Norfolk Kitchen

Probably the Last Norfolk Kitchen Post.

2011-11-11T09:29:00.002Z

But first, have a look at my freaky November tomatoes. I left one gro-bag in the mini greenhouse to keep the frame weighted down so it wouldn't blow away and, much to my surprise, the tomatoes started growing again during the mild October weather and are now ripening! How very odd.

Anyway, you've probably noticed my post rate has slowed dramatically recently. With the arrival of the Community Farm Pigs I've got much busier, sadly mostly with organising people and things rather than the pigs themselves though. I've also started volunteer work with the Citizen's Advice Bureau which is hugely rewarding but eats up my time too.

All this extra work has coincided with what is probably a natural decline in the blog anyway. I read somewhere that most blogs have about 2 years in them before you run out of new ways to keep saying the same thing! That sounds about right from my point of view and winter is always quiet on the Norfolk Kitchen front.

Hopefully I'll find something new to write about and start up a new blog as I enjoy the writing and photography and have thoroughly enjoyed meeting new people with similar interests both here and on Twitter.

So it's with a suddenly heavy heart that I say Goodbye and thanks to everyone who's commented and chatted with me along the way, I hope to re-connect soon.

So we're one chicken less ......

2011-10-15T07:17:00.004+01:00

Sadly, one of our ex-batt chickens died last week. In the past she'd had a few episodes of feeling ill, standing around and looking miserable for a day or two before recovering and getting back to her usual self. But this time was different. I don't know what it was exactly that killed her but she had escaped from our front garden while free ranging and I found her a little way down the road surrounded by poisonous laurel berries. I can't be sure if she'd eaten some or if she had some other underlying condition.

But the upshot is that I'm left with 4 chickens spread across 2 coops so my plan is to buy one bigger plastic coop, to combat the horrible red mite problem in the ex-batts coop, and merge both flocks into one. I'm rather apprehensive as Crispy, the thoroughbred chicken, is something of a bruiser and jealously guards her position as alpha hen. The ex-ex-batt was the alpha in the other coop and if ever they saw each other there would be blood. Literally.

The remaining ex-batts seem a bit lost without their leader, egg production has slowed dramatically although this could be co-incidence with the colder weather and shorter days but I think they'll be happier once they're under the thumb again. And Crispy is already twirling her moustache in anticipation.

A wizened husk can be a beautiful thing.

2011-10-07T13:22:00.003+01:00

I have to admit I was relieved when the hot weather broke. There was something downright spooky about winter sun of that temperature, even the quality of the light wasn't right. I was resentful about digging the suncream out again (parents required to slather wriggly offspring in Factor 50 as thick as marj will know where I'm coming from) my hayfever kicked off again and the sloes were shriveled like raisins by the time we got around to picking them.

On the plus side though, it's been utterly fabulous for the walnut crop. Normally when they fall they're still wearing their fat, wet green jackets which stain the hands mercilessly and can be difficult to pick off. Then they need to be dried out in order to remove the bitter 'wet walnut' taste and to preserve them. This year though, they're falling in a remarkably dessicated state. The green covering is dry and brittle which means it rubs off easily and cleanly, even better, the nuts are sun dried to perfection. The few I broke open have just the right crisp texture and that funny membrane that divides the two halves of the nut (can't remember the correct name) snaps cleanly in two which is a sign they've dried correctly.

It's hugely labour saving, walnuts are normally a bit of a pain to dry out and we end up with sacks of them all round the house, spread out in front of the radiators to try and speed the process up. This time it's just taken an hour or so to rub the skins off and that's it. As a result we're being ruthlessly efficient, going out early in the morning after every windy night to fill another bag. Knowing the pigs will be eating the excess assauges my guilt twinges. I wonder how a diet of windfall apples and walnuts will affect the taste of our pork?

When foraging and pig keeping collide.

2011-10-04T09:57:00.003+01:00

I do apologise if this sounds like a smug-fest, it's not what I intend, but sometimes I'm amazed at how lucky I am.

This morning I packed Willow off to school with a bag full of home grown patty pan and crooked neck squash for the harvest festival (I think she would have preferred a packet of Jaffa cakes but there you go) then I stopped by the pigs to feed them and scritch their ears (they recognise me now and come galloping over, grunting excitedly when they see me) and finally, back at home, I fed our chickens and collected the warm eggs.

It all feels a very long way from my urban background and a concrete planter full of nasturtiums.

I'm also discovering that foraging goes hand in glove with pig keeping. We've still got a sack full of walnuts from last year so Adam has been dispatched to collect a new bag full (the nuts have begun to fall but there are more to come I think, fingers crossed for gales at the weekend) and the old ones will be used to supplement the hard pig food over the winter and hopefully save us a bit of money. In the mean time I'm now adding acorns and beech nuts to my foraging wish list.

They're also getting left over veg from the veg growing arm of Diss Community Farm, but in the manner of wayward toddlers, they're not massively keen on the Cavolo Nero and are holding out for fermenting apples instead. The Livestock project overall is running well, the feeding rota is going smoothly. It's working out that most of us have about 2 feeds during the week and are taking 2 weekends each over the next few months so the time commitment isn't too heavy, a very civilised way to keep pigs!

I've ordered my sausage making kit from Amazon so it's just a matter of waiting now - come on piggies, eat up!

At last!

2011-09-21T14:13:00.004+01:00

We have our pigs! It's taken 7 months but at last they're here. They haven't had far to come as they're staying on the small holding site where they were born but were transferred from their home with their Mum into the Diss Community Farm paddock.

Unfortunately they don't seem too keen on their new home, the squeals of protest they made at being picked up had to be heard to be believed. Then, within minutes of arriving, they calmly pushed their way through the squares in the stock fencing and strolled back to Mum! We played porcine hokey cokey all weekend and then decided to leave them where they were until we could order an electric fence. Fortunately it shouldn't be too long til they grow a bit bigger and won't be able to fit through the fence any more.

Willow and Xanthe are in their element, Xanthe in particular has no fear of the pigs but I don't think it'll last when they get big, ugly and slobbery. Their cuteness (the pigs, not the children) is the main weakness in our plan at the moment, I worry that they'll become too pet like and we'll have tears when sausage time rolls around. We've deliberately not named them and I'm banking on the big, ugly, slobbery factor to make the goodbyes a bit more bearable.

I've found myself leading the DCF Livestock project almost by accident, our illustrious leader is having a baby soon so pig wrangling with an advanced bump is not the best idea. I offered to help out over her maternity leave, not realising that I was the only volunteer. So here I am, zero pig husbandry experience, no diy skills, no van, no truck, no trailer, an electric fence kit propped by the back door which is too heavy for me to lift and an 8' pig ark on it's way with no clue how I'm going to get it to the pigs.

Fun and games ahead I think!

Runner Bean where is thy string?

2011-09-15T10:14:00.004+01:00

Last year I grew quite a lot of runner beans, which would've been nice if they had been edible. They were shot through with the weird, remarkably tough, plasticy fibers. This year I made a conscious decision to remember that I hate runners and not grow them again .....

but .....

I went to visit the vegetable project part of Diss Community Farm where Gabbi the Grower waxed lyrical about the variety of runner beans she was growing. Her description of them when slow cooked in a spicy tomato sauce was beguiling. I think she was growing Enorma which I couldn't find but she also recommended Hunter. After my broad beans failed I found myself with a spare bed on the allotment so I planted some Hunter.

And, yes, this tale does end in the manner I think you're expecting. The Hunters are divine with an amazing and unexpected silky texture. I even enjoy the feel of them in my hand as I pick them. I think I'll stop there before I embarrass myself further with the gushing.

In other Diss Community Farm news, we are finally taking delivery of our pigs on Saturday. Many things have been happening on the livestock front so I'll save all the news for dedicated piggy post with pictures of our tasty new friends over the weekend.

Nasturtiums

2011-09-06T07:46:00.004+01:00

Nasturtiums have a special place in my affections. My food growing odyssey started with a packet of Nasturtium seeds in the back yard of a northern terraced house.

The house had an extension which occupied 80% of the original yard, leaving us with a tiny paved square bordered on all sides by walls at least 6 feet high. On sunny days we'd dash out with our plastic chairs to sit in the single shaft of sunlight which managed to peer over the walls for 15 mins at mid-day. At least the brevity of the sunbathing meant we didn't have long enough to be over powered by the stench of the bins stored out there.

In 1999 I watched Escape to River Cottage. Somehow or other, the disparity between Hugh's reality and my own didn't sink in. Instead, I eyed the small concrete planter built at the base of the wall by a previous tenant and thought I could get me a piece of the rural idyll. I planted Nasturtiums and wild rocket.

I can't say it was a roaring success. As I'd planted the only greenery for miles around, every single creature, winged and 4 footed was magnetically attracted to it. The Nasturtiums were rapidly covered in blackfly so I planted marigolds to attract the lacewings and therefore the ladybirds. Literally overnight half a dozen marigold plants were reduced to stalks by the monstrous turd-slugs, still the biggest slugs I've ever seen and big enough to make me fear for my limbs if I stayed still for too long out there. On the plus side, the neighbourhood cats seemed to appreciate the thoughtful toilet facilities I'd laid on for them. I really should have added cologne and a gilt dish for tips.

It didn't take much to distract me from the disastrous concrete planter. Life moved on and I moved out, the grow my own dream was neglected for almost a decade until I moved to Norfolk and acquired a small garden. When we got our first allotment last year, one of the first things I planted was the Nasturtiums. Just 'cos I can.

This year I've tried Nasturtium Seed Capers for the first time. I used Pam Corbain's recipe but the basic method is to soak the green (not yellowed or pinky) seed pods in brine for 24 hours then pack into a sterilised jar and cover with vinegar. Leave to mature for a few weeks before using. No idea what they taste like - I'll let you know when I find out!

Recipe Roundup

2011-08-26T08:04:00.004+01:00

Needless to say, after my last post I've been busy in the kitchen trying to wrangle a few gluts.

First up were the courgettes, the best use for them so far must surely be the Courgette Brownie recipe I picked up from Mumsnet. I used 100% courgettes instead of half courgettes and half carrots and chocolate chips instead of nuts (This is a bit like Theseus' paradox, if you change the ingredients is it still the same recipe?). There was a cloak and dagger element to the preparation as I couldn't let the children know there were (gasp!) vegetables in them. My deception paid off and the girls adored the dark, moist, indulgent tasting brownies and I could polish my good mum halo as they chomped down the courgettes.

Next were my bounteous crop of tomatoes. My whole reason for growing lots of toms this year was to repeat the Ketchup I made last year. Incidentally, I was out attempting to pick some wild apples for the recipe and, to my horror, discovered many local trees completely bare. Is anyone else finding the same? I'm wondering if the dry spring had something to do with it. I may even be driven to the extremes of paying for cooking apples for goodness sake.

Finally, I used my plums to make Plum and Lavender jam after being inspired to try the maceration technique by drroothair's comment on my Yellow Bullace Jam post. It took ages to stone the fruit but once that drudgery was out of the way it's a lovely way to make jam although I have to admit I went for the 'just boil it all up' method rather than fiddling about removing bits and then re-adding them. I couldn't taste the lavender in the final product at all but luckily, it didn't set first time so I re-boiled it and added some mixed spice which produced a lovely, tangy jam I was very pleased with. Hmmm, Theseus raises his head again, if you change the spices and the technique .....

Now, breakfast time, I'm off to pick some tomatoes for fresh tomatoes on toast - it's a hard life!

Glorious Gluts

2011-08-21T09:44:00.005+01:00

I'm starting to panic a bit if I'm honest, I think I've got to admit defeat with the patty pan mountain (maybe one more batch of piccalililili though) the tomatoes are coming on stream so I need to start making ketchup and the wild fruit is just ripening up too. Damsons looking readyish, the pear tree is groaning, we visited our old chum the wild plum tree yesterday and came home with 5kilos of plums, oh yes, and we still have about 5 kilos of Mirabelle plums in the freezer waiting to be processed.

I have a soft spot for this tree as it was one of our first big foraging finds, back in the day when we were still amazed at all the free fruit hanging around being ignored by the general populace. I don't know what sort of plum it is, it's not a damson because the fruit is sweeter and not so dark purple, they're smaller than Victoria plums but a similar colour.

Each year it's a battle to outwit the grubs (wasps?) as when the plums are fully ripe it can be virtually guaranteed that a small wiggly worm is in there, pooing for all it's worth, leaving a tell tale droplet of crystalised plum juice sitting on the softly bloomed surface. My solution is two-fold, early in the season I pick the plums slightly under-ripe (I'm so well acquainted with this tree by now I can tell the exact ripeness by the colour of the skin) The plums which are still green now will ripen later in the season and will usually escape the attentions of the wasps who have done whatever it is that wasps do in the winter (sleep/die/emigrate - who knows) by the time they're ripe, although whether they have escaped the attention of other foragers is another thing, there was already the familiar trampled ring of disappointment around the tree yesterday.

So what to do with them? Jam maybe, for the increased pectin in the under-ripe plums, or a plum cheese, nice and sharp or maybe bottled with red wine and spices. Whatever I end up doing I'd better get on with it quick as there's more fruit coming down the conveyor belt!

By the way - Many apologies for the blog silence over the past week, I've had my Mum to stay and we've been busy either taking the children out on day trips or Adam and I have been making the most of having a babysitter in the house and having a social life for once. All back to normal now though.

Piccallilililiiii

2011-08-11T10:30:00.005+01:00

I never know when to stop with Piccalilli, it's a bit like banananana.

I remember being a funky 18 year old (yes I was one once!) and visiting an older relative in the middle of her making Piccalilli. I was aghast, make Piccililli? I mean make it? Why? Is that even possible? And if it is why would you bother?

I think at that point if you'd told me that not only would I made my own Piccalilli one day but that I'd be photographing it as I went along to show the world what I'd done I think I would have thrown myself under the nearest bus.

Hooray for not being 18 any more, that's what I say.

I've finally got a few bona fide gluts from our allotments. Last year I was rather disappointed that our only true gluts came from the wild larder. Although we had plenty from the allotment I was never in danger of being overwhelmed. This year, however, is shaping up to be different!

Yesterday I could only bring home the fruits from 2 of our 5 Patty Pan squash plants because my flexi bucket was full and I was staggering under the weight of it so I currently have 16 patty pans at home with probably another 24 still on the allotment.

I'm wrangling this particular glut by pickling like mad, including today's Piccalilli. (That's why you bother, my 18 year old self, to use up the sodding summer squash!) I used Pam Corbin's recipe from the River Cottage Preserve book. My version had patty pan squash, courgettes, onion, carrots and broccoli. I wasn't sure if the broccoli was a bit bonkers or not but Pam says green crunchy veg is the secret to a good Piccalilli so hopefully it'll work. It needs a few weeks to mature but I nibbled some while I was potting it up and it was lovely if a tad vinegary but that's what maturation is for.

So, 1 patty pan down, 31 to go .....

Sunshine Pickle

2011-08-08T15:12:00.004+01:00

Just a short post to record this morning's irony. I made a batch of courgette pickle using yellow courgettes and orange peppers which I thought would make a lovely sunshiney pickle redolent of summer. The very moment I got the preserve pan out of the cupboard the heavens cracked and rain commenced bouncing down in stair-rods together with a mighty wind that rattled the fences in a manner which made me fear for the rotting fence posts.

I have to admit it gave me pause, just in case it was a divine opinion on my pickle vision or something. Hopefully, the almighty is a bit too busy to take an interest in the minutiae of my preserve recipes and I haven't damaged my immortal soul by pressing on and making it anyway.

It's very pretty by the way.

(and yes, we did have a good time on holiday. Thanks for asking)

Summer Holiday

2011-07-30T15:13:00.002+01:00

We're off on the annual Norfolk Kitchen summer holiday. Willow and Xanthe are making their first ever foreign trip to Eindhoven and are very excited about visiting De Efteling.

We'll see you back here next weekend.

Mirabelle and Ginger Cordial

2011-07-28T15:18:00.004+01:00

It's only 3pm and I'm sipping a whiskey with Mirabelle and Ginger Cordial. All in the name of research you understand. Pity we didn't have any limes because a twist would've made it perfect.

Mirabelle and Ginger Cordial.

I'm calling the yellow bullace Mirabelles for this recipe as it sounds posher. I took about 2 or 3 kilos (didn't weigh them first) and simmered them in about half a pint of water til they were soft, bashing them up with a wooden spoon and a potato masher along the way to help the juice come out. Once they were cooked I strained them through a muslin lined sieve until the juice had dripped through. For every litre of juice I added 700g light brown sugar plus a tablespoon of ground ginger. I then warmed it through til the sugar dissolved.

And here the ginger problem began. It was the devil's own job to get rid of little clumps of ground ginger which dispersed grittily through the cordial, giving an unpleasantly strong gingery hit if you got one in your mouth. I whisked it which helped with the bigger lumps but made no difference to the smaller ones, in the end I strained it through a tea strainer while bottling up. Next time I may try fresh ginger juice instead although any tips on dealing with ground ginger would be gratefully received.

The children aren't madly impressed with this one but I remember hating ginger beer when I was Willow's age and this cordial leaves a definite lingering warmth on the tongue. It's not got the impressive glowing colour of it's companion, cherry plum cordial, having a rather more sludgy appearance (am I selling it?!) instead. Personally I really like it's sweet/sharp toffee edged flavour which makes me think of Christmas.

As aforementioned, I decided to mix up some cordial with whiskey, just for research to see if it worked and enable me to report accurately on the blog. Honest. As I say, a twist of lime seems to be missing but other than that it's a lovely drink. Feels like it should cure ailments at 10 paces. I'm sure other dark spirits would work well too, or as a syrup over vanilla ice cream.

Cherry Plum Ketchup

2011-07-27T14:33:00.004+01:00

Here's the recipe from my plum ketchup experiment the other day. It's not quite got the HP sauce taste I was aiming for, maybe due to the lack of dried fruit compared to the Cherry Plum Chutney recipe, but it is a lovely, tangy, tingly on the tongue sauce and such a beautiful colour too.

Norfolk Kitchen Cherry Plum Ketchup.

2 kilos cherry plums

2 onions chopped

440ml vinegar (any kind except malt)

320g sugar

30g ground ginger

1tsp cayenne pepper

2oz salt

Generous pinch mixed spice

Stone the plums, add them to a pan with all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 40 minutes until the mixture is thick and jammy. Briefly blend everything together (I used a stick blender) then push through a sieve into a clean pan. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Makes approx 2 litres.

I'm not sure how long this will keep though I suspect it's not long as it's fairly light on the vinegar and sugar. To get around this I've got one bottle in the fridge and have put the excess into plastic bottles and stored them in the freezer.

The main advantage of home made ketchups versus shop bought, in my opinion, is their natural non-plasticy taste which gives them greater versatility. They're perfectly acceptable poured over most things I would never introduce to Heinz, like Pizza, omlettes or cheese on toast.

Right then, next on the experiment list: Yellow Bullace and ginger cordial.

The 2011 Foraging Season kicks off.

2011-07-26T08:23:00.006+01:00

One advantage of the children getting a little older is that they can be put to work in the foraging season - here's Xanthe hard at it in the kitchen.

On Saturday we went out on our annual cherry plum harvest, I know everyone else seems to have been picking them for weeks already, but our usual spot is in the shady side of a very tall hedge and they seem to ripen later. For a change it was a gloriously sunny day (most previous trips to this location have involved wellies and pack a macs), the children decided to scamper off into the 'hedge' which is actually a narrow strip of woodland running along the back of the Diss Rugby club ground, but Adam summoned them back to pull their weight in the fruit harvest.

We've refined our technique after last year's marathon bullace harvest and went for a 'shake the tree' method rather than the 'selective use of the apple picker' method. Adam extended the apple picker to it's full length, wedged it onto a branch and shook like mad. The resulting monsoon of cherry plums and yellow bullace sent the girls into shrieking paroxms of delight - at least until Xanthe was hit squarely in the eye by a large cherry plum. After that we stood well back while the fruit bounced down on Adam's head.

Once the road was carpeted with fruit, the children were required to help, we all rushed around around frantically picking them up before any cars came along. It's a teeny tiny single track country road so cars aren't frequent, I think we only saw 3, but they do seem to come along just at the wrong moment and squash the maximum number of plums. We also had our annual "yes you can eat them" conversation with passing walkers who never seem quite convinced and refuse our offers to try one.

Yesterday I made our household favourite, Cherry Plum Cordial (made 4 bottles, one half used already) and today I'm going to try and amalgamate my Cherry Plum Chutney recipe with myPlum Ketchup recipe which should be an interesting experiment. I'm hoping it turns out a bit like HP sauce.

