Mini Tunnel

One of my garden recycling projects I didn't talk about in the last post was my milk bottle tunnel. I wasn't very sure that it would work so, although you can see it in some of the pictures if you squint, I left it out of the round up. But Today I was jumping up and down happily. You can see seedlings. So let's get down to the nitty gritty.

Recycling in The Garden

Our first year growing we bought some small pots. Being on a balcony and starting from scratch we've needed to buy a lot of things in: endless amount of compost and the big tubs for outside, seeds, plug plants, bare root plants and impulse buys. But since that first year I've never bought another little pot. I just wash out my previous year's pots and hope my plant buying habit would also supply my pot needs.

Tomatoes Latah and Koralik Bask in Their Reused Pots

Pea Tendrils

Peas are such epic germinators that it's wise to start a load off every time you sow something you're feeling anxious about like a new tomato variety or your first cucumber ever. Rather than raising the lid to see if your more delicate specimens have popped their head up you can be distracted by the fierce colour and frantic activity of the peas.

We grew and ate pea tendrils last spring and summer but we didn't keep up with sowing to have a winter supply. Now I'm trying to get back into the habit. Considering how easy it is to start some off - take peas, sow in small pot of compost - and how quick it is to see results I imagine I'll grow quite a lot this year. Plus you get a nice smug glow from growing a posh veg for practically nothing!

Snack time

With depression always an issue it's important to me to watch what I eat. When things are bad it's easy for me to skip a meal and, as you can probably imagine, that just makes things worse. A lot worse. And for day to day mood maintenance I've always found one thing very important: snacking.

If I haven't had something to eat around three o'clock it doesn't matter how much you love me, you wouldn't want to be around me. That extra energy is useful for other things too. When you come home with your hunger meter on low it's hard to summon up the energy to cook a vegetable filled nutritious meal and instead I find myself reaching for the quick, easy and crappy or the take away. But when does afternoon snacking go too far? I think it went to far for me when I bought a bag of pre-cut apples and grapes. Seriously. I can cut apple up.

The Sweet Taste of Summer

So what have I been up to while Stephen has baked roll after roll after roll? Well eating rolls for one thing, also pizza. But I've also been experimenting with foraging and with preserving. Our flat has been filled with the most amazing smells. The nectary sweetness of elderflower and the pure sauciness of the Great British Strawberry.

The elderflower we've been picking up from walks around Cockington. The last two weekends we managed to get a bottle a time. This weekend should be much more productive, every elder in Torquay seems to be in flower. Even walking to my doctors this morning I saw rows of the buggers. And the first batch was so hard to find...

Aside from smelling delicious they make an excellent cordial for no more than the price of a couple of lemons and some sugar. The past two weekends have made me a complete convert to cordial making. It's a really easy method of preserving and there is nothing like a glass of fruity, sugary water to wake you up in the morning or if you are feeling a bit wobbly. It can even be used to make ice lollies.

A couple of punnets of Strawberries were then turned into a sugary treat, this time with all the water removed. I made a delicious fruit leather. Making fruit leathers is easy and charming, you end up with something far more beautiful than a stained glass window. Not to mention an easily packable fruity hit. I think I'm going to have to try taking some of this on every hike, canoe trip and camp I do this summer. Perfect portable energy.

I'm going to carry on making cordials and leathers out of every fruit I can find or buy cheaply. It's so much fun and so satisfying to put things up for those sugar deprivation moments.

The Last Of Springtime Foraging

The nettles are breaking into flower and the leaves of the wild garlic are looking wilted. The fantastic foraging of springtime greenery is nearly over for the year, at least around Torquay, but there is still a couple of weeks or so to enjoy pickings.


The first thing I've preserved this year is Wild Garlic Oil. A book I was flicking through and have since forgotten mentioned it (along with putting wild garlic in tomato sauce which was yum... I wish I could remember that books!) no recipe but not that hard to cobble together. I roughly chopped some wild garlic leaves and covered them with oil in a jar. Left in the pantry for two weeks it came out yesterday for a good strain, bottle and labelling.


