Food ‘n Drink

Posted by Sarah

So we’re mid way through August, and despite us having a fairly wet summer, again, the garden has been flourishing quite well.

Tomatoes

Both tomato plants have fared a lot better in their greenhouse this year, although they’ve probably gone without water a bit more than they should have. The downside to having them covered is that they don’t get watered when it rains (besides through the 3 air holes at the top of the greenhouse). However we’ve had half a dozen juicy red tomatoes off them so far and about another dozen or so to come.

Lettuce

My attempts at lettuce so far haven’t been so great. Our first lettuce were seedlings from my Dad, and these grew great, however the next attempt started well but just died off. I’ve now bought some new seeds (as my others were a few years old) and currently have a tray of small seedlings, plus some slightly larger ones from my Dad again so these are already in the long window box.

Chillis

The most successful pot plant so far this year! We’ve got 6 Jalapeno plants and a Scotch Bonnet plant. All of the plants have chillis on, the Jalapeno plants are in full swing with over 50 chillis in total. A couple of the plants are about 2.5 feet tall!

Strawberries

The strawberries are over for another year but we had a great batch from the various plants we’ve got. Having them in pots kept them away from the slugs and woodlice, although my hanging basket seemed to suffer from the strawberry beetle and none of the strawberries in the basket were any good. Next year I’ll put in measures to protect against this.

Radish

The last crop I tried of Radish, some came up great, some just grew the leaves but no radish. Again, old seeds so maybe they need a lot more than a window box can give them. However Dave’s got plenty of radish now so I probably won’t grow any more of that this year anyway!

Romano Pepper

I had a sweet pepper plant in between the tomato plants in the grow bag, and whilst it started off great, it seems to have hit a wall in improving. I’ve now dug it out and put it into its own pot to see if it fares any better, however I’m not expecting much from it. None of my pepper plants have ever done too well, besides just the one pepper (almost black and tasted horrible!) from a plant that was in the ground a couple of years back.

Aubergine

My Dad’s given me another Aubergine plant, however a couple of years back I had one from him that just took up a lot of space and did nothing! He got a few off a couple of plants, but I think it’s too late in the year and it’s in too small a pot for it to really do much. Still, there’s no harm in trying!

Courgettes

I’ve never grown courgettes before, however after seeing Jem’s posts about how she’d got courgettes off her enormous plant, plus seeing that I could still sow the seeds at the end of May (when I was nosing around the garden centre and spotted a pack of seeds. So I planted 4 seeds and 3 grew to small plants in the tray they were in. I separated these into individual trays once I saw how big they may get, and they just carried on growing! So a couple of weeks ago I took two of them and put them in a grow bag, and took the other plant to my Dad (see I give him plants too!).

My two courgette plants are quite large now and covered in a few flowers and lots of tiny little courgettes. I certainly can’t wait to start getting courgettes off these plants, and it’ll certainly be a permanent fixture in my choice of plants in future years.

Other Salads

My attempts at other salads hasn’t gone so well this year. Whether it’s down to the age of the seeds, or just the lack of decent weather, who knows. My spring onions have never grown too well anyway (I blame that on the lack of sun).

So all in all, the garden’s done quite well for being in pots, and it certainly proves that it’s possible. However, I do still miss having my own garden. Maybe next year.

Posted by Sarah

Various channel 4 programs airing in the UK in January of this year brought to light the true methods of chicken farming to the majority of the nation. Yes it was old news to some (I’d seen it about 15-18 months before then on TV, and some people I’ve spoken to were campaigning for this in the 80s/90s!), but to a lot it wasn’t, and it’s already been proven that a percentage of people have changed their buying habits, and have moved on to free range chickens.

However a lot of people’s arguments were that free range chickens were not affordable to them. Personally I don’t really agree with this argument. A whole chicken in Sainsburys can cost around £4.50, and that would feed a family of 4 and leave the carcass for making at least 3 or 4 decent bowls of soup too. So for about £1.12 per person you’d get enough meat to go with your dinner, and a bowl of soup. From one of these chickens the 2 of us (who are big eaters) get our roast dinner and enough meat left over for risotto the next day plus a large bowl of soup each for lunch.

The trouble I’ve found is that buying free range chicken breasts is expensive, and not very affordable to us. Free range leg and thigh packs are not too badly priced, and we had a box of chicken wings for about £1.50 for 8 the other day, and I love chicken wings! However the chicken breasts are expensive, and whilst free range turkey is cheaper, it’s just not as good for fajitas or stirfry (seems to dry out quicker). I tend to find the breasts at about £3-4 for a pack, yet a whole chicken costs about £1 more!

We’re quite lucky in that we can go shopping to our local Costco, and they’ve started to sell free range whole chickens, typically in a large format (around 2.3kg per bird!), but at a cheaper per kg price than the supermarkets. So today I’ve spent the afternoon with 2 large chickens and have cut them up into 4 large breasts (1 breast is more than enough for the two of us, so that’s 8 dinners), 4 leg/thighs which will do for a roast dinner (so 4 more dinners) and 4 chicken wings, great for the BBQ. Plus I’ve taken both carcasses and am currently making soup with that, which I’ll freeze, ready for when I fancy something warm for lunch. I should get about 8 soups easily out of them. The cost of all this? £15 and less than an hour of my time. Now I’m no butcher but it’s relatively easy to cut up a chicken, and even if it’s a smaller one from a supermarket, it works out so much cheaper than buying things separately.

