Harvest Monday

Last night (Monday) I went to a Norfolk Organic Group talk about butterflies (really interesting), but by the time I got home it was getting on a bit for finishing off the blog post, so I'm coming in late again for a Harvest Monday....

This week has been pretty busy with various foody bits n bobs, but not much allotment time. 

We had friends round on Friday night, so Jan made roasted butternut squash pasties again, incorporating some of the last green butternut plus caramelised red onions. We had the pasties with mashed potatoes - the stored potatoes have started to produce shoots due to the intermittent mild weather, so I'll try and use the rest up soon. There were enough pasties for leftovers at the weekend, and we shared one for lunch, with truly delicious salad, freshly harvested from Eves Hill Veg Co (not-for-profit market garden where I volunteer), grown in the polytunnel overwinter.

Earlier in the week we'd been continuing to eat-up my own winter salads....a load of corn salad from the allotment - 

And mizuna, also from the allotment. It seems to do well despite frosts. I'm glad I sowed it back in late summer - I wasn't going to bother as the seed was quite old!

Here's the kale and the 'random brassica' leaves that I harvested last week - the random brassica leaves (unidentified self-sown brassica) are massive compared with the kale. Mind you, I've been harvesting from the kale for months, so they've done pretty well.

Another from last week - a tasty quinoa meal with the green butternut squash and dwarf French beans from the freezer.

Another freezer-inspired meal tonight, using up diced sweet dumpling squash and courgette, with blauhilde beans  (the bean itself rather than the pod) and those mega 'random brassica' leaves. It turned into a bit of a gloop but tasted good, with noodles, onion, garlic, ginger, cumin and turmeric. It's great just grabbing bits from the freezer, already prepped for cooking / heating - quick n easy. I've still got some onions in storage (variety Sturon, grown from sets), so hopefully a few more weeks before we need to buy any.

We've had lots of other home-grown meals too, though they were even less photogenic than the ones above! 

I was back out at Eves Hill today (prepping new salad beds) with other volunteers, so that's the third time in eight days - an extra visit on Saturday for the monthly community day, which despite being soggy had a great turn out. This was followed by a showing of In Our Hands, a film by The Landworkers Alliance about regenerative small farms - well worth a watch if you get the opportunity.

I'm cutting it short again tonight, feeling sleepy, so will say good bye for now, and hopefully have some better photos next week, maybe some of the plot and Eves Hill (which was lovely and sunny today...I need a good session like that for the allotment).

Thanks for reading, I'm linking in with Harvest Monday kindly hosted this month by Michelle at From Seed To Table.

PS sorry if any email subscribers received a fairly empty post last night, I'm using a new app and accidentally published it live...oopsie.

Harvest Monday - leafy greens, Eves Hill Veg Co and a coastal walk

Phew, we largely escaped the effects of Storm Doris on Thursday....a few things were blown around on the allotment but nothing major..my shed escaped unharmed. On other sites in the city, greenhouses were demolished and wheelbarrows sent flying. Two of our fence panels in the back garden were blown out of place and bent a bit too, but our neighbours popped them back in place...they'll do for now, I don't fancy replacing the panels at the moment.

 

Inbetween the gnarly weather passing through this week I've actually made quite a lot of harvests....firstly some Brussels sprouts and a self -sown cabbage (the cabbage came from a plant I let go to seed a couple of years ago)...here's some of the outer cabbage leaves plus the sprouts -

...the inner cabbage leaves plus some of the Nero kale I've picked this week -

...more Nero kale and some self-sown chard -

...self-sown corn salad -

...a few leeks (plus there was an extra one I'd already used up by the time I got round to taking a pic)

....some dwarf curly kale -

...and finally, some Brussels sprouts which had started to 'blow'...I love these as spring greens. Here I used them with some leftover cooked potatoes and nut roast (yummy nut roast made by Jan's mum, who'd been visiting over the weekend).

