Tag: Recipes

Cooking and eating from the garden, Growing vegetables, fruit and flowers6 Comments

Summer harvest begins

Reclaiming Paradise

As we pass midsummer the harvest in the garden and allotment is really getting into full flow. The soft fruits are appearing: raspberries, redcurrants, strawberries and even some cherries this year, rescued from the tree before the blackbirds got to them. All this bounty is helping me towards my target of sixty different harvestable fruits, vegetables, herbs and weeds to celebrate my sixtieth birthday. I’ve now passed the half way point and am reasonably optimistic that I’ll meet my target – for an update see here As well as all the summer fruits, the overwintered broad beans are producing great … Continue reading Summer harvest begins

Cooking and eating from the garden1 Comment

Christmas cooking

Reclaiming Paradise

Dedicated vegetable growers will be able to make an entire Christmas dinner from the garden. I am dedicated but not sufficiently organised or successful to do that. However, we did manage to have Howgate Wonder apples for every meal on Christmas Day: some fruit salad for breakfast, some pieces of apple as part of a snack lunch and in both the red cabbage (a family tradition, cabbage from the farmers’ market) and the Christmas Pudding for the main feast. We also had our own Brussels sprouts, rosemary in the roast potatoes and bay leaf in the bread sauce. For Boxing … Continue reading Christmas cooking

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Apple and walnut scones

Reclaiming Paradise

I had a baking urge last night, just in from visiting my mother and with an hour or so to go before settling down to watch His Dark Materials* so rustled up a batch of scones. I was still using up the apples, collected from a neighbour’s box on the street a couple of weeks ago. I reckoned there was just time to make the scones. I adapted a recipe from one my trusted recipe books. Apple and Walnut Scones 250g flour (I used a mixture of wholemeal and white) 4tsp baking powder 1/2tsp salt 50 g margarine or butter … Continue reading Apple and walnut scones

Cooking and eating from the garden5 Comments

… and what to do with red tomatoes

Reclaiming Paradise

Last week I told you about my green tomato glut and what do with it. This week some of them have ripened and I have red tomatoes. Not exactly a glut but a decent crop. In the past I’ve always thought that the best thing to do with home grown tomatoes was to eat them fresh and, preferably, warm straight from the plant, but I discovered a couple of years ago, when I really did have a red tomato glut, that the best thing to do with them was to make fresh tomato soup. So I saved up this little … Continue reading … and what to do with red tomatoes

Cooking and eating from the garden5 Comments

If life gives you green tomatoes…

Reclaiming Paradise

In this strange and yet familiar year, I have tons of tomatoes but they have blight. We had to give up on the allotment tomatoes, with only a handful of useable green San Marzanos- huge admittedly – but very few. In the garden I also have San Marzano, which seems to be resisting the blight a bit better: Tigerella and Costoluto Fiorentino These giants were new to me this year, grown from a seed packet which came free with a gardening magazine. They’ve been amazing, with huge plants and prolific fruits. Yesterday I had to harvest most of them as … Continue reading If life gives you green tomatoes…

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Raspberry muffins

Reclaiming Paradise

Since it’s July and I’ve got some time off work, it has been pouring with rain, although yesterday was lovely. I was out tidying up and brought in these beautiful roses, which had become a bit top heavy on the plant, along with some pinks and red scabious I also got a good harvest of raspberries from the garden yesterday, along with lettuce, peas and redcurrants: So what better than to spend today (well about half an hour actually) making raspberry muffins? The recipe is based on the basic muffin recipe which I discovered a few weeks ago and took … Continue reading Raspberry muffins

Cooking and eating from the garden, Why I garden, Wildlife5 Comments

A little domestic wildness

Reclaiming Paradise

It’s June so it’s time for #30DaysWild , the campaign run by the Wildlife Trusts to get everyone to spot a little bit of wildness every day in June. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years and most years I treasure the chance to stop for a few minutes before or after work or over lunch to notice the wildness in the city around me. This year it’s a little different, with the wildness restricted to my daily walks or my own garden. Working from home, I can nip out with a cup of coffee or over lunch … Continue reading A little domestic wildness

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Support systems

Reclaiming Paradise

For today’s #SixOnSaturday theme I took a closer look at the pea tendrils, clinging to a variety of rustic poles in my vegetable plot: As you know, I love pea plants, for their flowers and, of course for their peas, but it’s always worth taking a closer look at their clever support systems: beautiful tendrils clinging to the nearest twig. I use rather rustic poles to hold my peas up, cuttings from other parts of the garden mainly. and the peas wind their way round these as they reach for the sky. Note the bottom right picture though, where a … Continue reading Support systems

Recycling and reusingLeave a comment

Store cupboard cake

Reclaiming Paradise

Warning! There is not much about gardening in this post but there is cake. Everyone else has just discovered gardening and growing their own vegetables. I’m delighted and I really hope they stick with it. I should have spent the whole day in the garden too but it’s bitingly cold. I did sow some seeds and check up on my recently sprouted seedlings The peas have emerged in the egg boxes, but it is too cold to plant them out so I’ll leave them for another week or two. I also sowed tomatoes and cucumbers in the house and resowed … Continue reading Store cupboard cake

Cooking and eating from the garden7 Comments

Strange white flowers and a rhubarb cake

Reclaiming Paradise

Last weekend I spotted some strange white flowers among the daffodils. I looked closer and saw that they were not some exciting new spring bulbs. They were bits of plastic that had fallen off a lampshade. They had been picked up and redeployed in the garden by the transportation of a giant umbrella tree on its journey from the house out on to the patio. The reason for this mass transportation was to repot this beauty, which is nearly forty years old. I acquired it as a student and it has moved around with us ever since. Seen here from … Continue reading Strange white flowers and a rhubarb cake