Two days of leave, then a final two days of work before I stop for Christmas - hooray!
Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention. Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire. A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me. From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
Tuesday 21 December 2021
Christmas time
Tuesday 7 December 2021
Sunrise, Sunset
When I opened the curtains on Thursday morning and spotted the moon, I had to dash for my big camera to get a photo and I was pleased to see it was in focus because 10 minutes later the moon was hidden by mist as the Sun arrived.
We did a little bit of clearing but the before and after shots didn't look much different on a typical December allotment plot!
A couple of hours later we took a wander up the High Street to see the Christmas lights.
The blue tree is particularly beautiful and the little trees attached to all the shops are always lovely to see, though the traffic was too busy to show the High Street off in all its glory - perhaps we'll do a late-night visit when the road is empty.The canal has to be the most photographed part of Hungerford and The Rose of Hungerford often has a starring role. When we drove past earlier there was quite a crowd gathering to have a canal trip with Santa 😊
So apart from that, I have barely moved from the living room in the past week, except to do some cooking...
I made these bean balls with gigantes and runner beans. The smoked paprika tomato sauce was very tasty and the green spinach noodles were a colourful addition. This is the bean balls cooking - I mashed them together with fried shallots and a bit of bell pepper, they were very tasty although not very photogenic.
I'm working my way through a packet of chestnuts and a Festival squash at the moment, so had a ricey-tomatoey meal last night.
And for lunch I've just had cold roasted squash, with chestnuts and a bought salad with lambs lettuce and beetroot slivers.
Sweet and delcious, but now I have to do some more work. I've just seen that a meeting has been cancelled - that's always a bonus! Aah, and a song title from Fiddler on the Roof - haven't seen that beautiful film for years.. maybe it'll be on at Christmas 😏Monday 29 November 2021
Arwen’s Song
We enjoyed a bit of snowfall yesterday. Nothing like the weather that Storm Arwen brought to the north of the country, but we don’t usually get much snow so I always think of it as a treat. A little slow-mo video.
We had a freezing night and this morning we awoke to a frozen dusting of snow on rooftops and a beautiful dramatic sky. You can (just about) see the crescent moon in the photo too.I’m having a long weekend so we went to the allotment this morning to pick a couple of carrots and see how the site looked. Ok, so neither the carrots nor snow are that impressive, but it was nice crunching through the icy grass.We were glad to have protected the broad beans at the weekend. They looked a bit limp through the tunnel, but not too bad.Something had left interesting tracks on a plank. I can’t work out what made them. Brrr, chilly little feet!Last night I ate my last spaghetti squash. It’s a shame I only got two fruits this year, but I’ll try again in 2022.
Thursday 25 November 2021
Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
November has blurred past me along with much of this year. Too much work and not enough play! I shouldn't complain, I like my job and I'm still working from home full-time - things could be so much worse!
Last week I was living off a Crown Prince squash. The beetroot noodles and peppers made a very pretty meal but I have to admit that I was rather disappointed with the pan-fried squash. It didn't have much flavour and certainly wasn't as sweet as I was expecting.
I added cayenne pepper and cumin to flavour the soup which I made with half the squash, which I roasted. Subsequent meals included more additional flavourings like this layered bake.
A tasty home-grown dish of beetroot, celeriac and squash flavoured with plenty of thyme, sage, garlic and topped off with cheese. It was meant to cater for me for 2 meals but was so tasty I scoffed the lot in one meal 😏
It was pretty cold at the weekend but we were pleased to see a bit of sunshine on Sunday. We put a small greenhouse up in the polytunnel. It's hoped that this will keep a few degrees higher so that we can start seeds a little earlier next year. So far it has shown to be 1.5° warmer than outside the little greenhouse, so that's a good start.
We had to cut the pipes down slightly so that it fit but it'll be good in the spring and there's still room for us to sit in the polytunnel 😊
We were extremely pleased to see that our Purple Sprouting Brocolli has already started producing; we weren't expecting it till February. There was only enough for one but I enjoyed it steamed with a seitan schnitzel that evening. We only have the one plant - all the others didn't make it beyond seedlings - so I hope we can keep harvesting to encourage more florets.
