Garden Recovery

Garden Recovery

It’s that time of year again, the time when the garden is looking just a little bit jaded. The vigorous growth of early summer is past, and the pace has begun to slow. 

Post-holiday garden recovery mode is now complete, the grass has all been cut, and our few hedges have been trimmed, though not the big yew tree yet - as that’s a mammoth task!  In the vegetable garden, the early peas have now been picked and the old forlorn plants removed and composted.  Their old silvery stems and leaves looked tired following weeks of yielding peas for the family.  It’s always a shame to remove vegetables from the beds but I now have a patch ready for some late summer fast growing salad crops.

The red onions have also been harvested and hung to dry in the sun, ready for winter storage.  I love stringing them and storing them in the kitchen, until they are needed.  The gourds, pumpkins and squashes have all started to romp around the garden, weaving their way through the dahlias, entwining themselves quite nicely wherever they go.  This year I’ve grown spaghetti squash for the first time; an interesting shape which could well be a real talking point! 

I’ve erected trellising to encourage the pumpkins (also known as cucurbita) to further explore and to create height; the trellises also enable air to circulate beneath them and makes it far easier to spot the swelling fruit and to keep an eye on them. 

The sunflowers loved the warmth and the rain last week, and have now reached some dizzy heights.  They have yet to be measured, but I recon the tallest is now well in excess of 7ft, maybe even 8! My tiny patch of eight or so sunflowers is hardly competition for the golden fields of mid France, but I’m content with my few strikingly tall yellow faces! 

Other crops doing well right now are the broad beans, the Swiss chard (great in a vegetable stir fry) and purple French beans (similar to the green variety - just purple in colour). 

The Borlotti beans are ready, although I’ll be drying these to use in stews later in the year.  They have a creamy flavour and a meaty texture, great for hearty soup as the weather gets colder in a few months’ time.  In the meantime we can make the most of the salad crops, especially the tomatoes, lettuce and the very versatile Swiss Chard.  The beetroot is coming on nicely, and I can’t wait to roast some of the big ones to enjoy with plenty of salt and pepper alongside a summer salad, or even as a side with a roast dinner!

I love this time of year; the garden may not be at it’s very best and the weeds like to make their presence known, but supper is always provided, very simple and very fresh & it doesn't get better that. Happy days!

Leeks by Torchlight!

The vegetable garden is now virtually empty, so the pantry or store cupboard is regularly raided, and baking cakes and breads have become the norm at The Pumpkin Patch.  Before Christmas, gingerbread cookies and shortbread were a hit, easy to make, easily made into all sorts of seasonal shapes & virtually impossible to get wrong yet really tasty. 

I mentioned the garden being empty, it is empty-ish, but not quite. We made 'Cawl' last week, and totally forgot to buy leeks, I was so disappointed. Cawl just isn't cawl without leeks. Anyway, somehow it suddenly dawned on me that I had a whole patch of the garden dedicated to leeks and I'd hardly harvested any of them. With all the recent rain, wind and drizzle, i'd totally forgotten about them. So torch in hand, wellies on, coat over apron, I ventured out into the black night to pick a few leeks! The cawl was great, just what the doctor ordered during the coldest week of the year to date, and made all the more special for the effort made to get the ingredients.

New Year's 'Lunch' resolution

Just a week into 2015 and no doubt that despite our best efforts and intentions, some of our new year's resolutions have already been forgotten about. Making serious changes to our lives can be difficult, it really does take effort.  Many of us will have decided to make food related changes. Some will wish to loose weight, others may wish to simply cut down on fat, fizzy drinks, sweets, crisps or to reduce alcohol consumption, or even to increase their water intake. 

One easy way to improve our health without really trying, is to change our lunch habits! Sounds a bit obvious but most of us don't give a lot of thought to what they have for lunch. By the time lunch time comes around we are usually starving, and consequently either opt for the same, safe repetition of yesterday's lunch menu, whatever that may be, or we grab the first thing available. Obviously, we have special days when we meet friends, have to attend pre organised lunches/ lunch meetings, but on normal, run of the mill days we rarely divert from the comfort of our regular lunch routine. 

