I spent last week away working, two days in Leeds and three days in Edinburgh. It was a long way from the allotment so I was glad to be back. I really had missed seeing the girls and they were making the most of the sunny start to the weekend.
They did us proud last week by producing a total of nine eggs.
We are having a bit of a courgette moment with Old Basing allotment at the moment but this time it is rhubarb. I keep giving it away but it keeps on growing. I left Nick with three rhubarb crumbles but he only managed to eat one and put two in the freezer.
I have had to resort to searching for alternatives and came up with:
RHUBARB AND ALMOND CHICKEN Serve with rice and salad for 4
Enough chicken parts to serve 4 (thighs, breasts etc)
1 tablespoon flour, very lightly seasoned with pepper, paprika, salt and chilli powder
3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil for frying
3-4 stalks rhubarb, cut into thumb-length pieces
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried
200 ml white wine
1 handful slivered almonds, lightly toasted
In a large bowl, toss the chicken in the flour mixture. In a large, heavy pan or high-lipped frying pan, heat the oil over a medium-high heat until it is hot then brown the chicken for about 5 minutes on each side. Add the rhubarb and onions and cook for about 8 minutes, stirring, until the onions are brown. Add the garlic, thyme and wine, cover and reduce the heat. Simmer the chicken for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until cooked through and tender. Serve sprinkled with almonds.
MACKEREL WITH RHUBARB AND CIDER Serves 2
Fresh mackerel fillets
4 bay leaves
salt and black pepper
120 ml (4 fl oz) dry cider
12 g (1/2 oz) butter
225 g (1/2 lb) fresh rhubarb, chopped
1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
25 g (1 oz) brown sugar
pinch nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 180°C, 350°F, Gas mark 4. Season the fillets with salt and pepper then place a bay leaf on each fillet and roll up. Place the fish rolls in a shallow ovenproof dish, pour over half the cider and dot with the butter. Cover with aluminium foil or a lid and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until tender. Meanwhile, place the remaining cider, rhubarb, lemon juice, brown sugar and nutmeg in a pan. Bring to the boil then simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring from time to time, until soft and puréed. To serve - transfer the fish to a warmed serving plate, drizzle some of the rhubarb sauce over the top of the fish and serve the remaining rhubarb sauce separately. Serve hot.
Churchill Way is providing us with our first crop of broad beans, and they are so sweet and delicious we both stood and ate them straight from the pod. They are so young there is more broad than bean but it is much better to pick them young.
We are going beans and peas in a big way this year and have loads of peas growing already and this weekend we planted out the butter beans, kidney beans and barlotto beans that had been growing like mad in the little greenhouse. We used a total of 60 canes on the beans which indicates how many we are going to have. I have now started off the dwarf french beans and runner beans which will go out at the end of May when there is no fear of frosts.
I am making a much greater effort at inter-cropping this year, so have planted the chinese artichokes in the spaces between the peas, and am going to put the celery out inbetween the butter beans.
Finally, I must share with you our wonderful sunday night supper. If I had the time to make bread, and ignoring the ham, it would be all home grown. Delicious scrambled duck egg with chives and broad beans. Yummy!!!
The big clear up has started on No 53. We have rather neglected the plot as we have been concentrating on the ducks so much. Ther are loads of apples forming on the trees although I would imaging that they will shed most of them as they are such young trees. The currents have quite a crop that we didn't expect and the gooseberries are plumping out nicely.
The strawberries love their hay bed courtesy of the duck bedding. It smells a bit as you come in the gate but is self fertilising. It seems that duck poo is good for strawberries.
Nick and Matt did a fantastic job finishing the duck compound and I can sleep well now knowing that they have a netting roof to stop the pigeons and magpies getting in a pinching their food. It also gives them greater protection form unmentionable preditors.
Back to gardening on 51 and 52 and the pumpkin, two butternut squash and two scallop squash have gone into the bath. I am confident of a bumper crop as they are growing in pure manure. The rain has done its job and the bucket under the bath plug-hole is steaming away with a lovely dark, thick liquid manure which will be used on the squash that is being planted elsewhere.
Not everything in the greenhouse is edible. I have also been thinking ahead to Basingstoke Gardening show and trying to exceed out rosette number from last year so I am cultivating a couple of hanging baskets to be able to enter one in the show. This is the pink and purple option. There is also a red and yellow, a red and while and an everything that was left over option. I am not sure that they will keep going until the end of July but fingers crossed there will be one that will make the grade.
Rebecca and I had a bottle and tomato planting session. We got 14 in the bed next to the small greenhouse, interspersed with marigolds to keep the greenfly away. There are also 30 in the big bed that has been heavily manured. I am worried how we are going to keep 44 tomato plants watered in the hot summer that we are expecting but we will do our best.
We also planted 48 celery plants in the space between the canes from the beans. There is one bed of butter beans and another with the barlotto beans and black and white kidney beans. The theory is that the celery will grow more slowly so by the time the beans are finished the celery will be growing well underneath and ready to pull lush heads of crunchy celery. That is the theory anyway.
I have been showing off my heritage purple podded peas. You may remember that I got the seeds at the potato festival. You will need to click on the image to see them properly but they really do look unusual.
Back to 53 and we cut the lovage back to find that the fig has about a dozen figs forming. It is at the bottom of the plot where the water drains so fingers crossed they will not drop. The size that they are now would indicate that they will ripen well and we will have fully grown ripe figs by August. 
That is about it for the update from this weekend except to add that there is someone on the allotment who has the right idea - Molly the allotment cat. She lives here and who can blame her as Ted feeds her such luxuries as chicken, salmon and gammon to supplement her diet of baby rabbit which she seems an expert at catching and depositing outside peoples gates. She has found that black membrane fabric absorbs the sun and it is her favourite place for her afternoon nap.
We are having a bit of a courgette moment with Old Basing allotment at the moment but this time it is rhubarb. I keep giving it away but it keeps on growing. I left Nick with three rhubarb crumbles but he only managed to eat one and put two in the freezer.
Churchill Way is providing us with our first crop of broad beans, and they are so sweet and delicious we both stood and ate them straight from the pod. They are so young there is more broad than bean but it is much better to pick them young.
Finally, I must share with you our wonderful sunday night supper. If I had the time to make bread, and ignoring the ham, it would be all home grown. Delicious scrambled duck egg with chives and broad beans. Yummy!!!
