Size Isn't Everything!

I dug up another two magnificent specimens of my Bulgarian Giant Leeks for Sunday lunch yesterday. Although spectacular to look at, and seemed to resist an attack of leek moth, I have to report, dear readers, that in my humble opinion the taste isn't up to much I'm afraid. I think that many giant-type vegetables - elephant garlic, giant pumpkins for instance, don't tend to compete on the taste front. The fresh Brussels Sprouts from Lincolnshire, however, were spectacular! Has anyone noticed a plague of little grey plastic items on their soil recently? It really annoys me that for months, even years after bonfire night I am picking these up out of my soil. I presume they are an integral part of a rocket, perhaps holding different colours, propellant chemicals etc. They fall to earth when a firework explodes and I suppose the manufacturers don't give a thought to the environment.

A very small plus point however... I collect up all these nice strong wooden sticks and use them as plant supports next Spring! - re-use re-cycle!

A Trip to Lincolnshire

So Matron really can't do carrots? so I decided in the Spring to plant some round shaped carrots to see what happened. These are a variety called Paris Market, they seem to have fared well in a pot full of sandy compost. My soil here in London is heavy clay, so any long rooted carrots usually fork.. as you will have seen in my 'naughty vegetables' post! The warm weather in the past couple of weeks has amazingly brought about a new crop of runner beans! I had left the vines to produce some dried pods for seed next year, but a whole new crop of baby runner beans started to grow! Even after a mild frost! A lovely, if unexpected late crop.

Yesterday I made a long car journey up to Lincolnshire. I love to sample local produce and cooking wherever possible, I just couldn't resist purchasing a supply of locally baked Lincolnshire Plum Loaf. Actually it is just dried sultanas and raisins, but this is a lovely accompaniment to a cup of tea!

Speaking of sandy soil, there are some amazing farm shops along the roads in rural Lincolnshire. It is a flat area of North East England which is mostly rich, arable farmland. Here you can see I bought a stick of Brussels Sprouts. The biggest ones on the stalk are almost as big as a tennis ball! I have never grown sprouts, but I think I might give them a try next season. Can anyone recommend a good new F1 hybrid variety that I might try?

The reason for my trip to Lincolnshire, apart from the plum loaf, was to visit the grey seal colony on the East coast. They come ashore into the sand dunes to give birth to their pups. There are miles of mud flats and miles of sand dunes here.

Along this stretch of nature reserve grows Sea Buckthorn. Here you can see a plentiful crop of bright orange berries. This plant is also known as Seaberry or Siberian Pineapple. Much too astringent to eat, but research has shown that Sea Buckthorn Oil has exceptional antioxidant and anti inflamatory properties.

Anyway, back to the baby seals... if you look closely on the horizon (click on the picture to enlarge it) you can see where the RAF fighter jets practice their bombing skills. The seals seem un-bothered by the fighter jets screaming over their heads!

They just lie on the sand, scratching their tummies, feeding their pups and staring at the passing idiots pointing cameras at them! Smile!

An Indian Summer?

London has been enjoying some unseasonably warm weather in the last few days. Almost up to 70degrees at times, which has encouraged my Autumn sown Isle of Wight Garlic to show its shoots! Just enough warmth encourages the seed clove to put down roots and send up a shoot. I think I will cover the patch with a bit of fleece in Winter just to keep the worst of the weather off. Meanwhile indoors I have given pride of place to my lovely red Rouge vif D'etamps pumpkin. Ted Senior has been keeping an eye on it too!

Once every 5 weeks I get a half day from work, and whilst in central London I have been playing 'Tourist in my own Town' resolving to visit London landmarks I have not seen for 40 years. I am only a stones' throw from some world class attractions so why not join the masses.

Westminster Abbey just seems a lot smaller inside than you imagine.

Poets Corner, Newton's Tomb, the Coronation chair (minus the stone of scone) well worth a visit.

Then my legs took me to St Pauls Cathedral where I climbed up hundreds of steps to the Whispering Gallery, then up another hundred or more steps to the stone gallery viewing point, then up another hundred or so steps to the gold gallery right at the top. From here you can see all round London. Pictured above is the Central Criminal Court otherwise known as the 'Old Bailey' you can just about see the sword of truth in her right hand and the scales of justice in her left.

You can get a good view of the Millenium footbridge across the Thames. Fondly known as the 'wobbly bridge' after some engineering resonance problems shortly after opening!

Now, boys and girls.... this last picture is of the steps of St Pauls... Think... Mary Poppins... and a certain song should come into your head!

Last Pickings!

This small helping will be savoured and appreciated like no other. These are the last pickings from the garden. Just a few sheltered tomatoes remain outside and now is the time to pick the last ones as we are having a bit of a frost most nights now. A late starter was the Dixie Golden Giant tomato and the Great Wall of China took their time to get going as well. Always a good idea to have some earlies and lates to eeek out the season. Sungold were the best, the earliest as well as the latest! Cream Sausage tomatoes were fun, and Chocolate Cherry are a must keep. Now all we have are horrible, insipid supermarket tomatoes until next June...sigh!

Bulgarian Giant Leeks!

