~What to do with courgettes!~

It's that time of the year when the courgettes are coming thick and fast...

This year I was given 4 plants (free - yay!) and put them in 2 growbags in a sunny spot.
Turn your back for a minute and there's one of these...

I'm lucky I love courgettes and have now amassed loads of recipes to deal with the glut.  I've just made these little courgette and potato rosti, and added fennel leaves and feta.

Grate 1 courgette and about 3 small potatoes and squeeze out as much of the liquid as you can with a teatowel. Add some crumbled feta and chopped herbs of your choice (I used fennel as I'm having them with salmon), along with a beaten egg to hold it all together. I added plenty of black pepper, but no salt as the feta's salty enough. Squeeze out the excess egg and shape with your hands into flat cakes and dust with flour before frying.

They are yummy!

~Autumn Harvest~

Is it Autumn? Or Summer? Or Sprautumn? (My primroses are flowering again!) I like things to stick to the rules sometimes, so I am out of kilter with this warm weather. And it makes me grumpy because I don't like being too hot whilst working and commuting. One of my clematis has flowered consistently and confusedly since June; and looks as knackered as I feel at the moment! Have had a sort out in the garden this week and not done too badly considering my plot is tiny. Small vegetables are the order of the day when you've got lots of containers, pots and troughs.

Day off Thursday may involve a bit of chutney making!

Thanks for your lovely comments about my Macmillan tea party, I appreciate your kind words x

~Time for (afternoon) Tea - 1st event! ~

"Please come in - you're in the right place!"

What an exciting learning curve the last few weeks have been, on the journey to my first underground afternoon tea today.  



Tasty tomatoes fresh from the garden



My 9 guests each had a table gift of a little jar of Plum & Cinnamon Cheese and some 'Love-in-a Mist' flower seeds. My youngest guest was lovely R, at 3 and a half; and guests had travelled from all over Yorkshire - York, Malton, Selby, Leeds and Pontefract.

Yorkshire Tea was very popular, and the ladies liked the China Rose Petal Tea too. Favourite cake of the day was deemed to be either the lemon drizzle (which had homemade lemon curd in the mixture) and these mini Victoria sponges which were filled with cream and my summer fruit jam.

A really enjoyable afternoon, with plenty of chatting (mainly about lovely wool and knitting!) and a good atmosphere. Thankyou to all who attended - looking forward to the next tea on 1st October when the theme will be 'Autumn Harvest'.

~Damson Cheese~

I started making fruit cheeses last year; after reading lots of books on preserves and learning more about chutneys, jams, jellies and conserves. Fruit cheese is not cheese at all; it's just the name given to a firm preserve where you cook the fruit first, sieve it, then boil it with sugar.  It sets firmly and you can turn it out to serve it if you wish, and slice or cube it to serve with cheese and biscuits on a cheeseboard. There's nothing better than a pantry shelf lined with jars with jewel-coloured preserves for the depths of winter.

First of all you need your fruit, and for me it's a matter of frugal principle not to buy it. So, if like me, you've only got a limited space to grow fruit and veg and aren't self-sufficient...

1. get out into the country lanes for elderflowers, blackberries, sloes, rosehips, crab apples etc.
2. ask friends, family and colleagues if they have any surplus homegrown produce.  Promise them some of your jam or chutney! This year I've had gooseberries, damsons, apples and plums given to me...and I've got tomatoes and sloes coming later.

I've been making damson cheese, which is good with cheese and meat, and also plum cheese with juniper berries, which is good apparently with Brie, and I love it with duck and game too.  It's the same method for any fruit, so experiment. My favourite book is an old Marguerite Patten one from the 1960's.

Rinse the damsons, then place in a large pan with a slug of water (about 100ml) Look at the lovely colour!

...simmer away for about 20 minutes, occasionally stir to prevent burning. They turn into a mushy soup like this....

Careful because it's now very, very hot and you're going to sieve it. I use a wooden spoon to press it firmly through the sieve. The good thing is that all the stones are removed without having to fiddle about. Throw the stones and skins away. Weigh the resulting fruit pulp - for every pound of pulp you add the same weight in granulated sugar. Cook on a low heat until the sugar is dissolved, then a higher heat for approximately 30 mins until setting point is reached. Trust me, you can tell when it's done - it starts to turn gelatinous on the spoon and sides of the pan. Pour into sterilised jam jars. 1lb of pulp makes about 2 jars.

Let me know if you've any ideas on recipe combinations...maybe the addition of port for a Christmas version?

~I put Basil in the Ratatouille~

Whenever I make Ratatouille, I think of Manuel's stricken face that his adored pet rat (Basil) was in the ratatouille - in fact I've just had to watch it on YouTube - glorious 1979 Fawlty Towers!! We've had a lot of heavy rain here in North Yorkshire today and the garden certainly needs it. The Jack be Little pumpkins are coming along nicely; they are snaking along a truss of string in front of the warm conservatory wall...

...the tomatoes are in wall troughs, again on a sunny wall - 'Tumbling Tom Red' (bush/hanging basket type tomato) which is always reliable and even more importantly tastes fab, and 'Ildi' a last minute sowing of some seeds I bought a couple of years ago at a show. They produce masses of tiny yellow, pear-shaped fruit - I've probably crammed too many in the troughs, but it works for me.  I keep them well fed (twice weekly) and watered (daily)so they do just fine.

