View over the veg plot.

 

This is a busy, productive time of year, with the harvest season fast approaching. 

Time to get out the dehydrator, and clear out the freezers of the remains of last years fruit and veg. I shall make soup I think with the veg and fruit crumble or maybe wine with the old fruit!

I am now harvesting new potatoes, broad beans, chard, salads of all sorts, herbs, carrots, courgettes, peas and mange tout, the first of the french beans today and lots of cucumbers. The tomatoes outside ( left over plants , not sold or given away, which I could not bear to throw on the compost!) are also doing really well. Which is a first for me as outdoor toms have never done well, here.

The climbing beans have finally got going, the leeks , parsnips and onions are looking good and I should be lifting the garlic and shallots any day now.

Apples, pears and plum trees are all covered with fruit and we have just started picking the tayberries - yum!

All in all, it is looking good so far, so fingers crossed we have some rain ( but not too much) and sunshine!


How is it with you, all?

Home made lunch

I just wanted to share my lunch with you...

as it had home made bread and butter with ingredients from organic sources within a 20 mile radius.

The salad leaves are home grown, the crisps are grown just down the road and cooked 10 miles away, the tomato and cucumber are grown 5 miles away and ALL is organic.

The soup ingredients were grown in our garden and the soup was made by me.

A VERY local lunch!

Soup making frenzy

I have spent this afternoon making soups...3 different sorts to be precise!


I wanted to use up some rather old bulb Fennel which came in the veg box and also I had a rather old Celeriac, so made up a recipe of Celeriac, Fennel and Celery soup using shallots and garlic grown by us and some ham stock from cooking an organic gammon joint.



I also made some Pumpkin soup, using one of my stored Lady Godiva pumpkins. Compostman very kindly chopped the Pumpkin into chunks for me and I roasted it in the oven whilst our Sunday meal was cooking. This variety has "naked" seeds which are good to dry and eat!


The Pumpkin soup used Onions and Garlic and home made veg stock.

The final soup was a vegan Lentil and assorted root veg soup...using Onions, Garlic, Kohl rabi, Swede, the trimmings of Celeriac and Fennel from making the other soup and an organic soup mix of Pearl Barley, Lentils, and Peas in with home made veg stock.


I have altogether made 10 portions of the Celeriac, Celery and Fennel soup. 14 portions of the Lentil and Veg soup and 18 portions of the Pumpkin Soup. All portions are VERY generous!!

I used home grown herbs for flavour and butter to cook the shallots and for the vegan soups I used a vegan spread to saute the onions !!

All are now in the freezer...waiting to be eaten YUMMY!!

All the veg was either grown by us or came from our veg box provider 5 miles away..and the meat stock came from an Organic farm less than 10 miles away, as did the butter.

The spread is UK made but not sure where!! So almost totally zero food miles for all of it which makes me very happy indeed!

I am still seriously considering doing a set period of a "15 mile diet"...it WOULD be easier to do from now until October, as we produce all our own fruit and veg during this period and I could get organic meat and dairy from within that limit..Hmmm..will have to have another think about this!

The "buy nothing" challenge was quite do-able and has become second nature..I stop and think and question EVERYTHING I want to get now and try to get it Free cycle or library or borrow it or charity shop it if I can...so maybe a new challenge is in order??