What, Pasta Sauce again? No, it’s Beetroot Ragu.
When you batch cook and freeze it is very easy to end up with an endless supply of the same meal again and again. I remember the early years of allotmenteering – I nearly convinced myself that the bags of broad beans were breeding in the freezer when I was pulling the 50th bag! From my experiences, I quickly realised that the key to using up your supplies (and keeping buy-in from the rest of the family) is to be creative in making a range of meals. If you can freeze a base recipe that can be made into a novel meal you are onto a winner. No more complaints of ‘Oh no, not pasta sauce again!’.
This is not a full recipe as such, I wanted to share methods I use to make a base recipe for cooking and then turn this into a variety of dishes.Growing Heritage seeds: The Heritage Seed Library.
Image courtesy of the Heritage Seed Library Facebook Group Heritage plants are open pollinated varieties that have been grown for many years and usually passed down through families or groups – green heirlooms.
In 2020 I have decided to dedicate some space to growing heirloom vegetables; trialling seeds that are a little different and saving the seeds for my own stock. Early this year I signed up to the Heritage Seed Library (HSL) and was very excited when the seed list for the 2020 choices arrived in the post today.We are Kitchen Garden’s Website/Blog of the year 2019!
Last Month we recieved a very exciting email! The January edition of the Kitchen Garden magazine will feature “Britain’s Best Allotment Gardener’s” and Don’t Crop Me Now has been selected as Kitchen Garden’s ‘Website/Blog’ of the year 2019.
Kitchen Garden Magazine January 2019 edition. Christmas at the Allotment
Snow at the Allotment – Christmas 2009 Home-grown veggies for the perfect Christmas Dinner, using your garden to decorate your home, the gift of growing, what to put on your your list to Santa and how to escape the chaos for a bit of allotment time. Here is Don’t Crop Me Now’s guide to a perfect Christmas at the Allotment!
November Allotment Tour
A tour around our plots in Manchester (UK) looking at what crops are growing over winter and a sneak preview of our Summerhouse building project!
Freekah grain salad with celeriac leaves
One gardening fail leads to another cooking adventure! Back in October I posted about my abundance of celeriac leaves on our Facebook group. I have never grown celeriac before and my plants simply did not swell up at the roots. So, my creativity has been challenged in trying to make the most out of this crop.
Beans for drying: a discussion
Butter beans 
Bolotti beans 
Cobra French beans
Beans, sometimes called “pulses”, are the edible seeds of the legume family. In the UK the term ‘bean’ often includes the pods of the legume plant; runner beans and French beans are popular on allotments all over the country, but growing for eating the seed is less common.
I have become quite interested in growing bean seeds as they store well, are very low maintenance crops and are a good source of protein. Here I discuss our experiences so far of growing beans for drying and my plans to expand the varieties of beans for drying that we grow for 2020.Corned beef hash with potatoes and root vegetables.
Winter is such a fab time for tasty veg on the allotment. One of my favourite winter vegetables are parsnips. Easy to grow (once you get them germinated!) and they can be stored in the ground right through till early Spring which means easy access to a great ingredient for winter cooking!
Last week I dug up this rather large parsnip. The variety is Gladiator which is very reliable. Grown in a ‘no dig’ bed, started in toilet rolls and transplanted – all the ‘no goes’ of traditional gardening methods! Another blog post maybe?
After a Sunday roast, and leftovers made into soup, I still had 3/4 of the beast left so I have a few meals planned this week to use the rest!
Firstly we have a corned beef hash with potatoes and root vegetables.Brussel Sprout Pate
Brussel Sprout Pate Recently on the ‘Feed Yourself for £1 a day’ Facebook group there was a conversation about ‘Brussel Sprout Pate’. I do love sprouts, especially homegrown ones, so I thought I would have a go at making my own version.
Allotment Spotting on Anglesey
For a long time, much to Ant’s annoyance, I have played a game of ‘Allotment spotting’ on every car journey we go on. This involves me loudly shouting ‘Allotment’ with any glimpse of non-commerical vegetable growing.
Last week we were on holiday on Anglesey. On Gardener’s World I had seen the Beaumaris Allotments featured and decided to contact the ground to see if we could have a look around.