A touch of colour came from some stewed fruit I made with the last of our stored apples, and frozen berries - gooseberry, raspberry, blackberry, saskatoon and red currants. I still have lots of berries in the freezer too, so hopefully they'll last us through to June (when the first strawberries should be ready).

As a bit of a sweetener I added about half a jar of my homemade apple and elberberry jelly (from 2015). I'd given away most of the jars for Christmas 2015 but still have a few left.

When the fruit starts to thaw it releases quite a bit of water, but that's fine as we mainly use it up on muesli for breakfast (along with organic milk and a big dollop of yogurt, mmm).

Whilst Storm Doris was giving it her best outside I got stuck into sowing some seeds...tomatoes, peppers and a few aubergines. I was comparing how many I'd sown of each variety last year but still managed to sow too many...couldn't help myself...but I'll give away spares. I covered them all with a thin layer of (peat free) compost, filled the tray with water to let the compost soak it up from below, then after a little while moved them to a fresh dry tray, wrapped it with bubble wrap and placed nearish the radiator. Quite exciting.

These are the tom varieties...

Last Wednesday I volunteered at Eves Hill Veg Co again. Amongst various tasks we pegged out where the beds in the new polytunnel will go. Five beds with four paths. Yes that'll be a lot of veggies...awesome. Unfortunately Storm Doris struck the following day and damaged the original smaller polytunnel next door, bending one side out of shape (the side in the photo below). But from what I've heard, it's repairable and may even have been sorted by now...phew.

We had a little excursion from Norwich at the weekend, with Jan's folks who were visiting and headed up to the coast to sunny Cromer (well, it wasn't actually sunny, but it was still lovely nonetheless)

Down on the beach we were actually out of the wind too, walking a couple of miles east to Overstrand.

But on the way back along the cliff top we experienced the full brunt of the wind plus some heavy rain joined in too - it was bracing to say the least. Nice scenery though.

So that's it from me, I think the weather is meant to perk up again soon (we had lots of rain showers again today) so hopefully I'll get some more work done on the plot too. Oh, this evening I went to an interesting Norfolk Organic Group talk on stinging nettles...that's how I like to spend my evenings :D

 

Thanks for reading this week, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

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Harvest Monday - a new harvest

I didn't think I'd taken many harvest pics, but looking back through the week has surprised me....I'd forgotten these from only a few days ago....

 

My first (and possibly last) Brussels sprouts. Quite small but very tasty....Jan even said how nice the flavour was. I just cooked them quickly in a little bit of boiling water, to keep in the flavour and goodness. They didn't need many outer leaves taking off either (which is good as there wouldn't have been much sprout left!).

I used up the last butternut squash this week, cubing and then roasting

I added some pumpkin seeds and freshly ground cumin seeds towards the end of the roasting too, yum. We had some of the squash as a side dish and made the rest into a soup with Nero kale from the plot....

....along with some of these chestnuts which I'd also roasted (shown here before roasting). I didn't get a photo of the finished soup but it was really tasty, all whizzed up. These were the last chestnuts, but they kept pretty well and we got several meals from them altogether.

I harvested quite a bit of kale from the plot this week (dwarf curly kale and Nero kale), and some more leeks, but didn't get any photos. I slow-cooked the leeks for a few hours with red lentils, a tin of tomatoes, onion, garlic, grated carrots and spiced with cinammon and ginger, adding in a small bag of purple basil pesto from the freezer towards the end...the last of the pesto too I think. Even before adding the pesto, the stew had turned a lovely dark colour. As with a lot of my meals it didn't look so good once it was dished out but sure tasted nice!

 

The corn salad did look good though...I still can't believe how easy this is just left to sow itself around the plot. I literally have carpets of it in places. My harvesting technique is to snip off whole plants just above soil level, (avoids disturbing the soil) then wash them all en masse, as it's a bit fiddly. I tip them all into a bowl of water, then swoosh each plant through the water a bit and then pinch off the bottom of the plant (which removes the lesser quality leaves and base of the plant where all the leaves meet, where the soil is hardest to clean out). This also separates each of the leaves, which I then keep in a glass bowl in the fridge so we can dip into it over the course of a few days making sandwiches etc.

