Not so glorious mud!

What a dreary week it has been weatherwise! I don't think it has really been light all week and  it has continued to be wet and miserable.

Other than our usual walks with Ruby and one necessary quick visit to the allotment we have been stuck indoors.

Our week indoors has however been productive. Our wallpaper arrived early and although it isn't quite what I expected - the pattern is larger than I imagined - I do like it which is a relief. The pattern was tricky to match up until we managed to get our eye in but we managed to finish the wallpapering in a day. Now we just need to wait until we feel safe enough to go shopping for curtains and carpet.

It's difficult to photograph the pattern as it looks different in differing light conditions. 

Our visit to the allotment was primarily to collect some vegetables. Everywhere is now wet and squelchy.

Some well used paths are slippery and care needs to be taken when walking along them.

The dahlias are now well and truly blackened so we are hoping for a reasonable day when we can lift the tubers for storage.

The cardoons are shrugging off the miserable weather and have already put on quite  lot of new growth.

We just spent sufficient time at the plot to gather together the vegetables that we needed for the week.

9 December - Flakee carrots, mixed leeks, 2 Kalibro cabbages & a Cordesa savoy cabbage

The vegetables are suffering from the weather. This is partly due to the wet conditions providing the ideal environment for slug foraging. Both carrots and cabbages bear the scars of their activity. This means there is quite a lot of waste when it comes to preparing the vegetables for cooking. Both the cabbages and the leeks are suffering from being constantly wet. Both need to have lots of leaves stripped off before parts of the vegetables that are good for using are reached. It makes meal preparation a longer task.

So onto last week's meals where our vegetables played a major role. 

Monday was chicken pilaf into which went onions and, from the freezer, green beans, sweet corn and peas. I used brown rice.

Tuesday's vegetable curry was cooked in a slow cooker and made use of our onion, carrot, green beans and potatoes.

Thursday, I used our, potato, leeks, onion, carrot, squash, sage and parsley in, what the recipe calls, a Vegan Shepherd's Pie.

I think that this is a misnomer as in my book a shepherd's pie contains lamb, so by definition, a shepherd's pie can't be vegan. I guess if we were to be  totally pedantic we could argue that it isn't even a pie. Anyway I'm going to call my version an allotment pie. I used Osprey potatoes which tend to break up when cooking. The recipe calls for half of the potatoes to be mashed and mixed into the vegetable mixture and half to be cut up a popped on top of the 'pie'. The Ospreys mashed well but crumbled when I tried to cut them up so my end product wasn't as it should have been and I also forgot the spinach. Still we enjoyed it.

Then Sunday I used  carrots, leeks and parsley in a turkey pasta and leek crisp.

Looking back, over the weeks,  at my photos of the dishes that I have made, I was struck by how similar they look but honestly they don't all taste the same.

By the way one of my visitors has told me that she can't access the web links to the recipes that I have used, is anyone else having a problem?

Now I wonder what this week will bring? Let's hope more vaccines are approved and they start to beat Covid into submission. Until such a time as always keep well and safe.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett