PYO slugs here July 5, 2008

Look, I’m not really complaining. It’s great that my 21-month-old is eating fruit, particularly when it’s from the garden and therefore comes with extra smug ‘Meet my child, he’s 100 per cent organic’ brownie points. It’s just a slight shame his pick-your-own technique is so thorough. It’s not the little white unripe strawberries heading towards his mouth that bother me so much as the rotting hollowed-out ones that come with their own side order of slugs. Hopefully not coming soon, ‘Meet my child, he’s in A&E.’

Still, at least I have strawberries. News came this week of an acquaintance who has left London for the whole Cornwall smallholding knit-your-own-yoghurt lifestyle thing. Anyway, the news is that she’s already boasting of having a glut of courgettes. On her first year of growing vegetables! Obviously mine haven’t even flowered yet and I now hold her in a mixture of envy/contempt.

A pudding of summeriness June 28, 2008

Never made a summer pudding before, but when you’ve got a total crop of 13 redcurrants, 2 blueberries, 6 ripe blackcurrants, five ripe raspberries and a whole ton of strawberries, it’s the obvious option. Seems like a traditional summer pudding doesn’t use strawberries at all, but I cobbled together various recipes from the internet – mainly using delia’s – and the sky didn’t fall in. 

The key is to simmer the currants and blueberries for about five minutes and only add the softer fruit – the strawberries and raspberries – a few minutes from the end. 

I’m always amazed when I follow a recipe and the result is edible. It’s also nice when growing fruit and vegetables in a garden 45×15 foot actually results in a proper dish – which turned out to be absolutely delicious of course (when are you ever going to hear a home-grown person saying otherwise?) –  as opposed to barefoot dressing-gown snacking. And I picked sweetpeas today and put them in an actual vase. Oh God, I’m turning into Martha Stewart. I’m sure at one stage I used to have a life, with a desk and a social life and lunch at Pret a Manger. I blame childcare. 

happiness is a bowl of cream (strawberries optional) June 19, 2008

Concerned reader(s) will be relieved to know that my potato pique has subsided in the face of saturated fats. In other words, I’ve just eaten a bowl of strawberries and raspberries with double cream, straight from the garden, natch. Yesterday it was rhubarb with redcurrants (I don’t need to mention the cream again, it’s obviously compulsory.) Sometimes it all seems so very worth it. Only one thing. You know when you see a strawberry and think, that looks lovely but maybe I’ll give it one more day and it will be absolutely ripe and the most perfect thing ever? How do the little black slugs, who have totally ignored them until now, know that that is the very night to drill holes in them? Uncanny.