Monday 20 September 2010

All shapes & sizes

For nigh on 38 years I’ve waged war against parsnips. As a child I disliked seeing my yummy Sunday lunch roast potatoes sharing a bowl with yucky parsnips and would gingerly pick out the tatties from amongst the devil’s root vegetables lurking in the bowl. As an adult, I’ve avoided that same root vegetable in all its forms, soup, mashed, roast, snuck into a casserole. Yesterday, something strange happened. I ate a parsnip and I liked it. I didn’t love it. Let’s not get carried away. It wasn’t too sweet. It wasn’t too mushy. It was a whopper and it came out of my garden. Perhaps I’m psychologically predisposed to favour my own vegetables, or maybe the thrill of eating a meal consisting almost entirely of my own produce (until Hera meets her maker that is) simply overpowers my parsnip phobia.

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Aside from whopper parsnips, colourful chard and carrots with legs, the garden continues to yield fruit and veg of all shapes and sizes. The debut blueberry harvest amounted to a bumper three berry crop. Hmm what to make ... blueberry muffin, blueberry pie, blueberry yoghurt … so many options so few berries.

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The damsons are falling from the tree faster than we can gather them. A wheel barrow was needed to carry the squash home.

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The brussel sprouts are ready about two months too early and are growing to cabbage proportions. The chillies are fiery red and doubling up as a source of entertainment for Dave (I’ve spared you the chilli earrings and comedy mouth shots).

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And my one and only aubergine is a weeble.

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