We picked 3 kilos of cherry plums and 4 of yellow bullace but I don't think it's enough! We're on holiday next week but I'm hoping to pick some more at the weekend and stash them in the freezer for processing when we get home.

Is next year always the perfect year?

2011-07-20T12:19:00.004+01:00

Because this year never is never quite up to scratch. There's always that little tweak which will make next year the best one ever.

2008: I started small scale veg growing in my teeny tiny back garden. The mistakes were many and varied. I didn't even realise that broad beans aren't climbers and optimistically planted 3 plants inside a bamboo wigwam and was surprised when I only grew enough for one tiny meal. Next year, I thought, I'll know better.

2009: Had a more realistic idea about yields. Didn't do too badly, learned my mosaic virus lesson, started this blog. Refined my plans and felt confident of next year being the best back yard year ever.

2010: Acquired an allotment! Great news but scuppered best back yard plans as focussed on the allotment instead. Scaling up was a shock to the system and we struggled to keep the weeds under control. But I had ideas, made plans, changed tack slightly. Next year will best growing year ever.

2011: Acquired a second allotment! Great news but totally changed the face of my plans for my original allotment due to the need to incorporate a 'split site' strategy. Plans for re-arranging the original allotment severely curtailed by the dry spring locking my fruit beds into the concrete like clay soil. Come Autumn, I'll catch up with the re-arranging then next year I'll be able to instigate my plans properly. The manure is rotted and ready to go, my weed control strategies are in place, I know the difference between vine and bush tomatoes - it'll be the best growing year ever! (Won't it?)

It's a Potato!

2011-07-17T11:45:00.003+01:00

I defy anyone who was a child in the '80's to dig up a potato and not say "It's a potato!" softly to themselves every time they find one. (Here' the explanation for those who weren't) And while I'm on the subject, can I add to my list of life's small disappointments: thinking you've found a potato but it turns out to be a smooth stone. Bitter disappointment of this nature can crush your soul.

I've now sampled 2 kinds of new potatoes, my much sought after Ulster Sceptre and the more common place Aron Pilot. My Ulster Sceptre did give me a few childhood memory flashbacks. The taste, if I'm honest, is just potatoy, but the texture, smell and colour of the skin took my right back to those sweaty little 5lb bags we used to get from the shops.

What I did really appreciate was the floury texture. The Aron Pilot are far more waxy and not really very good for roasting or mashing but the Ulster Sceptre are a much more dual purpose potato - which explains why they were so popular in the chippies back home. The only downside is the yield, it was OK but the Aron Pilot are much more abundant.

I've not tried my Nadine yet but they're next.

In the meantime, if anyone would care to share their recommendations for floury tasting early potatoes with a high yield, I'd love to hear them.

The Good Life gets closer!

2011-07-13T10:58:00.007+01:00

Our goal of expanding the Norfolk Kitchen empire into livestock by raising our own rare breed piggies in a local woodland is moving closer to reality.

You may remember back in April I talked about my involvement with Diss Community Farm. It's a community project a group of us have put together, initially in the hope of opening a community run farm next year. Things moved quicker than we anticipated though as we were offered 2 small plots of land, one for a vegetable growing pilot project and one for a pork raising pilot. I'm not personally involved with the vegetable project as I'm pretty much set up for my veggie needs with my allotments but I'm throwing my full enthusiasm behind the livestock project.

We've now formally launched the piggy project, we have about 16 people signed up to pay for the meat and to help look after the pigs. The big news is that we've secured a grant from a local company which will pay for our set up costs of things like fencing, pig arcs, feed bins etc This means that it's all systems go on the shopping front and we have a few days of hard work in front of us to get materials on site and to build the fences. (the photo is one of our members carrying one of about 60 pallets to the woods to be re-cycled as fencing)

It's really exciting to be actually moving forward at last. The land we're using is a small woodland of about 2.5 acres bordered by the River Waveney on one side, so it's a fantastic natural environment for the pigs and for small children too! The girls love playing in the woods, climbing trees and splashing in the river. I have to admit that buying into this kind of lifestyle for the children has been a major factor in my motivation for being involved in this project (that and making my own sausages and bacon) I'm really looking forward to a long, hot summer of visiting the pigs and playing in the woods.

By the way, if you're interested in what we're doing, we're having an open day at the vegetable growing pilot on Sunday.

"The time has come" the gardener said,

2011-07-07T11:35:00.004+01:00

"to talk of many things, of sheds and hoes and summer squash, of cabbages in spring" (with apologies to Lewis Carol)

I got a phone call last night from the secretary of the allotment association at our new Diss plot. We're not allowed our own sheds down there but instead have to rent one of the block of Council built sheds for the princely sum of £2 per year. The only trouble is that since the plots were divided in half there are half as many sheds as plots so there's a waiting list to get a shed. I've been waiting since I took on the plot in October and the phone call last night let me know I'd finally got to the top of the list so the upshot is - I have a shed!

This morning I went to investigate and transfer numerous things from our garage to the shed - including my treasured wheel hoe. It's much more convenient to keep it on site but I am a bit nervous about security, I'd be very upset if it was stolen. Not so much for the monetary value but the difficulty of getting hold of a replacement.

Now, I may not be cabbage looking but the purple sprouting broccoli certainly is. I bought a tray of seedlings from a car boot sale a couple of months ago, planted 5 of them, 4 have come up as broccoli but one has turned into a cabbage! Quite what my fellow allotmenteers make of me growing a single cabbage I don't know. Probably not as much as me growing enough summer squash to feed an army.

Talking of which - one of my growing goals this year was a basket of mixed summer squash and today I achieved it. I picked my first Patty Pan squash, aren't they amazing? I've not grown them before and I think I may have let these ones grow too big. I was waiting for them to turn snowy white like the picture on the seed packet but they're stayed vaguely green tinged, I'll probably pick them smaller in future. But look, Patty Pan squash, yellow courgettes and stripy courgettes, crook neck squash to come in the near future. This is why I have an allotment, you can't buy a basket like that in Tesco - I've got mixed tomatoes in my sights for next year.

Drink your own Garden!

2011-07-04T11:25:00.006+01:00

Just a brief post to admire the colour of the Yellow Bullace wine Adam made last year, although it's not as beautiful as I remember thinking it was after drinking half a glass last night. It's really not bad for home brew especially considering Adam's 'chuck it in the bucket and see what happens' approach to winemaking.

I'm consulting the splendidly named charity shop find 'Drink your own Garden' for further wine making ideas although it talks about stuff like Camden tablets (for attracting Goths?) and wine nutrient. We've only ever bought sugar and yeast to add to the wild fruit/nettles/elderflowers we use and haven't died yet, although I am a bit reluctant to drink last year's batch of cider as it's a bit too sweet.

I'm not sure I'd want to drink our garden anyway what with all the chicken poo, I'm thinking I may drink the hedgerow though. Elderberry and blackberry wine for Autumn evenings 2012 I think.

The Wheeled Push Hoe

2011-07-02T15:37:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago I went on a Diss Community Farm visit to Oak Tree Low Carbon Farm in Ipswich and there I made the discovery which could change the course of my allotment career!

Joanne at Oak Tree showed us her wheeled push hoe. This is basically a wheel on a stick which pulls a loop of sharpened metal just under the surface of the soil, thereby chopping the green tops off the weeds and aerating the soil in the process. (The photo at the bottom gives a back view of the blade.)

Once the rains started back home and our Diss plot filled up with tiny annual weed seedlings I realised that we had the ideal conditions for this bit of kit. The downside is that they're expensive, the one Joanne had was about £400 so I was delighted to find an Ebay shop selling them for £65 delivered.

It arrived yesterday and today I took it for a test drive. I love the look of it, like it's come virtually unchanged from the 19th Century. I had been a bit concerned that it might be too cheap and a bit flimsy but it's certainly sturdy enough for keeping on top of an allotment sized piece of land. The conditions at Diss are perfect for the wheel hoe, the soil is light and free flowing and there aren't any large perennial weeds with thick stems. It was really easy to use, the blade slipped through the soil like butter, decimating the weed population in it's path.

It comes with blades in 3 widths, I used the narrowest to enable me to get between rows of plants without disturbing them. It also has a pointy attachment which I assume is a tiller for making seed drills or earthing up potatoes etc this should be great for turning the soil over at the end of the season in preparation for over winter manuring.

I think the nature of the soil is probably key to the success of this hoe. I'm not sure how good it would be on heavy, clay soil like Bressingham. Certainly there's no way it could've smashed through during the dry spell but I may take it after some rain when the soil's soft and see how we get on. Likewise, even the light Diss soil may be too much after the rain when it's stickier.

But all in all, this is a fabulous tool for the allotmenteer and I'm mystified as to why they're not on the shelves of every garden centre in the land. Particularly at this price, they bridge the gap between a hand hoe and a rotavator nicely. I think this and the push mower at Bressingham are going to be the items that make my 2 allotments manageable.

This year's tomatoes.

2011-07-02T08:35:00.003+01:00

2011 is the year I actually pay attention to my tomatoes. For the last 3 years or so I've bought a few garden centre plants, put the Gardener's Delight in the mini greenhouse and the Tumbling Toms in hanging baskets, watered them but little else.

A friend of mine called round last summer and expressed loud dismay at the state of my greenhouse whose plastic seams were creaking with the effort of containing plants of Little Shop of Horrors proportions. I did have a decent yield of tomatoes, enough to use fresh plus home made ketchup and green tomato chutney, but the tomatoes were all tiny and I'm greedy so if I can get more bang for my buck then so be it.

This year I have decided to pinch out in the approved way in the hope of getting bigger tomatoes. I'm finding all the greenhouse fiddling a bit tedious to be honest and the blasted things insist on growing every 5 minutes, it's housework outdoors really. I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it considering I had enough last year but we'll see. Maybe next year I should stick to bushy varieties and leave them to their own devices.

I'm also a bit worried about a couple of plants who seem to be yellowing excessively. I know it's usual to yellow around the bottom but it's usually later in the season and this time only a couple of plants are affected. As far as I can tell they're adequately watered and fed. One of the plants in question is pictured below so any opinions on the cause will be gratefully received.

My tomato Holy Grail is a tomato salad like the one Jamie Oliver made in his 'At Home' series which featured loads of different types of tomatoes, yellow, green, stripy, purple etc etc. I've hopefully gone some way towards it this year, I've got Gardener's Delight (seeds free from Mumsnet!), Mr Stripy (bought seeds), Tumbling Toms (bought seeds), Roma (plants donated by a friend) and hopefully some yellow ones (plants donated by another friend who thinks she may have got her seedlings mixed up)

Ideally, if I had, say, 9 plants, I'd like them to be 9 different varieties. The problem with this is that I'd have to buy 9 packs of seed as I wouldn't get 9 varieties of plants in my local garden centres. From the 9 packs of seeds I'd only use a few then what would happen to the rest? Would they keep long enough to use the next year? Or would they go to waste? This is all starting to look a bit expensive too ....

But look what I found yesterday! Packets of mixed seeds! With a picture looking like Jamie's salad! Now if only I could find courgettes packed in the same way, I'd be a happy bunny!

Normal for Norfolk is ....

2011-06-29T11:57:00.004+01:00

.... being held up on the nursery run by a tractor convoy (pictured)

.... going to the pub and coming home with a courgette in your pocket

.... attempting to drive around a man in a bee keeping outfit on a tricycle towing a trailer loaded with 3 bee hives

.... popping to the shop and there's a tractor with two wheels on the pavement outside

.... waking up to find a gypsy horse on the front lawn

..... carefully avoiding driving over a turkey strolling across the road

This is the point where someone normally comments along the lines of "That's nothing, in Devon the chickens actually run the Post Office" or somesuch (if that's not the sound of a gauntlet hitting the ground I don't know what is!)

On the Value of Neighbours.

2011-06-28T09:48:00.004+01:00

Life with 5 chickens agrees with us. Currently we're getting 5 eggs per day which is a nice amount, enough for all our egg eating/cake baking needs with some left over for random gifts for friends and neighbours - which is just as well given the latest developments.

The hens live in 2 coops in the back garden and they free range in the front garden. We do have a persistent escape problem though. Our Omlet chicken proof fence is anything but, not only can the chooks stroll through the squares in the fence at will but they can hop over it in one leap. Next door's large shrubs are a magnetic draw for them providing the ideal foraging/perching/dust bathing environment. Once they get bored in our garden, they vault the fence into next door's chicken paradise.

To date, we've been able to bring them back with a shake of the sunflower seed jar, as soon as they hear that they come thundering back down the path in anticipation of a tasty snack.

Until yesterday that is ......

One ex-batt stubbornly fixed me with a beady stare and hunkered down into the dust in a defiant fashion. Have you ever tried to out-wit a chicken inside a thick hedge? It's depressingly difficult but after some scratches and swearing I managed to bring her home.

We have lovely, lovely neighbours who claim to be charmed by the persistent dust bath holes under the shrubs and scratched up flower beds ("They do a good job of raking the weeds out!"). They say they appreciate the softly clucking company as they weed and mow their garden. Personally I think they're taking 'polite' to a whole new level but nonetheless, I'm very grateful for their relaxed attitude. I'm giving them our excess eggs as a thank you, if they're having the disadvantages of chicken ownership they may as well share in the benefits too.

Now listen up chooks - if you want to keep your free ranging rights you really are going to have to consider the neighbours and come back when you're called, I think you've pushed them far enough!

What's this I've found?

2011-06-27T14:00:00.005+01:00

My word but it's sweltery today. I gave myself the day off from mowing at Bressingham as it's a tough job with an old push lawn mower at the best of times, let alone when it's 30 degrees. While I was inspecting the raspberries I found this plant hidden among the canes. I'd love to identify it so if anyone could help, that would be fantastic.

A bit of back ground about the plot which may help with identification; the land began to be used as an allotment site about 100 years ago but had fallen out of use since the 1990's and been left uncultivated since then. Last year was the first year it has been re-used as allotments although we were delayed in getting on the land as some possibly rare wild flowers were discovered, although I don't know what type. They were inspected and declared not rare and we were subsequently allowed on site.

Personally, I think it looks a bit orchid like but I know next to nothing about flowers so am unlikely to be right I think! Failing that, I'd like it to be some sort of historic meadow plant with an exotic name. Toadflax (suggested by Cheeky Spouse on Twitter) is heading in the right direction. I'm rather disappointed that I don't have 'Creeping Ladies Tresses' which I found on an orchid site. Not sure if it's the ladies or their tresses that do the creeping though.

*Update* I've been Googling and I now don't think it is an orchid, the leaves are wrong. Am bitterly disappointed that it's not sneezwort either.

On a massively un-related note, I discovered cooked radishes at the weekend and they're unexpectedly delicious. I used this Riverford recipe, amazing, it gives radishes a whole new lease of life away from the salad bowl. It's inspired me to go and plant not only more radishes but some small turnips too.

First harvest from Diss

2011-06-21T16:54:00.003+01:00

Just call me Gypsy Rose Lee. My prophecy on 24th May in my 'bizarre weather' post came true, the rains well and truly came down on Proms in the Park on 18th June as it does every single year. Bad news for the party goers but fabulous news for allotmenteers.

The newly damp weather is a mixed blessing, it lessens the workload in that I don't have to diligently visit the allotments for watering duty every day but, on the other hand, THE WEEDS!! I hadn't visited the Diss allotment for about 4 days so when I went today I was stunned at how many had sprung up in my absence - better watch my back for the committee!

Fortunately the crops have sprung up too and today I brought home my first harvest from the new plot, lettuce, radishes, rainbow chard and stripy courgettes. Cavolo Nero is also ready but I didn't pick any. Seeing as I finished the last portion of frozen 2010 courgette soup today, it seems fitting that the 2011 supply have kicked off too.

Sometimes prophetic ability spills over into tempting fate. After yesterday's post in praise of weeds at Bressingham my fellow Allotment committee member (there's only 2 of us!) phoned to tell me she thinks we need to clamp down on the weeds - why can't I keep my big mouth shut .....

A Tale of Two Allotments

2011-06-20T13:40:00.004+01:00

One unexpected benefit of having allotments on 2 different sites is that it's given me an insight into how disparate allotment culture can be from site to site.

My old allotment site at Bressingham certainly has it's fair share of disadvantages. The heavy, clay soil, the complete lack of water, the well established weeds which have had a decade to run rampant, not to mention the local residents and their anti-allotment campaign plus the fact that it's a 5 minute drive away from home. It was enough to make me run into the arms of my newly acquired Diss based allotment.

The advantages of the new plot are legion, running water - yes - actual taps for goodness sake, a mere 10 paces away! The soil has been tended for years and has a lovely fine texture, diligent previous tenants have kept on top of the nasty weeds, I don't have so much as a single dandelion to contend with and, the major advantage, it is a 3 minute walk from home.

But I've recently come to realise that the Bressingham site has hidden talents. Yes, it's a bit weedy and we've still got vacant plots aplenty but that gives the whole place a fairly relaxed, shambolic air which I'm worryingly at home in. I love the riot of poppies and cammomile which spring up around the sheds and carpet the vacant plots, they're beautiful against the backdrop of the open countryside that surrounds the site. No-one here is going to purse their lips if I leave a clump of poppies on the footpath just because I think they're pretty, or let the clover grow to help the bees.

Almost every plot holder has children of varying ages which means that if a few of us are down there, the children can roam as a pack enjoying an approximation of a 1950's childhood. They go to the see horses in the next field, roam the vacant plots digging up worms, search the ditches for frogs or chase the pheasants (not peasants) in the hedges. Tractors trundle the lanes and geese from the smallholding over the road honk overhead. (Keep this bucolic rural idyll in your mind and ignore the stinking, monsterous crop spraying tractor in the field next door which made me flee for home the other week.) Anti-rabbit fences around each plot not only keep the rabbits out but make sure the kids don't trample indiscriminately over neighbouring plots, what do they say about strong fences making good neighbours?

By contrast, Diss may have significant practical advantages but, goodness me, the pressure of being next to the old boys and their straight rows, fecund plots and zero tolerance policy on weeds! There aren't any lovely, safe fences so I have to be ever vigilant about trampling and nag the girls to stay on our plot continually. To be fair, the old boys seem to be quite taken with small girls and we've had the odd gift of newly picked carrots for them to munch on but I can't imagine they'd be quite so indulgent if small feet destroyed their rows of hard work.

And dear Lord, the weeding, if the slightest stalk of shepherd's purse shows it's face I get palpitations. Most evenings see me shouldering my hoe to go and toil once more at the weedface, I may not be digging up dandelion roots but the annuals are hard work too.

So what about you? What the allotment culture on your site? Do families and the old guard peacefully co-exist? Or has civil war broken out?

The disadvantage of being a Blogger's daughter ....

2011-06-05T17:04:00.004+01:00

.... is pausing with your strawberry in the air, tantilisingly close to plunging your teeth into it, for a photo opportunity without even being asked. Xanthe saw me approach with strawberries and camera in hand, she silently took the strawberry and posed obligingly with it. Even photophobic Willow, while snipping elderflowers for the 'bizarre weather' post, shot me a look mid-snip and asked the lens "have you finished? Can I put the scissors down?". I thought she was behaving in a marvelously natural and unselfconscious manner, turns out every move was carefully calculated.

The allotment strawberries have been fabulous this year, I'm coming away with tubs full every few days. I guess those news reports about jubilant strawberry farmers were true after all. It's a good job really as there's not much else ready to pick. We've got lettuce but last year's chard has finally run to seed and nothing else is ready, the radishes have only just gone in, tomatoes only just flowering, courgettes only just forming.

I assume everyone else is having an awful year for fruit trees and it's not just me? We had lots of flowers on the plum, apple and pear trees and lots of tiny fruit formed but the lack of rain seems to be stunting their growth. They've remained tiny, have withered and are dropping off the tree. Other wild trees (cherry and yellow bullace) seem to be doing the same thing too although sloes in the hedgerows seem to be OK so far.

I'm now at a stage where I should be able to see if my '2 plot' strategy pays off. Bressingham (the further away plot) is now more or less established, all the plants are watered in and shouldn't need much attention from hereon in. The high maintenance crops are all watered in at Louie's Lane (3 mins walk away) so survival watering and caterpillar patrol is all that's required - hopefully. So this is the moment of truth, will I be able to maintain 2 plots split between 2 sites? I certainly hope so as I'd hate to have to decide which plot to give up.

Tasted our First Frost Sloe Gin

2011-05-27T11:14:00.005+01:00

Last year we picked some sloes after the first frosts for the first time I think I've covered the theory behind this before, but I'll precis it for newer readers anyway.

Popular wisdom says that frost make the sloes sweeter or it breaks down their skin a little, allowing the juices to flow out more easily, either way, the upshot is supposed to be sloe gin with a rather more mellow and complex flavour.

