Pumpkins and bakes

So we have seen the Bake off final and I have harvested
4 pumpkins, 3 acorn squash and yet more yellow patty pans.

I made Green tomato chutney (from the latest Jamie magazine) which was great.

On the other hand my stuffed squash was not 100% successful. In fact not even 50% successful. I preferred the filling (60g Bulgar wheat with fridge veg)

I also made a lovely carrot, apple and courgette cake from the amazing Cake Hunter blog. It wasn't too sweet as uses honey, fruit juice and dates to sweeten it. It also had no eggs so quite heavy. You would definitely need the butter icing recommended but I screwed that up by using low fat cream cheese which dissolved into a pool that could never achieve frosting consistency. I admit I had to buy it in the end for office presentation.

I enjoyed it so much and colleagues liked it so much that I decided to bake it again for my own personal version of bake off - band of bakers. Yet again, I had trouble with frosting when practising.

On the plot I need to dig over the ground for winter and prepare soil - weed/ manure. STILL NOT DONE despite perfect weather - will have to wait until end November

In the recent storms, which we were lucky enough to miss the worst of, we just lost 2 fence panels. They will add fuel to the great allotment bonfire I am planning.

Finally with one of the pumpkins I roasted slices with whole onions and blitzed them for soup and also made Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall's pumpkin, chili cornbread which was a huge success.

A tidal wave of tomatoes

Lately it has been tomato season and I have harvested kilos of cherry tomatoes from the allotment. Even without being staked and with impending blight in the area, this has presented me with a problem of how to use so many in one go when we are traveling often or deadline with deadlines.

Nature has her own deadlines though so I had to get creative.  Clearly there are the standard roast tomatoes, tomato sauces that can be frozen. But there is only so much space in our 3 freezers and they are pretty much full! So I've made Mexican inspired brunches (sort of Huevos Rancheros without the chilli) which is essentially chopped fried tomatoes and onions, whatever vegetables you might have to hand (here I used peas) with a well made for an egg in the middle - a really filling breakfast that is low calorie and healthy.

I also made ketchup which, to be honest, doesn't taste anything like the Heinz ketchup I am used to but is tasty none the less.

Ingredients
1 large red onion, peeled and roughly chopped
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
Chilli flakes to taste
Pickling spices
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
2 cloves
Sea salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound cherry tomatoes
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/3 cup soft brown sugar
Place all the vegetables in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan with a big splash of olive oil and the garlic, chili flakes, coriander seeds and cloves. Season with the pepper and a good pinch of salt.

Cook gently over a low heat for 10 to 15 minutes until softened, stirring every so often. Add all the tomatoes and 1 1/2 cups of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer gently until the sauce reduces by half.

Blend the sauce in a food processor or with a hand blender. Put the sauce into a clean pan and add the vinegar and the sugar. Place the sauce on the heat and simmer until it reduces and thickens to the consistency of tomato ketchup. At this point, correct the seasoning to taste.

Spoon the ketchup through a funnel into sterilized bottles, then seal tightly and place in a cool dark place or the refrigerator until needed - it should keep for 6 months.

"Our agreement with the producers of "Jamie at Home" only permit us to make 2 recipes per episode available online. Food Network regrets the inconvenience to our viewers and foodnetwork.com users"

* Sterilizing Jars Tips:

To sterilize jars before filling with jams, pickles or preserves, wash jars and lids with hot, soapy water. Rinse well and arrange jars and lids open sides up, without touching, on a tray. Boil the jars and lids in a large saucepan, covered with water, for 15 minutes.

Or else pop some water in and microwave them.

As a rule, hot preserves go into hot jars and cold preserves go into cold jars.

Time for tomatoes

Despite complete neglect, the tomatoes seem to be doing well and on the whole are escaping the slugs and blight. I gathered 1.5kg today and made a great sauce from any bashed ones (including some figs in).

I also spotted a bumblebee on a bright pink zinia which are among the flowers that I am growing as cutting flowers. A particular success has been the statice also known as sea lavender (Limonium) which has grown particularly well in white and peach - the blue and hot pink were less plentiful.

