With silver bells and cockle shells? 

I could not be more excited at the moment with the progress of my little vegetable garden. Every day things change and grow, and I’m able to harvest something delightful for dinner. I literally go skipping down there like the Easter Bunny with my decade old metal trug feeling every inch the country living magazine (plus sized and slightly grey-ing) model. It must be one of the best feelings in the world to be able to come home from work, walk down the garden and get a bit muddy digging up spuds and onions then bring them indoors and cook them up, as fresh as fresh can be. 

Talk about fast food… 

I think my most successful things have been potatoes so far, they are fairly straightforward. The onions are proving to be fantastic, I will plant more of those next year. The leeks are still tiny but growing well, and I have planted some spring onions too. Fingers crossed for those. Oooh, and I have at least half a dozen baby aubergines….

  

The carrots are also unbelievably good so I am thinking that I will plant some more of those when I have pulled some more potatoes up in the next week. The kale although very pretty was very disappointing and holey and very tough to eat, I think that I really do need a Brassica cage to cover everything, not just my broccoli and cabbage plants. But I’ll give that a miss next year. Lesson learned! Tomatoes are slow but coming and I think I might be overrun with butternut squash when the time comes lol! 

  

I am really really cheesed off with myself that I didn’t plant any sweetcorn. Everyone else’s is ready now and it’s one of my most favourite things so I am gutted I didn’t think to put these in. Must plan better. But I have already bought seeds from Wilkos so they will be going in next year I can guarantee it!
This is what I picked last night:

 

And here is what I consider to be fast food. Wash and boil your potatoes, then add a little fresh crushed garlic, seasoning and chopped fresh parsley and stir. With the onions, chop into wedges and roast with a little olive oil until translucent, perhaps 15 minutes or so at 190°. Then cut some ready-made puff pastry, and score a 1cm line around the outside. Place onto a greased baking tray. Take your onions out of the oven and pop onto the centre of the pastry, add some soft goats cheese and bake in the oven until golden brown and the sides risen. Add a little fresh thyme to serve. 

 

But what about the courgette I hear you ask?! I didn’t think we needed that to so he has been chopped up to make a lovely salad with some leftover onions and goats cheese and quinoa and my new favourite salad dressing of mint sauce and elderflower cordial. Can’t wait to eat that today at lunchtime!

Now if only the first batch of red wine I’m making (currently stinking out the airing cupboard) was already ‘cooked’, that would have been great with this meal. Patience is very much not one of my virtues, I’ll be honest. But I am enjoying watching this one bubbling away every day fermenting

And I’m already itching to make the next. I think this could get quite addictive…

TTFN x