When we first started making sloe gin I had trouble picking post frost sloes as, by the time the frosts came, the sloes had withered on the vine (so to speak) I put this down to global warming and the frosts getting later. But, as we all know, the last couple of winters have seen an altered gulf stream and a preponderance of ice and snow. As a result, 2010 presented us with our first opportunity to grab some frosted sloes before they shrivelled.

It's spent 3 months macerating in the demi-jon and a further 4 months maturing in the bottle so it was with a flourish that we finally opened it.

I don't know what other sloe gin aficionados find, but I think the taste of sloe gin can vary batch to batch anyway, the amount of ginny tang and tannins can change considerably and there are so many variables (how long the gin is left to macerate/mature, how the sloes were pricked, differences between locations of the trees they grew on, whether bullaces have crept in etc etc) it hard to pinpoint which one is responsible.

However, this batch is definitely one of the best we've produced, noticeably thicker and mellower than the non frost batch. Whether that's down to the frosting alone is impossible to tell but I think we'll carry on making it when we get the opportunity, just to be sure!

Talking of bullace - has anyone heard of Essex Bullace? A friend of Adam's reckons he's picked some but when we Googled it we only found references to them on American sites along with Royal Bullace and White Bullace, none of which I've ever heard of, can anyone shed any light?

The weather gets even more bizarre.

2011-05-24T06:31:00.004+01:00

What is it with this weather? I get the impression that I'm imprisoned in the last dry and dusty corner of the county, bleating into the ether about the lack of rain while the rest of the country bends under the weight of torrential rain. My Facebook page is full of far flung people exclaiming at thunderstorms/hailstones/floods etc. (No locusts or frogs yet but surely it's only a matter of time) while I gaze mournfully at the dustbowl I call an allotment.

On the plus side though, the elderflowers are early. Willow has been eagerly anticipating her first taste of summer and has been monitoring the progress of the flowers in the hedgerow and telling me to get my finger out re cordial so yesterday I obliged. I say 'I', Willow did most of the work as you can see.

Anyway, I'm as confident as confident can be that the dry spell will break by 18th June as that's when Proms in the Park is held in Diss. Every year, without fail, there is torrential rain and revellers end up forgetting the words to Jerusalem and sipping warm wine out of plastic cups while huddling under golf umbrellas in an attempt to keep dry.

I was actually offended by the frost in April, how can it be fair that we're battling mid summer conditions and yet have to contend with extreme night time cold at the same time? Interestingly though, I read a couple of old garden diary type books, The Urban Gardener by Elspeth Thompson, (published in the mid '90s) and one whose name I can't remember as I was reading it in the Oxfam bookshop but was published in the 1930's (didn't buy it as it was about growing flowers rather than veg) both complained of 'freak' frost and snow in April. So I guess it's not that unusual after all, next year I promise I won't cast any clouts til May is out.

Yesterday though, things took another turn for the unexpected with the gale force winds. Luckily our, as yet empty, cold frame on the allotment stayed put but my plastic greenhouse at home has suffered. It didn't move as it's lashed securely to various down pipes on the side of the house and the frame is weighted down with gro bags. However, it did rock violently enough to tip up the tomatoes on the top shelves so they came crashing down on the tomatoes below. Plus the outer cover has ripped where the ropes tying it down are attached. Now the winds have died down I have a morning of duct tape repairs and surveying the damage to my Mr Stripeys in front of me. My leftover tumbling tom seedlings, who were destined for the allotment, flew around the garden alarmingly, the pots have been left behind but the plants have simply disappeared.

I have to admit I'm genuinely quite worried and can't help feeling that global warming is genuinely upon us. Some people may claim it doesn't exist and I hope they're right, but I doubt it.

Surviving the drought.

2011-05-17T09:08:00.007+01:00

Here in the East we've had an exceptionally dry spring with only something like 10% of the usual rainfall. I haven't found it too difficult to cope with although that's not to say I haven't had disasters. My broad beans and asparagus crowns have definitely failed and my carrots are worryingly slow to germinate but I've not giving up hope just yet. On the other hand my strawberries, fruit trees, borlotti beans, chard, cavolo nero, lettuce, leeks, sweetcorn and calabrese seem to be not just surviving but flourishing. This is down, in no small measure, to all the help I got in this post last year.

So, a year down the line, I thought it would be useful to review how I got on with the drought measures over the season, which tips worked and which am I carrying on with this year.

Last year I planted as many seeds as possible direct in the ground. I reasoned this would be less work than handling dozens of seedlings with all potting on and hardening off, but I was wrong. Hard work is trying to keep a 10m line of seeds wet enough to germinate (hence the fate of my carrots this year as I've sown them direct) It's much, much easier to keep a tray in a coldframe at home well watered plus this gives the seeds a head start as they germinate much more quickly. Once hardened off all the plants could all be watered simultaneously with 10 minutes under the sprinkler.

One of the best suggestions I got last year was from Craftygeek (see the comments on the old post) which was to plant bean seeds in cardboard tubes or rolls of newspaper full of compost. I packed mine together in an orange crate from the supermarket which I moved in and out of the coldframe en masse to harden them off. Once they were ready to go out I planted the whole tube/roll in the ground. This encourages deep roots and the compost and cardboard hold onto water, preventing it seeping away through the horribly cracked clay soil. Plus it improves the texture of the soil long term. Last year, once the beans were established I didn't water them at all but they continued to thrive and crop well.

Planting in a depression (just think of all the Lib Dem broken election promises ..... ) is probably the simplest and most effective thing I do. I put the seedlings in a dish shaped depression in the ground about 3cm deep and also build up a little 'wall' of soil around the plant. This holds the water, preventing it running off and giving it time to properly soak into the soil. As the plant grows bigger it tends to overrun the depression making it redundant but by this time the roots are deep enough to cope anyway.

As a proper double whammy, with large water hungry plants such as squash, cucumbers and tomatoes as well as the depression I use the bottom-chopped-off-plastic-bottle technique. I find this hugely effective, 48hrs after watering the soil is usually still damp around the plant, even on a hot, dry day.

These techniques are time saving too as I can quickly dump the water where it's needed and walk away, I don't have to stand at each plant for 20 seconds or so til the water has soaked in. Also as the water is getting directly to where it's needed, I don't need as much which means fewer trips to the tap/water butt. It takes me about 20 minutes to water each allotment, although I plan on stopping watering at all on the old allotment once the plants are established.

Have a look at Allotments4you's comment on the old post, I took this one to heart, last year I didn't water my borlotti beans, sweetcorn, brocolli, chard or cavolo nero once they were established and all did well. I didn't water the carrots either, apparently this encourages root veg to grow down further in search of water, making them bigger. Which they were. The wireworm seemed to approve anyway ....

PS - Just thought of another one. If you've got any spare seedlings with no room, pot them on and keep them alive as backups just in case your planted out ones fail, or die of frost, or get eaten by a chicken or something.

Blogger Curse strikes this time!

2011-05-16T10:47:00.001+01:00

A big "waaaaaaaah!" to Blogger for the technical confusion over the last few days, apologies to those who have left comments which have gone astray. I guess I should be thankful that my courgette post came back to life eventually!

Is that Wordpress I see on the horizon????

Courgette Curse strikes again

2011-05-12T13:48:00.000+01:00

Regular readers will know that courgettes are unfeasibly popular here in the Kitchen. Back in the day when I was struggling to grow what I could in my tiny garden they were a blessing as they give a generous crop in return for the smallest corner of ground. Having a glut was a novelty and I embraced the challenge with gusto - courgette cake, roasted courgette, courgette soup, courgette pickle, courgette jam, I love them all.

Therefore the great courgette tragedy of 2009, when I lost my slender green friends to mosaic virus, was a bitter blow. It's not just the loss of a popular vegetable but the ignominy of being unable to grow something universally acknowledged as a 'beginners' plant which is derided rather than celebrated for it's fecundity. Truth be told, I think it's the latter point that drives me on in my quest to conquer the courgette more than anything else.

2010 got off to a shaky start. I finally got my long awaited allotment (hoorah!) so the problem of being unable to use my mosaic virus infested garden was solved. I planted 4 courgette plants (2 green and 2 stripy) but I underestimated how exposed the allotment site was and all 4 plants went into shock after the cosiness of my back garden. I bit my nails for a week or two before they got a grip and started to actually grow.

It's true we had a glut after our holiday when the courgettes had been left to their own devices and a handful grew to monster proportions but the actual number of fruit was surprisingly low. The stripy variety in particular seemed to have quite a low yield, although I do wonder if this had something to do with their early shock.

Which brings us up to date. This year I have 2 allotments so space is far from an issue and I went to town! I sowed yellow courgettes, round courgettes and patty pan squash plus a friend kindly gave me a couple of crook neck squash seedlings. So courgettes all round then?

Hmmm, not so sure. I planted 2 yellow and 2 round on the allotment, only for us to have a frost a mere 2 days later, 1 of each type (plus a cucumber) was felled and the remaining plants have that familiar stunned look about them. Luckily my crook neck and patty pan squash were still at home and my sheltered garden escaped the frost so I'll plant a few more of those to step into the beach.

However, note to self for 2012 - don't plant the courgettes out til mid-May, it's just not worth the heartache!

Sweet(corn) Nothings

2011-05-01T18:57:00.004+01:00

Let's talk sweetcorn. Am I just rubbish at growing it or is it a somewhat testy diva of a vegetable that swoons when the conditions are anything less than perfect?

Last year I started the seeds off at home, outside in small pots. I reasoned that they'd grow already accustomed to the ambient conditions and I wouldn't have to bother hardening them off. This meant that they were outside during the late frost we had at the end of April last year, still tucked up under the potting compost in my sheltered, relatively frost free garden though, so not catastrophic. However, I do wonder whether this may have stunted them in later life.

I found that, at every stage of the growing process, I seemed to lose a proportion of the plants/ears of corn. About half of the seeds actually germinated and their progress was slooooooow, about 3 weeks from sowing to green shoots. Of the germinated seeds probably one third failed to thrive and didn't produce any corn. Of the plants that actually grew, about half produced decent corn and the other half produced weird nearly naked cobs. I think in the end we only had 6 or 8 decent decent cobs of corn from 20 plants.

This year I decided to buy a bigger cold frame so that I had the room to start off all my seeds under cover and get a head start. The sweetcorn has germinated within days but still, half the seeds have failed (in stark contrast to everything else which, other than the disappointing Mr Stripy tomatoes, has a success rate of almost 100%). I can also see huge disparities in size between the plants, a few are large, vigorous and obviously healthy (as seen in the photo, mid sprinkler session this afternoon) but a handful are rather runty. The pattern of last year seems to be repeating itself already.

So - what's your experience? Is my allotment fundamentally unsuited to sweetcorn, or is this fairly typical? I'd love to hear your stories and tips.

Please let it rain soon!

2011-04-28T13:53:00.003+01:00

The current dry weather conditions are playing havoc with our plans at Bressingham (the old allotment) In February I couldn't dig because the soil is so clay-y I couldn't stand up straight on it, pushing on a spade merely propelled me backwards through the slip. I missed the nanosecond when the weather dried up and the soil was in peak digging condition and, minutes later, it had dried out and set so rock hard that even jumping two footed onto the spade won't drive it into the ground.

My plan was to dig up the grassed area where the kids play, give them horsetail corner for playing instead, and transfer the strawberries to the rather more fecund original play area. Adam complained that digging up the turf in the compacted, played on soil, was heavy going so we put Roundup down thinking dead grass would be easier to grub up than living. By the time the Roundup had worked, the soil had set rock hard so we decided to wait for rain before we continued digging.

We waited, and waited and waited .......

8 weeks later we've only had one small shower of rain. The play area is still only half dug, the strawberries are snug in their original home and are now flowering determinedly, the broad bean seeds have died and the purple sprouting broccoli is running to seed and needs digging up but everything is locked into the concrete soil.

By contrast, the soil at the new allotment on Louie's Lane is a joy. It's like fine sand, free draining and easily heaped over the potatoes (the Ulster Sceptre are doing fine), seed drills are drawn in the blink of an eye (rather than seeds slipping down between huge cobbles) but walking over it is hard on the calves (my legs, there are no baby cows there) but other than that it's allotmenteering heaven.

The 2011 season is beginning in earnest now as my seedlings are slowly emerging from their coldframe home and being planted out in the big wide world of the allotment. The next few weeks will be hard work as I mollycoddle them into life but once they've got a toehold I should find out if my split site strategy will work and I actually have the resources to manage 2 allotments - oh and not forgetting the Diss Community Farm pig rearing project!

AB Seedy

2011-04-19T13:29:00.003+01:00

Had to get that pun in somewhere as I'm so proud of it! It's my suggestion for the name of the seed growing 'club' that a couple of friends and I have formed. The idea being we would co-ordinate our planting (eg, I do courgettes, Anna does lettuce), grow a few extra seedlings and then do a vegetal runaround, swapping excess plants. Of course this makes my germination rates uncomfortably public. In the past I would be quite sanguine about failures and just buy garden centre plants to fill any gaps. I really should have remembered that I did that with tomatoes for a couple of years on the run, last year was the first year I gave up and just went straight to the garden centre.

I think you've probably guessed where this is going already .....

Most of the seedlings are going well. I have a germination rate of over 50% for the sweetcorn which isn't too shabby. Borlotti beans more or less 100%, ditto courgettes, various squashes, chard, Cavelo Nero, calabrese etc etc

And my tomatoes? The ones which are supposed to be bounteous? Enough to share with friends? The value adding obscure varieties? Nada. Zip. Absolutely nothing. A handful of Tumbling Toms are struggling up but Mr Stripy are stubbornly staying soil bound.

In the meantime, I've taken my first delivery of leek seedlings from David. I had to share his seed tray idea in the photo above, I thought the cut off milk bottle was genius. Of course the size of the donation (the bottle in the photo, plus one more, plus a full conventional seed tray) causes me even more embaressment in having no tomatoes to give in return, let's just hope he likes courgettes ......

Purple Sprouting to Piggies.

2011-04-07T13:42:00.007+01:00

Wow, I finally have an hour to myself (just mistyped that as 'my elf', but I've paid him no attention either) Life has suddenly become overwhelmingly busy as the Norfolk Kitchen empire expands. As you probably know I have 2 allotments for the first time this season. I keep telling myself it's not as daunting as it sounds as both plots are half the traditional size so, really, it's just one plot. That's not too bad is it? Really? It'll be all right won't it??

I took advantage of the glorious weather and visited the Bressingham allotment (the old one) yesterday. Sadly, I forgot my camera which means I couldn't capture the blossom on the fruit trees or the glorious, glowing, shimmering purple of the sprouting broccoli. I photographed it at home but it's just not the same as when it's bathed in sunlight. I'm uncommon pleased with the purple sprouting, I bought a few spare plants from a fellow allotmenteer for 20p, stuck them in the soil and ignored them til now and suddenly, unexpectedly, I have this gourmet treat (stir fried in olive oil with anchovies by the way)

When I'd finished swinging a matock while sweat dripped off my nose in an attempt to dig over the sun hardened clay of the ex-Cavolo Nero bed, I called at the new allotment to check out the rotavating a friend did for me. The soil is beautiful, as fine a tilth as sand. I surveyed my blistered hands and could've wept!

Added to the extra land I've taken on 3 extra chickens making a total of 5, plus I'm getting quite heavily involved in the Diss Community Farm Livestock project. The Community Farm is basically a co-operative of local people, we're hoping to rent some land, work on it ourselves, share the produce and have a few laughs along the way. It's a huge project to get off the ground and lots of people are working very hard on it. The hope is that the Farm will become a reality next year and in the meantime we're running a couple of small pilot projects to test our plans and procedures. The vegetable growing project I'm leaving alone (see above) but the Project Piggy is a different matter ....

A local landowner has agreed to lease us an area of woodland of about 2 acres for a peppercorn rent and a side of pork, our plan is to keep a few pigs and some nice fierce geese to keep them safe from marauding teenagers. If all goes well we can scale up for the farm proper.

We're holding a Family Cream Tea this Sunday, 10th April, at Roydon Village Hall at 3pm. Please come along if you'd like to find out a bit more about our project or get involved. And if you're very lucky, you may even get to sample a little Norfolk Kitchen jam (but not the courgette and ginger which was very firmly rejected!)

Xanthe's Mud Pie Kitchen

2011-03-18T12:47:00.004Z

Ta-daaa! So here it is, Xanthe's Mud Pie kitchen. At the grand old age of 4, Xanthe is already an allotment veteran. We've reached the stage where miniature tool sets and packets of seeds have waned in the excitement stakes and every announcement of an allotment visit is met with loud howls of protest.

I've been avoiding this flashpoint by only visiting the allotment when Xanthe is at nursery but as demands on my precious child free time grow this is becoming impractical. The issue of keeping Xanthe amused and engaged feels even more important at the new allotment where our plots aren't fenced and the neighbours are the neat and tidy straight lines types who wouldn't fancy small feet tramping over the border.

I appealed for ideas on Twitter and Facebook and got some great suggestions including making scarecrows, flower pot mud castles (like sandcastles only muddier), flower pot stilts and cardboard tractors. All of which are fab ideas I have squirreled away for future use. The lovely Rachel, she of the transplaneted courgette, came up with the Rolls Royce solution: A Mud Pie Kitchen.

An hour in the charity shops of Diss produced a wooden wine rack which a dab of glue, 2 cheap hob covers and 2 big red buttons turned into a cooker. We added in a variety of charity shop utensils and the job was done. So far, it's proving to be a huge success. It's spent the last 48 hrs sitting in the living room, waiting for today's allotment trip, where it has already facilitated Xanthe's hamster stew ("pretend we're cats cooking hamsters!")

We took it to the plot today where Xanthe put it through it's muddy paces. For the first time in this family's allotment career, Xanthe was so absorbed in her mud and weeds cookery it took all my powers of persuasion to get her to leave and Willow's in a sulk because she hasn't seen the kitchen in situ yet. My ears are ringing to a new and unfamiliar refrain "But Muuuuum, when are we going to the allotment? I haven't been for aaaaages!"

Chickenopolis

2011-03-07T14:12:00.004Z

Wow, what a chickeny weekend we have had. We decided to buy a bigger new coop so that we could put non-laying Feathers out to retirement and replace her with 3 new point of lay hens. The coop was ordered when I received a call asking if we had space for a few ex-batts someone was collecting. I immediately agreed to take 3, now that we'd had a bit of chicken keeping experience I felt more confident about taking on chickens who potentially could have some problems, plus there's the fuzzy glow of doing something good, plus, well, umm, they're free so I've saved the best part of £60.

Once the new coop was assembled we realised that we had room to keep the old coop too so our plans expanded, we would go from owning 1 coop stocked with 2 hens so 2 coops with a combined total of 5 hens. The pre-existing Crispy plus 3 ex-batts meant we only had to buy 1 extra hen.

Sunday dawned cold and sunny and our day of avian runaround began.

Feathers was taken to her retirement home, namely a work mate of Adam's who adopts waif and stray birds from bantams to barn owls. He agreed to make a chicken sized space for Feathers who will no doubt thinks she's suddenly grown a foot overnight after being introduced to the bantams.

Next we sped off to collect the ex-batts. I've never seen one before so was a bit shocked, not at the lack of feathers so much, but their wilty combs and anaemic appearance. The lady who'd rescued them told me they actually had more feathers than most ex-batts so I think I'd expected them to be a bit more conventional looking.

Back home, we had a minor escapage during our complicated re-cooping schedule which resulted in Crispy and the ex-batts coming beak to beak a bit sooner than planned and, completely unexpectedly, Crispy turned into Rambo Hen. Making a growling noise I've never heard before, she launched herself ruthlessly at a hapless ex-batt, stamping on her neck and pecking viciously at her head. Naturally, we quickly separated them so we now have the 3 ex-batts in the new coop and Crispy the Bully is on her own in the old coop. She won't be alone for long as I'm getting her a brand new point of lay playmate tomorrow, I'm hoping that if we follow conventional rules, introduce the new hen after Crispy has gone to bed and get a newby that bears a passing resemblance to Feathers, Crispy will accept her a bit more readily.

Meanwhile, the ex-batts have been named. They're Spark, Katie (after the singer in the Ting Tings) and Lady Gaga (believe me, not my choice, but I suppose she's wearing about as many feathers as Lady Gaga wears clothes) and they seem really happy. They've made themselves at home and are really curious about us, coming out to line up and stare out at us from the run every time we come out of the house. And the icing on the cake (not literally) this morning, less than 24hrs after arriving, all 3 had laid an egg!