Squash challenge

It's that time of year again. The time when squash become a staple of our diet and I need to get creative in the kitchen.

Currently we have 4.41kg of yellow patty pan squash which look like mini flying saucers but taste much better.

On top of that a kind allotment neighbour, Adrian, offered me 3 of his courgettes which had overgrown into marrows when he wasn't looking. (Another 3.06kg)
Definitely time to search out the squash recipes.

The weather has been weird - more like April sunshine and showers. (17/8)
Tomatoes are starting to ripen but I should have staked them, fed them and pinched out side shoots. They are now prolific and resting on the ground.

I also cut down the old raspberry canes but didn't have time to take them to the tip. With winter brassicas in under weed suppressing fabric it's starting to look ready for Xmas.As I said I planted winter brassicas through weed fabric but most have been eaten. How can I help them survive?

I also stripped our stairs of carpet so will use that over a mulch of manure to prepare the soil for planting next year.

Assessing the harvest to date

After a fair bit of neglect, a late start because of frosts and a recent heatwave (including a plague of flying ants) it's surprising that there has been anything to harvest. And yet there has been. By far the best performer has been the raspberry patch - 7.2kg by the 26th July. There are more raspberries to pick but it's just too wet to pick them today. That should probably be the last picking then I can dig up plants near the path and cut down the old canes.

The mangetout are still giving a little (660g) though they are best as peas now

I get the occasional red currants from the plants in the garden - they are very tart but have high levels of vitamin C so are best mixed into a smoothie.

I'm so glad that I started growing some cutting flowers - I got this great bunch of statice which will also dry well and give me colour even in the winter. I also saw a brave first gladioli (Gladiolus) flowering in the rain today.

The latest, and more or less final, haul of potatoes was 4.5kg. Not bad but it could be improved with better soil preparation ahead of planting next year.

In a strange turn of weather it is now the 30th July and pouring down.  I got two more little patty pan squashes, taking my total harvest to 1.3kg, so I have to find some great recipes to use them up.

Looking towards future harvests, the tomato plants have developed little fruit and one of them is almost red. I didn't stake or pinch out side shoots so they will be a little floppy and will put too much effort in creating new fruit rather than feeding the existing ones but I'm still looking forward to the next summer harvest.

Finally, with the potato area cleared, I have ordered plug plants of winter/ spring brassicas to use up the space. the debate I'm having is whether to try to plant through a weed suppressing fabric to reduce work as I am starting a new job and want to concentrate my time on the allotment on fun things not weeding.

We're having a heat wave

For once, London is hotter than Central Europe and on a par with some of the southern areas.

This being Britain there are already some people complaining about the heat but I am enjoying it while it lasts. The Daily Mail (apologies, I didn't mean to read it, honest) did recently run a story about the wasteland southern England has become.  Certainly my plants might not like it quite so much but they will have to lump it. So far there seems to be no threat of a hosepipe ban which is good as I have a lovely new hose that coils itself up again. Bliss - no more hoses snaking around the garden and sweating over buckled pipes.

I was in Berlin recently and was very taken with the now defunct airport, Templehof (in the picture above), which has been turned into an impromptu leisure park. The runways make amazing rollerskating, running, cycling and roller skiing (yes, that's right) arenas.  In between that the land is used for kite flying, picnics and general lounging around.  There are a few unofficial allotments which, unlike in the UK, do not seem that focussed on grow your own just colourful wildflowers mainly.  There was even a nature crazy golf - with all the obstacles growing.

Templehof may be huge but no space is too small to grow things in. A neighbour down the road is using the patch of land outside his house which is shaded and with no soil to grow vegetables. In reclaimed containers he is growing a great variety of plants from seed. More power to him.

Fabulous fertilisers

Shit matters. Or at least fertilisers do.  Looking at the abundant foliage of Bernie's potato plants compared to  my rather scrawny efforts just shows who manured the plot before planting (Bernie) and who, sadly, didn't (guess who). And his potatoes are bigger too. Damn. On the other hand I still managed to harvest 4.545kg.

