Fritters, peas and glorious orange

I love the seasons dictating what we eat. We haven't had any tomatoes since last summer, so we're eagerly awaiting our next crop. The seedlings are coming along nicely. I think I may have added too many in the one patch, but there's plenty of basil in there too – a favourite companion in the garden and on the plate.

I can't wait for fresh basil again and warm tomatoes grown in my own soil. I thought I ate seasonally before, but not compared to now. Tending a garden and growing your own, even if it's only some herbs and a few vegetables, connects you in so many ways to nature and shows you a much simpler way to eat. What it also does is disconnect you from the trappings of supermarkets. Once you get used to all that year-round choice, it sucks you in, making you believe that choice is a good thing, when in fact choice is a whole lot of stress and it makes me dizzy.

I've always known this, but I still did buy the occasional tomato in winter. I still bought those over-priced over-sprayed wrapped bunches of herbs. Now I wait. If I haven't got the herb in the garden, I haven't got it.

We've waited all winter to plant our tomatoes, to sow our borlotti bean seeds and to see our peas get fat. We've watched our coriander show its first feathery leaves only to bolt and do that annoying thing that coriander does.

I've had a lot of coriander to use up – I'm cutting it in a bid to stop it going to seed. I won't stop it, of course, but I might delay it a bit this way.

So there it was sitting on my kitchen bench top narrowing the choice for dinner. Not only was this satisfying in itself, but having to wait for something to grow and then use it to make a meal is even more satisfying. It may not be everybody's idea of simple (not when you think about how easy it is to just go out and buy it versus building the beds, sourcing the materials to make soil, sowing the seeds and waiting... waiting... waiting...). But it's certainly mine. And it's satisfying beyond words.

I made corn, coriander and coconut fritters* with some spring onions I picked up at the co-op that morning. I think they might just be the tastiest corn fritters I've ever made. They certainly beat these ones.

After Luca feasted on all the fat peas hanging six feet above the garden beds, I had to pull the whole lot out. Powdery mildew got the better of them.

But sitting right there by the cabbages was one single nasturtium flower. That wild cutting worked.

So while my coriander plants just want to run away and flower, and while my peas have turned white and furry, it seems I know how to take a roadside nasturtium and make it flower in my own garden.






* Those tastiest corn fritters I've ever made: Mix 150g plain flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp ground coriander and 1 tsp ground cumin. Add 1 egg, 125ml coconut cream and 100ml water and mix well. Add 350g corn, 2 chopped spring onions and as much chopped coriander as you like (I like a lot) and stir through. Heat 2 tbsp coconut oil in a pan and cook dollops of the mixture until golden brown. 

Making our own compost

I want to spend every spare minute I have in the garden right now. The light is beautiful and it's not too hot. Yet.

I always get distracted from what I'm supposed to be doing. This morning was no different. I took my camera down and took a few pictures.

1. Our first snow peas are ready.

2. My little experiment with nasturtiums. We used to grow nasturtiums in England to eat, but right now I want them as a companion plant. Aphids love nasturtiums, so the plan is they'll love my cabbages and broccoli a little less. The thing is I can't get hold of nasturtium seeds through my plant man, so I went for a little walk and took some cuttings. They sat in water in the kitchen for a couple of weeks until I noticed some roots. Luca and I are after plenty of brilliant orange flowers so I stuck them in the poorest soil I could find near the brassica beds (nasturtiums don't like rich soil; you get more flowers if you hold back on the fertiliser and compost). Fingers crossed.

3. I'd actually forgotten I planted cauliflower. I got quite a surprise when I poked through some leaves and found this creamy white head.

4. A bed all ready for this season's crop of tomatoes and basil. It had sunk down a fair bit through the winter, so I followed the same no-dig garden method and topped with alternating layers of carbon (hay, cardboard) and nitrogen (mushroom compost, veggie scraps, lawn clippings).

5. Our first homegrown broccoli. Lovely but not quite the tight heads I was hoping for. Or does that not matter? And does anyone know why it's all going to flower so quickly?

6. Tomato seedlings in.

Then I got stuck into the one thing I've been looking forward to for weeks. Filling a compost bin to make soil. Number one compost bin is already full and takes the odd bucket of scraps from the kitchen but it's time to start another one.

Making compost is more than throwing in kitchen scraps at the bottom of an empty bin with the occasional bit of cardboard and grass (just because they can go in) and hoping for magic one day. We composted this way for years and abracadabra all we got was slime. With broken egg shell.

I've learnt there's a little bit of science. Much like no-dig gardening.  

I'm not exactly sure why I love filling a compost bin. Is it because I like adding a bit of this and a bit of that, put a lid on and leave the rest to nature? Is it because I find it incredibly satisfying to put household waste (newspapers, office paper, vegetable peelings, ahem urine*) to really good use? Is it the thrill of making something else other than food from scratch and saving a bit more money?

Probably all of the above.

The boys shredded paper. I filled buckets with water and a dash of molasses (blackstrap molasses does wonders for the micro-organisms, which help break everything down, and gets all the worms rushing in).

We filled the bin with different layers of carbon and nitrogen including some roadside alpaca poo and store-bought chicken manure, and finished it with a layer of molasses-soaked hay.

It'll sink down in a few days leaving us room to add our scraps.

Then abracadabra we'll have homemade compost. Very soon.

Congratulations to Libby who wins Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion.





* Graeme often 'waters' the garden when he gets in from work. You know, when it's dark and no one can see. He walks through the door and announces he's given the beds a good dose of nitrogen. He'll be doing the same to the compost bins as long as I remind him. Seriously, if you garden, urine is a valuable resource.