Monday, October 19, 2009
Last of the summer wine
Well, summer spuds if we want to be rigourously precise. I dug up the last of the spuds on Saturday. Once again I was a bit disappointed, they were healthy, sure but I was expecting more. I have to figure out what will make the spuds bigger, and better yield. Maybe I need to heavily manure the potato patch this winter? before planting.
I also picked more peppers and two lovely Queensland Blue pumpkins. They are now in the larder until the winter, for yummy pumpkin soup.
Well, at least that is one piece of the garden that looks nice now, all bare and raked over. The rest is disastrous. I just left the three sisters bed as it was so it is full of cut down cornstalks, bean stalks, and dead grass. Although, that does look very messy but underneath the soil is soft and supple. Maybe that has its merits after all.
My goal is to tidy up each patch and to them cover it in manure-filled stable waste. I cannot get pure manure so that will have to do. Now to see if I can hold this resolution!!
I also picked more peppers and two lovely Queensland Blue pumpkins. They are now in the larder until the winter, for yummy pumpkin soup.
Well, at least that is one piece of the garden that looks nice now, all bare and raked over. The rest is disastrous. I just left the three sisters bed as it was so it is full of cut down cornstalks, bean stalks, and dead grass. Although, that does look very messy but underneath the soil is soft and supple. Maybe that has its merits after all.
My goal is to tidy up each patch and to them cover it in manure-filled stable waste. I cannot get pure manure so that will have to do. Now to see if I can hold this resolution!!
Friday, October 09, 2009
Recipe: pumpkin chocolate cake
I sort of made this one up but it turned out to be absolutely gorgeous. SO much so that my kids didn't believe there was pumpkin in it! I used those very orange round pumpkins but any type should work. It makes quite a small cake so please adjust the quantities for a bigger one.
Melt the butter untill it is very hot then add the chocolate cut into small pieces. Leave to melt with the heat of the butter then blend till smooth.
Add the eggs and beat them in well, then add the sugar and the pumpkin and salt and cinnamon.
FOLD the flour into that mixture.
Bake in a moderately hot oven, 190-200 degC for about 15-20 minutes, it should still be melting inside.
- 1 small cup of steamed mashed pumpkin
- 150g cooking chocolate
- 75g butter or marg
- 100g sugar
- 2 eggs
- 75g self-raising flour
- pinch of cinnamon and pinch of salt
Melt the butter untill it is very hot then add the chocolate cut into small pieces. Leave to melt with the heat of the butter then blend till smooth.
Add the eggs and beat them in well, then add the sugar and the pumpkin and salt and cinnamon.
FOLD the flour into that mixture.
Bake in a moderately hot oven, 190-200 degC for about 15-20 minutes, it should still be melting inside.
slack slack slack
That describes my blogging activity in the past few weeks and pretty much the gardening too! Every weekend just seems to get carried away into other things... still there is still time to get the garden ready for spring!
I did manage to take a few photos though.
Here the overall mess of the garden can be seen. I basically still need to remove all the summer crop waste: the beanstalks, the bean wigwams, and so on, and weed it all and cover with some manure over the winter. Look at my nice parsnip patch though, just the right amount for the autumn.
And the pumpkins have been reasonably successful. Queensland blues:
And this one that hid in among the raspeberries, unobtrusively:
Still, the tomato harvest has been quite cool. Lots of sauce waiting in the cupboard and I still have plenty to make salsa from:
I did manage to take a few photos though.
Here the overall mess of the garden can be seen. I basically still need to remove all the summer crop waste: the beanstalks, the bean wigwams, and so on, and weed it all and cover with some manure over the winter. Look at my nice parsnip patch though, just the right amount for the autumn.
And the pumpkins have been reasonably successful. Queensland blues:And this one that hid in among the raspeberries, unobtrusively:Still, the tomato harvest has been quite cool. Lots of sauce waiting in the cupboard and I still have plenty to make salsa from:The strange thing I am holding in my grubby hand is a carrot. I got about 10 of them :-( Not the best harvest but gives me hope for next year. Except the carrots mostly came out purple!! very odd, especially as they are orange on the inside! I wonder what caused that??
Now I just have to dig out all that bloody grass. Oh well, it will give me some exercise in the coming months I guess!!
Labels: autumn, harvest, pumpkin, tomatoes
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