I have potato fertiliser and tomato feed but so far I had not used them. Given I am now at harvesting stage of potatoes I guess it's perhaps too late for the potatoes but I have a) started to water the tomatoes occasionally (which are flowering) and b) have put some feed on them in hope.

Looking elsewhere on the plot, the allium family is suffering as they are smothered by weeds. Bad me. As penance I indulged in a spot of hand weeding, which is pretty much back breaking.  Bernie suggested to completely soak the ground you want to weed a day a head of the weeding which makes the weeds less likely to snap and stay in the ground.

Rhubarb was as always great this year and keeps on giving though I have stopped harvesting now to avoid stressing the plants. In fact, fruit as a whole (apart from some fairly lackluster strawberries) are the success story - the raspberries are rampant. Too rampant in fact and they are over taking the path. Someone kindly tied them back but they are still blocking way. I used a strimmer line to add to the reinforcements and once they are done providing mounds of fruit (828g at the last harvest) then I will have to dig some canes up and relocate them further away from the path.

Another overly robust plant is are the rosemary plants. If I had a sheep farm there still wouldn't be enough lamb to use up the rosemary branches that I had to lop off to clear the path. In fact I broke a pair of secateurs in the process.

There is a mystery weed that is popping up all over the place which seems to be very deep rooted. That will be fun to dig down to Australia in an effort to dig those out.

The one place I did manure was where the tomatoes are planted. This may well have resulted in the copious amounts of nettles that I need to do battle with (mental note - use gloves because even if the stings are supposed to help arthritis, I don't have arthritis and it hurts like hell.) I also need to constantly have spare bags with me to collect produce.

The mangetout  are also producing well - 445g at last count. The squashes are also starting to flower.

Carry on sowing

The squash seedlings (pumpkin and courgettes and BNS) are through and growing madly.  The cavolo nero seedlings are also through but pretty tiny. I need to get them all in the ground before I go on an extended jaunt in France.

We were in France just a week ago too and, they are having as bad a time of the weather as we are. In fact it was the main news item in France - it was apparently 10 degrees colder than last year (which was hardly ideal) and some areas even had snow. We spent the weekend in the Champagne region avoiding showers/ torrential rain.  The cold and the wet will have hit the wine trade hard and I assume other farmers will also be suffering.

The basil seedlings I put out have curled up and died in shock from the cold and I can't be bothered to sow more. I wonder if in 'normal' weather they could have coped outside - I'll try again next year.

There is still time to catch up which is good news for a friend who has just got allocated a plot after 6 years of waiting. the plot is overgrown with weeds and he is tackling it bit by bit.  As his back is breaking under the work of clearing the plot, this is probably not a good time though for him to remember that he likes very few vegetables!

We took advantage of some dry weather to finally clear out the shed which was more than a dumping ground - more of a Bermuda triangle lurking in the garden. I feel much less guilty now and ready to start filling it up again now.

It might as well rain until September

So we are at mid- late May and the temperature is still in the low teens.  Even though I have done the great winter summer clothes swap over, nobody has told the weather gods and I am hankering after thick jumpers and duvet coats.

The cold weather isn't deterring my greatest garden enemies - the slugs and snails are definitely getting into swing of things. Not known to be nature's acrobats, they are reaching new heights in among my roses and eating the flower buds off my flag irises. Apparently there is a new Spanish slug invading but to be honest I'm equal opportunities in my hatred of all slugs (snails at least give you something to hold without covering your hands in slime.)  Salt is very effective to kill them (they shrivel alarmingly fast) but does leave a CSI-like outline around the desiccated corpse.

I took advantage of brief sunny spell last weekend to weed a bit and plant out (most) of the seedlings.  After planting I watered them with some of Bernie's magic water which apparently is used to help plants establish roots and has worked wonders on his crop so far.

