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.

Planting out, feeling grim

Long shadows as the mercury sinks

We staggered down to the plot on Sunday after an evening of making very generous and fulsome tributes at the temple of Bacchus, feeling none too great. This has, at least for me, become a bit of a regular weekenderly routine. The existential woe and grim foreboding that comes with any hangover worthy of the name is definitely ameliorated slightly by spending time around food that you have grown yourself.

Snow melts and alliums in!

Splitting cloves

We had been starting to fret about our order of over-wintering onions and garlic arriving from Thompson and Morgan, thinking that with the nights darkening and the clocks about to go back, time was running out to  get the blighters in the ground. I think in television they call this kind of thing "jeopardy". Just when I was getting ready to ask to cancel the order, up they turned; cue much punching of the air and "yeeha"-ing. Well not quite, but I was chuffed...

Rabbit Rillettes Recipe

Ok, so strictly speaking this recipe has nothing to do with our allotment, but what the hey, it tastes amazing and is dead easy to make so I thought I'd write it up. If you don't want to know about something delicious to do with a rabbit, you need read no further!

The match at the patch

Smoke on the allotment. Which is almost, but not quite, a Deep Purple lyric.

We've been blessed (figuratively speaking; I'm not thanking any particular deity for this. I don't have much time for those guys) with blue skies and even a bit of warmth over the weekend which has made pottering around on the plot very pleasant. 

My parents were passing through yesterday, and in exchange for little more than some genuine appreciation my Dad brought a chainsaw over to hack up some knackered old planks that weren't good for anything much more than burning.

Wrong-Cabbage Kimchi Recipe

Cabbage; prepare to be Kimchi'd

In this first year of growing stuff on our plot, we've tended not to do much to our veg in the kitchen; everything has been cooked very simply, probably because we're still getting used to actually having home-grown veg around and treat it as a bit of a luxury. However nice fresh cabbage, cooked in just some butter and a bit of stock, is though, we were probably a bit cabbaged out but still left with a whopper in the fridge.

We'd recently had a couple of great Korean meals at Mannaza in Newastle, where we'd eaten Kimchi for the first time.

Emergency Chutney Recipe

Ingredients!

Having spent a particularly fine night in the Lake District (no space to chat about here, this isn't a travel blog!), we got home yesterday to find that all was not well with the green tomatoes I had salvaged from Toni's discarded plants. A few looked like they were trying to ripen a bit, but a good number of them had developed some scabby bits on the exterior and some had gone full blown mouldy. They had only been sat on a windowsill for two days, so all this seemed a bit odd, if not quite distressing. Clearly the change in scenery had not been to their taste.

A Pit Fit for a Fig

That's not some daft tongue-twister I just made up for a laugh (I've got better things to do, just about), but a roundabout description of what we've been up to today. We've started buying Kitchen Garden magazine, after quite excitedly finding a copy in Carlisle Tesco. Not really having thought that magazines solely dedicated to growing food existed (not that there's any reason why they shouldn't of course) it brightened up an otherwise dull train ride to find a copy. I should point out here that contrary to popular belief, excitement can be found in Carlisle Tesco, provided you find gardening magazines exciting. Rock and roll...

Ripening Fruit, and Ripe Cheese in the Shed

In the sun, yesterday.

With it having been about a week since we'd been down the plot, it was great to get down yesterday on a day off to get some bits and bobs done. Having to go to work every day really cuts down your allotment time! There is a very autumnal feel on the plot now, with so many things having been harvested, and others, such as courgettes, coming to the end of their tenure. We've got quite a few empty spaces now. Those that haven't been treated to any manure since we've been on the plot are, when clear, going to get a good dose of rotted turd before being covered for the winter. Lucky them.

After the Deluge, part deux

Knacked

It has been another week of treacherous weather in the North East. While floods in June and August came as a result of biblical, if brief, downpours, this time it was an unspectacularly relentless spell of precipitation over 48 hours that did the damage. You've got to feel for the poor folks of Morpeth, some of whom are flooded for the second time in four years. In Newcastle, things weren't quite so bad, although some fairly serious gusts on Monday resulted in the town being littered with the skeletal remains of discarded brollies that just weren't up to the job. 

Talking about not being up to the job, it looks like what's left of our fence has finally shrugged it's shoulders and given up.