So in the future, if you want to save yourself some cash, buy the whole chickens and cut them up yourself. All you need is a good short but sharp knife to cut through the cartiladge (you can twist the leg and wings first to get the bone to pop out). From £15 we’ve got 8 dinners of fajitas, stirfry or risotto, 4 roast dinners, 4 wings and about 8 soups for lunch or a light dinner. I really don’t think you can complain with that return of investment! And, of course, it tastes so much better than indoor reared chickens

Posted by Sarah

I’ve been meaning to write this for a few weeks but work has become a tad busy and spare time is something I’m lacking right now. However, the good news is that Hellmans seems to have finally completed its roll out of free range eggs in its Mayonnaise. I’d seen the occasional jar with ‘Free Range Eggs’ stamped on the side, but it wasn’t until the end of May where their large jar size were all Free Range in Sainsburys. Then last week when I looked again, all the jars on the shelves were stamped Free Range Eggs on the side.

During the time between realising that standard mayonnaise used battery hen eggs and now, we’ve been trying out a few different types of mayonnaise, all organic as that was the only type that used free range eggs. SO Organic Mayonnaise from Sainsburys was the best option, although a little too creamy for my liking. The others were more like salad cream, and just as runny. I’m glad that Hellman’s have kept to their word and got the new free range version out as when it comes to mayonnaise, nothing beats hellman’s in my book.

Just make sure it’s stamped ‘Free Range Eggs’ on the side to be certain. Also remember, most premade coleslaw and potato salad will not have free range egg in the mayonnaise. To find free range eggs in various products you’ll need to at least look at the top of the range (Tesco Finest, Sainsburys Taste the Difference etc), unless you shop in Marks and Spencers or Waitrose (lucky people!). Even then, not all top of the range use free range eggs in their products. So there is still a need to check the ingredients if you want to be 100% sure.

I hope one day everything sold can be considered free range and we wouldn’t have to stand and check the labels, let’s hope that day comes soon!

Posted by Sarah

The British Strawberry season is upon us and yesterday we had the first batch of strawberries out of the garden. I’ve got about 20 plants in all growing, all in pots plus 4 in a hanging basket. They’re free from slugs, woodlice and other creepy crawlies that like to eat them, plus almost all are covered over to keep the birds away too, although I do have one uncovered pot which isn’t getting touched. I guess we put enough nice food out for them to not want to eat the strawberries!

My Salad garden is also bursting with seedlings. This is a metre long window box that I sowed various lines of seeds in. At the top is a mixed lettuce (most of which seems to be green and not the red variety!), then there’s rocket, a bit more lettuce and then radish at the bottom of the photo, which is going to need repotting soon. We’ve already had 6 lettuce out of the garden, all tasting so fresh and so much better than the shop bought stuff!

I’ve also bought some courgette seeds and have them in a tray in the greenhouse, although not much seems to be happening with them yet. According to the packet instructions I can plant them between April and July so hopefully they’ll catch on soon. I’ve never tried growing courgettes before but as we always have them in the fridge I figured it was worth a go.

My chilli plants are all doing well too. A couple of them are about a foot and a half high. A few little flowers have been appearing on them so hopefully we’ll start to see some fruit soon. Unfortunately they’re getting attacked by greenfly and my organic aphid and greenfly spray doesn’t seem to do much to deter them, so every morning it’s a case of check the plants over and kill off any greenfly that’s on there. The tomato plants are also growing fairly tall, the flowers are on there so again it’s a case of waiting for the fruit to appear.

Finally my Gooseberry plant is growing just a few gooseberries (about 3!). This time last year it was getting established in the garden and gave us a couple of dozen fruit, however when we had to move, I cut the bush back, uprooted it and dumped it into a pot. I’ve since replanted it into a nice large terracotta pot whilst finding the roots riddled with ants (I’d stood it on an ants nest without realising), so hopefully it’s in a better place now, and it makes a nice pot plant anyway!

So despite the unpredictable weather, the plants are still growing reasonably well. I’ll try and keep the updates a little more frequent in the future!

Posted by Sarah

This week we had our first lettuce from out of the garden, and wow can you taste the difference to shop bought ones! I cut out a couple of little gems which went very well in a couple of burgers! The taste is so fresh and crunchy, it reminds me how this is all worth it.

I’ve got another 4 lettuce ready for eating too, so I’m sure we’ll get through those over the next week or two, before they get past their best. I’ve also got about a metre long window box with the next lot of seeds in it, the radish have already popped through. The strawberries are starting to appear on the many plants we have, the chilli plants are growing healthily, and the tomato plants seem pretty happy in their new greenhouse.

All in all, the garden is doing well I’ll try and grab some up-to-date photos this week and post them up.