In my rush though I forgot to cover the brassicas. I promise myself that I will do it at same time as I plant out beans and sweet peas that I forgot to plant. If I don't then the brassicas will be ripped to shreds by the pigeons and the snails/ slugs will have eaten all the bean seedlings.

I'm cold and considering yet another jumper. Will we never see the sun again?

This is the busy time where you can hear the plants growing and panic starts in that you are falling badly behind. Or is that just me?

To make myself feel better here is what I HAVE done (too much that I haven't done to list!):
- Planted Sharps Express on 16th April
- Planted out mangetout but didn't support them well, planted Duke of York potato at row ends, and added an extra row for Maris Piper on 17th April
- I repotted all plug plants and seedlings

- I harvested 840g of rhubarb and made some rhubarb syrup for cocktails. Delicious.


Things that I really must make a priority:
- Sow more seeds (Maybe Cavollo Nero)

I need to establish when can I start to put seedlings out

Frost watch
We were still getting frosts on 27/28 March and we had snow in the 4th April
Just as you thought it was safe. Following 20+ temp on Thursday the temperature plummeted again down to 9ish degrees. Hopefully temporary blip.

Bulbs and blossom are finally emerging (unfortunately so are weeds and snails and I've been told this will be a  bumper year for them - damn)

Warming up now on the 2nd  May (I should hope so too!)

I just planted the last of the potatoes into a bag for the patio - in layers. But I won't be earthing up as apparently it makes no difference.
- Innovator at the bottom
- Purple Majesty in the middle
- Anya on the top
All from a stall at RHS spring show

I also planted out the onion sets which were in modules. While popping them in I noticed the tops of the Jerusalem artichoke are showing through in garden (and the tops of the Charlotte potatoes in the patio bag are just starting to show). On top of that I potted up 6 strawberry plants - I can never resist.

This is such a  busy time and I just can't find time to plant out tomatoes/ chillis/ look after peas properly/ plant brassicas (summer cauli and kohl rabi). I'm also not sure where to put wild garlic - I don't want it to spread but I also don't want it to die out....

Argh... Spring does my head in!

Getting into the swing of things

So 2013 has produced the coldest March since 1962 and the coldest Easter on record, and March was actually colder than the preceding winter months. We experienced snow on the 4th April so we had plenty of excuses to delay planting and sowing.
Despite this, I did put Maris Peer into the ground around Good Friday. I also popped Charlotte into a potato sack on our house steps. Hopefully the snow didn't ruin things but being close to the house means plants generally are a little sheltered from cold temperatures.
Now, mid April it is finally warming up (with 22 degrees on 14th) but last week coincided with a heavy work load and rains so the pressure to pull a finger out is growing.
I managed to plant a row of Pentland Javelin on the morning of the 15th before work.  It wasn't a full row so I have room for a couple more on the end. I plan to finish off all rows this week - a little at a time I will get there...  As part of the plan I will also finally plant out the pea plants which are taking on triffid proportions.
In my flying visit I noticed that someone has instigated a system for our pony poo pile. - it is now pinned in by a wall of bags with the good stuff all ready for scooping into wheelbarrows. Now where did I put my barrow?
I also noticed that the tidy raspberry lady has cut her raspberries down. This indicates hers are autumn plants. I'm not sure what mine are (though I suspect they are summer) so I might hedge my bets by cutting some nearest the water butt down to experiment.
I went to a Common Growth workshop at weekend up on Telegraph Hill on sowing and growing from seed.  Which, despite the rain, was very inspirational.  Not only do I completely promise to repot my plug plants but I also got a parsley plant, sowed some Red  Turks squash, zinia, and got a yellow tomato seedling.  Lovely.

