The first picking this year of “Tom Thumb” peas. Dating from the 1850s, the plants grow to a height of only about 30cm (one foot), so they don’t require tedious staking or netting (which are liable to be blown over in the kind of weather we often get here in May). Young pods, cooked whole … tonight will be had with a tin of salmon and a potato/sweetcorn/mayo salad. The second sowing of Tom Thumb is coming on nicely, and I’ll do a third sowing this afternoon.
For the last two or three years, I’ve found peeling and mashing potatoes really tough when my hands are doing the arthritic thing. I rarely eat potatoes anyway – except for the occasional roast, the main use is a topping for cottage pie or fish pie. So I’ve been using Smash! Sadly, when attempting to add it to my Waitrose order this week, they’ve stopped selling it. Guiltily, I have ordered from Amazon ….
My current mealtime reading is Colin Spencer’s “British Food – an extraordinary thousand years of history”, and I’ve been rather taken by some of the descriptions of mediaeval stuff. Last week, the Guardian published a recipe (https://www.theguardian.com/…/almond-lemon-spiced…) which was influenced by the food of that time, and I clearly had to try it. OK, I used the suggested golden syrup which I had in the cupboard, rather than honey, and omitted the pine nuts (horrid things!), and made half the recipe. Yes, that will easily do 4 portions, and at around 650 calories each it’s clearly not going to be a regular addition to my repertoire, but interesting and well worth doing.
Having looked at the weather forecast yesterday, I put tigernuts in to soak overnight. Horchata de chufas is a favourite summertime drink, and a couple of glasses on the patio went down well at teatime. I don’t think that lemon-and-cardamon cake is a traditional accompaniment, but it’s what I had to hand …
The kitchen is still in a state of turmoil, due to constantly moving the table round to get at assorted bits of walls and ceiling to prepare them for painting. That meant that things like the Kenwood mixer, cake tins and so on were not accessible, but I was determined to test bake something to see how the top oven worked in practice – I don’t imaginge I’ll be using the bottom oven much!
The answer seemed to be rock cakes (made with chopped apricots rather than sultanas). I’m pretty happy with the results. Regrettably, it’s a recipe that calls for one egg, so can’t be halved … I will be munching my way through a dozen of these large objects over the next few days.
A good day yesterday. Gethyn and Sue came over for coffee here, and then we went into town. Parked in the Copenhagen Street car park, and went towards Bowns. Council workers were hosing the mud of the quay walkway – the Severn has just got back within its banks, Although there were steps up to the Browns entrance, they were blocked off. Uncertain as to whether it was open, we walked round the back, where it clearly was.
A pleasant lunch, but brought to a bit of an abrupt close when I got a phone call from the Green Party saying that a delivery driver was outside my house – where was I? I’d actually not expected the unused 45,000 sheets of paper to be collected until next week, as today is Election Day in Gorton & Denton, where our candidate stands a very good chance, and I’d expected everyone to be far too busy to deal with it. Fortunately, we’d all finished eating, so were able to scamper back to Gethyn’s car and back to Church Road. They had other plans for the afternoon, so it was a hasty goodbye.
Today, I’m not feeling great. Overcast morning, and when I woke from an early nap the rain had reurned. My back really did not appreciate it! Fire lit around 4pm, and settling in for a long evening – today Worcestershire County Council considers its budget, with a County rise of nearly 10% (the City’s bit of it is only 3%), which looks like passing. It’s the Gorton & Denton by-election, and some good pix of WGP folk who’ve gone up to help on social media. It doesn’t look as though there will actually be a BBC election special, just rolling updates on the BBC News channel, though I think that Sky are doing an actual programme. Result expected sometime around 3 or 4 … I’m guessing it may well go to recounts.
And I’m overdue for a veggie day. I must summon up the energy to make an apple pie for later, which can also do if I get peckish while waiting for the byelection result. Rather a shortage of other veggie stuff, so it looked like making a batch of chickpea fritters (frozen ratatouille to go with them), but in the end I exhaustedly settled for baked beans on mix toast. Which used up the last of the loaf, so the bread machine is currently working on a replacement. That won’t be ready until well after my usual bed-time, but I’m trying to stay up or, failing that, awake for the by-election results.
Mary Berry’s recipes are usually pretty reliable, but I had trouble with this Stollen. The dough was horribly sticky, despite my adding extra flour and kneading (in my reliable old Kenwood Chef) for ten minutes longer than suggested. I hadn’t been planing to wrap the dough round marzipan anyway, as I dislike the stuff! After rising and knocking back, the dough was clearly still not going to hold a shape, so it ended up being cooked in a large loaf tin. Which took nearly twice as long as the recipe suggested. However, it seems to taste OK!
From the batch ripened indoors after the plants had been pulled up, I’ve been having the orange plum tomatoes at lunchtime but this Black Russian is the very last of this year’s crop to ripen. Nothing now until I sow the saved seeds, which I do on Valentine’s Day in Febrary.
The nights are drawing in, the clocks change at the end of this week, and Halloween approaches. That all means it’s time to make parkin! Best if left in the tin to mature for a few days, but a sample has been removed for quailty control purposes …
Due, I think, to my inability to water them twice daily during the drought, it hasn’t been a bumper year for tomatoes. More of a steady trickle, rather than having any gluts, in fact. But yesterday saw the last picking of a ripe tomato for lunch, and today has been rescuing the few remaining fruit, cutting down the plants, and removing and sorting the plastic cover for the tomato house for the winter. The “garden waste” bin is now fairly full of that, and runner bean plants also pulled up, ready for collection early on Thursday.