Children at primary school have very little choice, assuming they take advantage of Carmarthenshire's school meals which are conscientiously planned to offer children a tasty nutritionally balanced meal, offering meals containing carbs, protein, dairy etc and also giving our youngsters adequate energy (calories) needed to see them 'till tea time.

At secondary school, children have a little more choice made available to them, and of course, by the time our children get to twelve years and older, they really do have their own particular preferences and favourite foods. Trying to get a teenager to make the healthy option and to opt for a tuna salad over a pizza, is never going to be easy! The situation is made even more complex when you consider the differing nutritional needs of the thousand or so children at the school. The needs of the rugby firsts team, the sprinter, the ballet dancer, the actor, musician, the child with a high metabolic rate or the under active thyroid....the list goes on, and it's quite a challenge. Even within large family it can be quite a task to meet the nutritional needs of the energetic, the not so sporty, the weight lifter, rugby player, and those with a large appetite and those that rarely feel hungry, and yet each of them fall within the realms of 'normal'.

For me, the day passes quickly, lunch time often passes and it's school pick up time before I get my lunch, this is not ideal. For others, lunchtime is the highlight of the day. Escaping from the workplace to indulge in a cuppa and a panini, a baguette, a sandwich, a bowl of soup or even a sit down, two or three course meal at the office canteen with friend and colleagues is a treat, not to be missed, in the middle of the day.  

Whether you buy or prepare your own lunch box, it's important for our health (and our waistline!) that we take care to consider what we eat for our lunch. It goes without saying that a variation is key! It keeps us interested in our food as well as providing us a variety of different vitamins and minerals from the range of foods. Choosing different lunches also gives us the opportunity to balance high energy (the high calorie) luxury lunches with lower energy, high fibre foods such as a simple soup or salad. If you opt for the same sandwich on a regular basis,  and it happens to be the deluxe, highly calorific, mayonnaise laden, fatty option, then you'll soon see those pounds go on. The unfortunate thing is, you still go home thinking and exclaiming that 'I just had a quick sandwich for lunch'. 

Even if you haven't made any New Years resolutions this year,  make a decision to take lunch seriously.  If you've never considered it before, try making your own lunch and taking it with you a few times each week. Treat a bought lunch as a luxury, whatever the price. Make soups and bean or pasta salads, healthy sandwiches, add plenty of fruit and enjoy a lighter 2015. 

The Christmas Cake

The Christmas Cake

Stir- up Sunday has been and gone, but if you like many others didn’t manage to get stirring over the weekend, there’s still time! 

This week has been Christmas cake week at the Pumpkin Patch! Many of the regulars at the Pumpkin Patch have now weighed out, chopped and peeled, measured and stirred up a Christmas cake. 

It’s not as difficult or as time consuming as you may think. It does take a little organisation to ensure that you have all the ingredients, but from then on it’s prety straight forward. 

Usually, I’m one for throwing in a bit of this and a bit of that, and of not paying much attention to recipes. In making a christmas cake however, a little attention to detail is required. Leave out a few vital ingredients and your cake may become a door stop or just outright miserable!

I always recommend that you weigh everything out in advance, that way as you work your way through the recipe, nothing is left out or forgotten. Once the ingredients are weighed, you can methodically set about making the cake, but don’t forget to soak the dried fruit in a little brandy overnight. 

If you don’t want to use brandy, soak your dried fruit in some cold tea! Sound odd, but a traditional Welsh ‘barabrith' calls for just that - cold tea. It works well and adds plenty of moisture back into the dried fruit, which in turn makes a lovely moist cake. If you forget to soak the fruit, the fruit will swell and absorb the moisture from your cake, and leave the cake dry and crumbly.

Mix the cake early enough in the day, or early evening, as it takes up to four hours to cook! So, if you pop it in the oven at 9pm, you’re in for a late night!