So it seems to have been a week of some 'lasts' but also a first (Brussels sprouts)....what will this coming week bring (some very cold and rainy weather by the sounds of it!).

 

Thanks for reading, I'm linking in with Harvest Monday, kindly hosted by Michelle at From Seed to Table, over in California, for a few weeks.

 

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Harvest Monday - quick peep in the freezer

There's a howling gale outside as I write this - these strong winds seem to have been at it every other day for weeks. But at least the rain has had a break today. The sun even shone through when I was on my half hour lunch time walk (a chance to get out of the office for some fresh air).

 

Saturday was quite nice too so Jan and I had a trip to the plot. I went for a couple of hours before lunch and then we both headed down afterwards - it was nice to have a bit of company and it's very satisfying to see what two people have been able to achieve instead of one. Plus it seems amazing that for a lot of last year Jan hardly left the house as she was too ill with her thyroid problem (now thankfully recovered), and look at her now, helping on the plot in January (she's usually a fair weather helper, haha).

 

I've made a start on sorting out the old raised beds - the pallet wood has become rotten and the couch grass keeps creeping in from the sides, so I'm pulling out all the wood and reshaping the beds (currently two large 'U' shaped beds in a mirror image ) into six individual rectangular ones - I'll take my camera next time to get some pics as it's hard to explain. The raised beds were good while they lasted but I don't have any replacement wood and also slugs and snails seem to like hiding in them (plus the couch grass problem). As we were leaving the allotment a big flock of goldfinches landed in a nearby tree and were singing their twinkly song in the last rays of sun....lovely.

 

Anyway, here's what I've got left in the freezer from last year's harvests:

Top shelf is two bags of rocket pesto, tubs of tomato sauce and tubs of stewed fruit. Behind them is peas (sadly not grown by me but I wish they were) and some quorn (which we don't actually use very often).

Below that is cubed squash and behind that is loads of fruit.

Next drawer - more fruit, what a surprise! I don't think Jan's noticed all the strawberry tubs, she'll be very pleased when I take out one of them. The smaller drawer below this has yes, more fruit (and some ends of bread).

I think we're alright for fruit for a while eh! We're buying local apples still but I think when they go out of season I'll take some stewed fruit as a snack to work instead. We're trying to use less plastic so I'm going to use a small glass jar instead. The same goes for the freezer - I was reading on someone's blog the other day (zero waste chef) about how they freeze in jars rather than plastic, so that's definitely worth a go (the best tip was not to use narrow-necked jars as these break when the food expands as it freezes).

 

As usual, this week we've had lots of corn salad and sprouted beans

And eaten our first lot of cress (with egg), grown on the windowsill, yummy. Mark (of Mark's Veg Plot) has helpfully pointed me to a post of his from last year that covered growing cress, and I've taken his advice, sowing the next lot much more thickly.

Tasty lunch, drizzled with the homemade cider vinegar mix leftover from Jan's beetroot, celeriac and orange pickle

This week I've also lifted a few more leeks (this photo makes them look bigger than they were really)

Though not a bad amount to go in the spicy leek and bean soup, made in the slow cooker

Ok, thanks for reading this week and I'm linking in with Harvest Monday, hosted again by Dave at Our Happy Acres (many thanks go to Michelle at From Seed to Table for hosting during January)

 

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Harvest Monday - greeny #2

Well, we've had a much calmer week weather-wise. After the incredible storms and wind for several days last week I was relieved to find minimal damage on my plot. A few things turned up that needed returning to their owners though!

I had a good day and a half on the plot this weekend, what with having two bank holidays, making 4 days off! I planted out the rest of my potatoes and sowed some beetroot and RainbowChard in between two rows of autumn broad beans. I also sowed some spring broad beans too. Plus, lots and lots of weeding (mainly couch grass, urgh).

