Summer photographic scavenger hunt #5

My fifth posting in the summer photo scavenger hunt series, if you click on the "Summer photo scavenger hunt" label you'll find all my posts on the theme.The hunt is hosted by Mary-Lou over at Patio Postcards and has been running for a couple of months, it's due to finish at the end of September so if you hurry you can still take part if you want to. All the instructions are here.

7. A curvy path. The road to our allotment (technically from our allotment as this was taken from our plot corner looking back towards the site entrance!)

11. Fish. When I was at middle school in the late 70s/ early 80s all of us had cooking and art as well as woodworking and metal working lessons but by the time we got to high school at 13 we were back to needlework and cooking for girls and workshop stuff for boys grrr,,,, Still I have this little fish I made back when I was about 10 or 11 and there must be hundreds of them kicking around homes on the Isle of Wight!

Alternate A. Bird box. We rediscovered during a clear out over the weekend, made by my Dad many years ago and put in a safe place whilst we found a permanent home for it. Made for blackbirds, robins and the like we think it will be best on one of the sheds at the allotment. (I'm unlikely to find a (number 19) round here)

Well that's 3 more down and 7 more images to find. I've almost 5 weeks to do it but we'll see.....

Some like it hot....

Not a cloud in the sky but plenty of birdsong in the hedges. Sunflowers abound and the bees are loving them, the climbing beans are living up to their name and the lentils are drying well ready for harvesting in a week or so, there may even be sweetcorn if we can get to them before the badger. On the other hand poor J was busy melting whilst watering and finishing the mowing and I was hiding out in the car as we have yet another day over 25⁰c and we were soon heading home to shade, cold drinks and the TV. 

When our allotment gives us marrows instead of courgettes...

It's time for pie...

I first had a version of this many, many moons ago when I worked in Northern Greece, this is the closest I've been able to get to what I remember eating although a hunt around the internet shows that traditionally grated raw courgette is used. I also use shortcrust rather than filo pastry as it takes five minutes to make and costs pennies whereas filo needs to be bought in. It's also really easy to make a double batch and freeze half for days when life throws you a curve ball but you want real food. Some marrows can end up being quite watery so just bubble off the liquid until you have the desired consistency.

Marrow and cheese pie (works with courgettes that haven't got too big too!)

Shortcrust pastry (a batch made with 8oz flour is plenty for a four serving pie)







Filling 
1 medium brown onion (3 small ones in my case)
About 750g of marrow or courgette peeled and diced
1 dessert spoon dried parsley
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried Sage
appx 1tsp ground dried garlic (about 1 clove)
200g wensleydale diced (I usually use Feta but didn't have any today)
black pepper & salt to taste ( if using Feta don't usually need salt)
1 beaten egg

In a large saucepan, heat oil and slow fry onions to soften. Add diced marrow and herbs, stir well and cover and cook until soft.  This will take anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes depending on density of marrow and size of pieces. Add salt and pepper and allow to cool a little (about 5/10 minutes) then stir in the cheese. Once cool enough to not scramble the egg stir it in as this will help bind the filling.

Line pie dish with pastry and spoon cooled mixture in. Cover with lid. Seal by pinching the edges and trim away any excess. Make a hole for steam to escape, glaze if wish and bake in oven Gas Mark 6 for approx 30 minutes until golden brown.

I often find this is sufficient as a meal in itself but it can be served with a green salad if you prefer. This is a lovely herby substantial meal that makes great use of sometimes tasteless veg and the chief taste tester approved and of course, went back for seconds!

Beans, bees and baby squashes...

A trip to the hospital for a blood test was followed by a far more relaxing (for me anyway) couple of hours up the allotment today. Whilst J ran around like a mad thing strimming, mowing and lifting potatoes I pootled around picking things and taking photos in short bursts before hiding out in the shade of the car.

The beans are bulking up really well now with the Portuguese beans showing lots of glorious red pods as promised by the Heritage Seed Library catalogue way back in the depths of winter . The borlotto, cobra and blue lake beans are doing just as well so the winter stores should be well stocked again.


