Native in Europe, but considered invasive in the US, garlic mustard, or “jack-by-the-hedge” as it’s also known, is a tasty green that combines the two flavours of its name. It grows abundantly throughout the year on Wimbledon Common where I tend to pick the leaves in spring before the warmer weather starts to turn them […]
Oh February… This time last year was wet, our plot was flooded in places, but generally only where we still needed to build raised beds. The temperature was largely quite mild, and there was no snow to speak of in London. Oh how times have changed as we’re granted yet more – ahem – learning […]
May (well towards the end of April until the start of June) is all about asparagus in the UK. This crunchy, tender, delicious veg has such a short season which makes it all the more exciting to many of us Brits alongside our propensity to lose our minds over Jersey royals and, more recently, wild […]
Cherry blossoms might be long gone by now this year, but if you joined me in preserving some of the young buds with the recipe in this Japanese Salt-Pickled Cherry Blossoms post then this recipe is for you! If you didn’t preserve any blossom buds this year, don’t worry you can actually buy them online if […]
The elderflowers are out and summer feels like it’s really here. I find myself making more and more with elderflowers every year as they’re wonderfully abundant and so incredibly fragrant and delicious. They also keep their flavour really well with heat which I find isn’t the case with many of the other wild ingredients I […]
One of the goal’s we’ve had for our allotment since the very beginning has been to grow as much as we can throughout the year so that we can keep allowing the land to sustain us, at least in part, through the winter months as well as the summer. Obviously we’re far from being able […]
There’s something magical to me, some sort of alchemy that happens when you cook over a simple wood fire. I know it can seem unpredictable and perhaps daunting to cook with fire, without dials and digital displays, but the flavour imparted to any ingredients cooked this way is unbeatable and I find it so grounding […]
You might have noticed a hiatus in my blog posting over the last few months. Without going into too much detail at this point, my body wasn’t taking no for an answer and the enforced rest was pretty much mandatory for a while! The good news is that I’m in full health, there is nothing […]
The courgette glut has been coming thick and fast for the past few weeks and we’ve been harvesting more than we really know what to do with from our four courgette plants. They’ve been huge too – more like marrows. Courgettes are one of our allotment staples as they don’t require too much intervention to […]
As the weather turns cooler and the frosts start to creep in at night, for most people the main foraging “season” is coming to a close. Of course, the notion of a defined foraging season would have been nonsense to our ancestors who were relying on gathering their food from the wild in order to […]
I’ve mentioned our apple glut quite a bit over on Instagram, but we’ve also got a pear tree that has been just as abundant. I have plans to make plenty of chutney, and perhaps to freeze a few, but I love to preserve them in a flavoured syrup too and enjoy them with some ice […]
It’s October again. The weather is getting cooler and the leaves are slowly turning their beautiful shades of orange and red. It’s a time to savour the last of the vibrancy of summer, and to start getting used to the darker evenings and crisp mornings. The jackets are out, the gloves are on, and scarves […]
This has been our first year growing a lot of things, including broad beans. The fact that they are hardy plants that can be sown directly in the ground fairly early in the year while the weather is still cold makes them an attractive allotment staple now for us. They were also one of the […]
I have never really considered myself a bookworm. I struggled to get into books when I was a child, always preferring to be doing something else. To be honest it was actually a lot to do with my eyesight/tracking difficulties which made it quite uncomfortable to read. I didn’t understand what it was to get […]
