Broad beans, peas and asparagus pea pods with bacon and chilli.





All our own produce.
A gastronomic delight.

Chickens to go back in their pen.

From tomorrow, the chickens are banished from the spare veg patch!

For they have now discovered that they enjoy the leaves of the mangold wurzels, which have only just seen the light following the removal of the sowthistle jungle. Hopefully they will have had a significant impact on the slug population.

Migrants still in garden

Fortunately three Willow Warblers and the Whitethroat have chosen to hang around in the garden. This is the delight of autumn migration. Instead of being in a rush to get to their breeding grounds, birds hang around feeding up. The willow warblers in particular have become very showy flitting about just outside the lounge window. I have spent many a moment engrossed in their antics.

A new exercise fad?

Pulling weeds is an excellent all-round exercise. I can certainly attest to that after yesterday's efforts. In fact, maybe it could become the next fad in exercise. I could make a living and get my veg patches weeded.

The reason I mention this is that I promised myself (and Sue) that we'd have some days off this holiday and today seemed like a good choice to give my body a rest. So off we went shopping to a wholesale nursery just outside Wisbech which lets Jo Public in. We did very well indeed, keeping our spending below the three-figure mark! The back of my car resembled a mobile Chelsea Flower Show Garden.

It was tempting to buy several of everything, as drifts and patches of plants look more natural and have more visual impact than a random assortment of individuals. But this is where I need to be patient. For my next area of learning is going to be the world of propagation, especially now that I have my polytunnel. We cannot possibly afford to fill our garden with plants bought from nurseries, but if each plant can multiply, then just maybe...

A gastronomic delight

On our return, I roamed the veg patch trying to come up with some inspiration for what to cook with the reduced price pair of trout we managed to get today. Potatoes, in some form, are still obligatory with every meal. Despite the strike of blight we still seem to have a decent selection of potatoes in the ground. They just need a little sorting.

I picked four different types of courgette before they got too big - a glut is just about upon us now. However, they've been on the menu in one form or another for the last three days too. Best of all was Sue's curried courgette soup yesterday. She even managed to thicken it with a few potatoes.



Broad beans, peas and asparagus peas.

As I passed the broad bean plants, in various stages of cropping, I remembered that somebody (me!!) had left the freezer door slightly ajar yesterday and we had some streaky bacon to eat (thanks Squiggle and Curl). These two ingredients would combine beautifully. And why not throw in some peas too. And the asparagus peas are podding up now, so a few of those for variety.


Last time I cooked up a batch of broad beans, I loosely followed a recipe for broad bean and chilli mash. The delicacy of the double-podded broad beans went really well with the zing of the chilli, so I decided to incorporte this into my meal too.

So we ended up with broad bean, peas and asparagus pea pods with bacon and chilli. And baked trout and chips too. The result was a gastronomic delight.

Monday 6th August 2012
Sunny intervals with occasional torrential downpours again.