Is that all there is?

In one of the pots outside that flat, are three fine looking beetroot. Unfortunatly upon closer inspection, they’re not very good at all. Also, they’re covered in little aphi/bug things. Anyone know what they are and why has the beetroot not gorn any bulbs? They’ve got plenty of space to grow and I can’t understan why they’ve done this. Or do they simply need to grow a bit more?

Dinner

This is raab. A member of the turnip family, it looks like a mini version of brocolli. I’ve got a little pot of it growing outside the flat and it seems a very reliable and fast growing veg. I cooked with for the first time last night and it has a lovely flavour. Slightly peppery and a hint of mustard without it being over powering. Here’s what I made:

Brown rice with fried raab, mushrooms, red onion, tomato and chopped up parsley with a little drizzling of olive oil. It’s not the most inspiring meal, but it’s tasty enough. It’s also very good to use up any left over veg.

Speaking of leftovers (sort of), interesting to see that the government is persuading the public to cut back on food wastage. Good thing too! Far too much is wasted in this country and it’s very easy for us to cut back on that. I have to admit to being guilty of wasting food, especially bread and milk, but I’m going to do my best to try and cut that back. Veggies that are looking a bit past it can be used in soups and casserole type dishes, bread can be frozen and individual slices can be toasted when needed (and toast is the only reason for having bread in this household, because toast and butter and Marmite is the best thing in the world, especially on a Sunday) and milk just needs to be bought in one pint cartons. Oh, and Dave needs to sort his weird thing out where he’ll only use just bought milk and not the three cartons of milk already in the fridge that’s perfectly fine. Humph.

And of course there’s composting everything that is wasted in the end.

Oh, and I *really* need to plan my meals and stick to it and not just buy a load of food in and then eat takeaway pizza for the rest of the week. Ahem.

food and photos

As you may know, I’m growing a little bit of salad outside the flat. The front of the flat is a real hotspot, and if plants aren’t watered everyday, they can really suffer. Recently though with the gentle encouragement of Dave, things have been well looked after here. The salad is doing tremendously well and supplied my dinner last night and the flowers are blooming. The passiflora especially is doing well and is full of buds. Not that I’ve taken any photos of the flowers to show you (although if you got to my Flickr you’ll see lots of pictures of my salad. Woo.)

Speaking of pictures, I’ve started another little project. The aim is to take a picture every day for a year. It’s a challenge, but it should be interesting. If you want to follow my (mis)adventures, go over to the blog I’ve created especially, Some Photos

Glastonbury

I went, got a bit wet, then it stopped raining and I stopped getting depressed about the weather, saw lots of weird and wonderful things, ate lots of amazing food, got stuck in a ferris wheel steat, cried watching Leonard Cohen perform Hallelujah, got sunburnt and I can’t wait for next year.

Some proper gardening

I’ve not really written about gardening since I gave the allotment. To be honest, I’ve not really done any gardening. But a few weeks ago, Dave and I tidied up around the front of the flat. For what it is, it’s a generous space and had planty of room for a range of decent sized containers. A few flowers were planted, including a passiflora to cover the view of the snooker club below us. It’s doing amazingly well and I think it’ll take over the entire block. It wasn’t just flowers though. We have lots of salad leaves growing nicely plus a few corgettes, beetroot and lots of basil. The picture above is of mizuna, a very nice Japanese salad leaf. There’s some more photos in my Flickr if you want to have a look (link on the right of this page). They’re a bit out of date but I’ll take some more soon.

Flighty earlier this week very generously sent me a book on composting. It’s very good! Hopefully it’ll help me make up my mind about how I want to organise my kitchen waste. So thank you, Mr. F, it’s very cool.

Now I know I said I wasn’t going to go, but I gave in. I couldn’t spend a year without it. I’m going to Glastonbury Festival. Yay! I’m quite excited. In fact I leave for the coach there in but half an hour. Unfortunately it’s forecast to rain quite heavily tomorrow. Bum.