Lest we forget

The yearly allotment meeting is coming up and we are being encouraged to grow more winter crops. In theory this is a good idea except that the plants take up a lot of space for a very long time and aren't that exciting in terms of flavour or money saving.  Honourable exceptions, in my opinion, are cavollo nero and psb. I say that however last year my cavollo nero failed and only 2 psb plants made it through the dreadful winter/ summer. And those two plants, so full of promise a few weeks ago, seem to have been pigeoned. Damn.
We even had a slight snow shower on Easter Saturday. The plug plants remain indoors....
Just so that I remember, the seeds that I sowed on the 18th March were:
Tomato - Gardener's delight, Black Cherry
Early psb
Lemon basil
Pea Carouby de maussanne (purple mangetout)
Cosmos mixed
Verbascum
26th March and the mangetout and the psb are starting to emerge. March declared joint 5th coldest March since records began. As is traditional, I sowed some of my chitted potatoes on the plot (Maris Peer, a first early variety) and Charlotte potatoes in a bag at home. I also sowed 3 types of chilli and some cutting flowers.

Delicious ideas from a pop up restaurant

Mike and Ollie are a favourite in my area - they can be found at the excellent Brockley Market and there is also a pop up restaurant.   Wonderfully seasonal (though mackerel, beetroot and pork belly seem to have featured every time I'e been!) and often featuring foraged finds, this was my third visit to the pop up restaurant. The venues vary - once in Deptford Project's train cafe, once in live work units in New Cross Gate and this time in the badlands of Camberwell, my old stomping ground.

You know the drill, 20 or so people are entertained with amazing food (4 courses and a cocktail) supplemented by copious wine all for the price of a blow out meal at La Strada. What's not to like?

The food was great and I will definitely be trying to recreate the sweet pickled heritage beetroot (white, golden, chioggia and 'normal'). I was also really impressed with the delicious and almost portable scallop served in its shell with roast new potatoes, peas, wild garlic, butter and hollandaise sauce.

It is by reaching out and trying new things that you discover better or different ways of doing things. A volunteering stint at the Telegraph Hill Festival introduced me to someone who does French speaking evenings, a great jewellery designer which uses old books (trainstopjewellery.etsy.com), made a felted soap (something I had no idea I wanted to make until I saw how much fun it was!) and discovered a simple recipe for a citrus gluten free cake.

Instead of just using the juice of the citrus, you boil the whole fruit up for 2 hours and then take the pips out and blitz the rest (pulp and all). The house smells divine and it adds extra moistness. Perfect.  I adapted the recipe which is for a Clementine Cake on Smitten Kitchen (which in turn is an adaptation of Nigella's recipe) to use lemons and limes instead of the Clementines and added a touch more sugar to balance the added tartness.  Delicious. Even if I do say so myself.

You have more time than you think

It's amazing what you can do in 10 minutes. I took advantage of an earlier than usual start to go to allotment on a sunny but frosty morning before going to work. I only had 10 minutes but it was enough to start on weeding out the creeping buttercup, my arch nemesis on the plot.

I didn't get it all out yet but I've started something I was dreading as being laborious. And it only took 10 minutes. Admittedly I also uprooted some mint and overwintering rocket but they are so hardy they are almost like weeds on the plot. The next part will be trickier as that involves rhubarb and irises that are just getting into the swing of things so I don't want to upset them.

On a later day a miserable rainy day turned sunny unexpectedly and I managed to finish the job off to my boots' disadvantage. I never learn to wear appropriate clothing for gardening.  The potato trenches are now dug and the chitting potatoes have labels (a step forward) so now I need to do it pop them in the ground - only a few days after St Patrick's Day.

In the general scheme of things March is the time gardeners start to feel they are running to catch up and to do lists pile up. My advice is not to stress too much. If it's too cold for you to go out it's probably too cold for outdoor seeds to germinate. It might means things will be a little more frantic later when growing conditions are right but take comfort in the fact nature is quite forgiving. All it wants to do is grow and we just help it along.

