetables are too high in potassium so kidney patients have to over-over-cook them. For example, potatoes had to be double-boiled and the boiled-out nutrients washed down the sink.

Buglife - we've always enjoyed nature but having the allotment and the energy to work on it has provided the close access to interesting creatures that was missing from our lives since we moved to the flat without a garden.

Social life - we wouldn't have met and made friends with our lovely fellow plotholders. The allotment has opened up this side of our life in Hungerford. We'd probably still be more into computers and gaming. Of course, there's nothing with that, but real world is good too.

Sleeping - All the hours we spend on the plot would probably be spent sleeping. Dialysis cleans the blood but the tiredness remains.

Time off - I always treated dialsysis sessions (4 hours at the hospital every other day) like a job - but a job with no annual leave and no extended Christmas or Bank Holidays. And no sick days.

Holidays away - we first visited Tenerife while I was on haemodialysis, so it's definitely possible, but I certainly don't think we'd be having an annual holiday. It's more involved to arrange dialysis sessions away, locations are restricted and it's more expensive for insurance

Lethargy I'm certain that I wouldn't be learning spanish and wouldn't have taken on my new job. The inspiration to do new things isn't there when you're waiting for your next dialysis session, waiting for a hospital appointment, waiting for the call..

These are a few of my reasons why I see organ donation as 'a gift of life'. I wouldn't be dead without a new kidney but my life would be significantly limited.
Please have the conversation with your loved ones.

THANKYOU TO ALL THE DONORS AND DONOR FAMILIES 
AND THE NHS DOCTORS AND NURSES

Bank Holiday Tuesday

I'm not sure why we get an extra day off for the August Bank Holiday, but I'm glad we do! It was a beautiful sunny and hot day so Jamie and I had a barbecue on the plot.

We had a nice plate of heart-shaped cucumber, mayonnaise-y carrots and pickled garlic-tomatoes while we waited for our Quorn burgers and onions to cook on the little bbq. The garlic is still rather strong - not to be eaten at lunchtimes at work!
The tomatoes were all Orange Paruche. Very tasty but split too quickly to be used in anything where you want to keep them whole, or for cooking with where they fall apart.

I'm still managing to pass on plenty of courgettes and cucumbers at work so they aren't going to waste and we cooked one of the patty pans on the barbecue - it was quite tasty, but better cooked as part of a meal at home to be honest - like we had last night; baked and stuffed with a Bhuna curry, yum!

The Speedy dwarf beans (sown on 2nd July) are just getting big enough to harvest. We hope to make some chutney with the first crop at the weekend. They have timed really well this year as the runner beans have just about had their day (and we've had enough of them).

I Spy Through the Rain

This is looking through the slats of the stable down to our plot at the bottom of the site - it was a rainy/misty/warm day so we spent quite a bit of time in the greenhouse or in the site stable. All I did was a bit of weeding, picking and taking photos anyway, so it didn't matter that it was rainy - at least it wasn't cold.

I put the camera on a long stick - it looks better from ground level!

The rainbow chard stems are the brightest thing on our plot at the moment - almost glowing in the misty light!

The pumpkins on Plot 3 are amazing... Two plants and at least 7 large pumpkins. The foliage is beginning to die back as you can see.

This was that plant 8 weeks ago - isn't nature amazing?!

A little way to go yet...

We've had some really hot days with sultry nights and yesterday we got the storm. I didn't see any lightning but heard thunder rumbling around. The sun and rain are encouraging everything to grow but our sunflowers are shorter than previous years.

Sunflower peeping through

We've been to the plot to harvest and water each evening. This is our one loofah that's formed - it's about 30cm long. The plant is now producing quite a few flowers, but there won't be time to make any more loofahs at this stage.

The peppers are colouring up now; 2 peppers per plant is rather weak. I hope they taste good, we'll wait till they get their full colour before they get eaten - maybe stuffed peppers, mmm.

We've been alternating between courgette-based meals and runner bean & potato meals over the last couple of weeks. The runner beans are beginning to get a bit stringy on the edges now. The potato has been grey-purple because we've been using the Salad Blues- still tasty, but not very pretty! We should have emptied them out of the potato bag earlier then we could have had them as boiled salad potatoes.

All that (apart from the cucumber and raspberries!) went into a lovely roasted vegetable and halloumi meal.
That was the first of the patty pan summer squashes. We think it has a bit more flavour than the courgettes. They were really slow to get going, but look like they're going to swamp us soon! The courgettes I take to work keep disappearing from the kitchen, so they won't go to waste.

