petrol and pasties!

Well, maybe on the 8th (see last blog post) I could see the future! Lo and behold we have panic buying of petrol! And a strike hasn't been declared yet... I went to the service station the other day in my 8 or 9 day cycle to fill up as usual, and was sitting in the queue for a while wondering how many of the people ahead actually needed the fuel!. I did, my car was bleeping at me as it was hungry!

I don't really want to get personal, but despite the lack of common sense shown by the lady who decided to decant petrol in her kitchen with the hob on, the government minister who suggested filling up jerry cans to stock up on petrol really does need to take some of the responsibility, as the lady in question wouldn't have felt the need to muck around with cans of petrol in her kitchen if the nitwits (and that is putting it mildly!) in Government hadn't opened their gobs and panicked the general sheep ...sorry general public....

And pastie tax...well if a pastie has just come out of the oven, do I have to wait until it has cooled down before I buy it? I heard one suggestion that bakeries should install microwaves for customers to heat their own pasties up... It turns out the last time the Prime Minister ate a pastie was 5 years ago, at a now defunct shop in Leeds railway station, he probably can't remember the last time he had to get his own food never mind go to a bakery!

Petrol prices

The petrol price is getting ridiculous! I remember when the fuel protestors were getting irate about petrol and diesel being 80p a litre back in 2000. Back then I was tipped off by a friend in the local garage on the Sunday, so filled my car right up - by Monday everyone was panic buying and there were queues everywhere. People just went silly - supermarkets cleared of bread and other staples... Thinking laterally, I went in a health food shop, got some yeast and we made bread that evening! Later that week the black propaganda from the Government got going, hospitals supposedly running out of fuel, ambulances not able to get fuel etc - shouldn't have been a problem as the military have an extensive fuel system designed during the Cold War to keep fuel flowing around the country in the event of a war. Besides the Government can use emergency powers etc. It was just to break the strike by turning the public against the blockade.
We'll find out in 20 years time when they release the papers what really was going on, what decisions were taken and so on.

Back to the present, I drive around at 60 mph most of the time now, and average 41mpg. How you drive is important too, no revving or fast acceleration, stop start in towns is bad as well - I use the motorway which is - miles wise just slightly longer than the A roads but get 1-2mpg better on the fuel and a much quicker journey time. However, I am filling up every week with about £66 worth of fuel just to get the kids to school and to work, although any trips out with work get mileage allowance.
The high fuel prices don't seem to stop some people though, there's always drivers zooming along in cars which are probably consuming a whole lot more than mine is. And they sit right up your backside if you happen to be in their way (tip - gradually slow down or raise your left hand (if in the UK) and motion backwards repeatedly, many times they get the message and back off. I have even heard of one driver stopping altogether and having words though I wouldn't recommend that myself!)

I have to consider though whether the amount I am using in petrol is sustainable, both from a cost point of view and I do feel a little guilty at burning all the carbon. However, I have no realistic alternative at present.

Broccoli!

It is purple sprouting broccoli time! And we've got some creamy coloured sprouting brocolli which looks like those mini fractal cauliflowers you sometimes see in greengrocers - it does have a name but I can't remember what it is....

allotment in the snow

Now the 7th day with snow on the ground and -8 deg C when I went out. I heard on the radio the other day that fruit growers are very pleased at the cold snap. Due to the mild autumn and early winter, they were concerned that the fruit trees weren't getting the period of cold needed for the trees/bushes to help produce next year's fruit crop, thus affecting yields.

Be careful what you wish for! After a heavy snowfall on the 4th of February in the afternoon (complete with phantom accidents on the overhead road signs on the M1!), the snow has hung around, getting more icy, with another big dose of snow on Thursday 9th evening. Not much above freezing during the days so only a slight thaw, which has refrozen again into ice during the night.

Not as bad a the last two winters though, but there's time yet!

Allotment photos in the snow - the winter onions just poking out of the snow - they have had a good amount of growth in late autumn so should be fine, they are pretty hardy and most of them survived the last two winters.

Impossible to get the leeks out at the moment, they just snap off when you try and lift them!

And it won't be long until spring and broccoli! We've had a bit already, even a few springs of purple sprounting, but the main crop will be another month or so yet.

parsnip tea perhaps?

Do we eat this parsnip or do we make tea in it?

allotment news - 21/12/11

It's some time since I have had chance to update the blog, what with rushing around the children every weekend and sometimes during the week, things on at their schools etc.

I have just picked the two last ordinary tomatoes and last cherry tomato from the office plants, although I am going to do what we have successfully done with the tomato plant at home - prune it right back, let it grow shoots from the stem and enjoy tomatoes again by early spring! (I hope...)

In the allotment my wife has finished digging up all the stray potatoes and digging the patch over. We have got winter onions in and garlic at the top end where the beans were.

First time we have grown sprouts - two plants looking good, should be ok for Christmas dinner - although it is not me that eats them!

We also have occasional brocolli, both green and purple shooting, plenty of parsnips still, some beetroot, plenty of leeks.

We have potatoes and onions and garlic in store, we have just finished the apples.

4 or 5 allotment vegetables in December isn't bad for a meal!

pumpkin chutney (and the big stink!)

As it's getting a lot colder now (frost predicted tonight as I write this) and the 2 pumpkins in the allotment looked ready, I picked them on Saturday and proceeded to turn them into chutney.

The variety of pumpkin is "Turk's Turban" - you can see why from the picture above.

Now, these pumpkins were really tough to get through - I still have the blisters from peeling and chopping them! However, there was much more flesh per pumpkin than you get in the traditional ones for Halloween, and a lot fewer seeds.

So, once chopped up finely it is time for some cooking

I'm using just over half a bottle of Sarson's pickling vinegar (like most other British brands nowadays it is owned by another company, in this case Crosse and Blackwell, though I would imagine someone else owns them by now....). It's ready spiced so there is no messing around with a small muslin bag of pickling spices - you can of course do this if you have your own secret pickling recipe!
Also a 500g bag of dark brown sugar, some ginger, curry powder and garam masala, although of course you can add your own spices to taste.

The pumpkin was chopped up quite fine into rough cubes about 1cm cubed.

Now for the bubbling, and this is where the big stink comes in...

This is the chutney bubbling away in my mum's jam pan that I think dates from pre-war and didn't get melted down for Spitfires... It's steaming away just as much as the Icelandic hot springs we saw last year, and although not a sulphur smell, it is really quite a strong vinegar smell.
So much so that when my daughter came back up the street from a walk she could smell it from 3 houses down the road!

Anyway, the two pumpkins made 7 jars of chutney, now all I have got to do is keep my hands off them for a month or two while they mature!