Here are our shallots, growing in the raised bed. Some garlic have just sprouted too.
And here are the leeks and broad beans. Both should be fine through the Winter, they can survive low temperatures and we know from last year that broad beans can be frosted down to the ground and still perk up again.
We left the plot wih a few of our small carrots, some of Neal's chard and a Honey Boat squash (definitely the most tasty squash this year). Added to the last of our shallots and pre-soaked and cooked Borlotti beans I made my staple meal - with chopped tomatoes, smoked paprika and lots of garlic. This lot did serve me for two days and it really is my favourite kind of 'cooking' - all shoved in a pot in the oven for 40minutes and eaten with bread - yum.
So there's been quite a lot of cooking for me over the last couple of weeks - Jamie refuses to eat anything that looks like this 😀 so he's on veggie burgers for the days I cook for myself. And at lunchtime this week I have some scrumptious fennel and home-grown celeriac soup - based on the basic River Cottage recipe, it's the best! I hope next year that I'll have home-grown fennel to use.
So that's what I've been up to for the last two weekends - not much and not much planned for the next few, but I have my antibody test to do later. Whatever the result, I don't think I'll be venturing out too far for a while yet - well, the weather has gone too cold for me now anyway 😉
Jamie bought me this Tweetie-Pie mug, hence the song title by Middle of the Road - I know, I know, but I was struggling to find an appropriate song 😂
Sunday 7 November 2021
Setting Sun
It’s an hour before sunset and it’s only about 3:30. Time is moving too fast for me at the moment.
After doing a bit of HAHA admin this morning, we got to the plot after lunch to do some November tidying. It felt cold but it was sunny and, after moving about a bit, I soon needed to remove my big coat. The temperature was about 10° today. During the week it dropped to -2.8° and was very frosty; We only visited the plot one lunchtime to collect a honeyboat squash, pick some sage and chard to make this delicious meal. It includes re-hydrated Borlotti, Gigantes and runner beans, shallots and garlic from the allotment too, but I had to buy the chopped tomatoes and it has smoked paprika.
The honeyboat squash is so delicious and the dish has served me for three meals. Final night tonight and I added red chard and also made some crispy seaweed-style chard with sesame oil and seeds. (Neal, if you’re reading this, I owe you some red chard ☺️)The broad beans have grown well over the last 3 weeks. We’ll leave their cloches on for a bit longer but don’t want them to grow too tall. The shallot bulbs have begun to sprout, but no sign of the garlic yet, although popping one back into the soil (probably a bird pulled it out) I could feel that the roots had started to grow.
The polytunnel is clear now, apart from stored squashes and now there’s room for our chairs. While Jamie was riddling the soil from the peppers grow-bags I was collecting Kestrel potatoes; one plant from a bag and one from the ground. I expect the ground-grown ones to have a few slug holes, but they all look pretty good.
We had celeriac for Halloween and this one I used in a chestnut and celeriac soup. It’s very tasty and will cover a few lunches. There are a few chunks of chestnut remaining for a bit of added interest. Yum!So another weekend is over. We’ve had our flu jabs and my 3rd, not booster, third COVID jab is booked for next week. Kidney transplant patients are to have two of the Pfizer jabs this time… hope they do the trick so that life can be a bit more varied and perhaps that will slow time down a bit! The song title is provided by the excellent Chemical Brothers.
Monday 1 November 2021
The Ballad of Peter Pumpkin-head
There goes October, flying by and ending with a pumpkin-filled Halloween weekend.
On Saturday we spent much of the day cooking. Jamie made a roasted red pepper and pumpkin soup, with shallots, garlic and onion.For the main course of our Halloween meal we had Veggie haggis with mushed-up roast potato and celeriac. We used the celeriac that I grew from seed. Although they were extremely slow to grow they eventually produced some pretty good veg - though nothing like the size they sell in shops. We got these two chunks from two plants.