Dinner was inspired by my allotment!

There are loads of 'Here's what I had for dinner' blogs but please grant me this one because I grew a good deal of the meal on my allotment!

I do feel quite proud of myself lugging my trug home full of produce that I took the time to sow in the greenhouse, re-plant outside, weed, water and generally look after.

I started planning the meal by taking some wild scottish haddock fillets out of the freezer which were sent to me a while ago by Fish Is The Dish and supplied to them by Delish Fish in Aberdeen. Even though this fish has been in my freezer it still tastes as fresh as the day it left the sea!

I just wanted simplicity itself with the fish so popped in on a grill pan, light brushing of oil, sea salt crystals with lemon from Falksalt and a sprinkling of mixed spiced that my sister sent me from North Carolina. Under the grill for about 10 minutes whilst I got on with the stir fry.

Into my large frying pan I poured about 2 Tablespoons of rapeseed oil and gently started to fry the schallot that I had thinly sliced.

Next went in the thinly sliced courgettes (2) and peas from the allotment followed by the rainbow chard also thinly sliced. For some heat I added a large teaspoon of Gran Luchito Mexican chilli paste.

I stir fried this for about 5 minutes till tender and at the last 2 minutes I added two packages of chinese noodles (I got them reduced from £2.40 to 24p!) and about 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce and presto - a really fast and delicious supper topped with the fish fillets.

Mr R said he really liked the dinner even if he nearly broke his back digging earlier in the Spring - drama queen!!

Dinner tonight is grown by? Me .......!

It is absolutely heartwarming when you go to the allotment and for the first time can pick enough for a proper meal. Up till now we have had a few lettuce leaves, some radishes and some fresh herbs.

But this last weekend we were rewarded with some courgettes and a handful of pea pods.  So tonight's dinner will be a pasta with a courgette and bacon sauce (with a handful of fresh peas).

I sliced the courgettes really thinly and added them to the pan with the chopped onion and diced bacon.  After frying in olive oil I added the tomatoes, pesto and red pepper paste along with seasonings.

Really looking forward to dinner tonight! What will be ready next visit?

Where there's muck there's ..........

You know the old saying; 'Where there's muck there's brass' or 'There's gold in them there hills'.  Well in my case where there's muck there's me putting it into bags for the allotment!

We have several farms in the vicinity of our house so every trip to the allotment now means stopping by a huge pile of well rotted horse manure and bagging up as much as we can fit into the car.

Mr R won't help me bag up the manure and is ready to laugh should there suddenly be a landslide and I get buried underneath!

Today we bagged up 6 bags ready to transport to the plot and most of these went into the new bed that we dug up today.

In order to cut down the amount of grass we have to dig through we have a couple of pieces of carpet and we rotate them around.  The piece that we moved today yielded a lovely patch which we dug up without too much trouble.  Tomorrow I will be putting in some tomatoes, peppers and chillis.

Apparently my courgettes are looking better than those on plots around mine. I think it is the tyres that keep the roots warmer and moister and being higher than ground level offers some protection from the elements.  Most garages or tyre centres will be only too glad to give you old tyres.

I finally got the water butt up there too so we are really starting to feel right at home!

Today's pickings included some radishes, mint for the Jersey Royal potatoes and the first pieces of Rainbow Chard.

There is still so much to do but no rush and with a bit of warmer weather I will be spending more time up there.

Radishes the size of your arm!

We weren't able to get up to the allotment over the weekend so we popped up after work tonight.

I was afraid the slugs may have decimated my crop but was there and surprise surprise the bean seeds that I planted 10 days ago were poking through and so were the potatoes.

But the biggest surprise was the radishes! The row we picked a few small ones from when Boy G was visiting were HUGE!  I picked most of them and will finish off the row on the weekend.  Good job I have a couple of rows already planted behind this one!

Can I pick these Nanny?

My daughter and two grandsons visited us last weekend to celebrate my birthday. We really know how to have fun, I introduced them to my new allotment.

Boy G (nearly 4 yrs old) was very busy helping grandad water things, collecting stones but he really got excited when he saw the radishes.  Can I pick these Nanny?  Just one or two I said. Well he kept on picking and having such fun I couldn't stop him.

 

 

It was OK to pick the radishes - they went well with our pic-nic later that afternoon.

 

Baby G (almost 10 months old) was having fun in the sun too!

The best bit of the afternoon came when Boy G crashed out and slept straight through till the next morning! Oh the wonders of fresh air!

WooHoo we've planted!!

Finally the weather seemed to be getting better and warmer and we began to plant the vegetable plants we had been growing in father-in-law's greenhouse. 

Bank Holiday weekend we finished adding organic matter to the main bed and planted the rainbow chard, some beetroot seedlings and filled the tyre towers with green courgettes in two and yellow courgettes in the third. I love growing courgettes in tyre towers, keeping the plants moister than on the ground and as they grow down the tower they don't tend to rot on the ground before you can pick them.

I have slightly overplanted the tyres but I expect there will be natural thinning out by the slugs!

 

 

We also planted the dwarf French beans both green and yellow. In the USA when I was growing up we just called them green and yellow stringbeans.

 

I put in the long row of plants that I had started off and then another row of seeds as a backup. There is also a row of rainbow chard which should, if it doesn't get eaten, do very well and last for ages.

 

The herbs I planted a couple of months ago are doing really well and the radishes are coming along nicely. I keep adding a short row of radishes every couple of weeks.

The red gooseberry bush that Thompson & Morgan sent me is growing at a steady pace and I am sure won't be long before it rivals the green gooseberrries we inherited with the site!

However as I write this it has rained for three days and I am praying that the slugs haven't eaten everything I planted before I get a chance to get up there with the slug pellets!!

There is still a lot of area to work on but we have loads of time.

A Little Bit Here - A Little Bit There

We spent a couple of hours up at the allotment today.  We are working on two seperate rectangular beds, getting them absolutely ready to sow/plant out in a week or two's time. 

My plan is to get dwarf french beans (both green and yellow), courgettes, peppers and chilli peppers as well as rainbow chard planted out first.  Once these have all been planted (some have been started in the greenhouse and some will be planted straight out) I will be a happy bunny.

Then we will start another couple of rectangular beds. All the digging over and sorting out will begin again. But it will all be worth it.

As my allotment hasn't had anything done to it in 3-4 years there is a lot to do but once we have turned all the soil over and got rid of the grass we will cover over with plastic or carpet to make sure it doesn't present the same problem next spring! I don't want to go through all that digging again!

Don't let Mr R tell you I work him too hard! Here he is enjoying a coffee break after the first hour!