Harvest Festival at Regents Park

 Twas a lovely sunny day to celebrate a very successful and bountiful season at the Allotment Garden in Regents Park.

 Colourful flowers in bloom in the bed we planted at a training session earlier in the year with green manure

 Keeping everything in order and warding off garden enemies

One of the beds of squashes all intertwined and climbing over each other

 

 Wood-burning oven on hand for all the bread baking and pizza making

Possible the biggest and most finely crafted loaf I have ever seen

 We were spoilt will so much delicious food all sourced from the Allotment garden. You can't get more fresh or local than that!

Squash and ricotta mixed salad, yum!

Taking advantage of the kids activities on the 'Make you own Scarecrow' table. Keeping this one to watch over my window sill plants as think she's a little delicate to brave the cold nights outdoors.

Claire helping with the final straw-trimming to finish off scarecrow

Colours from the garden

A range of roots I dug up today, particularly happy with the 3-fork fat carrot which made me laugh. Must remember to keep sowing radish seeds throughout September to keep a steady flow of little roots as we traverse through Autumn.

Big Pumpkin and little Butternut Squash. I was very sad to find that some garden animal (definitely a fiend and not a friend) has dug up the pumpkin plant at its root and ravaged it to the point of no repair so I am hoping it will ripen on its own since it has already started to go orange on its bottom. If not, it will be a controversial green Halloween lantern.

Ah, pretty, pretty, pretty. The Nasturtiums are absolutely thriving and are happily climbing their way all over my patch, while other flowers including a few Calendulas are sadly starting to run out of Summer time steam. The late planted Borage is now also offering plentiful supplies on delicate blue flowers. I'm going to freeze them in icecubes to have in the homemade ginger beer!

HARVEST...a totally homegrown meal

Tonight was a very special night indeed. After nurturing it for months my Turks Turban squash was finally ready to be cooked up and shared with my friend Rose, another squash enthusiast.

If you are a squash fan you will know that the main downside to this wonderful vegetable is the cutting process made even more tricky with a healing broken arm! After successfully cutting up said squash into chunks I cooked it up with other veggies, chili, garlic and ginger and we enjoyed it with a mixed flower salad and kohl rabi yoghurt sauce. In lieu of wine we had my homemade ginger beer which this time had a great fizz (last time I killed the fermented 'ginger bug' making it ginger cordial instead)

So apart from the ginger - which I am going to try and grow next year as an experiment - it was a fully homegrown meal. And what better way to finish off than with a lovely slice of Apple Cake made by Rose, mmm yummy Wednesday!

Ginger Chili Squash and Mixed Vegetables Recipe
A few cloves of garlic
Knob of ginger
1 Onion,
Small chili
2 courgettes
1/2 squash
Handful of beans
A few beetroots
Yoghurt
Kohl Rabi
Salad leaves and edible flowers

1. Lightly boil the squash, courgettes beans and beetroot
2. Fry the garlic, onion, ginger and chili in some oil, then add in the squash, courgette and beans
3. Leave the beetroot to boil a bit longer until it is soft
4. When the beetroot is done remove and slice into chunks and pour a little of the cooking water in with the veggies (Keep the rest for soup stock or for watering herb plants, my thai basil loves it!)
5. Season the squash and veggie mix with salt and pepper as desired.
6. Serve with salad leaves ( I used baby chard, baby spinach, wild rocket and a variety of lettuce leaves) with edible flowers (calendula and nasturtiums)
7. Grate Kohl Rabi and mix with plain yoghurt to have on the side with chunks of beetroot.