So hurrah for the Bash Street Hens, although they do have really long claws, does anyone have any experience of trimming chicken claws? Is it easy to do?

Potato Madness

2011-02-15T11:46:00.004Z

I finally got hold of my Ulster Sceptre seed potatoes thanks to the 2011 East Anglian Potato Day. It was the first time I've been to one of their events and it was an education! I envisaged a market stall type set up and as I only wanted a small number of one variety I thought it would be fairly easy to quickly drop by and pick up what I wanted.

It was a shock to the system then, to arrive at Stonham Barns and be faced with actual queues of traffic waiting to get in. I finally parked and was directed to the marquee by a helpful car park attendant who admired my parking spot and cheerfully exclaimed "At least you won't get stuck in the mud like the others!". Outside the marquee, I tagged on to the end of a huge queue of people in wellies with that outdoorsy sheen of mud and rude health about them and shuffled patiently towards the door. Apparently those in the know get there early and start to queue before the tent's even open.

Inside I was faced with a frantically busy potato jumble sale, complete with steely eye glints and sharp elbows. Rows of seed potatoes were laid out in alphabetical order, punters fill paper bags with their required varieties and then commence the arcane payment procedure which involves a two stage tally ("Did you not count them?") and pay ("Did you not write the name on the bag?") system.

I paid 12p per potato plus my £1.50 entry fee. For my small haul that worked out at roughly the same as garden centre prices but clearly, further hauls would have yielded greater savings. Indeed, I was mildly surprised to see people tottering under the weight of bags of life stuffed to the brim. The only reason I was so restrained quantity wise is the gift of two bags of seed potatoes (Arran Pilot and Nadine) I was given by a fellow allotmenteer which I already have tucked away at home.

It took much longer than anticipated to make my small purchase but what a great event! I love the fact that there are so many people out there who are obviously bonkers enough about potatoes to stage the event, to queue happily in the mud and to eagerly anticipate Potato Day each year. And thank goodness they do, I've no idea where I would have got my Ulster Sceptre otherwise.

I'm going in for potatoes in a bigger way than I'd planned this year thanks to the seed potato presents I've got but it'll be interesting to test the Ulster Sceptre against a more standard variety and see if there's any taste difference. It would be even more interesting to test them against Ulster Sceptre grown in Cheshire to see if there's any truth in the claim that it's the salty Cheshire soil that makes them taste special.

I'm especially happy to have got through a whole post about potatoes without once saying "the humble spud". Cliche neatly side stepped I think.

How far can a straight line take me?

2011-02-02T18:38:00.007Z

That's not an entirely rhetorical question. You may remember that over the winter, while the veg patch sleeps, I've been exploring the world of the haberdasher. My sewing skills are limited, I've never followed a pattern, never sewed in a zip or made a button hole. In fact my one and only skill is my ability to sew in a straight line. It's true I've dabbled in a three stitch zig zag on prone to fraying raw edges but, to be honest, it makes me anxious. So straight lines it is.

Sewing is supposed to be a thrifty activity but it doesn't take long to discover that the mainstream approach of purchasing fabric and patterns from the local haberdasher is more expensive than you might think, so I've been rather enjoying the challenge of finding alternative means of sourcing cheap materials.

Charity shops are an obvious first stop. My local Oxfam sells bundles of about 5 roughly fat quarter sized pieces for 99p as well as cards of buttons presumably snipped from clothes destined for the rag bag. Zips (which are beyond my capabilities) seem to be a perennial charity shop favourite too at 50p a pop. It's also worth keeping an eye on the Lidl website for their twice weekly specials which a few times a year throw up bargain sewing machines, boxes of thread and well stocked sewing boxes.

I'm also lucky enough to live relatively close to the heart of the silk weaving industry. (Sudbury, seeing as you ask, it was news to me too) I know of two silk mill factory shops, Vanners and Stephen Walters. I drove over to Sudbury just after Christmas, unfortunately Vanners was closed (Thank You chap on the phone who assured me they would be open on Tuesday but he actually meant Thursday. Still, they both begin with 'T', an easy mistake to make, what's a two hour futile round trip between friends? Tsk) but, happily, I unwittingly walked in on the first day of the Stephen Walters January Sale. I came away with about 6 meters of brightly coloured silk destined for tie making plus a couple of bumper patchwork bags of satisfyingly heavy, seriously good quality fabric for £19. If anyone knows of any other silk/fabric mills with factory shops, please let us know.

Oh, and I think we all know Ebay is our friend, especially for bulk buying ribbon, cord, buttons, trimmings etc. And another obvious one, there are lots of free patterns and tutorials out there on the net.

So, how far have I got with my bargain materials and a straight line?

I'm quite proud of myself actually. I mentioned in a previous post that I made 2 fleece backed patchwork quilts for the living room. I have also made a crazy patchwork table runner, a curtain to hide the toy shelves in the living room, Christmas stockings, a dog glove puppet, 2 drop bags and 2 drawstring bags for the children to keep their toys in and a series of 'pockets' to go along the side of Xanthe's new bed to keep her treasures in. Next on the list is a Nintendo DS pouch for Willow. Then we bring out the big guns - an actual pattern (eek) to make some soft toys and cushions for the kitchen chairs with (bated breath) zips! Does this mean I've come to the end of the straight line??

Update! Talk about timely, Lidl are stocking some sewing materials, yarns, needles etc on Monday 10th Feb.

Glorious Day

2011-01-20T09:24:00.004Z

What an amazing day yesterday was. It's been like spring here in Norfolk, I can't believe it's only January. Although it's very pleasant it's also quite disorientating to go straight from heavy snow to verdant new growth and we all know we can't trust spring after last year's seedling destroying late cold snap.

Global warming concerns aside, I grabbed the opportunity to plant my raspberries and survey the snow damage on the plot. I haven't been to the Bressingham plot for some time because it's been impassable to vehicles for months now. The vehicle access isn't hardcored or metalled in any way and was quickly reduced to a quagmire with the onset of Autumn. The only solution is to leave the car on the road (much to the annoyance of local residents and passing farm vehicles) and totter unsteadily through the slutch and ruts - it's not an appealing prospect in bad weather with small children in tow.

I wasn't surprised to see the Rainbow Chard completely felled by the snow although clearing away the dead leaves revealed new leaves already beginning to grow again. The Cavolo Nero on the other hand is looking positively refreshed after it's ice bath, it's not only survived but actually grown. Despite this, I'm having doubts as to whether there's any advantage to growing Cavolo Nero as opposed to a bog standard savoy cabbage. I can't really taste much difference and have become dissatisfied with the stalk to leaf ratio of the former so may plant the latter instead this year.

The bad news is I think we've got rats in the compost bin. Other plot holders have seen them around the site and compost appears to have been thrown out from inside of the bin. My immediate response was the pull the Macaulay Culkin Home Alone face and sprint away as fast as my clay encased boots would allow. Naturally I will not be investigating further until I have my husband on hand to hide behind.

So, the next task is to sift through my seed packets, assemble my cold frame and plan a timetable for seed planting. I'm still in the process of tracking down my Ulster Sceptre seed potatoes, there aren't any in the local Garden Centres and my parents can't find them in the north west either. On-line suppliers are showing stock coming in during February so maybe they'll appear in the shops in a few weeks but if anyone knows of a Garden Centre in South Norfolk or Warrington which may have them, I'd love to hear from you.

My boots yesterday. Soil as clay as clay can be.

Well Hello 2011

2011-01-03T20:23:00.004Z

If it's OK with you, would you mind being a tad warmer than 2010? Oh, and please, please kick off spring on time, I'd very much appreciate a growing season of the standard length. And please don't tell anyone about the exciting, tentative, top secret empire expanding plans. Many Thanks.

It's hard to believe that my allotment career is not yet a year old. This time last year I had nothing doing in the garden (other than that pesky cat problem) but now I'm the proud owner of two whole plots and the luxury of plenty of time to plan, plant, chit and sow, unlike last year's March start.

So far I have my Autumn fruiting raspberries which need planting now the ground has de-frosted as well as my potted Tayberries.

Next on the list is my desire to re-create the potatoes of my childhood (yes, really!) Anyone from the NorthWest will be aware of the revered Cheshire potato, sung out from luminous banners in Chippy windows in early summer. A little bit of internet research tells me that Cheshires aren't actually a variety but just the name given to Ulster Sceptre potatoes bestowed with a unique flavour by the supposedly salty Cheshire soil. So next week I'm off to try and source some Ulster Sceptre seed potatoes. Maybe I'm on a hiding to nothing, maybe it's true about the soil, maybe Norfolk mud's just not the same but the beauty of an allotment is that I can give it a go.

Talking of those luminous food signs, anyone remember the Tasty Toaster? I just fancy a slice now ......

Oooh, it's a DSLR!

2010-12-22T10:14:00.004Z

Much joy in the Kitchen as I unveiled my (prematurely delivered so we can capture the festivities) Christmas present from Adam - a Digital SLR! So far all the NK photos have been taken on tiny, crappy point and shoot. Even if I say so myself, I don't think I've done too badly on it but I've been frustrated by it's performance in low light and the slow shutter release. I've lost count of the number of empty frames I've got where the children have dashed off/swung out of shot long before the camera coughs painfully into action.

I'm very much still learning, mainly surviving on auto modes but I can already see the difference in the quality of light, graining etc I have a vague grasp of things like shutter speeds and fstops as I owned an SLR in my student days (which I'm horrified to discover were 20 years ago!) but photography seemed expensive in those days not only did we have to wait days before we even saw our photos but we had to pay to print every single duff shot too so my interest waned fairly rapidly.

I do feel rather conspicuous with this professional looking contraption swinging around my neck, not only do I fear being uncovered as a raging amateur but I've already encountered low level hostility from strangers. While browsing a toy stall at the Bury St Edmunds Christmas Market the stall holder snappily told me to not photograph her merchandise, which I had no intention of doing, so that proved to be useful in deciding which stall to actually purchase from. I can't help thinking someone engaged in industrial espionage would be a tad more subtle ....

Anyway, on a lighter note, please admire my lovely proving basket from Jane Jennifer. I e-mailed her asking for one of her proving baskets without mentioning this blog or my sourdough bread but she saw the link from my blog to her website and put 2 + 2 together. As a result she made a basket specifically for me and my sourdough requirements. It's made from white willow because it doesn't stain the dough like darker willow would and it's the exact size I wanted. Best of all it's been handmade just a few miles away from where it's being used and loved.

Winter ingenuity!

2010-12-07T13:36:00.005Z

So the snow arrived - and so did my bare rooted raspberries. At the very moment the ground froze to the consistency of concrete my precious stock arrived needing speedy planting. As our raspberries failed totally this year I'm determined to have more success (or,in fact, any success) next year so I was thrown into a panic as I feared for the lives of the hallowed canes.

I'm quite proud of my ingenious solution, I cut the top off a bag of garden centre compost and stuck the canes into the soil as a cosy, temporary home. Once the cold snap has finished I'll plant them out properly in our loving prepared, muck filled trenches. I've not visited the allotment since the snow fell but there's only Rainbow Chard and Cavolo Nero in the ground at the moment. I'm hoping the Cavolo Nero's OK but judging by the Chard at home, I'm expecting it to have turned up it's toes.

Continuing the sourdough theme of the winter, by co-incidence Adam has recently been presented with a 'Herman'. I've never heard of these but apparently it's a tradition which comes from either Germany or the Amish, depending on which website you read. It's a sweet sourdough starter which eventually makes a cake, it sells itself as a 'friendship' cake because the idea is you split the starter, keep a fifth and pass the rest on to friends. Willow's quite taken with the idea and is eagerly monitoring the regular feedings. I'm thinking of passing on ours to some of her friends at school although I am a tad concerned that the other mothers may be somewhat disconcerted when presented with a jar of white gloop. Hmmm.

I hope it's edible, I'm not sure Willow's social life would survive the white gloop, 10 days attention and feeding which results in a shoddy cake.

Sourdough Success

2010-11-30T10:13:00.005Z

Finally! I have a successful sourdough loaf! Admittedly, I don't have holes as large as I'd like but it has a soft, light interior and a dense, chewy, flavoursome crust so I'm not complaining! I swapped to Dan Lepard's recipe which I found much easier, less time consuming and more successful than the River Cottage sponge making version I had been using.

It's a nice place to be - good enough to make an enjoyable loaf to be proud of but more than enough room for improvement to keep the interest alive (and hopefully the starter too!)

I've now reached the point in the Norfolk Kitchen year when the blog quietens down as I don't have a great deal of foraging or allotment activity going on in the winter. I don't even have a Christmas Presents series this year as I've decided to give my long suffering family a break from home made presents (apart from Hot Chocolate on a stick which I will blog about separately)

My current winter creativity outlet appears to be sewing. I'm somewhat hampered by the fact that I'm an utter dunce in this arena, straight lines and hems are about as far as I get. I prefer not to think about buttonholes and zips and the like unless I'm breathing into a paper bag so I'm quite proud of the 2 patchwork throws I made for the living room.

They're basically 9 50cm squares, sewn together in a block and backed with fleece. They're warm and soft, ideal for snuggling under while waiting for the central heating to kick in. I saw some in a local shop, made in exactly the same way for £45 each. Mine are made from scraps I had lying around plus a length of fleece which cost £25 for both so I'm feeling rather smug. Next up, helping Father Christmas with the stockings he asked me to make for the children - where did I put that paper bag ......

Sourdough #2

2010-11-23T09:40:00.005Z

First of all, let's all gather around and gasp at the lovely airy sourdough I made.

Thank you.

Now let's turn our gaze south and pause to consider the dense brick like appearance of the other side of the loaf Things are getting better though, it tastes lovely, the crust is everything I hoped it would be but I think I've made a few of errors.

First of all my dough wasn't as wet as the recipe described at the kneading flour into the sponge stage. I added extra water but I'm not sure if this will have made a difference. Second, I put the shaped, round dough into the proving basket smooth side up but according to the book it should be smooth side down. Will this have made a difference to the rise? Not really sure. Finally, I accidentally made too much dough by forgetting to half the quantities in the recipe so I think the oven was over crowded and the loaf didn't cook evenly (hence the brick like side vs light and bubbly side)

Thanks to @goodshoeday who has been quietly cheering me on via Twitter and has recommended Dan Lepard's website for sourdough tips. My plan is to read through the webside then set about sourdough #3, which I fully expect to be perfect!

Well done to anyone reading through this, I'm uncomfortably aware that I'm becoming a sourdough bore but I have to make this work, namely because I've ordered some lovely handmade bread proving baskets from Jane Jennifer and the purchase has to be justified!

Vintage darling, vintage.

2010-11-22T10:19:00.006Z

I'm choosing to call these vintage rather than second hand so as to sound all posh. They cost the grand sum of 10p each at a car boot sale back in the summer. I had the screw bands refurbished at KilnerjarsUk for a further £2.50 each so not a bad price for the beautiful greeny, bubbly glass jars.

They have old fashioned 2 piece glass lids but no maker's mark. Kilnerjars Peter thinks they're probably cheapo Woolworths copies of Kilner/Mason jars. I have to admit I'm a bit too nervous to use them for actually bottling as I'm not sure if the old glass will stand up to the pressure with it's various flaws etc. I'd also need buy rubber bands and they, rather frustratingly, are all very slightly different sizes so I'd have to buy a pack of bands for each jar which would bump the price up further, plus figuring out which size to buy would be a bit hit and miss. I will therefore be keeping these for storage and pickling.

I was rather pleased to see Ruth on the Edwardian Farm using jars of the same design for pickling her apples the other week - though I was desperate to tell her to pickle damsons rather than apples as they're so much nicer!

Sourdough

2010-11-17T09:49:00.005Z

After watching the River Cottage bread episode I was inspired to try my hand at baking sourdough bread. Why sourdough? Well, it fits into the Norfolk Kitchen philosophy in a couple of ways. I was astonished to learn it's made with wild yeasts living in the air (I can't be the only person in existence who didn't know wild yeasts live in the air can I?) so technically it's foraging, plus it costs a fortune to buy so it's worthwhile learning how to do it. Oh and it's tasty, I particularly like the dense crust of sourdough and the loaves do look impressive.

So my journey began back on 6th November when I began the starter. (I've got the River Cottage Bread book and used that as my guide) I used organic spelt which took a little while to get going but once I got it into a warm enough spot in the kitchen it bubbled like a cauldron, in fact, I had to move it into the chilly bathroom to slow it down a bit.

I finally got around to making the bread yesterday, it needs babysitting so it has to be done on a day when you're happy to stay close to home and it also takes some planning. I made the sponge on Monday night then kneaded the extra flour in on Tuesday, then shaped it again, and again, and again before finally getting it into the oven at Tuesday teatime. (Do I get an award of some sort from Citi Slow?)

And the result? I made a flat thing - as Kipper might say. The bread is tasty but it's not as light and airy as the bread in the book, I'm thinking this is probably because it was made from stoneground wholemeal flour which makes a dense loaf at the best of times, plus I may not have used enough of the starter. I reduced the quantities given in the recipe so was guessing half a ladle of starter by eye. Next time, more starter and half and half white and wholemeal flour I think. If any sourdough aficionados out there have any advice on producing a lighter loaf, please share!

By the way, I've been nominated for a Dorset Cereals little blog award, if you're of a mind to do so, please feel free to vote for me! (widget on the left of the screen) I have one lonely vote at the moment - thank you!

Kitchen Life Returns to Normal

2010-11-05T18:51:00.005Z

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I'm sure that many of you don't know but Adam, my husband, has a brain tumour. That's not as bad as it sounds, he's fit and well, was operated on 6 years ago and made a full recovery so it's not a story of doom and disaster. He had a small re-growth 2 years ago and is now on annual MRI scans to pick up any further re-growths. The 2010 scan took place on Monday and today we got the results - all clear. Hoorah.

Needless to say I've been a bag of nerves for the couple of weeks leading up to today and wasn't really home to blogging muse if you see what I mean so that's my excuse for my lack of productivity.

Not only have a I neglected the blog but I've neglected the allotments too (oh the shame) The old allotment needs to be cleared of weeds and manured for the winter, we've lost some good days weatherwise to the brain tumour worry fug, I'm hoping we get a few nice days next week so I can redeem myself. Fortunately the new allotment is clear and needs no work but I can't think of anything to plant there just now.

I've come up with the following list of low maintenance crops for the old allotment (Bressingham) and more needy crops for the new close to home allotment (Diss) :

Low Maintenance

Strawberries, raspberries, fruit trees, possibly a hybrid berry of some sort if some kind soul buys me one for Christmas, sweetcorn, borlotti beans, broad beans, calabrese, leeks.

Needy crops

Carrots and new potatoes (I know, not needy but this is because of the wireworm at Bressingham) Rainbow chard (because I only use 2 or 3 leaves at a time so it's better off near home) lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, pumpkins.

Cavolo nero undecided, probably Diss due to the caterpillar patrolling.

So that's it, if anyone thinks there's something I could be doing at the Diss plot I'd be happy to hear from you as I'm feeling guilty for my lack of activity. Anyhoo, off to a celebratory evening of chocolate and alcohol with my husband - think we deserve it after all the worry.

Pumpkin and Maple Spread

2010-10-30T12:36:00.004+01:00

I'm actually in the middle of cooking this right now so have no idea how it'll turn out. Nevertheless, I thought I'd quickly post the recipe as I figure many people will be hollowing out pumpkins this weekend and timely ideas for using up the scrapings may go down well!

Pumpkin and Maple Spread

1.5kg chopped pumpkin (the shavings made when you scrape out the insides with a spoon are perfect)

600g maple syrup (this is roughly 2 bottles. I got mine cheaply from Aldi)

300g honey (roughly a standard jar)

Cinnamon stick if liked.

Stick everything in a big pan and simmer gently for 90 minutes, skimming any scum. The recipe says it can be left chunky or pureed. I'm planning on pureeing mine when it's cool. I'll then heat up the smooth spread back to boiling point to kill off any bugs and pack into sterilised jars which should keep for 6 months.

Suggested uses include:

Spread on Toast

Drizzled over waffles and cream

Combined with cream and eggs to make a pie filling

Eaten with a spoon when feeling low.

This recipe is from Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton's book 'Preserved'. I've never made it before, but will report back on the success or otherwise in more detail tomorrow when it's done.

*Update* It's a roaring success! Sweet, caramelly, spicy, gorgeous. We had it spooned over quince crumble with vanilla ice cream, I think it's probably best thought of as a dessert topping/syrup type of affair rather than a jam.

This recipe made 3 jars so I'm thinking of using the rest of our stash of somewhat insipid orange pumpkins to make some more.

Big fat Chestnuts

2010-10-17T16:10:00.004+01:00

I really should listen to my children a bit more, they are far more vigilant at this foraging lark than we are.

