Lunch at the Allotment

I was working from home today and it was such a hot day that we decided to go to the plot for our lunch. It was lovely; certainly could have stayed there for the afternoon!

Jamie picked some long-awaited runner beans for his dad and we picked some bits for our dinner tonight - fried marinaded tofu with veggies (tomatoes, courgettes, peppers, basil).
Our peppers are rather gnarly but they taste fabulous.

I also took some photos of the many 'beasties' and will put entries on the wildlife blog. I'm not a fan of spiders but the one I took a photo of today is quite amazing looking! It's your standard orb weaver garden spider - the type that makes a web across your porch so you walk through it in the morning <shiver>

I meant to post this photo the other day of our pickled silverskin onions, runner bean chutney and tomato & courgette chutney.

We've decided that the pickled onions will provide us with enough for next year too so we won't plant any shallots next year - will give us a bit of space on the plot for something else...

Chutney and Pickles

I know, we're a bit obsessed with preserving at the moment - I'm sure we're smelling rather sweet and vinegar-y too. I certainly know our flat is!
We picked this lot from the plot this morning - the silverskin onions are currently soaking in brine prior to being pickled tomorrow. Some of the courgettes will go to work but some are for dinner for the next two days as well as for the chutney. There are also a few leaves of perpetual spinach from fellow plotholder Geoff (Thanks Geoff).

Yesterday we made some runner bean chutney - the same recipe that we always use, as it's so delicious.
And today we've been making tomato and courgette chutney, with a different recipe - based on the one I found here, but with a few adjustments. This is the ingredients list we've used and we just put it all in the pan and cook until it thickens:

• 455g courgettes
• 284g onions
• 284g tomatoes
• 270g Demerara sugar
• ¼ pint malt vinegar
• ¼ pint pickling vinegar
• 4 cloves of garlic
• ½ tspn paprika
• ½ tspn salt

 It's smelling delicious as it simmers away so hopefully it'll taste just as good! We'll find out at Christmas.

This is the stage we figured it was ready - it's always a bit tricky; The spoon leaves a clear path through the mixture until the liquid slowly covers it again.

Here's the end result, along with the pickled silverskins and the two types of chutney. The courgette and tomato is far right, with the runner bean in the middle - mmm

We're Pickled!

That's the shallots all done. Three big jars and four smaller ones.

Two have got fresh chillies in - hot! hot! hot!

All in storage for Christmas along with the pickled beets Jamie did last week.

Plans for Pickles and Meals

It's pickling weekend so the flat smells of onions. We peeled all the shallots yesterday and they've been soaking in salt water overnight. We'll start the pickling after I've written this. We went to the allotment earlier, it's been a lovely hot day but we didn't spend as much time on the plot as we intended. Here's a photo of the asparagus pea; I felt it deserved a photo after I was recommending it yesterday. There should be enough on there to have them with a meal later in the week - they need to be eaten when smaller than 2.5cm or they are tough.

The squash are going crazy. A couple of the Uchiki Kuri really look like they're ready, but surely it's too soon..? I read somewhere that it's better to leave them to mature for longer but am a bit concerned that they'll go over if I leave them on the plant too long. The climbing frame has worked, so that can stay for next year.

Our peppers have gone red on the top side where the sun touches them - a lovely shiny red. We've had a couple in salads and they are tasty but the skins are a bit tough. I may add them to the roasting tin of veggies tomorrow. There are lots of green ones on the plants still and they're getting very big, so hopefully the sun will continue to shine for them to go red too.

We've pulled our silverskin onions and have them on the drying rack. We should be able to pickle them next weekend, although we really want to get some bean chutney done then and I want to do some tomato chutney - ooh, so much to do!!

I was hoping to make chive vinegar, as shown on the Horticultural Channel but the second lot of flowers which are now coming on our chives don't look as healthy as the flowers in Spring - looks like that plan may have to carry over till next year.

Another thing which will have to wait till next year is the fennel recipes I had planned. My florence fennel plants have gone to seed (such a shame, I should have started harvesting earlier). I've left a couple of the smaller plants in the ground but I think they've probably had their day too.

We left with our trug of goodies. That's our first Kestrel potato plant of this year - one of the tubers weighs over 600g! We hope it's ok on the inside. A lot of them are very scabby but we're hoping to bake a couple of them and scab makes the skin lovely and crispy :-)
There's also a couple of garlic; they've dried out well up the plot, even though we've had quite a lot of rain over the last few days, it's dried out in between and the garlic seem to be unaffected.
 

Lizzano and Picasa

Our Lizzano tomatoes were bought as grafted plants from Dobies. They did well last year so we have three plants in pots on the plot this year. We tried to give them more room, as last year they toppled over. However, this year they've grown even bigger and in attempting to pick we are finding ourselves treading on fallen trusses. Having said that we're still having plenty to eat.

We've been picking small amounts over the last few weeks but now masses are turning green so now our meal plans are tomato-based, still with the occasional courgette...

Our Rocky cucumbers are still paying out well and today we finally got round to eating some of the asparagus pea. We'd tasted one raw and it was horrible - one of those plants that sucks all the moisture from your tongue :-{ But stir-fried in a bit of butter - mmmm. And they really do taste of asparagus - lovely! We'll grow them again as they're such a pretty plant too.

The wildflower patch is also now looking really pretty and providing lots of pollen for the bees and butterflies.

I was fiddling about with the image processing tools in Picasa.

Saturation

1960s

Boost

I don't generally use the tools to modify photos on the blog - except for cropping and occasionally I need to up the brightness.

But the Orton-ish tool does give a pleasing result!

Orton-ish

Now, back to pickling our onions...