Food and Vegetable Beds

Last Thursday, Lindsey baked some bread rolls and kindly left some for us for when we went up on Friday to play with Rupert and Hugo.

On Friday I decided to have one, liberally buttered, as a snack with my mid morning cup of tea.

Rupert decided that really, he rather wanted it. He bounced up and down and wagged his tail and looked longingly at my buttered roll.  I offered him a dog treat. He took it - and spat it out.  Hugo swept in to claim the dog treat. Rupert continued to ask for my bread roll. I offered him a piece of chicken jerky. He took it - and spat it out. Hugo swept in to claim it. Rupert continued to bounce up and down, staring longingly at my bread roll.  I gave it to him (there was only half left by this time) and he trotted off happily and settled down on his bed with it.  He's an odd dog!

Fortunately, there were more bread rolls so I could have one with my accidental tomato soup that I had taken up with me for lunch. Accidental soup, I hear you ask? I had found a stray piece of puff pastry when sorting through my kitchen freezer and decided to use it to make a tomato and cheese tart. I had a load of tomatoes kicking around and put a variety of them into the tart. When I took it out of the oven I found I had a pastry bowl and a tomato soup with bits of delicious cherry tomatoes and melted cheese floating in it. Let me caution you, should you ever be minded to make a tomato and cheese tart, not to make the base of your filling a load of saucing tomatoes which, as you might expect, turned to liquid when heated. I tipped everything apart from the pastry into the new blender. Voila! Soup for lunch. And very nice it was too, although not quite what I was expecting.

As part of the "Clearing out our over-filled freezers and using up the contents" challenge that Lindsey and I have embarked on, I had had a fossick around the top layer of Lindsey and Ian's laundry freezer and in my garage freezer. In them I found some chicken thighs and several packets of frozen peas. I decided to have a go at Nigella Lawson's chicken and frozen pea tray bake for Friday dinner at both houses. The only thing I had to buy for it was leeks. Everything else was available in my kitchen and freezers or the Hill House kitchen and freezers.  It was, as you might expect from Nigella, very delicious:

My version.
You will find the recipe in Nigella Lawson's 
At my table

I have decided to have a complete reorganisation of the vegetable garden. As the winter comes in I am going to replace the metal hexagonal beds with wooden rectangular beds. I think I will get more space that way. I am intending to move the blackcurrant, gooseberry and blueberry bushes along the fence, between the two lemon trees, then move the asparagus into a bed in front of that and then have vegetable beds in front of that. I can't do anything significant until the runner beans have finished and that won't be for another few weeks - they are only just starting. I am also going to make the wooden beds out the front into a U-shape. I was going to put miniature apple trees in the hexagonal beds out the front but I have decided to put them in tubs on the back patio instead. I am going to put a hedge of raspberries in the raised wooded boxes along the back path. I already have two boxes with raspberries, and six more plants arrived from Diggers yesterday. There are three varieties which I hope will extend the raspberry season from summer to autumn.

The metal raised beds, both hexagonal and square, will move up to Hill House so Lindsey and I can also grow veggies up there. Nobody grew any vegetables up there this year. Jim the Gardener has retired from active service and maintaining the vegetable garden that he established is beyond Lindsey and me. We don't have the time or the strength to dig it over and to maintain it. Raised beds are the way to go.

We have now finished the potatoes and sweet corn. The tomatoes are ripening, which is fortunate because the plants are beginning to die back. The zucchini plants are still producing but more slowly now. And we have eaten the one pumpkin that formed. Autumn is incoming.