Wild garlic flowers are out right now and they have a pleasant garlic taste and a show stopping look. Especially if you take more care with your salads than I do! Also in my salads are foraged garlic mustard leaves. Other offenders in that salad are home-grown rocket, oak leaf, salad bowl and baby chard leaves, croutons and some west country blue cheese that we picked up at a food fair.


And, of course, wild garlic (yes, it is rather a theme isn't it) makes an incredible garlic bread made with one of my home made baguettes. The sauce on the pasta is a basic tomato sauce with nettle leaves thrown in at the end until they are just wilted. And no, not stinging.

Flower Power

The Forage

I've foraged for dandelion flowers before. Last year I made a fowl tasting sore throat remedy to help me get through my endless colds. I put it in green tea to hide the taste. Eventually my taste buds must have told my throat to knock it off already. And that's how you cure the common cold. Revulsion.

So boiled to death and sugared up they taste awful but there is a well-known fact in our flat. If Alys Fowler says so we have to try it. So after watching her make dandelion fritters of this week's episode of The Edible Garden we really did have to.

Hers were dipped in pancake batter and fried so we did a twist on the traditional and used the (American style) pancake batter from Vegan with a Vengeance adapted slightly. The recipe is enough for around 15 dandelion heads which is a perfect for two people as a snack. Any leftovers can be used to make a tiny pancake.

Dandelion Fritters

For the batter:

• 40g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• 3 tablespoons water
• 75 ml soy milk
• a drop of vanilla extract
  

And:

• 15 dandelion heads
• icing sugar, for dusting

1. Whisk together the batter ingredients. Try to get it as thin as humanly possible. Or cheat. We use the whisk attachment on our mini blender.

2. Heat the pan with a little oil test that it is warm enough by dropping a bit of batter in. It should sizzle.

3. Holding the flower by the green back dunk it in the batter and splat it into the frying pan, yellow down. Do about half the flowers at once.

4. Once the bottom is browned, which should take no more than two minutes, flip over. You may need to push it down a bit with the spatula to cook evenly.

5. Once the other side of the fritter is browned remove from the pan and cook the other half in the same way.

6. Dust with icing sugar and eat.


The Pansy Problem

This pansy was supposed to a violet. I went shopping for violets. We walked up to the local B&Q and Focus. We comparison shopped for violets. I decided on the basic violets being cheaper and a mix of colours. I came home with pansies placed on the wrong shelf. Oz. I planted them anyway, fully prepared to resent them. But I love the colour of this one, and it's velvet soft petals. So perhaps pansies aren't so bad. Violets next year though.


The Promise

But by far the most exciting flowers we get are the ones that turn into food. There are a few strawberry flowers poking up right now and masses of black current. I know food plants aren't supposed to be beautiful and you are supposed to hide them away in a plot or patch rather than a garden proper but come on... who can look at this and not be excited. And who can say it isn't beautiful.

Our Dig In seeds have arrived! I'm actually a bit less excited about the varieties this year than last year. Possibly because I've lasted an entire season but tomatoes, beetroot and squash just seem a bit more exciting than this lot.

The French beans (making 2 climbing and 1 dwarf so far this year) are in. The carrot I'm waiting so I can have a late crop. The bought ones have been in since early march. The salad will get popped in wherever I can and the basil... well I never have much luck with it but I may as well try.

The Courgette... I've got some free gift Black Beauty left over from last year so I guess these will get saved up for the next seed swap.

This post isn't exactly dripping with excitement is it? But don't get me wrong. It will be a pleasure to watch these guys grow.

First Forage of the Season

When I saw that Riverford were selling their Wild Garlic I thought it was about time to drag Stephen to my favorite patch to see if the young leaves were in. Not quite up to last Aprils lushness yet but a few plants were ready for the harvest.

As the plants are young it is important to be extra careful. One or two leaves from each plant quickly adds up to a nice amount but without doing irreparable damage. It's important to be a responsible picker - trying to keep to paths, not talking an entire plant - both for the local environment and for the forager who hopes for a continuous supply.