The Homeguard spuds we picked a few weeks ago were really tasty and as good mashed as they were boiled in their skins so I was chuffed when J dug the next row of them and produced this lot from just 5 plants. We've still got the second earlies and maincrops in the ground so keep your fingers crossed the dreaded blight stays away!

A quick check on the butternut and uchiki kuri squash plants didn't disappoint with about 4 butternuts including this baby one and at least 4 uchikis that I hope ripen over the next month or so to join the beans in autumn and winter stews.

Back to summer veg and our lovely yellow courgette had plenty for us to pick today, including one oversized one that's destined for pie tomorrow. I think I'm glad only one plant made it as it's keeping us well stocked.





And the flowers? Well they are keeping the local buzzies happy as well as providing beautiful bunches for the house. 

Whilst it was really cloudy when we set out by the time we got up there the sun was at full beam and it's promising to get hotter and hotter as the weekend progresses so today's visit was a fairly brief one but with a good haul and a tidy plot to show for it. A bag of beet leaves; several beetroots; onions; potatoes; blackberries; cooking apples, courgettes, rudbeckia and sunflowers all came home with us ready for a long weekend in the kitchen.

Happy weekend all.

  

Sunshine on the sideboard!

Painting again

After a lovely time at the hospice yesterday, today I sat down again to play with the paints. The works in progress are now completed and if not great works of art they have been enjoyable to complete - even if there has been a fair bit of swearing over the windmill sails!

And the one I finished at the hospice yesterday:

Pretty morning

After a couple of hours sleep in the chair yesterday afternoon, a few hours dabbling with watercolours and a good night's sleep I've woken to one of those pretty late summer morning, no nausea and a better frame of mind - thanks for bearing with me.

Works in progress from yesterday evening based on photos taken a couple of years ago:

 

Today is hospice day and I'll probably be resuming work on this one based on part of the hospice garden as well as a chance for a bit of reflexology and tai chi.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

Sorry, not sorry

The last few days have not been the easiest, sometimes living with this bloody disease just gets on top of me and whilst diversionary activities do help, when you don't sleep the world can look very grey and you feel crap. Most of the time I don't write this down here 'cos it's not something folk want to read about but I don't want to give credence to the trope that if you "fight" you win, that being cheerful all the time means a medical miracle is just round the corner and that every day will be roses and sunshine until you wander off peacefully "over the rainbow bridge", it just isn't. Sometimes you hurt and you want to scream, cry your eyes out or curl up into a ball to make it all go away. It doesn't and if you are lucky those you love hang around, let you cry and yell, hold your hand and help the bad days pass - and believe me I know I am very lucky and just hope that they too have someone they can talk to when their days turn grey and I'm a useless puddle of selfishness.

It will pass, panic attacks don't hang around for long and neither do my grey days. There will be flowers again, in fact we've been making sure of that this weekend - potting on cuttings and taking more - see it's not all been grey.

A rainy kitcheny kind of day

I thought my eyes were deceiving me this morning as I stood in the kitchen chatting to my Mum on the phone and a flock of long-tailed tits fluttered through the garden. They scampered around from the giant fir two houses down across our hedge and apple tree and into the cherry two doors across the other side and then back again briefly alighting on the apple. Of course, as I cut my chat with Mum short and grabbed the camera the little blighters disappeared - not sure whether they have camera or rain sensors but they didn't return. I'll just have to keep an eye out but usually they're a winter sight around here not summer.

As the promised rain duly bucketed down all morning I decided to go through the fridge and fruit stores to cook up anything that was looking a bit sad and not likely to keep over the weekend. Now I'm up 2 pots of mixed berry and apple sauce - great for pies, crumbles or for stirring into yoghurt or warmed over ice cream; a pot of peas; a tray of roast tomato and pepper sauce cubes and half a dozen roast courgette and mushroom cubes plus a tub of cooked beet leaves for adding to soups, stews or pie fillings. I'm shattered but at least nothing's going to waste.
The vegetable cubes are really simple to make, use up slightly-less-than-best veggies and provide wonderful little flavour bombs for adding to pie fillings, pasta sauces, soups, stews and bakes throughout the winter. They also make great use of any gluts you might have or even left-over roast veg from a meal.

