The last couple of weeks have been very like the last couple of months, I worked, I slept, I even occasionally left the house! But it’s hard to get too excited about much, I don’t think I’m unusual and actually compared to a couple of people I know, I’m in a very good space. As everything starts to open up and there’s worry about the Indian variant and what that could do to the opening up plans, we’re in a constant state of ‘always winter and never Christmas’.
It’s wearing and natural for me to feel worn through even though, as I keep saying, I’m quite well and feeling pretty ok.
Last week, I broke through a bit from the ‘languishing’, I got loads of good work done, getting through stuff that had been hanging around not getting finished, I’m not entirely out of the weeds of work yet but it’s nice to get things under control.
This weekend Ma and I abandoned the allotment to the rainy weather and I went to hers for Saturday morning breakfast. Ma doesn’t have a large coffee pot like I do and maternal sacrifice does not extend to having less than a three cups of coffee, so I had to have the little cafetière!
We went shopping for Christmas presents because I didn’t finish buying the nephews presents when family Christmas got cancelled last year. It’ll be lovely to see them over the weekend and our family’s ‘Christmas in May’ will be watching the Champions League final to see if Chelsea can overcome their very poor run of the last couple of weeks and beat Man City, it’s unlikely especially as I have Chelsea and Ben has Man City and I don’t think I’ve ever yet won a bet against my brother.
Other plans for this week, include lunch with Sue on Tuesday for her birthday, making carrot cake for the weekend, putting out the tomatoes in the cloche at the plot and giving the flat a deeper clean than normal, mostly to the floors! The usual stuff.
Why We Speak More Weirdly at Home. This is lovely and so true. In our family we have nicknames and lots of weird words and saying. For example, I’ll answer to my actual name and two others. My brother is often Bungy, we call my sister in law ‘Lu’, we had thought that it was a nickname but it was about a year into knowing in her we realised that my brother invented it. In fact nicknames are our thing, I call my goddaughter “Tabs” but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person that does, Ma and I talk about ‘the boy’ which often means Ben but sometimes the youngest nephew. At Easter, we eat ‘cross H buns’ because I couldn’t get the sequence of words and say Hot Cross Buns. There are others but they are all peculiar to our family and I bet you have them too.
One of the things I’ve picked up this year is to have a week every month when I don’t grocery shop, usually the week before the I’m paid.
It’s a good habit to keep me acquainted with everything that’s in the fridge, freezer and cupboards and avoid waste. It also keeps me more creative and flexible in my cooking.
These were the contents of the fridge on Friday afternoon. Usually I would do a scan of the fridge, freezer and cupboards before I went shopping. It’s the second week of the Oddbox and I think it’s working out pretty well (although I’m eating a lot more apples than usual!)
Produce
The produce was a bag of salad leaves, a bag of spinach, some cabbage, two oranges, two and a half lemons, two limes, two very geriatric pears, five frozen by the fridge carrots, 6 nectarines and 10 apples.
The fridge has lots of jars of things, there’s pickle, cornichions, plum and raspberry puree, rhubarb compote, green tomato chutney, cocktail cherries, fat, leftover butter parmesan sauce (made for globe artichokes), blackberry jam, kefir grains, two jars of yoghurt whey, pesto, yoghurt, eggs, cheese and two bottles of Purdeys*), not pictured is the milk, ketchup, mustards, anchovies, coffee, lemon juice and tomato puree in the door!
I also had onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, flour, beans, pasta and so on (at this point I can hear my mother saying I have too much food in the cupboards – she’s not wrong but all of it is stuff I use so I regret nothing), as I run out of things, I chalk them up on the board in the kitchen, so that’s what I didn’t have or was running low on. I’m not going to inflict the contents of the freezer on you, it’s in dire need of defrosting. But a quick rundown, shows that I have about 6 pots of pesto, frozen veg (broccoli, peas, sweetcorn and spinach), Sunday breakfast packs (I buy bacon, chipolatas and black pudding and break them down into one person portions) for other meat there were 6 sausages, a pork shoulder, a pack of beef, a pork chop and two chicken legs (all Dorset meats) and some damsons that are going to be turned into gin. There was also two portions of soup, two portions of Hot Stew and two person size pasta bake which is what happens when I make too much, they go into the freezer as a sort of homemade ready meal!