I also helped myself to some of the young nettle tips we found. Returning form Cockington Supermarket I cooked up a simple, classic tea of pasta with wild garlic pesto (recipe on link above) I'm also going to try a recipe I have for nettle pesto once I'm feeling brave enough to get stung again.

See also: weekly crocus picture from the purple tub.


Post submitted to: Grow Your Own #40

Attention Dig Inners

You can now apply for seeds from the Dig In website.

A little mix up

First some more garden news. Today the new, relaunched Dig in site is up and running. This year they are giving away French beans, salad leaves, carrots, courgettes and basil. There is also a new 'plan your space' section which isn't ground breaking but isn't bad either.

Next up is my unbeatable craving for anything salty, saucy and fatty right now. So for a snack I fried some brilliantly flavoured Dry Masala Mixed Nuts from Cooking Like Mummyji. Nice but I could never, ever eat that many peanuts. But the jar I decanted my peanuts into was already full. I opened the bag the night before to make...


A classic that I don't think I've cooked since I first bought Vegan with a Vengeance; the Brooklyn Pad Thai.

Garden stuff

A £1 bag of crocus bulbs, looking smashing in spring. And there is other exciting gardening news too although, I admit, I'm being more than a little Devon-centric here.

Tomorrow is the 4th annual Totnes Seedy Saturday. Being in one of our favorite towns and having seeds. Well how could we miss it? I've packaged up all of our leftovers. We're taking cauliflower, mint, chives, swede, marigold, nasturtiums, sun flowers, and dwarf French beans.

And speaking of some of our favourite places in Devon Riverford will be offering boxes to grow this spring. We're looking at the the small veg one. Although most of the balcony is already mapped out for this year and we'll probably end up with more seeds tomorrow but what can it hurt?

Unless the balcony collapses.

Food for free, kitchenwear at Disney World prices.

Now that this weekends foraging scores have been put to use on my hair and in my tummy and store cupboard it's time to report back. I had some of the delicious rosehip syrup on pancakes for lunch today and it was delicious. The taste is slightly spicy, slightly earthy, accompanied by a hell of a lot of sugar. Really, very yummy.

The Great Autumn Adventure

We set out yesterday with two objectives both involving food. The plan was to set off from the flat around ten, walk through Cockington and the woods to Occombe farm. Have lunch, ether at Cockington Court or Occombe and pick up anything edible on the way. Around about an 8 mile round trip.


First we packed our kit. In our impressive travelling library was Food for Free, RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds (not that we forage for birds), Seaweed and Eat it and Mushrooms: River Cottage Handbook. We took freezer bags for specimens (again, not of birds), a notebook and pencil, a knife, our trug and (not pictured) a camera.


As we walked up the path from Cockington we spotted a fallen log. One side was full of tiny (and I mean tiny) mushrooms so we where about to turn away when we spotted the other side. Jelly Ears! Something I could safely identify. Yay! They became the first mushroom I ever picked. I held the brambles back with a gardeners glove and picked off the mushrooms with a bag over my hand. Even indirectly they felt yucky, definitely jelly like. I have since touched them bear handed. I must have warmed up to them, I just found it fascinating. They are apparently excellent in stir fries and I'll try it later this week. Although one of my mushroom books advises it's an acquired taste.


A bit more solid this time, from around a hedge row I picked plenty of rose hips. I'm not terribly concerned about my vitamin C but rose hip syrup will be great to have around this winter. It's described as good on pancakes so I'm betting it's a winner.


This particular hedgerow really was a winner. On the other side they had slows! Now let me tell you about gathering these particular sloes. Sloes grow on the blackthorn bush which can grow around six feet tall. Devonian hedgerows are traditionally built on banks which makes it even higher. I had to bend the branches down to pick the fruit but... big but... black thorns are covered with big thorns. So it required my gardening gloves and some death defying climbing to get my tiny harvest.