I dug my first Bulgarian Giant Leeks today. I am very pleased with the final result. These are about an inch thick and the shaft of the biggest ones is nearly 3 feet long, add a couple of feet on to that for the green leaves and that is definitely a giant leek! I saw them in the Dobies catalogue last Autumn and thought they might be a bit of fun. These I will definitely grow again next year. I didn't look after them as well as I might have, so who knows, with a giant helping of well rotted manure and much more rain and watering than we had this Summer - who knows how much bigger they might grow next year?

Having an Appley Weekend!

It really is an apple extravaganza of a weekend! At the RHS Wisley they are having a Taste of Autumn festival to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the first Bramleys Seedling apple. Of course, no Autumn show would be complete without a spectacular display of pumpkins and squash. Every conceivable variety you could think of, and experts on hand to answer any veggie questions.

You can see the lovely pale blue Crown Prince squash in the foreground, and the unmistakable Turks Turban squash below.

A veritable feast for the eyes and gives me ideas of which varieties I might like to grow in the future.

The Autumn show at Wisley also offers a free apple identification service, you take along at least 3 apples from a tree and the expert will identify the variety for you. This is no mean feat when there are thousands of apple varieties to chose from.

For Matron, no trip to Wisley is complete without a stroll through the fruit orchard. All those windfall apples...seems a shame to leave them there... a few may or may not have been 'liberated' from their fate! This is my favourite place to be at this time of year!

A few of these windfalls did make their way back home with Matron!

Finally, not to be outdone, my local fruit orchard Home Cottage Farm had their open day yesterday. Local producers and growers must be supported, so I did. These are the last of an amazing crop of Cox's apples. A real testament to the reasons why you must eat fruit and veg which are produced in season, and not stored in a refrigerator for 6 months then transported round the other side of the world. These apples were heavenly!

HHot Hot HHorseradish!

Horseradish is one of the easiest crops to grow down on the allotment. In fact, you don't have to do anything to it, nothing at all. The only snag comes when you come to dig it up this time of year to find that horseradish roots can go feet down into the ground and you have to dig a big hole to get a decent sized root. Peel and chop your horseradish root.

I implore you to use an electric chopper, and keep the lid firmly on. The fumes from chopped horseradish will cause you PAIN!

I used every precaution, held the bowl at arms length and held my breath for as long as possible, but still ended up with a painful face full of tears!

Can you imagine grating this by hand???

Add soured cream to the grated horseradish and you have the most wonderful, wonderful accompaniment to roast beef. I just LOVE mixing horseradish with cold cooked beetroot, those flavours were just made for each other. Do you have any ideas for foods which go well with horseradish? Matron would like to hear from you.

Quince Cheese

No, this has nothing at all to do with dairy products or cheese as you usually know it. A fruit cheese is a fruit desert made with pectin rich fruit such as damsons, plums or quinces. I have never made it before, I am quite pleased with the results. A crucial aspect of the quince is that it is extremely pectin rich. Pectin is a protein which helps set jams and chutneys. Quince seeds are especially rich in pectin so they are an essential part of this recipe. Wash and chop the quinces and just cover in water, add some lemon juice and bring to a simmer for about 40 minutes until quite soft. I left this cooked quince overnight to cool before sieving out the pips and the skins until I had a thick puree. For each pint volume of puree you will need to add one pound of sugar. This recipe reduces down considerably so you will want to start with 2 or 3 pints of puree.

Then simmer slowly,

Stirring constantly,

For about 3 hours,

Or as long as it takes to draw the spoon across the bottom of the pan and still see the bottom of the pan, that can be an awful long time! Then pour the very thick, ruby red paste into a pan which has been greased with oil or glycerin.

Then leave overnight to set. You should be able to turn this out onto greaseproof paper and cut into squares or diamonds. Sprinkle caster sugar over them and dry for a further 24 hours.

This should be kept in an airtight tin, eaten as an after dinner treat or snack. I will keep mine in individual small cake/muffin cases.

Autumn Colours

Although lots of fruit and veggies are dying back this Autumn, there are some stunning colours on show in Matron's garden. I am torn between leaving these lovely crabapples on the plant to cheer up the garden, or to pick them and make some jelly. That's a tough decision. This Swiss Chard will continue to provide colour right the way through Winter and into Spring next year. I have planted a Rainbow Lights selection so I also have yellow, orange and white chard.

This is one of the flowers on my Jerusalem Artichokes. Most of them are 12 feet up in the air on top of the tall stems, but here is one nearer the ground. I look forward to digging them up later, after a frost has sweetened them a bit more.

I am looking forward to enjoying this Lemon/Lime cross on Christmas Day with my gin and tonic!

A small show of my greenhouse chilli Numex Twilight. These little finger chillis are fiery hot and come in a rainbow of different colours which ripen to red.

Which one of us does not have a maze of spider webs all over the place at the moment, they are beautiful if you look closely.

We've had a bit of a warm spell in London over the past few weeks so these runner beans that I am saving for seed have started to produce more beans! These will be left on the vine as long as possible to produce seeds for next year.

The last colour in this lovely Autumn display is........

White with black spots!

Matron's Naughty Vegetables!

I told you I couldn't grow carrots! Do you remember that a few weeks ago I gave Buddy a DNA breed test? I was curious to find out what breeds were in the mix... to make this fine fellow. Well, the results are in. They are shocking! Apparently he is 75% German Shepherd, 25% Border Collie....and wait for it...

25% DALMATIAN!......

I nearly fell off my chair! then I found some spots!