Aside from the usual wine chillers, ice, and ice packs for my head, the freezer also contains random ingredient stuff – a bag of chicken bones and veg scraps for stock, a bag of parmesan rinds for soup, a bag of stale bread that will make bread pudding at some point and some frozen blocks of herbs). It’s where food languishes waiting for me to eat it!
On Friday night, I used the butter parmesan sauce and the milk to make a white sauce for macaroni cheese which I ate with the salad leaves (yes all of them, a bag of salad leaves is one portion)
Saturday morning I made soda bread to have with the bacon, sausage, black pudding (from the freezer) and poached eggs that Ma and I had for breakfast. We didn’t have lunch but dinner was sausages, baked potatoes and peas (hurrah for a very old fashioned 70’s tea!)
On Sunday, I had toast and jam for breakfast, a sausage sandwich for lunch and potatoes for dinner. (It was not my day for good or healthy eating).
I also used some of my courgettes to make a courgette cake. I used this recipe but subbed mixed fruit for the raisins and walnuts
Lunch on Monday and Tuesday was soup from the freezer and Monday night dinner was also a freezer meal, pasta vegetable bake with roasted frozen broccoli.
Tuesday night was Hot Stew (also from the freezer) with rice and peas.
On Wednesday, I made hummus and ate that with toast, carrots and cornichion for lunch.
Wednesday night dinner was risotto-ish. I had leftover rice from Tuesday with half a bag of the spinach, the cabbage, onions and pesto. It tasted great but the joy of eating alone is that sometimes, if it doesn’t look great, I don’t get negative feedback from other diners….
Today, I will eat the crisp and yoghurt for breakfast, hummus for lunch and baked sweet potatoes with black bean and sweetcorn taco filling Foodie with Family, which I use a lot. I’ll use salsa I made in the summer too so a win for using up preserves.
On Friday, breakfast and lunch will be the same. I have a friend coming over for dinner, which will be caramelised onion and spinach pizza and I promised her rhubarb crumble!
The fridge is much emptier than it was last Friday and there are things I need to buy tomorrow, milk for yoghurt, mozzarrella, the list of things on the board, more eggs, some veg for Saturday and Sunday because my new Oddbox doesn’t arrive until late Sunday night and I’ll have used all of it except the apples.
Maybe for next week, I’ll show you how I used the apples and the leftover taco filling!
Everything is looking good but I also feel like everything is behind and I’m not too worried about it.
Over the bank holiday Ma and I will sort out compost and wood and I’m going to sow the squashes direct in the first week of June which is about the same time as I’ll put the tomatoes out. Yes, it’s late but we’re adapting to conditions!
This week, we weeded, we topped up the potato pots, we made another plan for the top half, with the hope being that by next spring we’ll be done with structure, although I’m determined that by the time I’m 60 there will be a greenhouse/polytunnel of some description!
The rhubarb is doing well, we picked over 3 kilos without making that much of a dent in the size of it.
The peonies flowered.
Peony
The magpies visited.
Magpie
And there are bluebells, so I’m happy with how we’re going given the circumstances.
I took some time off because I was in a slump (yes they are coming more frequently, I’m perimenopausal and look at the state of the world, of course it’s harder to be cheerful and motivated!) and when that happens, I have to concentrate on work and home because those things are more important.
The world is still a mess, and on fire in Gaza. (side note, I believe that Israel has a right to exist, I don’t like or agree with Hamas. However, Israel is treating the Palestinians as sub human, if you treat people like rabid dogs, that’s how they’ll act. They are trapped in Gaza and the West Bank, in occupied Jerusalem (that’s the east of the city) they are basically having their homes stolen from them. It’s been called apartheid, but to me it looks more like Germany about 1938 and I don’t say that lightly. But on Monday the news said that 5 Israelis and 35 Palestinians (including 9 children) had been killed. The Today Programme spoke to two women, one in Palestinian and one Israeli, I was struck by the Israeli woman saying that the body count was wrong, six people had died. I thought that would have put the body count up to 41 not six. Maybe she didn’t know, maybe the Palestinian deaths aren’t reported in Israeli media, but isn’t that the problem?