Back to winter

After a single glorious spring day which sent me scurrying for the seed packets and planning outdoor activities the temperatures are due to drop from a positively balmy 13 degrees back to 0-3 degrees at the weekend. And snow. Oh good. So no burning of garden debris then.
Other tasks I'm supposed to do now according to the RHS app and weekly garden magazines (with a new magazine format for Garden News):

Weatherproof:
Penstemon cuttings
Sow broad beans
Sow peas inside
Sow tomatoes
Sow sweet peas

Big jobs that I'd prefer to have help on or at least do in the dry and warmer weather:
Fix Raspberry wires (again)
Spread manure (needs to be warm so don't trap cold in)
Cover with cardboard
Burn rubbish (unlikely to happen if the clouds open)

More urgent and secretly satisfying:
Dig behind water butt
Hand weed self seeders
Dig potato trenches
Prune red currants and gooseberries

It's not just in the allotment though. I've decided the garden deserves some love too:
Tie up rose at back
Tidy in general
Cut back jasmine
Burn rubbish
Repot blueberries
Plant fruit bushes in garden
Spray and clean patio (again need a dry day for this)

Indoors the potatoes are chitting well. Once again I have too many to plant on the plot but I will grow the surplus in sacks again this year. I just need to buy vast amounts of compost (or use the stuff in the garden come to think of it). Varieties I have are mainly early as that means they can be out early freeing up space for other crops or a second sowing (I never know whether to move this within a growing year).

The varieties are:
Maris piper - main crop
Sharps express - 1st earlies
Duke of York - 1st earlies
Golden wonder x3 which are looking very manky
Pentland javelin - 1st early
Charlotte - salad
Maris peer - early

Mother's Day and a cracking hangover limited my activities over the weekend of the 10th but I did tie up the rose and cut back the jasmine and bamboo in the garden. A distinct lack of compost put an end to seed sowing plans. Next weekend.....

2 weeks later.... Well it got even colder and on the 24th March we are experiencing the coldest March since records began. It is snowing in zone 2 in London and it's even settling.

Stuck indoors, potting compost was bought and mangetout peas, cosmos, verbascum, lemon basil, tomatoes (gardeners delight and black cherry) and purple sprouting broccoli were sown. I have also bought plug plants for 3 varieties of tomato (baby plum, cherry and money maker), chilli pepper, bell pepper, cauliflower. Now I just need the snow to stop so I can start planting things out.

Can you dig it?

Apologies for 90s throwback reference. But I am a very happy lady. The plot is (almost) all dug over. With the help of Tom the majority has been dug and weeded. The herb/ rhubarb bed needs complete clearing of creeping buttercup which is living up well to its name. And the 'extra bit' by the water butt needs a bit of an overhaul and some thought on what would survive in such an over shadowed and out of the way place.

Thankfully for our insides there weren't that many Jerusalem artichokes coming from the remaining plants. A row of tubers were replanted by the wall and the section by the compost bins was sown with garlic. Shallots went in edging the wall border by the water butt. I did have onion sets too but as space was limited I concentrated on harder to find and more expensive alliums. I might pop them in the garden and see what happens. I have also read that you can grow onions in seed trays for planting out later so I might try that later.

A few patches show signs of self seeding/ overwintering eg chard/ beetroot. If we dug them up by accident the protocol was to apologise to the plant, replant it and hope for the best.   On the whole though I decided not to trust Tom with handweeding the patch as a) it's not a very fun job and b) I wasn't sure he would no pull out the good seedling but leave the weeds. So I still have to do this. Fun.

The weather has been lovely - dry but cold for the year. I don't mind the cold as once your are digging you warm up pretty fast. However the cold does mean we haven't spread out the manure or compost yet as it would not only keep the moisture in (good) but also trap the cold in (bad). I'll just have to wait until a warm midday to try to capture some of the sun's warmth in the soil.

Next steps are to:
- cover the earth with cardboard/ carpet/ manure/ compost.
- Dig potato trenches
- Chit potatoes
- Sow broad beans for succession
- Repot the blueberry shrubs at home
- Sow onion sets into trays
- Give carrots another go but in pots to avoid the troubles with growing in soil. Try coloured varieties.

Looking to the future with an eye on the past

Which sounds like a physical impossibility but I've been in training for my half marathon so am in peak condition...