At the park yesterday Adam and I were sitting on a bench enjoying the unseasonal warmth while Willow, Xanthe and their friend frolicked in the distance. Willow periodically mithered us to 'come and look', assuming it was yet another dance show of some description we demurred. However, Willow knows how to get our attention and mentioned the word 'walnut'. Walnuts you say? Now that's different ....

"No, not walnuts, that's not what I mean, the spiky ones, like in the park but edible", "Chestnuts?", "Yes! That's it, chestnuts!"

Last year's chestnut forage was a bit lacklustre. Our usual tree had bizarrely small nuts but I managed to find another with not quite so small nuts so all was not lost but it wasn't bounteous either. However, this year, Willow's new tree was amazing. Adam actually held up one of the chestnuts and scoffed "well, this is clearly a conker, you never get sweet chestnuts this big!" but he was wrong, it was a sweet chestnut. All of them are big, fat, shiny and beautiful. Certainly the biggest chestnuts we've found to date. 15 minutes picking gave us 4lbs of chestnuts.

It's interesting to read last year's blog post. It seems that in 2008 the chestnuts fell in early November. 2009 was a dry Autumn producing under-developed nuts which fell earlier - late September/early October while this year's wet Autumn has produced bigger, later nuts. Adam's hoping to log a couple of decade's worth of chestnut related data so he can produce graphs and suchlike illustrating the correlation between nut size, weather and ripening. Yes, dear reader, I did marry a geek - we all have our cross to bear.

Oh, and we forgot our most basic of nut foraging rules - wear a hat. Adam was narrowly missed by falling spiky chestnut case and I whacked my head on a low hanging branch and have a bleeding scalp to show for my efforts.

So, yeah, wear a hat!

The Norfolk Kitchen Empire Expands.

2010-10-15T20:25:00.007+01:00

This time last year I was mainly concerned with how to maximise the vegetable harvest from my tiny back yard while quietly fuming about the lack of progress with the planned new allotment site.

Now I find myself in possession of not one but two allotments.

Yep, you read it right, I've taken on a second plot. Not on our current site at Bressingham but on the Diss allotment site which is just behind my house. It's always been a very popular site with long waiting lists and I had assumed it would take years to get a plot there so, although it's the closest to my house, I'd mentally written it off.

But back at Bressingham, as regular readers will probably know, we've had yet another kerfuffle. After the initial kerfuffle between the allotment holders, a house neighbouring the site has taken against the concept of allotments per se and has commenced a further kerfuffle - this one involving fly tipping, vandalism and raising formal complaints about children on the allotments. To be honest, this, taken with the well established perennial weeds, lack of water supply, muddy driveway which is unusable after rain, the 5 mile round trip every visit and the wonky decision making of the Parish Council has tipped me over the edge.

I called the Diss allotment site and asked to go on their waiting list which turned out to be all of 24hrs in length. Last night I got a call offering us the plot. I expressed surprise at the speed of the offer and was told it's all thanks to Bressingham, apparently we've absorbed the waiting lists from Diss and Roydon so there are vacant plots on those sites for the first time in years.

Today, I went to sign up. Even walking at a 3 year old's pace it only took 4 minutes to get there. Upon arrival, the clouds parted, a shaft of sunlight lit our way and the air was riven with angels singing. The driveway is hardcored, there is mains water on tap, the plot is clear with no weeds, the soil is fine crumbed and not the heavy clay we have at Bressingham. It's like sliding into a warm bath of allotmenteering. Ahhhhh .......

So now the question is, what do we do with Bressingham? We have a contract til March, so don't have to decide just yet but our two options seem to be:

Keep it. Plant it with low maintenance stuff like fruit trees/bushes so we don't have to go very often and keep Diss for the veg which will need lots of watering/care.

Hand it back. But what would we do with our shed, fence and newly planted fruit trees - none of which are allowed at Diss and none of which we have room for at home.

I'm leaning towards the former, but will having 2 plots on different sites be a pain in the rear?

What do you think? I'd love to hear your views.

There's Not Mush Room inside ....

2010-10-11T20:30:00.006+01:00

Today, I was soooo tempted to write a whole ranty post about the Parish Council sternly writing to me (as secretary of the Allotment Association) with the rather joyless phrase "the allotments are for the purpose of growing vegetables, they are not playgrounds for children" in response to a complaint from a grumpy nearby householder which was taken at face value and not given even the most cursory of investigations. But as you can see, I decided not to do that.

(Deep breath)

What I decided to do instead was write a post about parasol mushrooms and how astonishing they are.

Adam and I are very much novices on the mushroom gathering front which I guess puts us in the category of Enthusiastic Amateurs Most Likely to Poison Themselves but we're slowly building our repertoire.

Driving past Brewer's Green the other day we spotted mushrooms so huge they were instantly visible from the road so we screeched to a halt and got out of the car to investigate. They were about a foot high and the top was easily the size of a large dinner plate, we took a couple of specimens home to identify but our confidence was dented when a dog walker sprinted over to us as we were leaving and tried to convince us they were poisonous, but despite the ominous portent we pressed on.

Happily, the dog walker was wrong. I've no idea where she got her identification from but we were careful, did a spore print etc and identified them as parasols.

I cooked them simply, fried in olive oil and garlic. The most astonishing thing I thought was how dramatically the mushrooms shrank when cooked. The cap was easily 30 or 40 cm across but by the time the water had been driven off, it was barely enough to feed 2 of us for lunch. Although, saying that, am I the only one to find wild mushrooms incredibly filling?

They dined on Mince and slices of Quince.

2010-09-30T09:58:00.006+01:00

We have dined on mince and slices of quince - albeit in separate dishes, though I'm sure I heard Greg Wallace say something about smoked bacon and quince on Masterchef last night.

For the last few days I've been steadily working my way through the Norfolk Kitchen Quince Mountain. I avoided Membrillo and Jelly this year as we've had lots of those in previous years thanks to the old Japonica Quince, instead I've made the most of the quince flesh in crumbles, cakes etc as that was difficult to do with the tiny Japonicas. Quince upside down cake was a great success, pieces of pre-cooked quince in the bottom of a cake tin with a standard 3 egg sponge mix poured on top and baked at gm4 for about 45 minutes. The secret ingredient is a couple of tablespoons of rose water added to the sponge mix, along with the usual vanilla extract.

Quince Mincemeat also worked well. I took Delia's mincemeat method as a base and came up with this mixture from bits we already had in the cupboard:

225g Quince (chopped into small pieces and poached til soft)

110g suet (I used vegetarian)

400g chopped dates

110g mixed candied peel

175g brown sugar

zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon

25g chopped walnuts

2 tsp ground mixed spice

1/2tsp ground cinnamon

a few gratings of fresh nutmeg

Generous amount of Cointreau (because it was already in the house, brandy is in the original recipe) - probably a double measure.

The method is really easy. Mix everything together except the alcohol and put into a covered dish in a very, very low oven for 3 hours. Take it out and stir a few times as it cools to distribute the fat, add the alcohol when it's completely cool. Pot up into sterilised jars in the usual fashion. Delia says this methods prevents the fresh fruit juice seeping out and fermenting as it seals the pieces with fat. I can vouch for it working as I used this method last year and the mincemeat was still fine 9 months after it was made. I tasted it last night and it's really very good, even before it's matured.

I also made Quince Chutney from Pam Corbain's River Cottage Preserves book.

1kig pumpkin, peeled, seeded and diced

1kg quince, peeled, cored and diced

500g cooking/wild apples, peeled, cored and diced

500g red onions, diced

500g raisins

50g fresh ginger (fresh horseradish in the original recipe but I couldn't get hold of any)

500g brown sugar

600ml cider vinegar

Spice bag

2tsp peppercorns

12 cloves

2 cinnamon sticks.

You probably know the drill. Mix everything together, bring to the boil and then turn down the heat and simmer for ages til it looks like chutney. Then pot it into sterilised jars etc makes about 10 jars.

Other than these 2 recipes, I've been freezing the quinces. I find it easier to boil the quince whole for roughly an hour or so til they're soft then let them cool completely. Once they're soft, they're much easier to chop neatly, I then pack them into foil trays and stack them in the chest freezer.

I think I'm coming to the end although I may bottle a few in spiced cider or something similar as a change from the plain, frozen ones. I still have masses of the pesky things left so I may begin to distribute them to friends and family - whether they want them or not!

(By the way, did you know that a 'Runicble Spoon' is actually a spork?)

A nutting crook in hand, I turn'd my steps towards the distant woods

2010-09-28T10:45:00.006+01:00

We seem to be in nut season once more, locally at least, the walnuts are tumbling down again. Adam went out to do a tour of our local trees on Saturday morning where he met nut gathering competition in the form of (in his words) a 'proper nutter'. Apparently a broom and a wicker basket doth a proper nutter make. Although I was surprised to hear that our rival was hatless which is a schoolboy error in our book, on a windy day a high velocity walnut can be painful on a bare head.

According to Adam's account, the two men circled each other like wary tigers, exchanging cagey pickling vs drying information, both careful to boast that their respective 2009 nut stores were prodigious enough to have not yet run out.

I pointed out that Adam may have carrier bags rather than a wicker basket but he was, nonetheless, also a proper nutter. He seemed wounded by the suggestion, pointed out his Converse, twisted his baseball cap backwards and claimed to be a 'Street Nutter'.

Yes dear, whatever you say.

Anyway, our walnut foraging tips are:

The best time to go is early in the morning after a windy night. Nuts will have fallen overnight and if you're out at first light you'll beat the proper nutters and catch the worm (or something)

Be wary of getting the juice from the green cases on your fingers. Walnuts are used to make dye and will stain like nothing else. Once your hands and finger nails are black there is nothing you can do other than live with the mechanic look til your skin renews itself and the discoloured nails have grown out. On the bright side, you can measure the new nail growth and plot their progress on a graph.

Further to the above, try to squash any walnuts still in their case with your foot to get them out. Failing that wear rubber gloves to prise them out - not gardening gloves as they're not waterproof and the juice seeps through.

In my humble opinion fresh, wet walnuts have a horrible, bitter taste. I much prefer them dry. I dried mine by putting them in onion nets and laying them on the floor in front of a radiator. If they don't seem to be drying fast enough they can be put into a very low oven with the door open or an airing cupboard may work. Once dry they will keep for ages, we have some a year old which are still fine to eat.

By the way, that poem 'Nutting' by Wordsworth, why is he taking a nutting crook with him if the hazels are in bloom and, presumably, haven't actually formed any nuts yet?

Foraging #Fail

2010-09-26T16:49:00.007+01:00

Waaaah! What a day (that's sarcasm by the way). We were over in Great Yarmouth visiting the in-laws and decided to take the opportunity to harvest some Sea BuckThorn berries. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall made Sea BuckThorn Jelly on River Cottage a couple of years ago. Last year we realised that the bushes with silver grey leaves and vivid orange berries which are numerous in the Great Yarmouth area were your actual Sea BuckThorn. Sadly we were a bit too late and the berries had started to shrivel so I added it to my 2010 wish list and patiently waited a whole year to try again.

This afternoon we dutifully pitched up, ice cream tubs in hand, and though the bushes weren't quite as laden with berries as they were last year, there was still a respectable amount so we thought 500g would be a cinch.

Well you know what thought did (as my old Nan used to say)

Picking them is devilish tricky. Hugh warns about the thorns but we didn't find them too much of a problem, the real issue is the fragile nature of the tiny, blackcurrant sized berries. They don't hang in long stalked clusters like elderberries, each little orange orb has a short stalk which seems to be attached directly to a main branch and the slightest pressure causes them to explode at an astonishing velocity. One I popped at waist height splattered orange juice right over my shoulder.

It became obvious very early on that this was going to be a lengthy task and we quickly asked ourselves if it was worth the effort. We tasted a few berries and the refreshing, fragrant, astringent taste was intriguing enough for us to press on.

I'd guess at least 25% of those we picked popped on contact. Very slow, careful, gentle picking for about an hour barely yielded 100g of berries. When the juice had smothered our hands and found it's stinging way into every tiny break in the skin we'd previously failed to notice, we gave up. Regular readers will know I expect to weigh my hauls in stones, not grams, so I was not terribly pleased. Still, I hoped we had enough for me to make a small, half pint jelly.

Back home I got to work. I simmered the berries in a little water til they were soft and then passed them through a sieve, added Cointreau and sugar to counterbalance the astringency and tasted.

Hmm.

Rather disappointing if the truth be told. I was rather heavy handed with both the alcohol and the sugar and the resulting juice seemed to taste merely of sweet oranges. I pressed on with the gelatine and made 2 small glass bowls of fairly insipid orange jelly.

So that was worth the effort then.

Still, at least a took a few nice photos for the blog while we were out there, let's take a look. Nope, that's one's blurred (don't you just hate it when they look fine on the camera screen but the unforgiving laptop screen shows up every shake) and that one, and that one. In fact, the only usable one is the one you're looking at up there.

So that's it, I think I should call it a day before I cock something else up. Time to snuggle up on the sofa with a nice glass of red to sooth my rattled culinary ego. Except there's none in the house and now it's 5.20pm on Sunday which, in this part of Norfolk, means that all alcohol buying options shut over an hour ago.

*sob*

# Update. The jelly was actually really good in the end!

Allotment vs Foraging # 2

2010-09-22T09:24:00.005+01:00

You may remember my recent bleat about the lack of allotment produce we were getting compared to the amount of free fruit we merely rock up and pick with no input on our part at all. Fortunately, our Autumn crops are now coming into their own and beginning to redress the balance. Our pumpkins are picked and have been stored on our old, coverless mini greenhouse frame in the garage, the borlotti beans are ready, the sweetcorn is mostly ripe, cavollo nero is ready to eat, leeks are ready (and have been a revelation, so sweet and fragrant), rainbow chard still going strong and the courgettes are still producing marrows (please, God, let them stop soon!) Oh and the runner beans we now detest are busting out all over in the cooler Autumn weather, I have to confess they're going straight on the compost heap at the moment.

So the allotment brings it's score back up, but foraging fought back with our new discovery - the wild Quince tree. You may recall that last year we lost the wild Japonica Quince which grew right by our house. It caused some distress at the time but our new discovery is even better because it's a traditional Quince tree with the larger, yellow fruit so they're less fiddly to work with and you get more flesh per peel if you see what I mean.

My slightly guilty secret is that the location of this tree is truly exceptional. I would love to blog it but when it comes to foraging discretion is the better part of valour so I'll save that post til I'm in my dotage and the foraging is all behind me. We visited the site at the weekend and came back with (wait for it ......) 25 kilos of Quinces! (what is the correct plural by the way, Quince or Quinces?) Have to admit I felt a bit guilty taking so much in case we've stumbled on someone else's treasured foraging spot, however, we did leave loads of fruit on the tree plus we'll probably give quite a lot away as I'm not sure even I can process 25 kilos so it's not all for us.

So - foraging staged a strong comeback. The main advantage of foraging is the lack of effort on our part. No stress, no pruning, watering or molly coddling the crops. No dealing with local householders raising a petition against our sheds, no fly tipping from said householders and no vandalising of the marker pegs we spent an afternoon measuring out ......

These veggies had better be bloody tasty to make up for the hassle.

Dewberries in Ancient Places

2010-09-14T20:14:00.005+01:00

We had a full on foraging day this weekend at my favourite spot - the nameless bridleway opposite our house. It's an unremarkable, workaday little lane, heading off the B1077 into open farmland. It appears on Faden's 1797 map of Norwich so I know it's at least 200 years old - maybe even more.

Residents of Norfolk and Suffolk may not see anything remarkable in that but residents of my home town, Warrington, probably will. Warrington is the kind of place you can leave for 6 months and, upon your return, be unable to navigate to the town centre because the 2 new by-passes have sprung up in your absence. The Golden Square is full of confused ex-pats who drove into the Leigh Street car park and seem to have emerged in a different century. In short: it changes - a lot. Buildings are pulled down and roads are built, the streets are like shifting sand.

So to this urban girl, it seems astonishing that the oldest known map of Diss shows the town centre largely unchanged from today's street plan and I can pick blackberries from a hedge I'm can be confident is at least 200 years old.

The fruit down there is fairly ordinary, blackberries, sloes, crab apples, rose hips and elderberries but it's convenient being so close. Last year I was delighted to discover some dewberries down there. All the foraging books claim that dewberries are common but this is the only place I've ever found them though I suppose it's easy to mistake them for mal-formed blackberries. As they're tricky to pick without thoroughly squishing them so we guzzled them at the roadside - scrummy.

I think I'm nearly done on the jam making front for the year. I've got cooked blackberries straining in the kitchen in preparation for the king of preserves - Bramble Jelly, and on Sunday I made Apple and Blackberry butter which was truly divine. As I have probably mentioned before, fruit butters are a thick jam made of pureed fruit. They're great for filling sponge cakes as they don't dribble down the sides or soak into the sponge, they just sit in an impressively thick, obedient pile. Similarly they're good in jam tarts as they don't bubble and overflow the pastry shell so you can pile loads in. If the fancy takes you, they can even be turned out, sliced and serves as a dessert with nuts and clotted cream.

Apple and Blackberry Butter.

1.8kg cooking/crab apples

1.2kg blackberries

150ml water

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

butter

sugar

Roughly chop the apples cut out any bruised bits but don't peel or core. Cook them with the blackberries in the water til all the fruit is very soft and pulpy. Rub through a sieve. Return the puree to a clean pan with the spices. For every pint of puree (my jam pan is calibrated which makes this part much easier) add 25g butter and 400g sugar. Stir over a low heat til the sugar as dissolved, taste at this point to check the spices and add more if you think it's needed. Turn the heat up and boil til setting point is reached. Pot up into sterilised jars. The yield for me was 7, almost 8, jars.

Tomato Ketchup

2010-09-11T06:54:00.005+01:00

The hanging basket tumbling toms had shrivelled to twigs and the Gardener's Delight in the mini greenhouse were suffering from the attentions of next door's cat (which is a whole other post ....) so I decided to chop them down and harvest the remaining fruit. The green tomatoes went into Green Tomato chutney along with the chillis from Willow's chilli plant. It's too hot for me but Adam will appreciate it I think.

I used the ripe fruit for Tomato Ketchup. I've made plum and hawthorn ketchup before but never tomato. I was a bit apprehensive because the other ketchups don't have a precedent whereas the comparison inviting spectre of Heinz looms large over this one. I thought it would probably be infinitely preferable to an adult palate but the children are an entirely different matter. I used a Marguerite Patten recipe although she doesn't specify a spice mixture, that bit's my own.

Tomato Ketchup

450ml white malt vinegar

2tbs black peppercorns

1tbs szechuan pepper

1tbs coriander seed

1.8k ripe tomatoes roughly chopped

225g onions finely chopped

350g chopped cooking apples (peeled and cored weight)

450g sugar

salt to taste

First boil the spices in vinegar, then leave them to steep for 15 mins or so before removing them from the vinegar. Put the vegetables in a heavy bottomed pan and simmer until very soft. Rub through a sieve to remove the tomato seeds/skins etc, return the pulp to a clean pan, add the vinegar, sugar and salt and simmer until thickened.

I'm not really sure of the keeping properties of this ketchup but as the original recipe recommends bottling it, it's safe to assume it doesn't have a long shelf life. This recipe made 2 bottles for me, 1 of which I put in the fridge, the other (in a plastic bottle) I put into the freezer.

I love, love, love this ketchup and had to be restrained from guzzling it neat like soup. It has a really bright, zingy fresh tomato flavour that's a smack in the chops after the plastic gloop of commercial ketchup. The only drawback is that it's very thin and runny compared to what we're used to but I can live with that. Luckily, Willow agrees with me. I invited her to test it, she approached the spoon with caution but her little face lit up when she tasted it. The smugness ended with Xanthe though who refused to taste it and made sick noises - oh the joys of cooking for small children *sigh*

Egg Rack

2010-09-05T13:17:00.004+01:00

Just a quick one today for my fellow chicken keepers. We all know it can be a bit of pain keeping track of which eggs need to be used up first. I've previously solved the problem by keeping old egg boxes (labelled 1 and 2 for when the hens are particularly productive) in the fridge and having a system of going left to right, top to bottom while keeping the box hinge on the left. As a system it functions but isn't immediately obvious to visitors (or my husband so far as I can tell) and isn't particularly aesthetically pleasing either.

I've had my eye on the Omlet egg helter skelter for a while but £20 felt a bit steep so I was pleased to discover this Ebay shop. My egg rack arrived a couple of days ago and I'm delighted with it. The idea is you put new eggs on the left and take eggs to use from the right. When one is removed the others gently roll down to make room for fresh eggs. I love the simple, clean design and the fact that they're individually hand made, well worth the price I think.