Because the allotment isn’t producing a lot at the moment (we’re getting rhubarb and not much else) I decided to try Oddbox. Yes, it’s part of my drive to be a bit more sustainable because this produce would be thrown out otherwise.
I chose the £19.99 large fruit and veg box to be delivered every two weeks, because it had more variety in it and I eat a lot of produce, especially as I’m not eating meat Monday to Friday. The first order was £10 off and Oddbox does run a refer a friend scheme (https://mention-me.com/m/ol/nn2gg-nicola-dempsey. This is my link if it’s something that interests you). You can change your delivery frequency and the size of the box anytime, I can see that when the allotment gets going I might switch to the small box or the fruit booster box.
The large box
I’ve been trying over the last year to buy British seasonal produce, so I have to admit it was a shock to have a box with tomatoes, courgettes, passion fruit and mangoes in it! But it’s been interesting to have to plan around the contents of the box and not plan and then shop! I chose a Large fruit and veg box every two weeks, because it had more variety in it and I eat a lot of produce, especially as I’m not eating meat Monday to Friday. I do know that for many of my friends with children this way of doing things has been difficult because they don’t have the time to plan, however, Oddbox do send you an email the week before with the expected list of what’s in the box and I was impressed that compared to another box scheme more of the produce was local (i.e British) although yes the apples and clementines were little!
You can exclude up to three things and you can change that every week but I thought it would be more interesting to take was I was given and go from there. Which meant potatoes. Really like potatoes but don’t often buy them, there is a certain time of the year on the plot when I eat a lot of potato salad and I love mashed potatoes, but I’m not my dad and I don’t need them with every meal! So I went looking for a recipe and stumbled on this, as luck would have it, I had sweet potatoes in the box as well so it was a win.
As usual, I made a small change, and used spring onion tops instead of chives (I really need to replant some chives on the plot but these spring onions over wintered in one of the beds and I’m going to make that something I do for next winter!) and my oven still runs too hot so it’s maybe a little darker than a perfect quiche would be.
Next time I will use the food processor to grate the potatoes and I might use more paprika in the crust, but it was perfect with a salad for dinner and eating the leftovers for lunch!
On Saturday, despite some disappointments (lack of wood and compost) we were rearing and ready to get to the plot. Then Mum’s knee went out from under her, it’s a thing, it’s happened before and she was not happy about it.
Apple blossom
So new plan. I left her in the street to hobble home and went to the plot. Well not quite. I did leave her to go to the plot, so I could dump the contents of the bokashi bin into the compost and pick some rhubarb! Then I went back to help her walk home, Ma has a pretty high pain tolerance so if she’s telling us she’s in pain and can’t walk, it’s really bad. We got home, iced the knee and had a nice quiet Saturday.
Bulb bed and the rhubarb
So the next morning, I left the house when Ma went home and headed to the plot. I watered everything and re-upped the bird feeders. My plan was to strim which I started and then the strimmer stopped working. It’s an easy fix I have a replacement bit at home! So I tidied up, weeded the rhubarb and gooseberries, removed the raspberries from where they aren’t supposed to be (I’m beginning to think that they are actually triffids!), did a bit of path weeding and planted the phlox Ma bought last week.
At home, I potted on the tomatoes, echinacea and basil.
Spring view
We are pretty behind where I intended to be at this point. The weather is weird, it’s really still to cold for the summer plants and there is a dearth of compost and wood so I can’t really get on with building the other beds or filling the ones that are already built and to be honest, I’m not too worried. If I end up direct sowing the squash plants, at the end of the month when I do the french beans and cucumbers, then I do. It might mean that we don’t have as long to eat summer squash or as many winter squash as I’d like but as Ma keeps pointing out (annoyingly), we aren’t subsistence farmers, this isn’t the only food we have access to and it’s not our livelihood. We’ll be disappointed but it really won’t kill us and we’ll have next year to get it right. Something will grow.
