Had a friend over for dinner today, so thought I'd take the opportunity to make a meal for two using only allotment grown ingredients. But for the bread and the beer, I was entirely successful. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling very pleased with myself this afternoon.
I served allotment soup (more or less what I made last week) and a new creation: allotment salad. Here's an extreme close up:
The ingredients are: nasturtium leaves and flowers, peas, blueberries, coriander, chives and mint. That's all, just thrown together. It's punchy, and went down well. I also provided a jar of fermented peas to munch alongside it. These went down even better. Andy took a jar home with him. We polished off the soup between us, and I kept the remaining portion of the salad for myself.
Nine of our "five a day" in a single meal, and all organically home grown. It doesn't get much yummier than this.
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I don't need a walking stick, but who knows? Maybe I'll live to be old enough to need one. Or, failing that, old enough to look like I need one. I'm neither yet, but maybe I'll eventually be both. I hope so. Not because I particularly relish the thought of declining mobility, but only because I recently came across this magnificent specimen of a stick:
If there's something we can all agree on, it's that this is a really great stick. As you can see from the picture here of me holding it, it's the optimum height for a person like me (for example, me). This stick and I were meant to be together.
I took it home, and it's been standing it my kitchen for a while, as sticks do when you leave them standing in your kitchen. Yesterday I decided I would sand it down a little, to remove any ugliness. So I did. Then I began varnishing it. The stick now looks like this:
I will continue to add layers of varnish as and when I feel like it, until such time as it feels right to stop. At this point I will have a serviceable, beautiful, durable walking stick. I'm looking forward to that. I think my stick and I are going to be good friends.
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It's hard to go wrong with soup. Chop it up, season it up, heat it up, blend it up. Job done. Soup.
It's even harder to go wrong when you're using your own allotment-grown ingredients. Anybody who's ever grown their own food, and experienced the sensory privilege that is eating it within hours - moments even - of picking, will tell you that nothing you can buy in the shops compares. I don't know if there's any actual scientific evidence for this, but it's a fact.
Ingredients.
Today I harvested onions, peas, and curly kale. Most soups are onion-based and usually contain something green. Peas are green, and so is kale. Therefore, pea and kale soup. I didn't want to imply that I was making pea soup, though, which is a whole other thing, so I'm just calling this allotment soup. Allotment Soup Number One. There will be others.
First, I chopped two of the larger onions (one white, one red) and sweated these down in a generous splash of vegetable oil.
Next I added some garlic and some herbs (lemon thyme, vulgar thyme, and sage) - previously harvested and in the herbs' case, dried.
As I was doing this, I rememebered reading how the brine from something pickled or fermented can be added to a soup for some extra kick, so I cracked open a recently completed jar of lacto-fermented pea pods, and tipped some in. As liquids bubbled and mixed, a vibrant smell was released. I win at soup.
All that remained was to add the peas and kale, and let the whole thing boil and simmer. So that's what I did.
Something else came to mind as I was shelling the peas. If immature pea pods can be fermented, that is, before the peas have formed, why can't the shells once mature peas have been removed and souped? Seems wrong to just dump all that good green matter on the compost. So I rinsed them off, and with the kale stems from which I'd pulled the leaves for the soup, I set them to one side for further lacto-experimentation.
15 minutes later, or thereabouts, I took the pan off the heat, and blended.
And there it is. Green, tingly, leafy, allotment-y soup. A healthy bowl of happiness.
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The weekend was a scorcher, and I had the privilege of spending it over in North Yorkshire, where I saw many wonderful gardens and plants. Here are some pictures.
I returned home a bag of mushy strawberries for which my mother had no further use. Then this morning, back over at the allotment, I noticed that the blackcurrants are not only ripening, but starting to fall off the bush. When you don't have a fridge, you have to act fast.
So I decided I'd make some blackcurrant and strawberry jam, and call it "summer fruit jam". That's really all this post is about. As per what I learned last year about jam making, I heated equal parts fruit and sugar (about 500g) with half an 8g sachet of pectin, slowly bringing the mixture to just below the boil, adding the sugar gradually and stirring all the while until it dissolved. Meanwhile, I sterilised two jars in the oven, and once they were ready, I poured the jam into the jars, immediately sealed, and left on the windowsill to cool. Easy. Here are some pictures:
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