 More courgettes too - hence the ratatouille - made with homegrown basil (poor Basil) , parsley and garlic. It tastes absolutely gorgeous, we had it with plain couscous made with butter and a glug of good quality extra virgin olive oil.
Recipe: Chop 3 onions and cook slowly in olive oil and a bit of butter for 5-10 mins, then add 4 chopped cloves of garlic, careful not to burn it.  Add 3 large courgettes (chopped), one red pepper (chopped) and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 5-10 mins. Add approx 100ml of vegetable stock (I use Marigold Swiss Bouillon). Then add a handful of chopped parsley and basil, a spoonful of homemade chutney/red onion marmalade and 2 tins of supermarket Value chopped tomatoes. Simmer with the lid on for about 1 hour.
That's it! - cheap as anything and enough for the freezer too.

~Courgette Chocolate Cake~

3 courgette plants and I've already got a steady supply. I have many recipes to deal with a courgette glut gleaned from various friends, books and websites. I just have to remind myself to pick them when they're reasonably sized and tasty because if you ignore them they can turn into marrows overnight! So, Sunday afternoon has been spent turning these

into this

The recipe actually made 2 loaves, one for the freezer and one for now. The recipe is from The Allotment Seaonal Planner & Cookbook by Andi Clevely. The kids sometimes complain about the tell-tale green bits visible in the sponge, 'but it does taste really nice', I say...
Here's the recipe;
Beat 125g butter and 115g brown sugar together. Add 2 eggs with a little of the flour(310g). Mix in 1 tsp vanilla and 110ml plain yogurt.. Sieve remaining dry ingredients ( 2 tsp bicarb of soda, 30g cocoa,1/2 tsp mixed spice,1 tsp cinnamon,1/2 tsp salt) and fold in. Then mix in the courgettes. Grease and line the tins. ( I use greaseproof loaf tin liners from the Pound Shop). Makes 1 square cake or 2 loaves. 45 mins at 170 degrees C.
 Gorgeous. Does it count as one of my 5-a-day?

~Garlic harvest and alien alliums~

It is so hot here today! I've been pottering in the garden and I decided to dig up my garlic as all the tops had turned yellow and flopped over. I got a decent crop bearing in mind they were grown in a raised bed and not in full sun. I planted them late October, and I was frugal and used shop-bought garlic instead of expensive seed garlic as a trial just to see how it went. Gardening books advise against this and say the crop is likely to be inferior and more prone to disease, but I am impressed with the results. It's drying out in the sun now, and I'll keep some to sow again in autumn.

I've kept the scapes (the twisty garlic flower stalks that hard-necked varieties produce) and I'm going to make garlic scape pesto for the first time. My leeks have also bolted, but I'm loving the flower heads, just like alliums, and I have some unopened ones in a vase in the kitchen just becuse they're so weird and

alien-looking. The bees love them too!

Yes, I think I love the allium family... This is one of my favourite pictures - I bought this limited edition linocut print by Selby-based artist Helen Roddie at an art show a few years ago - it's called 'Onion Watch' .

~Gardener's World Live & BBC Good Food Show~

I've just returned today from a really lovely weekend with the lovely V and J. We went on

our annual jaunt to the NEC Birmingham for the BBC's Gardening and Food shows, though we did miss last year. Compared to the previous 7 or 8 years we were suitably attired; comfort rather than image now being a priority...

and we had the essential wheeley trolley - they are very 'now' so I'm told! We were frugal and equipped ourselves with our own supply of Pimms and the trimmings. We sat in the sunshine and dodged the occasional showers.

The gardens were full of inspiration as always

I loved this 'Grow Your Own' display of course...

And as well as Carol, Monty and Joe, we saw the Masterchef finalists with Greg Wallace & John Torode which was brilliant entertainment

What a great day! More next time...

~Garden Salad~

I've grown veg for about 6 years now; despite loving gardening from my late twenties I was hesitant to get growing veg, for fear of failure I think - of doing it wrong somehow. Once you've started it dawns on you that that's the joy of it; that each year crops grow differently and results are dependent on nature as well as you.This year I gave up my allotment (sob) as it was unrealistic for me, so now I'm being more creative with my little garden - spinach, salad leaves, kohl rabi, tomatoes, squash, strawberries, runner beans, courgettes, garlic, leeks, herbs, chillis - amazing what you can squeeze in! And have room for flowers and perennials too. So tonight, it was in from work, out the back door with scissors and colander, and 5 minutes later you have a garden salad all cobbled together from what you find outside. Cheaper and tastier than something out of a plastic bag methinks.

If you're about to have a go I would definitely advise a John Seymour book (an old one from a Car Boot Sale if poss) which is sound basic stuff to learn. Try not to get too carried away, like super-enthusiastic me two weeks ago, who was seduced by the sun and planted everything out. I normally wait until after Chelsea, which reminds me -can't wait for Chelsea coverage tonight with Sarah Raven.  Most of my veg plants look a bit wind-whipped and forlorn at the moment, will it have taught me a lesson? Probably not.