On the plot right now, there are berries on the gooseberries and blackcurrant bushes, the rhubarb is abundant, there are broad beans and peas coming up, the beetroot and carrots are beginning to show, as are the potatoes, the garlic, onions and shallots are all doing ok and there is blossom on the plum and apple trees, and the blueberry bushes. There are even flowers on the strawberry plants. It might not be as generous as last year but it’ll give us something.
Tiny blackcurrant
One of the areas of the plot I’m most proud of is the pond and rose garden. I’m ok at growing food but I’m not that great with flowers, although I’m trying to work on that to help the pollinators. This area of the plot, I made up all by myself, I moved rose bushes and plants and dug a pond and hoped for the best. And it’s not perfect but I think it’s looking pretty good.
Pond and rose garden
I think it’s maturing nicely with it’s ‘chuck it all in’ design and I’m looking forward to seeing how it fills out.
Last year we bought a bunch of bulbs and because the soil was so dry and hard to dig into, ended up throwing bulbs into the bed near the plum tree, we’ve designated that bed the bulb bed and we have narcissi, daffodils, crocuses and tulips in there. I think there are also irises in that bed that we are waiting on and this mystery (in that I can’t remember what it called) allium. I. moved some of the white tulips into this bed and I’ll also move the other tulips on the plot into the bed too. There is no planning in this bed either but I’m really fond of it’s chaos, especially as the californian poppies go mad in that bed!
It’s been mentioned a couple of times but I’m on a quest to reduce my rubbish, I’ve switched to soap but one of the places that I can make a change with is moisturiser and hand cream. I have really dry skin and my use of both things is high.
Sarah at Sustainable Cooks, has a recipe for hard lotion bars, which she swears by and she’s never steered me wrong before! I was prepared to give it a go but I’m not that keen on coconut oil, I’ve used it before but it’s not my favourite. So I used the same basic recipe but subbed in cocoa butter. I’ve also done another replacing the coconut oil with shea butter and both work fine.
The bars work well and I have an old mint tin that I’m using for storing it and it works really well. It’s also worth noting that you don’t need a fancy mould, I had one and thought that it would work really well if I was making them for presents but a silicone muffin cup would work as well (actually I have a silicone madeleine mould which I think would be perfect for hand lotion bars!)
This is a case where I’m reducing not giving up entirely, I still love my Altruist moisturiser, it’s a brilliant all in one cream that works for body, hands and feet, so while I have these bars for body and hands, I will continue to use it for my feet, but it’s using maybe three tubes a year versus more than 24 as I go through about 12 tubes of hand cream a year and about the same of moisturiser. Like I said, I’m not aiming for perfect but in this instance, less is more!
I have today off work because I wanted to have a long, long weekend. Right this minute, I’m mooching around the kitchen finishing my coffee. Then I’m going to wash up the breakfast things, do some house stuff and do weekend things I usually do on Sunday. Then come Sunday, I can read books…
This is a sort of what I ate but only the really good stand out stuff of the last week or so.
Roasted veg and mozzarella (or why I will never be a vegan). An easy throw it in the oven lunch (carrot, cauliflower, sqaush, onion and sweet potato), if I’d had salad leaves, I’d have thrown them in as well but we can’t have everything..
Hot Stew. This in very adaptable, I need to can some more black beans and chickpeas, this used a 10 bean mix and the last jar of chickpeas. The dumplings were perfect, fluffy balls of gorgeousness.
Pain au Raisin. Saturday morning breakfast
Roasted Veg Soup. Using the same mix of veg as above, added to stock with some red lentils. Soup is an easy way of using up vegetables and an easy lunch.
Chard and Goats Cheese Pasties. When we pulled up all the chard a while back, I made two batches of these, I made the pasties a bit smaller and froze them so that Ma could have some. In future, I’m going to do it this way all the time, the bake really well from frozen and it’s always good to have something like this for quick, hands off lunches at home or eventually for office packed lunches.
Nic Dempsey 