A late summer Sunday lunch

A large platter of roast chicken, roast potatoes and mash

One of the really nice things about cooking at this time of year is that you can just wander about in the garden and on the allotment and collect fruit and vegetables for the table more or less at will.

Garden vegetables and a bowl of stuffing

Tabitha, Gareth and Richard were coming for Sunday lunch. So was Cally, but she's only 5 months old so doesn't figure largely, yet, in my menu calculations. So I went down into the garden and got some bramley apples from the tree and some blackberries from the bramble overhanging the garden and put them in the slow cooker overnight to stew down.  We have potatoes from the allotment and organised some to be turned into roasties, and some to be turned into mash. I made a big pot of a ratatouille type vegetable stew with zucchini, tomato, onions, garlic, rainbow chard and basil. I got carrots and a variety of beans. And we bought from the Chatsworth farm shop a free range chicken, which I roasted stuffed with a home made bread, sage, onion and lemon stuffing.

One small fruit pie per person

The stewed fruit I made into little fruit pies, which we had with home made ginger ice cream (I use Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's basic vanilla ice cream recipe and then leave out the vanilla pods and use other flavours if vanilla doesn't float my boat on that occasion. This weekend I put finely chopped crystallised ginger pieces into the cream when I was scalding it. I left the ginger in when I churned the ice cream and it was nice and delicately ginger flavour when I served it. Went down a treat with the apple and blackberry pies.

Pie and ginger ice cream

A little bowl of mash and carrots for the baby. She wasn't impressed!

We had a little wine and lots of chatter and a good time.  Sunday lunches are a great and glorious thing. Even better when almost all of it comes from the garden!