We saw some mushrooms that where inedible, barely a metre from our front door are false chanterelles. Others I just couldn't identify. Some where so cute I had to take a picture anyway.


These ones seemed to be oysters but I didn't want to hazard a guess. I cut one off to take home for a spore print to see if I can get a positive ID.


The last find was after on our weary walk home (although we did forage for vegan parmesan in the Occombe farm shop) was nettles. Not particularly hard to find. I picked off some of the tops to wash my hair with. I do a conditioning treatment that invloves nettles and apple cider vinegar. As you can imagine I smell wonderful afterwards.

Gourmet Torbay: Pulses and Indian Food

I've mentioned before how much it sucked moving to Torquay in terms of good Indian food. But I may have been a bit hasty then. Turns out the answer is not just the internet but the local market as well.

Local markets are occasionally snobbishly disregarded - even by working class heros such as myself - when it comes to a source of food. Kind of a 'yeah they have a butcher but he doesn't have organic meat' and 'of course they have a green grocers but they don't stock purple sprouted broccoli'.



All this is problematic. Granted they can't afford to be more imaginative but food is still food and the cow is still dead. The traditional skill that foodies are often complaining about loosing can often be found on your local market. They are just priced for a pensioner's budget, selected for practicality and not housed in a pretty building. So it doesn't count right?


The market in Torquay manages to fill a significant gap. One of the few remaining places more geared towards locals than tourists is a lovely stall that sells a mixture of health food shop staples and giant bags of Indian delights.



Those hard to find spices? Check. I've bought asafoetida, tamarind and decent Garam Massala there. They also have the lovely huge bags of the more common spices of Indian cookery; cumin, coriander, and so on.

Lentils of every shape, size and colour? Check, double check because many of them are available in tiny stomach portions and 2kg bags.

Giant bags of rice? Defiantly, and if you ever see one you have to buy one. Even with as a single person who ate rice once a week getting the giant bag represented a significant saving.

And meany other things you never thought you'd see in Torquay? Oh yeah. I have jaggery in my cupboard! There are cans of ghee (not that I'll be buying that) and an interestingly picked selection of sauces from India, south east Asia, and the Caribbean. All in thrift friendly big portions. There's no tiny amounts of sauce in posh bottles here!

All of it inspired (and helped supply) the meal pictured above: Browned Rice and Spinach with Curry Sauce (both from The Asian Vegan Kitchen) and Peeli Dal (Indian Every Day a much better book than Indian Food Made Easy, especially for veggies, but didn't have a TV show). It was seriously one of the most satisfying meals I've had in a long time.

The rice was lovely and dry, just the way I like it, and delicately spiced. The home grown chillies in the dal made it seriously pop and the freshness of the Spinach Curry really came through. Home grown tomatoes and chillies in that one.


Torquay's Market Forum can be found off Market Street or by walking through the Union Square Shopping Centre (off Union Street) and is the host to Torquay Food and Arts Festival next Friday and Saturday.

A week without a box

When I'm away we tend not to get a box. Stephen won't eat that many veggies by himself even though his horizons are expanding. So last week, when I went camping with the Guides there was no box. This week, when I came back there was no box.

Everything I ate had to come from the garden or store cupboard (or the pizza box!) which isn't a hardship in my mind.

Before I went away I made some slow dried tomatoes from my box tomatoes, supplemented with a few early ones from the windowsill. The principal of slow drying tomatoes is that we don't have enough sun in the UK for sundrying them but the oven on low isn't too bad.

I chopped them up with some preserved peppers, and some fresh beetroot greens and popped them in some pasta and breadcrumbs.

The beetroot is ours, grown and nurtured on the balcony. And another night I roasted a couple of the beetroots in spices and stir-fried their greens. They made a tasty accompaniment and also made me very confused when I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the loo. 'oh yeah, I ate beetroot.'

Last night was the big clear out though. Oriental green cut from the balcony and tofu supplemented whatever veg I could find in the freezer. I ended up with peas, broccoli and yellow pepper. god knows what else lives in there.

Today there is a new box. I'm excited.