Fireworks

Mmm, these were my Gigantes beans marinading to have with dinner. They're so tasty. After soaking them overnight they get huge (I know, the clue's in the name!)

I ate them re-heated with these celeriac 'steaks' for dinner - this was an expensive way to buy celeriac, though the seasoning was nice it wasn't nice enough to warrant the price!

I decided to use the remaining celeriac with chestnut puree to make soup. I ground the cardamom this time, to remove the seeds from their pods. I also added an onion, cumin and lots of pepper.

The soup looked nasty and the cumin overpowered the rest of the flavours, so I still haven't successfully experienced the cardamom flavour....

Oh well, try and try again...

On Wednesday afternoon we visited the soggy plot - we've had a couple of cold nights, as you can see from the state of the beans...

and the begonia!

We pulled our last bag of potatoes - Dido. They look good and slug-free. Apparently they should have a 'floury to waxy texture'.

At the back of the polytunnel I can see that our buddleia and bay leaf cuttings are looking pretty happy. They must have some quite healthy roots in the bottom of their pots - the buddleia will be potted on next year

We were saddened that the crowds weren't so big at the Newbury Racecourse Fireworks this year; hopefully it was the weather that put people off rather than the event, which was excellent. I love fireworks but they're getting such bad press at the moment.

The post title is courtesy of First Aid Kit (hooray, I didn't have to use Katy Perry!). This is a rather  nice song, which I hadn't heard before.

Looking for the Rain

We didn't have to look far yesterday, this is our front window. Torrential downpours in between drizzle was all we had for most of the day.

We were so pleased that it stayed away during the evening while we were at Newbury Racecourse for the fireworks - what a great display! The beginning was particularly amazing with the loudest bangs I've ever heard - it made the ground shake - and the soundtrack for the evening was the ending of the First World War 100 years ago today, so there were lots of red fireworks to represent poppies - it was actually really good (much better than this photo).

Today, Jamie is feeling very painful because of the Twister fairground ride that we went on last night - he was in the seat that gets crushed and has bruised his ribs (or maybe cracked one, as he heard a 'pop' - eurgh). So while he's resting up I made some pumpkin soup. I'm sorry to say that last week's roasted Crown Prince soup went in the bin - it was vile! So I didn't roast the pumpkin today.

And I peeled most of the skin off as this type of pumpkin tends to have rather hard skin. I fried two shallots with turmeric, paprika, cumin and a bit of curry powder, then added the pumpkin and some stock.

Mmm, that smelt so delicious

While that was simmering, I mixed up the pumpkin seeds in a bag with melted butter, salt and smoked paprika before putting in the oven on 150 for 45 minutes.

I decided to sieve the soup after I'd blitzed it, there were still some bits of skin which seemed a bit hard, and now it's a delicious smooth pumpkin curry soup. And more than half a pumpkin left...

The songtitle is by Unkle - it's part of the soundtrack to a Danish TV series we watched recently, The Rain. Tonight I'm off to the ballet to see Swan Lake, with my sister - my first ever ballet! I'm looking forward to it.

Gunpowder, Poison and Soup

Sorry about the title. It's the best I could come up with based on "gunpowder, treason and plot" ;-}
There's the gunpowder. A fabulous fireworks display at Newbury Racecourse last night. I know lots of animals hate fireworks - our cat, Jaffa, used to go into hiding if there was even a distant bang - but I have to admit we love to see and hear them.

And, here's the poison. Spindle berries. They're growing in the hedgerow around the allotment and are so pretty, but extremely toxic. The pink shell explodes to reveal the orange berry and those colours together are fabulous!

And, of course, here's the soup. Yes pumpkin again, but this time with carrot, onion and garlic and plenty of pepper. I left the skin on again.

The Jack-Be-Little pumpkins are quite hard to cut up but once cooked the skin is thin enough to get a spoon through, so fine for the blender to deal with and there weren't any scratchy-throat bits when I ate the last lot I made.

We visited the plot to pull the carrots and collect the other ingredients from their storage in the greenhouse. The loofahs are in there too but have a lot more drying out to do. I might bring them indoors.
The part of the plot with the sprouts, chard, kohl rabi and carrots doesn't look too awful.

But the rest of the plots look very sad and we should be clearing and tidying, but the inclination isn't here at the moment. All that dead growth collapsed after a couple of frosts we had last week followed by a lot of rain.