I use a stand mixer, but the children in my classes don’t.  A large bowl and strong wooden spoon works well, combined with a bit of muscle power, and a lot of hard work!  To make life easier, line a cake tin with lining paper or grease proof paper before you start mixing, that way the awkward fiddly bit is out of the way. Simply use a pastry brush and a small bowl full of oil to brush inside the tin before you place the paper inside, this keeps the lining paper in place and makes the job considerably easier.  

Once the cake mixture is in the tin, trim the lining paper to the height of the tin and cover the top with more paper. For the past few years I’ve used foil baked parchment paper available in supermarkets to cover the top, it does the job, and stays in place whilst cooking. Why cover the top? Well, it prevents the cake from drying out and also stops the top from browning too much during the long cooking time. Keep the oven to a cool 140°C and just check it after about 3 ½ hours, just in case!

This is a lovely easy recipe for a dark moist, fruity cake.  When it’s cooled, wrap it in more greaseproof paper and foil or keep it in an air tight tin.  Feed it a little brandy on a regular basis for a boozy cake, and decorate it with candied fruit and apricot jam, or with traditional marzipan and icing. Good luck and have fun. 

If you don’t think you’ll find the time to get baking this year, don’t worry send one of the children along to the Pumpkin Patch Christmas Make & Bake sessions! 

We’ll have lots of fun, and you’ll have some Christmas treats :)

It's stir-up Sunday

It’s Stir-up Sunday!

I only became aware of stir up Sunday sometime during the last few years. I usually made my Christmas cake whenever I found the time, and it was inevitably during the last few weeks in the run up to Christmas. I was usually found icing it late on Christmas Eve afternoon! 

I was totally oblivious to any traditions or unwritten rules relating to the custom of pudding, cake and mince meat making. Obviously, for those who make and bake to provide cakes for friends and family, they need to be a little more organised than I used to be. For years, I made one Christmas cake per annum, and it was us, for the family to enjoy on Christmas Day and during the days that followed. It was fun to purchase the ingredients and to dedicate an evening to weighing out and soaking the dry ingredients, then to mixing the vast quantities of butter and sugar, flour, fruit and spices. The annual Christmas cake bake would, and still does, fill the house with the real aroma of the festive season.  

This Sunday - the 23rd, is ‘stir-up’ Sunday, the last Sunday before advent begins. It become popular during victorian times, but it does actually serve as an useful reminder that it’s time to get busy in the kitchen and to begin the festive baking. If you’re keen to get mixing this Sunday, making your own mincemeat is a great start, and believe me, it really isn’t difficult. 

Obviously, you can pop to the shops and buy a jar of mince meat, but you won’t beat the flavour of the home made version, and it’s a lot more fun!

The advantage of starting now, is that the fruit and spices in the mince meat, cake or pudding will have time mingle and to get to know each other  in the run up to Christmas! This makes for a much richer and fuller flavour. It also means you have more time to get on with other things like school plays, concerts, carol services and shopping as the Christmas season progresses.

To make your own mince meat, mix all your favourite dried fruity flavours together for your perfect mix. Use currants, raisins, sultanas, cranberries, dates, and prunes. To make it more exotic, and less traditional try using mango and pineapple, papaya and dried apple for an alternative flavour. To about ½ kilo of dried fruit, you can add a handful of chopped walnuts, hazelnuts or almonds, then add some citrus flavours like orange and lemon juice and zest. 

To bulk up the mix, add 2 chopped apples, and then spice it up with 2 teaspoons of mixed spice and a glass of brandy, port or another favourite tipple. Sweeten with brown sugar (150-200g ish!) and add about 100g suet for a traditional mince meat. Suet is now widely available in the supermarket in both traditional and vegetarian forms, so this shouldn’t be a problem. 

The children can take over at this point, pop the kettle on and relax, make a cup of tea, and allow the children to do the stirring!! The flavours simply need to mix.

All you need to do now, is to jar this up into sterilised jars ready for the Christmas pies. If you’ve made too much, use pretty labels and ribbon and give them away to very lucky friends and family as little pre-Christmas gifts, or take it one stop further, and add flour, more spices and eggs and turn the remainder into a Christmas Pud. Job done, well done!