Just one tip - make sure you explain to any 6 year olds in the house that although it's true that the eggs roll along the rack, it's probably best not to send them whizzing, theme park style, from one end to the other. This post ends here as I appear to have a floor to mop ....

Puffball Pride!

2010-09-04T18:58:00.003+01:00

Look at what we found! The crowning glory of a great day's foraging which began this morning in a discombobulating fashion.

A few days ago while cruising the highways and byways of South Norfolk I spotted a derelict house with a massively overgrown garden, topped off with pear and apple trees leering menacingly over the road - eat your heart out Scooby Doo. We went back en famille today but only managed a disappointing half carrier bag of pears as the brambles and building rubble proved to be an effective barrier to our efforts. The apples were more respectable at a full carrier bag and we got a tub full of blackberries too. I had planned on sneaking around the back of the house to see if any goodies awaited our attentions there but it just wasn't safe with all kinds of sharp and pointy nasties hiding in the undergrowth. Plus the discarded underwear outside the kicked in front door spoke of nefarious activities I'd rather not get to close too .....

And then!

In the afternoon we decided to take a walk down a bridleway we haven't explored before, alert to new foraging opportunities as always. The fruit was a bit 'meh', crab apples, blackberries, sloes, so far so hedgerow, 'til Willow said "is that a football Mummy?" And there they were - 2 smooth white balls.

My heart leapt into my throat and I could barely breathe as I scrabbled up the bank of loose soil, oblivious to the nettle stings. I've never found a puffball before but it was unmistakable, smooth, white and round with an overwhelming sweet, mushroomy smell. It took application of only the slightest pressure to uproot them and they rolled down the hill (to the chagrin of the earwigs and woodlice) They were surprisingly heavy and shockingly big, the pair of them straining the oversized carrier bag we'd brought with us.

Back home we discovered their combined weight was 4kilos. We sliced open the smallest one first and were disappointed to find it had started to spoil already, luckily the biggest one was still chalky white and fine to eat. You can see the obvious different in the photo.

Naturally we had mushrooms for tea! 2 thick slices were to be used trencher style, I brushed them with olive oil and bbq'd them. A 3rd slice was diced and gently sauteed with leeks and courgettes from the allotment together with a sprinkle of chorizo and garlic. The mixture was served on top of the trenchers with a sprinkle of cheese. I was a bit concerned that the puffball might be nothing more than an oversized button mushroom but fortunately it's rich, woody, wild mushroom flavour did not disappoint.

The size of the thing is staggering, every time I walk past it I have to stop and shake my head. Guess that's mushrooms on toast all round for breakfast.

Healthy puffball.

Manky puffball.

Pickled Damsons for Suzanne

2010-08-31T18:47:00.004+01:00

This is for Suzanne because I feel bad. A couple of weeks ago she asked what recipe I would recommend for damsons, without a moment's hesitation I went for pickled damsons. They need a lengthy maturation - at least 6 months - but the reward is a rich, velvety smooth, sweet and sour fruit that is just sublime with the (ubiquitous) cheese and cold meats. Though I love them with my favourite breakfast which I hesitate to post in case my followers lose faith in my palate.

After receiving a tip off from Rachel that the damsons in our usual stomping ground were ripe I bobbed off and picked a few kilos (not sure exactly how many due to the temperamental nature of my scales) and skipped eagerly back to the laptop to get my pickled damsons recipe.

Oh.

Sorry Suzanne - I thought I'd recorded it for prosperity last year but I didn't. Fortunately I still have my scribbled notes in the margin of my Marguerite Patten recipe book so here it is.

Pickled Damsons

2.5 pints white wine/cider vinegar

2.25k sugar

2.25k damsons

5 cloves

1 vanilla pod.

Heat the vinegar together with the spices and allow to cool. Fish the spices out and tip the damsons in, heat til they have softened then pack them into sterilised jars. Add the sugar to the vinegar and boil to a thickish, syrupy consistency. Pour the hot syrup over the damsons and seal with a vinegar proof lid. Makes about 11lbs. Mature for at least 6 months.

I always have a problem with excess syrup when making pickled fruit. It seems that a large quantity of vinegar is needed to cover the fruit at the cooking stage which then requires a large quantity of sugar to make a palatable syrup. The upshot is a surfeit of syrup. I'd love to hear from anyone else with experience of pickling fruit, do you have the same kind of problem? Or are your recipes very different to Marguerite's?

Bring on Autumn!

2010-08-30T20:09:00.005+01:00

I'm writing this in the evening of 30th August so I think it's fair to say that I can mention the 'A' word in polite company. As has been previously discussed on here, I always enjoy Autumn, (although come to think of it, the only time of year I don't like is the dead, grey cold of January and February) but this year, I'm looking forward to it more than ever.

A visit to the allotment brought home to me how I've managed to unwittingly plant crops that come to fruition fairly late in the year. Since the broad beans finished I've been existing on a diet of rainbow chard and courgettes from the allotment but waiting in the wings for their Autumn colours are are the eagerly awaited crown jewels of the plot. The recent rain has been a massive boost, quietly fattening the sweetcorn and borlotti beans as well as pushing the cavolo nero skyward so we're teetering on the edge of a full blown Autumnal glut - I can barely contain myself!

We cut our first pumpkins today, the biggest was 6 kilos, which has given the kitchen a pleasing harvest festival vibe. There are another half dozen monsters waiting on the plot so if anyone has any pumpkin storing tips, I'd be pleased to hear them.

The runner beans are also experiencing a renaissance. I read Alys Fowler in The Guardian on Saturday with interest, it makes sense that the reason they didn't set earlier in the summer was the hot weather we had. They're obviously loving the cooler, wetter weather and are beginning to drip with beans which is a mixed blessing, their newly verdant leaves are a sight to behold but how the hell did I manage to forget they taste so vile? Even Adam, aka the human dustbin, refused to eat them today. I had been planning on cosseting them through to a second season as Alys suggests but I don't think I'll bother ....

Yellow Bullace and Cointreau Jam

2010-08-25T09:24:00.003+01:00

I'm slowly working my way through our mountain of yellow bullace. I bottled a couple of kilos in Rose wine syrup with vanilla, not tried it yet though so let's hope it's nice. Another couple of kilos went into this jam/jelly cross, the rest have been temporarily housed in the freezer to be brought out for future ketchup and cordial recipes.

Yellow Bullace and Cointreau Jam

2 kilos of yellow bullace

sugar and Cointreau - exact quantities in recipe.

I simmered the bullace in a little water, didn't need much as the fruit was very ripe and readily gave out it's juice. Once they were softened I rubbed them through a sieve to remove the skins and stones. This stage is very much down to personal taste/patience levels though. I find it quicker than sifting the stones out by hand and removing the skins reduces the tannic flavour making the final product sweeter. This could be a good or bad thing according to your palate and what you want to use the jam for. If it's needed for a glaze for chicken or sticky ribs for example, the extra tannin would be quite beneficial.

Measure the juice and pulp mixture, for every pint add 1lb sugar and 2tbsp Cointreau. Then boil til setting point is reached and pot up in the usual way. Makes about 10 jars.

The final product is a warm, orange colour (though thanks to the camera situation you'll have to take my word for it. A giraffe is not dissimilar though) and it has a warm, orange tainted flavour too.

So much to report, so little time.

2010-08-23T07:13:00.007+01:00

After my last marathon post, in the interests of brevity, I'm sticking with the headlines:

Turns out foraging with a clutchbag isn't terribly sensible or productive
Mulberry trees seem to have a predilection for churchyards
Those courgettes are never going to go away
It takes an hour, 3 people, a large tarpaulin and a custom built platform to gather 11 kilos of yellow bullace
The sweetcorn seem to have pulled through
Digital cameras, akin to mobile phones and Willow's DSi, don't appreciate sitting in a puddle of water
Indonesian pickle is interesting (evidenced below)

Indonesian Pickle

1/2 cucumber sliced

6oz cauliflower

2 large carrots

1 - 2 chillis chopped

1/2" grated ginger

2 cloves garlic

3tsp veg oil

1/4 pint of nice vinegar (ie, not malt)

2 level tps turmeric

4 tbsp sesame seeds

4oz roughly chopped salted peanuts

4oz soft dark sugar

Cook ginger, garlic and turmeric in the oil til soft. Add the vinegar and bring to the boil. Add the chopped/sliced veg and bring back to the boil. Boil for about 5 mins (depending on veg used, it needs to soften slightly but still retain the crunch) Stir in the rest of the ingredients, heat til the sugar dissolves. Pack into hot jars and allow to mature for a month.

This is from my trusty WI recipe book, 'Jams and Preserves Old and New' though when I made it, I just used cucumber and courgette instead of carrots and cauliflower.

Next on my list to experiment with are the yellow bullace, I'm thinking jam with Cointreau and bottled with pink wine and vanilla.

Apologies for the random photo, see my camera related headline, I'm reduced to using random snaps stored on the laptop til I can get the whole debacle sorted out and further apologies for the layout. Let's just say 'Blogger - ffs!'

Allotment vs Foraging

2010-08-17T21:02:00.005+01:00

The wheel of the year seems to have nudged on a notch and it suddenly feels like we're peering at Autumn. I find myself taking refuge from the chilly air in a steamy kitchen, heated by a bubbling pan, all of which feels oddly familiar.

Fruit is finally ripe in the hedgerows, although it is somewhat eccentric and patchy, certainly not as bounteous as last year. When we were on holiday up north we filled a carrier bag with blackberries in less than half an hour on the way back from the pub, however, back in Norfolk when we visited Wortham Ling we struggled to fill a tea cup. More worryingly, a large number were dusty, malformed stubs, having not even developed to the point of tight green knots like their brethren.

Today, Willow and I went to carry on the cherry plum/yellow bullace harvest. Before our holiday we managed to quickly scrabble 2 kilos of just ripe cherry plums from our usual stomping ground and stored them in the freezer. My intention today was to finish the job but I struggled to find a single kilo of yellow bullace and a further kilo of cherry plums. Whereas last year we easily gathered a total of about 10 kilos in half the time.

I guess that illustrates how bad conditions have been this year which is strangely comforting with regard to the allotment as our harvests there have been well below my expectations. Even though the foraging returns are down on last year, they're still dwarfing the allotment returns - and all for zero effort.

This is the major advantage that foraging has. You turn up, you pick the stuff, you take it home. Then sit on your bottom til next year. Whereas the wan cultivated crops of the allotment demand constant attention like a whiny child, "weed me, water me, protect me from the beastly pests (scream)! "

Yes, but .....

The allotment offers a choice, I get to make decisions rather than exploiting opportunities. Man cannot live by fruit alone and the allotment offers luxuries such as carbohydrates and a savoury balance to the sweetness of all the fruit.

I've come to realise though, that foraging has something to teach me about the allotment. These fruit trees and wild crops just grow, they shrug and get on with it. Why? Because they happen to be growing in the right place with the right conditions. If they seeded in the wrong place with the wrong conditions, they'd just die and no-one would be any wiser, we only benefit from the successful specimens.

So that's going to be my allotment motto for next year. If it grows, it grows. If it doesn't, well then it's obviously not right for my plot. I think the approach to veg growing which dictates hours should be spent on the plot watering and weeding your poker straight rows in return for the thrill of potatoes and turnips is not for me. It's my hope that I can identify a range of crops which will be at home on the plot and not need too much hand holding but also conform to my other criteria - they must be interesting, hard to find or expensive in the shops, or have taste benefits from being eaten really fresh.

I am hopeful that 2011 will be rather more fecund than 2010, thanks to a smattering of additional experience and the love, care and shit we will be lavishing on the site over the winter.

Fingers crossed.

Sunshine on a Rainy Day.

2010-08-16T11:44:00.004+01:00

Anyone following me on Twitter will already know of my rather dramatic courgette situation. On return from holiday we found 5 monster courgettes, all roughly 50cm in length and weighing around 6lbs. Willow is pictured struggling to hold one. I have to confess to being somewhat daunted by this embarassment of riches but nonetheless, a glut brings out the best in me to here goes.

Yesterday we had courgette pasta for lunch and nut roast with grated courgette for dinner and I reluctantly prepared Marguerite Patten's Marrow and Ginger jam (obviously replacing the marrow with monster courgette), a recipe I derided last year being, as I am, not a lover of marrow or ginger.

This is the recipe as it appears in Marguerite's book, I scaled it up 5 (yes, 5!) times. This recipe makes roughly 750g of jam.

Marrow and Ginger Jam.

1lb marrow/courgette, peeled, seeds removed and chopped to 1.5cm dice

3tbsp chopped crystalized ginger

1lb sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

Mix the marrow, ginger and sugar in a pan and leave overnight. The sugar will draw a large amount of liquid from the marrow. Stir well to extract as much liquid as possible. From then on it's standard stuff, heat to setting point and pot into sterilised jars. As there are large pieces of marrow it's advisable to allow the jam to cook somewhat before potting up in a vain attempt to distribute the pieces evenly so they don't all float to the top. I'm useless at getting that bit to work though.

I'm surprised how nice it is. Rather sweet for my taste (I seem to have become accustomed to tart wild fruit) but pleasant enough. It's a delicate, summery preserve, sunshine yellow in colour and, as the bland courgette tones down the fire of the ginger, gently warming on the palate. Very breakfasty I feel.

So that's 2 monsters dealt with, 3 more to go. One more batch of pickle I think followed by courgette bake for tea, then I may resort to stocking the freezer with courgette puree for future soup use.

Holiday time again!

2010-08-06T14:23:00.002+01:00

Just a very brief note to say Goodbye for a week, we're off on our annual jaunt up north. The children are visiting my parents while me and Adam brave the haunted bedrooms of the Golden Fleece in York (does anyone know of an establishment where one can purchase oysters and champagne in York?). I really, really hope that by the time we get back the wild fruit will be well on it's way and I can start pickling and preserving in earnest.

See you next week.

Mulberry Granola Crumble

2010-08-03T20:04:00.004+01:00

I cooked the mulberries today, originally intending to use the recipe for Mulberry and Pear upside down cake that PattyPan from the Tarragon and Thyme blog sent to me. However, Feathers has decided to moult yet again and seems to be off laying so I was an egg short and had to think again. Crumble? I didn't have any butter in the house or even any marj suitable for cooking (damn you low fat spread with your peculiar after taste) I was also housebound due to playdate/Adam's car needing complications so couldn't get out to the shops.

Hmmm, what to do?

In the end I decided to go for crumble with a granola style topping so I could use oil in place of the fat and this is what I came up with:

Mulberry Granola Crumble.

800g Mulberry

1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

3tbsp sloe gin

sprinkle of brown sugar

100g nuts

100g oats

120ml flavourless oil

50ml maple syrup

Snip the stems off the mulberries and put into an oven proof dish. Add the sloe gin, vanilla extract and brown sugar and mix gently. Combine the rest of the ingredients and spread on top of the fruit. Bake at gm 3 for about 40 minutes. Serve with thick cream.

I loved this dessert. The flavour of the mulberries seems to be really enhanced by heating. I have to admit the topping tastes quite healthy (although I'm sure it's not!) rather than rich and indulgent but I quite liked that as the fruit is quite a rich flavour in itself so it was a nice balance.

I toyed with the idea of making jam with the rest of the fruit but in the end I decided to just freeze them for use in future crumbles/cakes etc as I kind of feel an unusual fruit like this is best enjoyed as it is.

Sweet Cucumber Pickle.

2010-08-01T19:02:00.004+01:00

Adam and I arrived at the allotment on Friday to discover our didactic cucumber had burgeoned to monstrous proportions, as we still have half of it's sibling in the fridge I knew we'd struggle to get through this one so I decided to turn it into a pickle.

I turned once more to my Norfolk WI booklet 'Jams and Preserves Old and New' from whence my acclaimed Courgette Pickle came and it came up trumps once more with this surprisingly flavoursome pickle. This is the recipe exactly as it is in the book:

Sweet Cucumber Pickle

3 large cucumbers

3 large onions

2 green peppers

2oz salt

1 pint white wine vinegar

1lb soft brown sugar

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tbsp mustard seeds

1/4 tsp ground cloves

Peel the cucumbers and cut into 'finger' sized pieces. Slice the onions and peppers finely. Mix the vegetables with the salt and leave to stand for 3 hours. Drain, and rinse very well.

Bring all the other ingredients to the boil, add the vegetables and simmer for 2 minutes (no longer, or the cucumber will be too limp) Pack into sterilised jars and leave for a month to mature before eating.

I reduced the quantities given as I guessed my monster cucumber was probably roughly equivalent to 2 standard cucumbers and so reduced the other ingredients by a third too. This yielded about 4lbs of finished pickle.

I tasted a little in it's pre-matured state and was very surprised at the punch the seasoning packs, it's an amazingly strong flavour though I have to admit I don't think I rinsed my vegetables well enough as it's still on the salty side.

On an entirely unrelated matter, we had a lovely family walk today the highlight of which was the discovery of several new foraging spots. We found more cherry plums, a walnut tree, 2 pear trees and a new quince tree! I think 1st August should go down in Norfolk Kitchen history. Fingers crossed for tomorrow too as Adam is hoping to forage our first ever Mulberries. I think 2010 is going to be a good year for foraging even if the allotment is a bit of a damp squid, errrr, squib.

I got sunshine in a bag.

2010-07-28T20:25:00.004+01:00

I'm guessing that Gorillaz didn't have Rowan berries in mind when they talked about sunshine in a bag but look at that photo and tell me it's not appropriate. The children and I gathered about 4lbs this afternoon having learned our lesson from last year when we left it too late and were faced with several treeloads of old, wizened berries. I've waited almost a year to taste Rowan jelly so it'd better not disappoint!

The big discovery of the day though was a Mulberry tree. That kind of makes up for the loss of our Quince tree to municipal tidy mindedness last year and, rather neatly, this one was a Xanthe spot ("Blackberries Mummy!") to Willow's initial Quince tree spot.

We didn't recognise it outright, it's like nothing I've seen before. A towering, full size tree with what appeared to be large red and black blackberries tumbling from the boughs and plopping softly onto the grass below. I took some fruit and leaves home and 5 minutes on Google images identified them for me. The plan is to go back next week (after our action packed weekend) and fill as many ice cream tubs as we can get our hands on, then it's Mulberry cook-a-thon ahoy. I haven't actually tasted them yet as by the time I got them home and identified them, they were looking a bit battered, but there seem to a lot of people out there on t'interweb who rate them highly.

I reckon Apple need to come up with a new i-phone app. A bit like that mobile phone thing where you can play some music to your phone and it identifies the track for you. When in the field one should be able to photograph a random wild fruit, send it to a website somewhere and get an instant, reliable id back so you know whether to add it to your picnic or give it a wide berth. (you can have that for free Apple, though a complementary i-phone wouldn't go amiss)

Anyhoo - this year's preserve wish list is below. This is a list of everything I either made and considered a huge success last year, or missed an opportunity to make and want to try in 2010. Hopefully there will also be plenty of ad hoc foraged gluts to deal with along the way too.

Courgette Pickle (done)

Apple and blackberry butter

Pickled damsons

SeaBuckthorn jelly (the gelatine kind, not the preserve kind)

Rowan Jelly

Sloe Jelly with Port

Red Wine Jelly

Cherry Plum chutney

Cherry Plum cordial

Blackberry and elderberry cordial

Plum Ketchup

Sloe Jelly

Pears in Cider/Red Wine/Perry

Our First Cucumber

2010-07-25T19:12:00.004+01:00

This is what Xanthe considers to be an appropriate 'I grew a cucumber!' pose, it's unclear exactly why. I hadn't planned on growing any cucumbers but we were at a car boot sale a few weeks ago and saw a stall selling vegetable seedlings for 50p each. I offered to buy one each for the children for their section of the allotment, Willow chose a tomato plant and Xanthe chose the cucumber.

I have to admit I didn't think too deeply about either plant, just stuck them in the ground and watered them. The cucumber has romped away, so far we've had this one and the curly one in the previous picture and we still have a few babies too.

The broad beans have finished now so it feels like we're in a vegetal stasis. We've got Rainbow Chard and courgettes a-plenty but are still waiting for the Cavolo Nero, sweetcorn, pumpkins, borlotti beans and runner beans. I also dug out the religious carrots* and have planted peas instead so I hope my allotment book is correct when it says I'm not too late to get a pea crop. I've also planted some red Pak Choi which should be interesting.

My poor home veggie patch is very neglected this year so I'm hoping to lavish some attention on it this week (children permitting) I've just planted my salad tray with a mixture of my favourite mizuna and peas (as a cut and come again salad crop of pea shoots, not for the peas themselves) I figure that should be a nice mix to use either as a salad or a stir fry crop.

