Lift Off!

Full of chit

The snow stopped, the gales abated, heck- even our old pal the sun even made a prolonged appearance. I'm not calling the arrival of Spring yet, but it was lovely to spend the day down on the plot and we even got our (possibly over-chitted) "Rocket" first earlies into the ground. It felt good, and now you get to read about some actual gardening for once. Treats all round!

If you can't grow, borrow from nature, or; A Recipe for Wild Garlic Pesto

View down the Tyne

So the weather's still crap, have you noticed? I imagine you did, unless you're really good at ignoring these kind of things, or live in an underground compound in which case it seems odd to me that you should be looking at a blog that is nominally about gardening. Going to be growing many leeks in that subterranean bunker of yours? You want to check out one of those survivalist blogs, that'd be far more up your street. Anyway, enough rambling; despite having taken last week off work with the vague hope of finally digging over enough of the plot to plant some seed spuds out, it was too cold and wet. I'm not planting potatoes in snow. The wednesday's forecast was for flurries of white stuff, so I headed out for a cycle before it hit, with the intention of grabbing some wild garlic from the banks of the Tyne. If you can't grow, borrow.

Recipe: Mussels with N'duja and Fennel

Aftermath

It would be great to be writing about how I'd just planted out our seed potatoes or having just put up our polytunnel but the weather continues to be irredeemably gash, so that's not happening. Winter seems either unwilling or unable to leave the stage, despite the booing and jeers from all sides. It really is the tenacious, thick-skinned git of the seasonal family. I stopped being hacked off for just long enough to nip to the shops today, picking up en route one of the foods that is meant to be best at this time of year (Winter, that is); mussels.

Chewing our way round London

For those with an at least passing interest in food, London can, viewed from afar, almost seem a bit... daunting. There's just too bloody much stuff to eat. With only a few days excursion in our nation's capital the temptation is to draw up some sort of "must do" list, cramming in as much as one's available time and gastric capacity will allow.

Feeling a bit seedy...

As minds turn to what can be sown when, I've just done a full stock-take of our seed stash and, well, we've got loads. It's amazing how many packets you can rack up without even really paying attention. As well as the few orders we've put in to various companies and the leftovers from last year, they tend to accumulate via being stuck to the front of gardening magazines, not to mention the odd donation.

All fired up

The sun comes out; is spring about to be sprung?

An absolutely gorgeous day today, so with just a faint whisper of a hangover I headed down to the plot for the first decent stint in a long time. There was some actual heat in the sun and it was beautifully bright. I did briefly stick a fork in the soil, but it's still treacherously damp and cloddy, so no real digging action today, that'll have to wait. There was plenty enough tidying-up to keep me occupied for a good few hours.

Let there be white

The track to the plot today

As it hadn't rained for a good few days, we were all geared up to do a bit of digging on the plot this weekend, hoping that the soil might have become just a bit less waterlogged. However that plan was scuppered as we woke up on Saturday to find a good few inches of snow had fallen during the night; I don't remember hearing that being advertised. We took a walk down today to have a look and take waste food to add to the compost.

Restaurant Review: Alyn Williams at The Westbury, Mayfair

Trips down to London have been sadly infrequent recently. One of the good bits about a visit southward is the chance to seek out a relatively bargainous lunch at one of the zillion or so top-flight restaurants that litter the place. Newcastle is not bad for eating out, with a few genuinely excellent restaurants and eateries, but with food as most other things, Londoners are farcically spoiled. Not for us are the multi-course extravaganzas of matched-wine tasting menus (we need the train fare home...), but, especially at lunchtime, it's very possible to eat some amazing stuff without incurring a bill that runs into hundreds of pounds. On previous sorties south we've been to Texture, Pied a Terre and Arbutus, all of which were great in different ways. This time out, I had seen some good reviews of Alyn Williams' newish restaurant in the Mayfair-situated Westbury Hotel, so off we schlepped to check it out.

Getting back into it...

It has been almost a month since we've done anything even vaguely allotment-related, which, clearly, simply won't do. In fairness, the weather during that period has pretty much all been on a scale from mildly repellent to cataclysmically shit, so there hasn't really been much to do. Better to neglect now than in the middle of summer when things are really happening. Yes, that's it; we've been getting our neglecting in at the most appropriate time.

Bit of a sausage-fest in here...

On the way to sausage heaven, pretending to drive the train and loving it

One doesn't, as a rule, get invited to an afternoon of sausage making very often, so it'd be churlish to turn it down when it does happen, and so I didn't. A bit of background: a friend, Mark, who does a lot of shooting of game, had started making sausages from the resultant carcasses. Having recently upgraded from a manual sausage maker to an electric version, he invited me and another friend, Neil, round to have a bash at putting some flavourings and seasonings together. I might have known it was going to be a good day when, despite getting on at Monument, I managed to snare the only really good seat on the Metro. That never happens.

A meagre but mealworthy midwinter harvest

A couple of years ago, before we got ourselves the allotment, the idea that it would be possible to be feeding ourselves from veg harvested at this time of year would've seemed pretty daft. I have vague memories of eating autumn-harvested kale from the garden when I was a kid, but that would be about it; Dad was, for the most part, a summer gardener only and as far as I knew, winter was for staying inside, and not for pulling up leeks

Happy New Year!

Impressive church. Drunken loutishness not pictured.

Belated good tidings; hope you had a great festive period and that the near year has kicked off in a style not too dissimilar to that which you would have chosen for it. We had excellent Christmasses. Plural? Why yes; you see Kasia's folks are Polish, and so for the them Christmas Eve is the big thing, and so she was at home celebrating that while I headed off home to Scotland to imbibe outlandish quantities of various comestibles and accompanying libations with my clan. Just when I had started to feel healthy-ish again, it was down to Lincoln for a stag do. Lincoln is a lovely city and it was good to have a chance to wander round and see the Cathedral and old town before the staggish unpleasantness kicked off, booze and matching shirts to the fore...

Festive Pumpkin Chutney

Chutney decanting, in moody black and white.

As I'm tapping this out, the windows in our flat are steamed up and the place is full of the smell of spices and sugar; that's right, we've been on the chutney again. We have been meaning to make up a batch to give jars of as part of Christmas presents, using one of the pumpkins that we harvested back at the end of September.

Sunny Sunday stroll to the plot

Inspecting the fence

A gorgeous Sunday today, so despite not really planning to do any great amount of work we headed down the plot to take compost own and check on the fence progress. Happily, Tom has been busy and it's nearly done. Looks great, just makes the rest of the plot look a bit shabby by comparison.

We planted a few daffodil bulbs that had been hanging around.

Restaurant Review: Mannaza, Newcastle

The thrill of the grill, or some such other rubbish pun

What’s all this then? I thought this was a blog about an allotment? Yes, well, so did I, but seeing as we eat out a reasonable amount and I do enjoy prattling on about restaurants I thought I’d put up some resultant thoughts about where we’ve been. Moreover, we probably don’t go to enough restaurants to warrant a blog just for writing about them, and I couldn’t think of a name for a North East based restaurant blog that appealed enough anyway. “Beyond the Stottie” was as close as I got. Awful, eh?

Weird and wonderful plants under threat

Bird of Paradise plant

Some less than happy news from the horticultural world: I nipped from having a look at the fine construction job being done on our fence yesterday to a meeting at Moorbank Botanical Gardens which is just round the corner from our allotments. Newcastle University has decided not to renew the lease on the Gardens which has placed their future in jeopardy. You can read a piece about it on Sky Tyne and Wear here, and another in the Chronicle about the meeting here. I attended a session about marketing and fundraising ideas in a future apart from the University and then had a walk round the Gardens to have a look at some of the amazing and interesting plants they house.

Causing o' fence!

Our allotment's front door. No tipping, alright?

Not much going on in terms of gardening for us this weekend. We're waiting for onions and garlic to sprout, there's some tidying up to be getting on with, but not enough for it to seem worthwhile to go out and get wet and cold in weather like that which we've had this weekend. However, don't think for a minute that the allotment excitement stops with the gardening, no sir. Kasia took a wander down on Saturday and - drumroll - our new fence has started to go up!

Last of the turds, and the smallest vineyard in the world

Ooo, what a lovely day!

Well, the manure pile is no more. About this time last year we took delivery of four tonnes of the stuff, and we've been slowly adding it to newly dug-over patches ever since. The last of it went on today. All sections of the plot , apart from a few bits that still need tidying, are either now planted with something, or covered, awaiting the spring, which is quite smug-inducing.

Recipe: Chinese Style Knackered Sweetcorn Soup

Rescued corn

Since we harvested the underdeveloped cobs of corn  from our sweetcorn plants nearly a month ago, they've sat in a cupboard awaiting instruction. The need to do something with them became a bit more urgent yesterday when I noticed fluffy growths of mould growing over some of the cobs. Most of the cobs were retrievable; the smallest ones were like baby corn and I chopped the whole things up. I stripped the corn off the larger ones, it came away quite easily. If you don't have any knackered old sweetcorn for this recipe, I'm sure fresh stuff would be just as good...

Parsnip harvest, and help from a mercenary digmaster

The leaf-strewn path to the patch

A fine day followed a soggy evening in Newcastle yesterday, making for good conditions in which to continue the slow work of tidying up and preparing the ground for next year's planting. Except that actually, the work done yesterday wasn't so slow at all, thanks to the phenomenal digging abilities of Kasia's mum, who visited to help us out/ put us to shame. All the remaining un-manured sections of the plot, both on our side and Toni's were dug over and most of the final dregs of the manure we acquired last year were spread over them. Today we'll get them covered up to suppress the weeds until spring.