Allotment Tour May

It is raining again today, but yesterday was a surprise sunny day.  I took the opportunity to take some snaps of the allotment.  First, appropriately, the potato patch.

The shaws are appearing above ground and very soon it will be time to mound them.

Beyond the potatoes is the fruit cage.  The first of the three bays was strawberries.  Notoriously these have to be moved around in order to avoid build up of disease.  So currently this bay is garlic,  Elephant to the left, ordinary to the right.  In between are two rows of parsnips which are indistinguishable from the germinating weeds currently.  But believe me they are there!

The remainder of the fruit cage is more conventionally raspberries and a mixture of currants and berries:

Reaching the turn at the end I am most pleasantly surprised by these autumn planted red onion sets.  I had given them up for lost but come the new year they have reappeared and are thriving.

Also at that end are spring planted onion sets (tent to the left ) Carrots (temple to the right) and leeks between them.  Next  is onions and shallots from seed (I went a bit mad on alliums this year) and the start of the brassica patch in front of that in the picture below.

Working back to the start I have covered the ground, temporarily with weed suppressant fabric.  This is going to be the the other half of the brassica patch and the legume/cucurbit patch which currently only has broad beans and a row of peas on the go along with some salads.  The runner bean poles are up in readiness but the runner beans are only now germinating back at home.

Broad beans (under netting)

For the sake of completeness here is the last section with strawberries and blueberries to the left, rhubarb to the right and asparagus bed featured in my last post in the middle.

 

So there you have it.  Together with the seedling nursery at home this is my vegetable home!  Hope you enjoyed the tour.

A Bread a Day Week, Day Three - Cinnamon Buns

A sweet dough is a novelty for me, but the sticky dough made photography rather difficult.  So there are only  pictures of the finished product:

This is a previously untried recipe from Joe Ortiz's "The Village Baker",  a book I've had for many years, and learnt to rely on. There are still some recipes I've never tried, like this one.

My execution was not really very good but the camera is forgiving, and so were the family who scoffed the lot.

The principle is that you roll out a sweet dough, wash with an egg wash, spread with a currant, sugar and cinnamon mixture and then roll  up like a Swiss roll.  Slice into discs with a (very) sharp knife and flatten each disc with the palm of your hand before rising and then glazing with a vanilla flavoured sugar syrup. You are supposed to drizzle with a fondant icing, but this was a a step too far given my rudimentary buns.

The family verdict: "Can you make these again for Christmas, Dad?" A winner. I will... and presentationaly  I will make a better job of them too.