The tomatoes we're mostly eating are Aviditas, I think they're more tasty than the Orange Paruche, which split as soon as they're picked. The Indigo Rose are still on their way to ripening... I've tied them up in an attempt to get the green ones and green parts to see more light..

Our sweetcorn has finally formed some cobs. They aren't very big, but hopefully they're still going to fill out. Looking at previous years (aren't blogs handy?) we normally start harvesting it in September, sometimes late September, so we seem to be pretty much on track.

The Jack-Be-Little plants are producing loads of pumpkins and clambering all over the sweetcorn, the trellis, the courgettes.... And the Speedy dwarf beans which are just forming, so we'll have them to replace the runners in our diet.

A mackerel sky

Star-struck Cucumber

That's my starry salad lunch - we were so pleased that our cucumber mould was successful this year, for the first time! We may be lucky and find a heart-shaped cucumber waiting for us on the plot one evening this week!

The growth spreads suprisingly well into the corners of the mould and then there's a bit of a fight to get the mould off, but I think it's worth it. (Not convinced it would work too well on tomatoes, but maybe next year)

The weather is sweltering, but still the plants are beginning to look rather autumnal - that's our largest pumpkin preparing itself for October!

And the hedgerow is well-stocked with berries already. Summer seems to have been rather short-lived although we have had some lovely hot days and long evenings to enjoy this year. And recently we've had some hot Septembers and Octobers, so I hope this year follows suit.

My salad was all home-grown: delicious coleslaw, with cabbage and carrot, two tpes of tomato, purple basil, rainbow chard and Rocky cucumbers. And the salad we had for dinner last night included courgette and potato/onion cakes.
We're still waiting for the purple/black tomatoes to ripen, but they can't be too far off now...

Showtime 2016!

It was the second year for HAHA to join forces with the Royal British Legion for the Horticultural and Handicraft Show. With 32 exhibitors and 406 exhibits it was even more successful than last year - See how useful allotments are to local communities!

Setting up the Show

We were picking, selecting, washing and trimming our vegetables on Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning. We managed to gather together reasonable items for the following categories:

Tomatoes on a vine	5 Bush tomatoes
Matching pair of cucumbers	4 carrots with tops
Any 5 veg	Any 3 veg
3 onions (over 8oz)	3 onions (under 8oz)
Largest circumference onion	Plus a photo for each category

And now we have a flat full of slightly wonky carrots, dodgy spuds and damaged cucumbers. Also the cabbage that we were hoping to include but that is too holey - I think we're going to have lots of coleslaw over the next week! This is our trug of spuds. The Salad Blue are a great colour, but horribly scabby - they were grown in a bag. The white ones are Orla, grown in a bag, and are really good quality. The Kestrels were grown in the ground when we were searching for coloured potatoes to show.

Can't believe we couldn't find 5 runner beans that were suitable! And again our longest runner bean wasn't long enough - doh! We got 1st place for a couple of the categories but mostly 2nd, 3rd or highly commended. But all placings earn points so we got equal third prize so not bad considering the year! And we're always happy to share with Ted :-)

After a busy morning and afternoon it was good fun going along to the prize-giving in the evening. Along with the auction of exhibits and raffle and a bar to enjoy a shandy (ahem) or two or three :-)

It's such a fun event and great to mix with our fellow growers along with bakers, picklers and handicrafters!We're only sitting by the cakes - we didn't buy or make all of them!! 

Lots more photos here.

Count your Lucky Stars

We had a stroll up to the allotment in the early hours of this morning to look for shooting stars during this year's Perseids meteor shower. It was a beautiful night and the moon had just dipped out of view from the bench so we had a great dark sky to view. 

That's not a photo :-) We only saw a couple of meteors each, but it was worth venturing out. An owl was very active and noisy in the trees around the site and on our way through the Croft a hedgehog trundled across our path! We'd only mentioned yesterday that we hadn't seen one for a couple of years.

We had a lovely sunny afternoon on the plot yesterday; watering, feeding and deadheading various plants.

And look! The sunflowers are here! The tall ones are still growing but not flowering yet, but the short ones are very sweet and the bees love them.

We picked a few bits for dinner - our yellow courgettes are getting greener each day! Cucumbers are featuring in every harvest now.

A bit annoying that this was amongst the carrots. That could have been our entry for the 'funny shaped veg' in the show next week. I expect there will be more to choose from though!