I have to admit that, overall, my crops seem to be a little unbalanced in that they're all either green and leafy or beany poddy. I think that's kind of inevitable given that I'm not too keen on root veg which is probably just as well given the wireworm problem. Next year I think I'll mix in some alliums somewhere along the line though I have to keep to my philosophy of growing crops which are either expensive or hard to find in the shops. I'm thinking green garlic but not sure what else. Any suggestions?

* Holy.

..... is for Cucumber.

2010-07-20T20:33:00.005+01:00

Here's Xanthe's cucumber helpfully teaching her the alphabet. I'm not sure that teaching via vegetables is the way to go though, as it appears to have glossed right over A and B.

Did anyone else tell that silly story as a child, you know, the one that goes "It was a dark, dark night, in a dark, dark house ...." I've adapted it slightly for the allotment, "It was a hard, hard plot, with hard, hard soil in a hard, hard year, watered with hard, hard water by a gardener with hard, hard hands and a hard, hard heart" (all true apart from the heart business)

Our woes have been added to with the discovery that our carrots weren't eaten by carrot fly but by wire worm. A neighbouring plot has lost potatoes to the same pest. Apparently they have a three year life cycle so it could be 3 years before we can successfully grow root vegetables.

However, it's not all bleak. Today I harvested the remainder of our broad beans, we've had about 10 kilos in total so I think that can count as a successful crop. The courgettes and rainbow chard are also cropping well at the moment and the pumpkins, borlotti beans and cavolo nero are coming along nicely too. I am a tad concerned that the sweetcorn isn't growing as quickly as I'd like but fingers crossed.

The courgettes are doing so well that I've been able to kick off the 2010 preserving season with my first batch of courgette pickle (below), hopefully there'll be a few more to come. I've got an exhaustive wish list for this year's preserves, more of which anon but suffice to say I've got my eye on the Rowan berries next .......

The Biggest Lollo Rosso in the World!

2010-07-15T19:40:00.003+01:00

After my whiny last post I felt I had to redress the balance somewhat with the astonishing Lollo Rosso I felled this week.

Lollo Rosso is a firm favourite in my back garden veg patch. I can usually buy a tray of about dozen plug plants for a pound or so from a car boot sale in the spring and this is mostly enough to satisfy my salad needs for the whole summer season. They're really easy to grow, fortunately slugs and snails don't seem to like them, they will doze happily among the stems but don't seem to be tempted to actually take a bite.

My harvesting technique is a tad unusual in that I don't chop the whole plant, I leave them to shoot up like a rocket til they nearly touch the sky and then pluck the biggest individual leaves from the bottom. I've always done it this way because I usually need just one or two leaves at a time for sandwiches and this method keeps the remaining leaves in good condition on the plant rather than languishing at the back of the salad draw.

A rather pleasing side effect is that the plants are allowed to grow into these amazing giants. The plant in the photo is just over a metre, we couldn't see the top of it, it got so blooming high. What you can't quite see is how the leaves grow in a very regular spiral around the stem, giving it a geometric, sculptural look. Adam can regularly be found in his bear skin, playing Tarzan of the apes in the back yard Lollo forest.

I took the unusual step of toppling an intact specimen as I promised a few veggies to Debbie who kindly donated a small mountain of horse manure to my allotment enterprise. I stripped this one of it's leaves and gave her a bag of Lollo Rosso along with some broad beans and courgettes.

Now, a handful of QI points to anyone who figures out the musical classic I've been alluding to throughout this post .....

When Good Allotments Turn Bad.

2010-07-14T13:44:00.006+01:00

It's not all roses (so to speak) in the land of Grow Your Own. For the past few years we've grown a fairly small amount of veg in our garden but have foraged vast quantities of fruit, this year with the allotment, I was hoping for similarly vast quantities of veg. I'm now realising that I probably had unrealistic expectations for our inaugural allotment year.

After a couple of days of heavy rain softened the soil to a workable consistency I decided to dig up a few carrots - and just look at what I found! I'm assuming this is the work of the dreaded carrot fly but I'm happy to be told otherwise if anyone disagrees. I haven't seen any actual insects, just the bore holes left behind. So that would be a resounding 'no' to my earlier question "will shade netting provide any protection from carrot fly?". Almost every carrot I pulled up seemed to be affected so that's goodbye to my carrot crop this year.

I'm also a bit concerned about this year's runner beans, they've flowered profusely but the flowers seem to be falling off without producing any beans (both at home and on the plot) After careful searching I've found 2 baby beans on about 8 plants so don't hold out much hope for runner beans either.

The soft fruit section of the plot is also ailing. My raspberries completely failed, haven't got a clue why, they were from 2 different sources, different varieties planted at different times. Out of 8 canes, I think 2 or 3 put up a few tentative shoots before they died off, never to be seen again. The redcurrants seemed to be doing well at first but have now taken on a yellowy tinge and haven't flowered (maybe I'm expecting too much for their first year?) The strawberries have been OK but we haven't had as many as I'd hoped.

It doesn't help that the fruit corner is infested with Horsetail (or Marestail, or Devil's Fingers, depending on where you live) My plan next year is to double the size of the strawberry bed and move the fruit section (aka '3 enfeebled redcurrant bushes') to this year's 'fallow' section which we set aside for the children to play in and give the children Horsetail HQ instead.

To add insult to injury, my elderflower champagne didn't work out this year either. I think the hot and humid recent weather is responsible for the slimy film of mould growing across the top of the flower heads, such a shame as it smelt marvellously alcoholic as I tipped it down the sink and I could do with a stiff drink to be honest!

The less fragrant side of foraging .....

2010-07-11T20:50:00.003+01:00

Today was the Samphire open day, we visited last year and had a great time so decided to repeat the experience this year. Sycamore Farm was idyllic as ever and my back garden was scruffy as ever upon our return home. I'd like to think that for 364 days of the year the Farm is as weedy and mis-matched looking as our allotment and once a year, Karen springs into action and spruces the place up for visitors before slipping back into languid slobdom and allowing the bindweed to take over. But however much I'd like to think it, I sincerely doubt it's true! Something tells me it's probably this charming all year round.

By the time we arrived the smallholding tours were full, so we missed out this time round, but spending such a glorious day eating our onion marmalade pork pies in the shade of a sycamore to the strains of a folk quartet was not such a shabby way to spend an afternoon.

Back home we took our foraging into new territory. Brewer's Green has played host to a traditional, horse drawn, covered gypsy caravan for the last 3 weeks or so which made a diverting addition to the school run. Once the itinerant owner had moved on, I noticed the vast quantity of horse manure left behind. So today, Adam and I popped over with a spade and some bags and scooped up a couple of sacks full. Just enough to fill our second compost bin to the top so we now have two bins full of horse manure which feels like money in the bank!

Despite my pleasure and pride in my splendid muck heap, I decided not to photograph it for the blog and went for our infant pumpkins instead. They're loving the hot weather and seem to be growing before our eyes, here's hoping they continue to do so well.

Today's Home Grown Haul.

2010-07-07T13:51:00.004+01:00

The first courgettes of the season! Hurrah! I discovered them in typical courgette fashion, ie "Good Lord! When did that pop up? Better chop it down quick before it turns into a marrow", it was even more of a surprise as it turned up on the runtiest plant on the allotment, one which was chilled by the late frost this year has sulked ever since. I was sure that my pampered courgette in our toasty, sheltered back garden would win the race but it's fruit are looking quite weedy in comparison. I'm very excited about making my courgette pickle again this year, it proved really quite popular so I'll be making lots this round.

Continuing on the squash theme, I'm growing 3 pumpkin plants for the first time this year. One Crown Prince from seed saved from the pumpkin Rachel gave me last year and two anonymous orange ones I bought from the garden centre and then forgot to keep their labels (oops). The anonymous plants are huge and have begun to set lots of little fruit. I've read that I need to keep a maximum of 3 fruit per plant to get them to a decent size so I chopped a few little ones off but have kept about 5 fruit on each, I'm fearful that if I go down to 3 straight away there's a risk they may fail for some reason or other. I'll wait til they get a bit bigger (they're golf ball sized at the moment) and then chop the two weakest/smallest off.

Has anyone out there grown summer squash other than courgettes, Patty Pan or similar? I was thinking of giving them a go next year but I'm not sure what they taste like, are they just courgettes in a pretty dress?

Elderflowers are my Raison d'Etre.

2010-07-01T13:04:00.003+01:00

Well, the Norfolk Kitchen Raison d'Etre rather my actual being I suppose (you'd have to ask my parents about that one)

I think it was 2008 when I last made Elderflower Champagne, in the summer of 2009 I was wondering whether to make some more but was dismayed to realise I no longer had the recipe. It was then that it occurred to me that a kind of kitchen diary cum recipe scrapbook would be really useful, not just for recipes but also for recording the wild fruit we'd picked and - lo! - Norfolk Kitchen was born.

I never did get round to making Elderflower Champagne last year but have done this year. I kept things simple and used the River Cottage recipe (in 2008 I seem to recall endless Googling before amalgamating 2 or 3 recipes) I've cut it fine with regard to the elderflowers though, most have already wilted and begun to turn into tiny, green berries but, feeling somewhat foolish in my floral dress and nettle beating wellies, I managed to find just enough fresh blooms. Still, I'll be glad of the berries come crumble season.

On the way back home I investigated a local bullace shrub and found it laden with juvenile fruit (pictured), all around the foraging season seems to limbering up, ready for the main performance in a couple of months. I've seen cherry plums just beginning to blush red and baby apples burgeoning quietly in the hedgerows. Time to draw up my 2010 preserves wish list ....

Norfolk Tart

2010-06-29T11:16:00.005+01:00

Right, here's the deal. You refrain from telling jokes about Thetford, Great Yarmouth and errant husbands and I won't tell you the horrific details of my "regional tarts" Google experience. No need to spread the trauma any further I think.

As it was my Mum's 60th Birthday recently we decided to throw an extravagant champagne cream tea to celebrate. We took Jenny Joseph's 'Warning' as our theme, gilt edged crockery was purchased, posh frocks were worn and the menu was fretted over.

In celebration of my 'new' culinary home, I decided to make a Norfolk Tart using this recipe I'm assured it's calorie free ; ) I've mentioned this dish to a number of people who've never heard of it so it would be lovely to hear from anyone who knows anything about it, or how traditional this recipe may be.

Pictured is the finished product (on the bottom tier of the cake stand) which was sweet, buttery and delicious. Much better than the Manchester Tart I remember from school dinners with it's 100's and 1,000's slowly bleeding their colour into the slimy, jellified custard underneath, though I suspect that's more to do with the school kitchen than the Tart itself.

Sometimes, the weeds are just too pretty to kill ......

2010-06-23T13:37:00.003+01:00

Phew, that was hard work.

2010-06-22T12:28:00.004+01:00

Many apologies for the lack of posts over the last week or so. Life has been hectic in the kitchen lately due to a combination of ill children, a small child deciding she's not dry at night time after all which resulted in a series of 3am wake up calls and a stag weekend closely followed by a hen weekend. The end result was the reduction of a formerly robust human being (ie me) to a mere husk, wont to seizing child free afternoons as an opportunity to nap rather than blog.

But now, the hangovers have been slept off, the germs have been banished, nappies have been bought (much to my frustration), smallest daughter is slathered in sun cream and is frolicking outdoors in the sun while brandishing a gushing hosepipe so here I am again.

I'm pleased to say that Norfolk Kitchen has been mentioned on the EDP's new 'Norfolk Food Blogs' list. I'm disproportionately excited about it, so "Hello!" to any new followers.

I've just about managed to keep the allotment watered and reasonably healthy but the weeds are on the verge of getting out of control. Horsetail is rife in one corner of the plot which isn't as bad as it could be to be honest. Our allotment site was left derelict and grew wild for almost a decade so the perennial weeds have a real strangle hold, some other plots are almost carpeted in horsetail so I'm quite fortunate in comparison. It's horribly depressing though, to be continually digging it up, only for it to reappear what feels like seconds later. I've tried weedkiller on some bits (away from crops obviously) but all that happens is the end looks a bit singed but the rest of the plant soldiers on like a wounded horror film villain.

There's not much else going on in the affected corner, as the raspberries failed I'm left with just 3 redcurrant bushes. I'm wondering whether to isolate the area and cover it with carpet or similar for a year or so, though I wonder whether horsetail would survive even that. Another option could be to weedkiller the whole area thoroughly, though I'm not sure how far away from the redcurrants I'd have to stay to avoid killing them too.

I'd love to hear any other horsetail stories, is it possible to beat it or am I stuck with it now?

The Vegetable Headlines today are ......

2010-06-11T13:18:00.003+01:00

Rabe Broccoli: Was very nice but isn't really broccoli like at all. Everything is eaten, the leaves, stalks and florets. The bottom 6cm or so of the stalks are really very fiberous so they're best cut off, the leaves wilt right down like spinach (and also has a similar minerally taste) which is a relief on the emergency chomping front as I've not got the mountain of veg I first imagined. The recipe I tried was lovely, highly recommended.

Broad Beans: Having pinched the tops out I decided to keep the pinchings (not sure that's an actual technical term) to cook at home. I arrived back from the allotment with a carrier bag bulging with beans tops, Raab Broccoli and Radishes which I left in the hallway when I came in. About half an hour later I went back to it to find an army of winged creatures teeming out of the bag and making their way determinedly up my walls. I would have screamed and flung the bag outside if I hadn't remembered that not only am I gardener but am northern to boot and therefore made of sterner stuff, so I placed the bag outside in a calm and seemly fashion. Now I just have to come up with a way to use up a carrier bag full of bean tops.

Potatoes: I began to worry about my potatoes at home after seeing several plots at the allotment had flowering potatoes already whereas mine are showing no signs of doing so, yet were planted out much earlier. I rummaged around in the bags and was horrified to discover the soil at the bottom of the bags was bone dry, despite several days of heavy rain here. I didn't realise that the bags seem to be in the rain shadow on the fence. I've obviously given them a good watering so it's now a matter of keeping my fingers crossed and see what happens.

Courgettes: I've got my first courgette flowers! I initially bought 3 courgette plants, planted 1 at home and 2 on the allotment. The one at home has gone from strength to strength in the shelter of our high fences but the allotment courgettes struggled in their exposed position in the cold snap we had (despite cloches). In a panic I planted a few more courgette seeds as I couldn't face a second courgette-less year after the 2009 Mosaic virus incident so I now also have 3 baby courgette seedlings planted out on the plot. Some may call it disorganised - I call it succession planting!

Our First Allotment Harvest!

2010-06-06T18:23:00.006+01:00

Another historic day in the kitchen - Roughly 10 weeks after taking on our allotment, I brought home our first harvest, a bunch of big, fat radishes and a straggly bouquet of Rabe Broccoli.

I guess it's no surprise that radishes feature as they're such a fast growing crop though the stonking great size was unexpected. We sampled them at home and they were eye wateringly, nose runningly hot. On the upside, my sinuses have never been so clear.

I've recently discovered that I'm actually growing Rabe Broccoli (a name I prefer to it's other, rather off putting, one of turnip broccoli) I have to admit I got the seeds free on the front of a gardening magazine and just slung them in the ground without paying too much attention. When they came up with a somewhat unconventional appearance I did some proper research and realised what I actually had.

I now find I have the first glut of the season on my hands, the plants have grown up remarkably quickly and some are even flowering which gives an urgency to our diet over the next few days. I chopped down just 4 of the biggest plants, they filled a bucket and I struggled to cram them into the fridge. To make matters worse the children have turned their nose up at the slightly peppery taste so chomping duty falls to me and Adam. I may experiment with freezing some though I'm not sure if the leaves can stand it.

I'd happily give some away if it weren't for their embarrassingly lacy appearance thanks to the flea beetle. My efforts to control them haven't been effective so far. I put up some sticky traps but the little blighters merely boinged contently around them, refusing to fling themselves at the traps in a suicidal fashion. I've tried the treacle on card method but again, they seemed quite savvy re jumping away from the death trap card rather than onto it. Fleece is next on the list to try.

On the chomping front I'm going to try this recipe with the Rabe Broccoli alongside some barbecued pork belly for that authentic down home vibe.

Today's Food Adventures.

2010-06-04T15:19:00.005+01:00

I had a bit of a brainstorm over breakfast this morning. Made myself eggy crumpets, which is a breakfast staple in this house, I'm not sure what thought process it triggered but something made me think of the pickled damsons I made back in August last year.

I first discussed pickled fruit here, I made some pickled quince and blackberries back in 2008 but wasn't impressed with them until about a year later when they had matured into a smooth, complex, almost boozy, deliciousness. I'm pleased to say the damsons from 2009 seem to have gone the same way so it seems a lengthy maturation period is the key. They're not sweet enough to have a desert with ice cream or anything but they have a delicious, tangy, sweet and sour flavour, akin to a good chutney.

Teamed with the eggy crumpets they made an amazing breakfast and I'm sure they must be good with the ubiquitous chutney partners of cold meats and cheese too.

The other foodie experiment of the day was quickie ice cream using the zip lock method. I'm sure that parents of small children everywhere know this 'ideal for the holidays' trick but I'll re-hash it anyway. You take one small zip lock bag, fill it with a cup of milk, a tablespoon of sugar and some vanilla essence (or flavouring of your choice, or you could even use flavoured milkshake) zip it closed and place it in a larger zip lock bag along with 2 or 3 handfuls of ice cubes and 2 tablespoons of salt. Shake it all about for 5 minutes or so and Ta Daaaa - ice cream!

The children were sold on the idea but soon moaned about cold hands (hence Willow's expression in the photo) we used semi skimmed milk which was ok but full cream would've been nicer, still, at least we know for next time.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2010-05-30T17:13:00.004+01:00

It was on 25th May 2009 that I posted my inaugural message on Norfolk Kitchen. Of course all month I've been furiously trying to remember all month to post on 25th May 2010 but obviously I had to go and forget so - Happy 370 days Norfolk Kitchen.

My personal blogging philosophy is not one that revolves around getting high numbers of followers or a desire to be listed in the Times most influential bloggers or anything like that. I get a lot of personal satisfaction from writing and taking photos plus there's a very practical use in recording what I've done in the garden or made in the kitchen. I also use Blurb.com to turn my blog into a vanity published book which I keep in a drawer in the hope that one day, in about 30 years time, the children will look at each other and say "Remember that Cyder Jelly Mum used to make when we were kids? Shall we make some now?" and the recipe will be there for them to use. I think I'll explain my expectations when they're 14 and shall eagerly await their (cough) enthusiasm ......

Thank you to everyone who follows, reads and contributes to the blog, I've really enjoyed 'meeting' everyone here and on Twitter and big thanks to those who've shared their expertise and given me a much needed helping hand. Here's to the 2010 season.

Composting queries

2010-05-27T13:46:00.004+01:00

This post is basically a shameless plea for help! As our garden at home is so small we've never had the space for a compost bin, now we've got the plot and more space I need to get the compost bin going so I've got some nice organic material to dig into our horribly dry clay soil for next year. The problem is that I have no access to green leafy material as yet as nothing has actually grown on the plot and we're not allowed to bring kitchen or garden waste from home.

So, the organic material I can get my hands on at the moment is:

Chicken manure mixed with hemcore/aubiose

Stuff from the Bokashi bin

Some grass clippings but not loads (our grass is mostly eaten by the chickens)

Newspapers

That's about it, and some of that is stretching the definition of 'kitchen and garden waste'. I'm also trying to source some horse manure but haven't had any success yet. I'm digging up vast quantities of weeds still (see picture for impressive looking root of something or other, that's about 10" long in real life) but obviously won't be adding those. Later in the year we'll have waste green things from the plot itself.

So will I be able to get a usable compost from the above? I've Googled a little bit but am getting confused with green/brown material, hot composting, dire warnings about too many grass clippings, slimy compost etc. Am I over thinking this? Should I just shove it all in together and stop worrying??

Any advice would be gratefully received!

About time .....

2010-05-23T15:36:00.006+01:00

2010 seems to have finally realised what 'spring' means so I find myself having fretted about frost only a week or so ago, now fretting about wilted plants and rock hard soil. On the plus side my seedlings have suddenly sprung into life, sweetcorn, borlotti beans and pumpkins have all jolted upwards which is a relief as I wasn't sure if they'd been destroyed by the frost.

On the allotment I'm beginning to think that the main skill in gardening is prompt identification and effective elimination of pests.