At home, in pots and loo rolls I had a good sowing session on Friday - sweet corn (in the loo rolls for their long roots*), winter and summer squashes. I have a load of seeds on the sofa waiting to be sown too but haven't had chance yet.

*just to add that when growing in the ground, the corn roots are shallow, just below the soil. But I find if I grow them in pots the roots poke through the bottom quite quickly, and as they're not meant to like being disturbed when planted out, I can plant the whole loo roll out too because it will break down in the soil.

I've picked quite a lot of corn salad this week, it's growing quite fast now so I'm taking a whole plant at a time rather than just picking the biggest leaves off. Here's some with my homegrown fermented gherkins.

And some with homemade coleslaw (red &. White cabbage, grated carrot and vegan Mayo and cider vinegar) - (not homegrown coleslaw though)

I've picked more oriental greens (to go in noodle soup)

And forked out the rest of my leeks. These last ones weren't that big but as there's quite a few it added up to a reasonable amount to go in a soup.

I've left a few tiny ones in situ to flower and seed around. Though if you're properly saving seed I think it's good to leave your best as they'll then be more likely to produce quality seed too.

We treated ourselves to veggie curry pie from a local takeaway this weekend and to be healthy (ish) I added some purple sprouting broccoli on the side! Should still have a fair amount of PSB to come.

And I just realised there were a couple of non-green things too:

I used some sweetcorn from the freezer to add to a savoury pancake filling plus also a tub of tomato and courgette sauce. I tried to take a photo but it just looked like brown gloop (very tasty gloop though, with added kidney beans from a tin).

When saving my corn, i do it a bit long-winded and prise out each kernal with my fingers (after blanching and cooling rapidly) because my technique for cutting it off the cob is rubbish and I end up wasting lots otherwise.

And we used up the last tub of fruit concoction for the freezer. I'm gutted at this because I usually have a huge dollop on my museli every morning. I think I might just get some cooking apples and add a jar of one of my preserves to make a slightly less healthy version (because of the sugar in the preserve).

That's me for the week, back to work tomorrow, hope you've all enjoyed the holidays!

Linking in with HarvestMonday on Daphne's Dandelions

 

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Harvest Monday - leaking leeks

We had guests this weekend so I didn't get a proper allotment session (had a very nice weekend though despite this, ho ho), but I did have a very quick trip to the plot to take down a bag of manure (still in my front yard) and dig up some leeks. It's only 10 mins walk away after all.

I was pleased with these 3 leeks and put them in a carrier to take home. Nearing home I thought 'these leeks feel a bit light' but continued on my way. On getting in the house, taking shoes, coat off etc I spotted some leek roots peeping out the bottom of the bag and on closer inspection there was a large hole, perfect for a leek (or two) to slip out. Sigh! So I quickly headed back out to retrace my steps and try to recover my missing leeks. I could see a lump on the pavement a long way down and, yes! It was one of my leeks. Hurrah. But no sign of the other so I continued all the way back to the allotment and *drum roll*.....you'll be pleased to hear I found my other leek on the main path, phew! So my quick trip turned into a bit of a pallava but ok in the end.

Here they are, nice looking specimens. I think I'll use them tomorrow in a giant potato / parsnip mash for freezing.

I also picked a bit of corn salad

And earlier in the week picked some of my oriental greens from the lean-to for a noodle soup

A quick update on my toms - they're doing ok, the true leaves are forming well. The chillis and aubergines have started germinating but not the sweet peppers

A pic from the other end. You can see the six empty pepper modules

I was going to try sowing some more sweet peppers, doing a pre-soak as recommended by Margaret but discovered I've run out of seeds, so instead have snipped off these 6 modules, given them more of a soak from below and put them in their own bag. Fingers crossed.

And finally, unfortunately these were not my eggs (no chickens myself but maybe one day) but from the organic veg stall in the market. And what's unusual with them? Three double yolks in a row! They were yummy too.

Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's Dandelions

 

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