Quick and Easy Sauce Cubes
Ingredients
Tomato and Pepper
Roast equal quantities red pepper and tomatoes with basil, black pepper and onion powder.

Courgette and Mushroom
Roast equal quantities of mushrooms and courgette with thyme, black pepper and onion powder

Next steps
Allow to cool slightly and then tip into a deep bowl or pyrex jug and blitz with a stick blender ( or tip into a food processor if you prefer but I find stick blenders easier for small quantities).
Once thoroughly blitzed, spoon mixture into an ice cube tray and either cover with lid or with a sheet of foil and freeze.
Once frozen they can be popped into a box or bag to free up the cube trays for future sauces.

Red pepper and tomato

Mushroom and courgette

Blitz

1 tray = 14 flavour bombs

Not as pretty but definitely tasty

Cover tray and freeze -don't forget to label

Soggy sunflowers

After a wonderful day catching up with friends over lunch yesterday and dodging high winds and heavy showers, this morning we popped up to the allotment to see how the sheds, beans and sweetcorn had coped with the stormy weather. Luckily the tee-pees are still upright and the beans are climbing high, the sunflowers are continuing to give us dozens of beautiful heads of yellow, copper and rusty red and all but one sweetcorn plant standing proud - and this one looked more like a casualty of falling apples rather than high winds so it looks like the hazel windbreaks and hedgerows are working well to filter out the worst of the gusts. The sheds at each end are also still steady on their bases so we count ourselves lucky. A quick potter around the beds yielded well-washed crops and well-watered plants, so we picked more courgettes, peas, spinach beet and a few berries for the kitchen as well as a couple of bunches of sunflowers, rudbeckia and yarrow to brighten up the living room. We managed just a little bit of weeding before the rains quickly came hammering down, thoroughly watering us and everything on the plot. A short but productive visit.

Rudbeckia amongst the squash plants

Glorious multi-headed sunflowers

Peas, courgettes, onion and berries

Growing nicely...

It wasn't just the spuds that were thriving at the weekend. 

There was plenty of wildlife around on the beds, in the path edges and circling above all adding to the joy of being outside for a few hours

bees on the sunflowers

crickets in the paths

ladybirds on the edges

and rooks and buzzards overhead

The other plants were also bulking up nicely for our late summer and autumn harvests. The beans will be left until fully formed and dried for winter stews and soups. We hope the squash will start setting fruits soon - it's first flowers are already peeking through the leaves and the sweetcorn is looking healthy if a little short but there's still time for them to set cobs.

beans podding up nicely

butternut squash taking over the bed

Sweetcorn spreading

First potatoes - plot to plate

Yesterday was a busy allotment day - at least for J who spent about 5 hours up there in the end, mowing, weeding and tidying - I joined him about 3.30 to do some picking and give him a lift home. In addition to some lovely flowers and a few more peas, we also managed to pick a couple of courgettes and some onions plus, most importantly the first of our potatoes. Importantly, because whilst relatively cheap to buy the taste of homegrown fresh from the plot is wonderful and the last few batches I have bought have been really quite ropey and not kept for long at all. This batch is called Home Guard and is a first early we're trying for the first time. We grow using the no dig method, earthing up with compost and mown grass on a layer of card and compost on top of our sandy soil. It produces really clean spuds with minimal disturbance of the soil so it maintains its health and helps it retain moisture. If you aren't familiar with No dig growing I really recommend checking out the You Tube channel of Charles Dowding.

Today we ate some of them - they held their shape well when boiled and are just the right balance of floury and waxy to enjoy this way. A nice simple lunch with our peas and beans, shop bought carrots, chunks of feta and black pepper. Yum!