Looking around the half (well, quarter) dug plot I see signs of emerging shoots everywhere despite the recent cold snap.  Pink noses of rhubarb are poking through the earth and there are signs that the Purple Sprouting Broccoli did not fail completely - the plants that managed to survive the winter and being eaten by birds and other beasts are bravely hinting at the purple joy to come.  The Autumn sown broad beans also seem to be boldly announcing the fact that spring is on its way.

Looking back over last year's entries I see that this time last year we were suffering from overly warm weather whereas now we are at the mercy of the Beast from the East (cold weather that is coming from Siberia) and snow is predicted for tonight and temperatures of around 0 degrees are predicted to last until Wednesday.

As I hunker down under the duvet and avoid the prospect of a long run, it seems the perfect time to review my best intentions and learnings from last year so I can try to avoid the pitfalls this year.

Starting with the old faithfuls, potatoes.  Last year my potatoes were planted on St Patrick's day (20th March). This year St Patrick's day is 10 days early so I might wait to plant them until Easter which is also early this year (30th March).  I still need to dig trenches (which were dug on 27/2 last year) and LABEL the varieties.

Overall jobs I need to do when I venture into the cold:
Mulch and manure
Plant garlic and onions (February is the last month to do this)
Clear up accumulated rubbish
Tie in raspberries
Weeding of perennials weeds

I have also reworked my planting plan to rotate the potatoes, onions and brassicas into new areas. This is tough when space is limited and some crops (eg onions and potatoes take up a pretty big amount of space)

As part of Lent I have toyed with giving up booze (fail fairly spectacularly at least once a week).  An alternative resolution is to use up all the frozen vegetables in the chest freezer by the time Easter comes. This means various bowls of green mush squatting in the fridge inducing guilt in me.  The trusty layers terrrine of vegetables bound together by egg in a loaf tin has been very useful in using up the old vegetables. 

The cauliflower was used up in the form of a cauliflower cheese (weightwatchers recipe but pimped up a bit with extra cheese - oops).

March is around the corner and then things will start really speeding up - with seed sowing and preparations.

Tasks to to in early March:
Sow broad beans - a little deeper than last year
Remember I had some good Jerusalem Artichoke recipes in March last year
Also try out a salsa verde with J Artichokes which tasted amazing at a restaurant we went to in north London - the sharp zing contrasted well with the earthy sweetness of the artichokes.

Deep breaths....

Invasion of the triffids/ giant artichokes

Well not triffids at all really. Just enormous Jerusalem artichokes. Maybe because they have been in the ground for a long time or were grown from good sized tubers. Whatever the reason, they are at least twice the size of the last 2 years (those are kitchen scissors by the way not teeny tiny scissors chosen to skew the scale).

Last weekend I cleared some snow away (along with some cat or fox 'gifts' - yuk) to unearth over 4kg of artichokes. And I still have more than twice that to harvest still. So I will have to be quite creative in using them up.

I first decided to use some of them as an alternative topping for a weight watchers fish pie. It worked brilliantly even if next time I would boil and slice them thinly rather than try to mash them which had mixed results.

I also shaved them with a cheese slice and layered them with garlic, creme fraiche and feta for a bake to go with a haggis we are eating to celebrate burns night.

Finally, I also made this great tray roast of Jerusalem Artichokes, chicken and lemon from Yotam Ottolenghi's fabulous book 'Jerusalem'. You can find a copy of the recipe here.  I omitted the tarragon and peppercorns and substituted preserved lemons for fresh ones as I have some I need to use up.

Along with the the haggis it is traditional to have 'neeps and tatties' - potatoes and swede (not turnips as one would logically assume). As luck would have it I still have a swede lurking I the garden as a refugee from the Christmas over catering experience. I mashed half of it and turned the other half into chips (Morrisons have a good recipe here). No potatoes as health kick is still ongoing.

I have also signed up to attend a local baking event in March. the theme is British Classics. I am currently debating between all time classics (scones/ shortbreads etc) OR savoury (game pie/ pasties) OR a historic slant (long lost puddings like Deptford pudding)).  I would do a Woolton pie except it was developed in the war as 'nutricious and economical'. Not sure I want to make my debut with a ration book creation...