Back to work on the allotment

Now that we are fairly back to normal after the coronavirus and have a little bit of energy, we are concentrating on the allotment so that we can have some harvest from it. We have the potatoes in, various brassicas and some sweetcorn. At home we have lots of tomato seedlings, more brassica seedlings, both green beans and runner beans, chard and spring onions. I want a wigwam of runner beans here at the house so that I can ensure that I can pick some young and tender runner beans, just the way I like them. I also want the spring onions here in a big pot so that I can pick them one at a time to go on my salads. My husband doesn't like them so I only have a few planted and they are all for me : ).

We have done well with the seeds. They are all from last year or the year before or the year before that and I was not at all sure how many would germinate but I have been surprised and really pleased by the number that are growing.

We have been eating lots of leaf beet (perpetual spinach) these last two weeks. The season for it is over and it is trying to flower and I have been picking and eating the stems with the flower buds on. After all, broccoli is a stem with flower buds on. They have been lovely - so tasty. I do love spinach any way I have tried it. It has nearly come to an end and I will miss it. When we have picked everything off the stems that we want, the hens will get the whole plant and there will be hardly anything left by the time they have finished pecking at it because they love anything like this too : )

Lots of babies

We went to the park for a walk and there is a lake which I felt strong enough to walk around. We met this goose family with mum and dad and their 10 babies. You can see one parent keeping a wary eye on that woman with a phone who wanted to take a photo. We also saw a duck with her ducklings and a pair of coots with their 10 babies. the coots were right by the edge of the pond so we got a good look at them. They were lovely. I have never seen coot babies up close before. These ones were covered in down and had not feathered up at all so they were young ones. Unfortunately I can't get the photos of the super cute coots on to this page.

These are coots that I got from Google. Their feet are quite strange and not like the typical webbed foot of a duck or goose.

Sorry about the arrangement of the pictures. I can't seem to organise them.

Jack Monroe's first cook book

Jack Monroe's cook book is currently on sale at Amazon for 99p for the Kindle edition. An absolute bargain! I have had this book since shortly after it was published and I have used so many of the recipes that I really recommend it.

Soup and Nettles

We have been having soup most days for lunch. I love soup! I have always made soup, but in the last year, leading a life that was just a little bit too busy meant that I did not always get around to making soup. So for Christmas, two of our kids clubbed together and bought me a soup maker. I have used it so much since then. All you have to do is empty some roughly chopped veg in the soupmaker, add some herbs and maybe some garlic, fill with water or last night's vegetable cooking water, turn it on - and 21 minutes later, there is soup.

The last two times, I have made nettle soup. Lovely! As a child, I remember being told that nettle soup was really good for you and in the spring, it cleansed the system after the winter. I can also remember sitting at the table for hours looking at my first bowl of nettle soup. I was told that I would be sitting at the table until such times as I finished it. The trouble is that nobody had told me that I would not get stung in the mouth by eating nettle soup. After all, every other time any part of me had touched a nettle, I had suffered afterwards. I don't remember how that incident ended but I do know that I love nettle soup now : )

Nettle soup - my way:

I used a large potato, gave it a scrub and chopped it roughly into the soupmaker. I didn't bother peeling it. I peeled an onion and chopped it into quarters and added that. I took my 2 litre measuring jug and some scissors and went into the garden and snipped off the top shoots of nettles until my measuring jug was full. Then I washed them (carefully! because I did not want my skin to touch them) and added them to the soupmaker. Then I added a half teaspoon of garlic granules, a good shake of mixed dried herbs, two vegetable stock cubes and filled the jug of the soupmaker up to the marked line with water. I turned it on and 21 minutes later, there was soup ready to eat for lunch. I did enjoy it and I hoped it was doing me some good as a bonus : )

I have several nettles growing in the garden and won't let my husband dig them up as he wants to because they are such useful plants. I take an empty and washed out milk bottle, don some gloves and take it up the garden with my kitchen scissors. I cut off the stems of nettle leaves and stuff as many as I can into the milk bottle. I use the scissors as tongs to fit the stems into the bottle. When it is as full as I can get it, I fill it with water, put the lid on and leave it in the shade around the back of the shed for a month or six weeks - and I have a nasty smelling liquid feed for my veg in pots. Free for 5-10 minutes work. It does a good job too.