My broad beans are being eaten by something or other. Lord knows what, there's nothing visible on them, I've put slug pellets down but no signs of dead slugs, I've put slug collars on them (the plants, not the slugs. Maybe tethering the slugs would be a better idea) but no improvement so I resorted to spraying them with a catch all 'Kill Stuff' type of spray which seems to have helped as they're looking much healthier now. My burgeoning broccoli plants have attracted the attentions of weird tiny, black, flea like things which are leaving tiny holes all over the place.

At least in the garden I know my enemies, they tend to be larger and furrier with only 4 feet. The neighbourhood cats are driving me demented, they climb on top of the mini greenhouse, they try and sit in my hanging baskets of tumbling toms (talking of which, pictured is my first mini tomato!) they jump into the sweetcorn seedlings and they dig up the runner bean seeds.

It's kind of like being under siege from all sides, suffice to say I've invested in miles and miles of protective netting which is slowly going up in various locations.

At this time of year the chickens have their annual holiday to the front garden, the back lawn is out of bounds for a month or two to give it a chance to grow again. Pictured below is one of the disconcerting consequences of this. I'm sitting in the living room, minding my own business, tapping away quietly on the laptop, have that 'being watched' feeling and spying beady eyes staring unblinking through the living room window .....

It's all gone a bit Blair Witch ....

2010-05-17T18:40:00.006+01:00

We decided to go for a luvverly Family Walk in the woods yesterday, or the "Deep, dark woods" as Xanthe the Gruffalo fan insisted on calling them. Our favourite spot is Tyrrel's Wood just off the A140 near Long Stratton. It makes a great day out when combined with a visit to the tea room at Goodies Farm Shop and sometimes, if you're really lucky, you can observe a lesser spotted Rick Wakeman enjoying a tea cake in there. Good luck though, in navigating the arcane rules on what constitutes 'hot' and 'cold' food and the serving times of the afore mentioned food groups. (cold sandwiches are 'hot' and hot sausage rolls are 'cold'. It makes my head ache)

I find navigating Tyrrel's Wood quite hard, it's a smallish wood but disorientating, though that's probably a characteristic of most woodlands with their restricted visibility and plethora of small creatures content to occupy themselves with flitting through your peripheral vision before scuttling and scratching in the undergrowth in an alarming fashion. Superstitious? Moi?

We somehow or other managed to get on the wrong path, we were anticipating a walk of about half an hour but ended up trudging in a depressed and slightly panicky sort of way for three times as long. All sense of direction vanished and we actively repressed memories of the Blair Witch project, especially after stumbling across a number of hastily assembled little shelters made of fallen branches and haven't we passed that log before???

It really didn't help matters when we stumbled across this grisly artefact, a neatly severed hare's (or possibly rabbit's) head, wedged into a tree at a height of about 6'. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has the vaguest clue as to how or why it may have come to be here. There was no trace of the rest of the body and it was a very neat job which made me wonder if it had been done by human hand. I've previously seen dead animals festooned on forest gates, rats and the like, nailed neatly into rows so maybe this is something similar though I've no idea why anyone would nail rats to a gate either (that's not a phrase you use every day).

Fortunately the children were fascinated rather than alarmed though they were moaning like crazy about wanting to get back to the car. Obviously we made it home in the end, thanks largely to the fact that we were in a small wood in otherwise open countryside so we stuck to the outside edge and slowly made our way round in a huge circle. I think Xanthe picked up on our panic as she tearfully told Adam "I'm only coming back here when there are no trees any more!"

Beer Bomb.

2010-05-10T20:26:00.006+01:00

I think I've mentioned previously that we've had our first harvest from the Allotment. Sadly not a crop we've grown but a large bagful of nettles I picked before the rough ground got zizzed by a helpful lawnmower. As free alcohol always piques my interest I decided to try my hand at Nettle Beer.

I used the River Cottage recipe which was really easy. I fancied a fizzy drink so I consulted the oracle of all things home brew aka my husband who once made some fizzy lager back when the Conservatives were last in power. He advised putting a couple of teaspoons of sugar in each bottle as I was bottling it.

Technically then, the mess in my larder is his fault. I opened the larder door on Saturday morning to make breakfast and a bottle top rolled out.....

Then I spied a funny sticky patch on the floor.

Then the splash marks.

Then the wreckage of a 2litre plastic bottle.

So no, husband dearest, that mysterious bang you heard at midnight wasn't someone trying to break in as you first thought and neither was it the fault of the neighbours as you later thought. It was, in fact, our nettle beer exploding and taking out the hand held mini vac in the process.

Luckily we only lost one bottle, but the others were alarmingly mis-shapen and blown and they fizzed and farted for what felt like an age as we let the excess gas out.

The first tasting was last night. It bears no resemblance to beer as I'd recognise it but it's very close to elderflower champagne. Perhaps not quite so sophisticated with it's strangely swampy sweetness but very pleasant and summery nonetheless and, most importantly, it's free!

Peas!

2010-05-07T06:21:00.004+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts this week, all my time seems to have been taken up with ridiculous politics in the Allotment Association which has soured the whole Allotment experience somewhat but I'm firmly backing away from the situation in an effort to control my blood pressure.

On the plus side it's distracted me from the playroom dwarf peas who, upon closer examination yesterday, revealed they've been quietly cropping (that's cropping, the other one is what the cat does in the playroom) and are now festooned with pea pods, although they appear to be a mange tout/snow pea type thing which is a double surprise as I was expecting normal peas. But hey, the children are thrilled nonetheless.

On the allotment I find myself peering anxiously at the seed beds, waiting for seeds to pop up. They seem to be taking ages this year, maybe it's to do with the late spring or maybe I'm just a bit more hyper aware this year than in previous years. I'm finding growing on an allotment scarily public, it just invites direct comparison and competition doesn't it? Maybe it affects the psyche and makes a gardener more combative. Hmmm, just a theory.

Manna from Heaven.

2010-04-30T19:01:00.007+01:00

At last, a decent amount of rain. Last night it bucketed down but today when I went down to the allotment to plant the new pear tree the top 3" or so of soil were still dry as dust. The rain has started again now and more is forecast over the weekend so fingers crossed we get a good soaking. Then I only have to worry about getting stuck in the mud again ......

Our little plot is shaping up nicely. As you can see in the photo, we've now put up shade/shelter netting to protect us from the biting winds bowling over the open countryside we're surrounded by. I'd be interested in opinions anyone may have re carrot fly, will the shelter netting give us any protection or should I still put fleece around the carrot bed?

The fruit section is now well populated with strawberries, raspberries, red currants, 1 plum tree, 2 pear trees and 2 dwarf apple trees are due to arrive immanently. Carrot and broccoli seeds are just beginning to join the broad beans above the soil and runner beans, borlotti beans, sweetcorn and pumpkin are sprouting co-operatively at home.

We've had our first crop from the allotment already - but I have to confess it's not something we grew. I picked some nettles from the trackway around the plot and have brewed some nettle beer. Not tasted it yet but will blog the recipe if it's any good.

The salad potatoes at home are proving to be more expensive than I thought. As mentioned previously, I'm not growing main crop potatoes as I can get them really cheaply at a local farm shop. I thought that growing the higher value salad potatoes made more sense. I looked at the price of salad potatoes in the shops versus the cost of seed potatoes and bags to grow them in and decided they were cheaper to grow than buy. What I failed to factor in though, is the cost of the compost. I'm going through sacks and sacks of the stuff in the earthing up process so next year they'll be definite candidates for the allotment instead.

I've never grown potatoes before so I'm really, really hoping the taste of freshly dug spuds makes up for the cost!

More eccentric gardening .....

2010-04-26T13:26:00.007+01:00

I've just spent a happy hour outside in the garden, planting Borlotti bean and sweetcorn seeds for the allotment as well as putting the tumbling toms into their hanging baskets in the garden.

I've used Craftygeek's suggestion from my previous post 'Water Problem' of planting bean seeds in toilet roll tubes. Once the seeds have sprouted, I'll plant them complete with the tube in the hope it will encourage nice deep roots and also help the rather dry, clay soil absorb moisture a bit more effectively.

Here at the Kitchen we are very fond of our tumbling toms. Xanthe has always loved toddling around outside plucking fresh, sun warmed tomatoes off the vine and will scoff them til her chin gets sore from the dribbly juice. The main problem I've found is the amount of watering needed, tomatoes are a thirsty crop at the best of times, let alone when planted in minimal soil and subjected to drying wind from all sides.

Last year I had a problem in that the frequent watering led to the top of the soil in the hanging baskets developing a hard, dry 'crust', I presume it's a kind of lime scale from the minerals etc in our hard water. This meant that when I watered the baskets the water had a tendency to run off over the edges rather than sink into the soil.

This year I've attempted to solve the problem by sinking bottles with the bottoms cut off into the soil so that the water can get down under the surface, plus I'm going to make a mulch of some sort to try and prevent the crust building up. I got the idea from our immaculately groomed neighbour who made a 'mulch' of carefully arranged miniature slate pieces over the top of her tumbling tom hanging baskets which look quite beautiful.

However, I'm not sure that I want the expense of buying a sack full of slate chippings only to use a handful. Plus, the idea of growing your own is to save money isn't it? I was thinking of the rather cheaper option of spreading grass clippings over the top of the baskets. I mean, that won't look eccentric will it? Old Diet Coke bottles poking out through the mouldering clippings? No, thought not. Not that I particularly care, you know my mantra by now, I'm not a keen gardener, I'm a keen eater. Now I just need to persuade Adam to mow the lawn. I fear this mulch may take some time .....

2010 season rolls on apace ....

2010-04-23T09:55:00.005+01:00

The first shoots have appeared at the allotment, pictured are our broad beans, finally coming up. I was beginning to think I'd never see them again....

Rainbow Chard, carrot and broccoli seeds have gone in but it's early days so no seedlings yet. Our fruit trees and red currants are doing well, raspberries showing tentative signs of life but the courgettes are ailing. I think it's a combination of sunny days, no rain and a strong, cold wind as the leaves haven't wilted in the conventional way but gone all crispy. I've ordered some shelter netting as protection against the wind which I hope will also slow down water loss from the ground but until it arrives I've put cloches over the courgettes and am hoping they pull through. After last year's mosaic virus debacle, my confidence in my courgette growing abilities has taken a knock, I thought they were supposed to be easy?!

Things are mostly looking good at home. The salad potatoes are doing well, they're shooting up and seem to need earthing up every 5 minutes. I'm still waiting for signs of life from the Runner beans, peas, pumpkins and rainbow chard seeds. The radishes are like the curate's egg - good in parts. The lower row look fine but the top row are small and some are wilting, no idea why. I'm wondering if a cat has somehow managed to perch on the fence and pee on them (which, if true, is a trick that would do well on Britain's Got Talent) The courgettes in pots at home, in contrast to their allotment brethren, are doing well when not subjected to the attentions of neighbourhood cats trying to sit in the pot (despite it being festooned in netting and whirling windmills (the pot, not the cat))

Now that there isn't so much pressure on the space at home I'm finding myself considering (gasp) ornamental plants. The bean frame I grew borlotti beans on last year is home to sweet peas, at Willow's request, this year. The Jerusalem artichoke patch is being turned into a herb garden to allow me to indulge my interest in collecting obscurish herbs. The other day I raided an honesty table and brought home Sorrel, Winter Savoury, Loveage (to go with the Lettuce) and Salad Burnet which together with my pea shoots, mizuna and lollo rosso should make interesting salads this year.

I'm surprisingly nervous about the success of the allotment crops, I feel all exposed and wonder if my fellow allotmenteers are judging my efforts, so I'm anxiously waiting for further signs of green amongst the huge expanse of bare soil as a badge of success. Come on seeds, don't let me down!

NB* Apologies for the internal links not working properly, I've no idea why, Blogger seems to have repeated problems with them.

Photo Meme

2010-04-15T20:39:00.009+01:00

Well, this is a new experience! I've never heard of a Meme before but was sent one by the charming @violetposy on Twitter.

The rules are:

Open up the oldest photo folder on your pc
Scroll to the 10th photo
Post the photo and the story behind it
Tag 5 or more people to continue the thread

My laptop's reasonably newish so I was never going to uncover anything ancient but this photo is from our family holiday last year (the 'interesting' angle is a bit too interesting though, makes me feel slightly queasy).

As Willow is only in Year One at school we're still reeling from the shock of the cost of taking family holidays at peak times and are in the process of formulating strategies to cope. Last year we decided to take advantage of having family in far flung locations so we spent almost 2 weeks up in Warrington with my parents. Mid-week while Mum and Dad were working we took the girls off to Llandudno to a B&B for a couple of nights.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather and as soon as we landed we headed for the beach, where this photo was taken. Later, we took our tired, sandy off spring back to the B&B and tucked them up in bed. Adam and I got a bottle of red from the bar, took it up to the first floor residents lounge with it's panoramic views and watched the sun set over Llandudno Bay.

Maybe I'm easily pleased but it was easily one of the best holidays we've had. That and the Peak District, oh and London at Easter and ....

By the way, the photo below is the one I would have chosen to represent this holiday if I'd been given more of a choice!

Water Problem ....

2010-04-10T09:36:00.006+01:00

The fences going up at the allotment has had an unexpected psychological impact in that I'm feeling a greater sense of ownership and confidence about the plot. We've started planting in earnest, raspberry canes, red currant bushes and a couple of courgette plants have gone in and next week's project is to plant our billions of seeds.

Planting continues apace at home too with lollo rosso seedlings, courgette plants, rainbow chard seeds and runner bean seeds going in.

Watering in the newly planted fruit bushes graphically underlined what a problem we're going to have with water. We have no mains supply at all, our shed has guttering and a water butt but it's mostly empty as we have only had one night of rain since it went up. We have begun to take 25 litre containers full of water with us every time we go to fill up the water butt but they are very heavy and difficult for me to handle alone. I was quite disappointed by how little the water level went up after our one rainy night.

So I have spent the last day or so pestering the people on Twitter and combing Google for advice growing veg with the minimum of water (thanks to @abbipanks and @ukallotmenteer) and this what I have come up with so far:

Dig newspaper into the soil to help retain moisture and improve the structure of our heavy clay soil.
Hang a big plastic sheet strung between poles over your water butt, feeding water to the top.
Invest in an IBC 1,000l water container
Use mulches such as bark chippings or grass clippings to slow water loss
Cut the bottom off a plastic water bottle, sink it into the ground next to water loving plant, water into the bottle so that water goes straight to the roots and doesn't evaporate from the surface.
Plant seedlings in a slight depression in the soil to allow water to puddle around them rather than run off
Plant seeds in small pots initially rather than directly into the ground, you'll need to water a much smaller area while they germinate.

Plus, I came across this really useful document (link is working now!) from the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners which explains the differing water requirements of various crops (I had no idea carrots didn't need watering at all)

I'm hoping to put all of the above into practice over the coming season, obviously I will report back on how successful they are. If anyone has any further tips to add, I'd love to hear them. I'm beginning to realise that there are advantages to growing veg in a small garden, protected by high walls with a mains water supply!

Rabbit Proof Fence

2010-04-07T15:46:00.005+01:00

What a day, today has been really, really hard work but worth it as our fence is now complete. The shed went up on Easter Monday following Shed Wars with the neighbours which culminated in our shed window being smashed while we were off site having lunch. I'm drawing a discrete veil over that incident in the hope that it will eventually be put behind us (but Grrrr, Allotments are supposed to relieve stress, not create it)

Now we feel like proper allotmenteers, the car is covered in mud, our hands are covered in segs and every time I stand up I hold my back. The children have been little troopers considering there hasn't been much for them to do up until now. Today they tied some bits of wire they found around some old sticks and spent hours running around with them, first they were snakes, then dogs ("It's a dog Mummy- but mostly it's a stick") then fishing rods. They've fallen in puddles, stood in ditches, dug for worms and collected ants. There's nothing like a bit of boredom to bring out the best in kids I think.

Now that the fence is finished though we can all start planting. The children have some wild flower seeds but I'll probably get them a few bedding plants too for instant gratification. The grown ups have their work cut out too, we've got some raspberry canes which desperately need planting, strawberry plants on order and a cupboard full of seeds who are eager to be set free.

We've still got a way to go but at least the most back breaking of the work is over. It's all fun from here on in (isn't it???....)

"Sob, sob, sob, sob" (pause) "sob ....."

2010-04-01T20:25:00.005+01:00

I should have known yesterday would be a bad day when I woke up with a hacking cough and pain behind my ears. I should have stayed in bed. I should not have set foot outside the door and I most certainly should not have gone down that sodding dirt track to the allotment in the rain.

I was expecting the shed to be delivered. Got a phone call from the delivery driver quite early, "Fab" I thought, "delivery out of the way, leaves the rest of the day free". Trundled down to the allotment, met the driver, signed for the shed, off they go - done and dusted at 10am.

But you already know it's not going to be that simple don't you?

Getting into the allotment site wasn't a problem but driving out the car suddenly stopped moving, Xanthe laughed and said "Look at all that mud on my window!". Yes, the wheels were spinning in the slipware the road surface had turned into, spraying liquid mud all over the car. My worst allotment nightmare come true - we were stuck.

I suddenly realised how vulnerable we were. Rural location, about 2 miles from home with a 3 year old who can walk half a mile max, no pushchair, no food, no water, no shops, no facilities.

I made a valiant attempt to free myself. Hauled the tiles we'd used as a path on the allotment over to the car and wedged them under the tyres. Nothing. Found an old door in the hedgerow which I laid on the mud. Nothing. Tried to push the bugger. Nothing.

So now, I have the cough, the ear pain, I'm cold, covered in mud and exhausted. Xanthe is bored, cold and thirsty and is screaming her little lungs out. Thank goodness I had my mobile and the number of my breakdown recovery service (yes I did knock on the doors of neighbouring houses to ask for help, shame on you the cottage who pretended not to be in, the others were empty) I can't begin to imagine what I'd have done if I'd left my phone at home as I am wont to do.

2 hours,1 tearful phone call to a hard hearted call centre who tried to claim I wasn't covered and 1 tow truck later I was home. That just leaves the car to clean inside and out, all our clothes to wash, the cakes to make for the Easter Fair and red wine to buy (and, boy, does that red wine need buying) the school run, tea to make and school disco to taxi for. And Adam's train's delayed so it's still many hours til I can crack open that red wine (weep) ((again))

Flippin' Heck Crispy!

2010-03-30T09:47:00.006+01:00

Normally Crispy lays quite small eggs, about 55g which is on the cusp of Small and Medium in terms of supermarket eggs. Feathers lays massive eggs of around 65/70g which makes them Large. But Crispy excelled herself yesterday and laid this monster. It weighs about 80g which is off the scale and puts it in the Extra Large category.

I wasn't quite sure whether I should be delighted or concerned, I certainly felt somewhat guilty that I hadn't been out there mopping her fevered brow and telling her to breathe. There's a vague niggling worry that it can't be good for her, I was half expecting her to be walking like a chicken John Wayne but she seems quite active and jolly today.

I've tried to give a sense of scale in the photos, in the top one you can see how the monster egg doesn't fit into a standard size egg box, it won't sit in the compartments and I can't shut the lid. In the photo below, a standard Crispy egg is on the left, standard Feathers egg in the middle and monster Crispy egg on the right.

She's in the nesting box as I type, doing her bit for Norfolk Kitchen egg production, can't wait to see if we've got another monster!

Allotments - They're not just about the veg are they?

2010-03-27T20:12:00.004Z

As I've said before, I'm not a keen gardener, I'm a keen eater. My main motivation for growing veg is the enhanced taste experience it offers, not only with spankingly fresh veg but stuff you just can't get hold of in Tesco - Cavello Nero, or fresh Borlotti beans for example. So up until now, to me, an allotment represented an opportunity to grow more of what I enjoy and explore more exotic varieties.

It's only this week that I've begun to appreciate that the benefits of an allotment stretch much further than the salad drawer of the fridge. As I outlined earlier, I'm fascinated by the objects we're digging up and the sense of a connection to the past. A sure sign that I'm firmly in the allotment honeymoon period was the speed with which I found myself charmed by a cigarette butt and it's pleasing historical 'book end' to the clay pipe stems we've been finding.

I'm also utterly exhausted by the physical effort, but in a pleasing 'I worked hard today' kind of way rather than that 'children had a 4am start' hollow eyed , soul crushing pain kind of way. And I'm sure that (whisper it) my clothes feel looser and my thighs more toned after just a week.

The community spirit of the allotment site has taken me by surprise too. Our initial Allotment Association meeting felt like an episode of the Archers. I perched on a hard plastic chair in the cutest timbered village hall I've ever seen, while conversation thick with local names, gossip and obscure farming terms flew over my head. At least I haven't been press ganged into appearing in the Panto ..... yet. We seem to be a nice mix of people, several young families and wide age range. I think we have the makings of a vibrant Allotment Community.