What did you eat today that you picked?

Yep the birds are very clever around here! lol

 

Spinach with chicken (didn't pick the chook!). And for afters, stewed forced rhubarb with some strawberries that we dehydrated last summer.

 

I have 8 chicks that are supposed to be the beginning of my raising meat birds to get away from the whole industrialized meat thing. This Saturday I will be putting a guy from the farmers market's 25 eggs into my incubator. The hatching of them for him being in exchange for the roosters he will have to keep till they can be identified by sex. I will then take the roosters for butchering.

He has 15 chickens and sells the eggs with his veg at the market and wants some chicks from his rooster (he loves his rooster, and is a very kind chicken keeper) for increasing the flock.

Another guy there raises goats and I am thinking very seriously about getting a couple and butchering them. I want grass fed, free range, chemical free meat - from animals that had a animal life and a quick end. It is a chore, a trying one too. My wife could not help - that is why I am looking for someone else who would like to go in with me and we get 2, and then share out the whole thing that means. I am a good butcher, having been a serious deer hunter in the past. But that is very impersonal compared to the goat thing.

I spent my childhood in the Middle East and do love the food - it was where my mother actually learned to cook (taught by our houseboy of 7 years; who had previously been with a French family and so was a good cook - in local cuisine too as they had him learn it). The goat would be excellent for that - I expect. Lamb better, but goat worth doing - if I find a partner for the moral and physical support of the job.

 

I've had runners outside now for about 3 weeks in pots. Growing up a trelis where some hoeysuckle is growing. Broadbeans have been out for quite a whil. First batch is about 30" high second batch went out from pots 2 weeks ago. Spuds in bags showing foliage about a foot high. Ready now for potting or grow bagging courgetttes outside.

 

Home grown basil in our carbonara sauce tonight, mmmmm

 

I have basil, parsley, and garlic chives in the dehydrator. and giant beets boiling. I like my beets large, I think the flavor is good, and the slices are nice the way they hold butter. I have never had woody ones but always grew Detroit Red and this batch are a mix of free seeds, the internal stripey ones, cylindrical ones, and something called 'Beets" - a generic 4/$1 pack. Mixed and grown together. I have the stripey ones on, you can tell because the stalks are striped.

And for really silly posting just photographed them


The garlic chives and parsley are looking good - the basil? But I planted 10 kinds from a mass of free seeds, no telling what they are - have an anisette smell.



They are now simmering away and the water was beet red in the process - and I recon they will take 1 1/2 hour to cook - that is what I set my timer on. If they are woody, which would surprise me, they will go into the juicer with my Brussels sprout leaves and the end of my chard.

 

Had some freshly picked sprouting broccoli from the garden with our evening meal. Very nice it was too.

Mrs Trunky had a bit of a shock though, in amongst her freshly cooked broccoli was ... a freshly cooked caterpillar!

I'm a bit puzzled as to why it would be there at this time of year though. It must have been one which failed to pupate last autumn and then successfully overwintered on the broccoli plant.

 

Hope you butterflied the caterpillar to ensure even cooking lol!

 

Just munched a triple blackcurrant sandwich. Morrisons blooma bread and delish homegrown currants from last year, YUM

 

Just had broad bean tops nipped out just before the blackfly arrive, topped with a couple of eggs from my hens. Totally yum

 

I had leeks yesterday only a few left now then that's it I will be waiting for this year's crops to start

 

Surprising what you can eat really isn't it?

I've got some spicy mixed salad leaves growing in large pots in the greenhouse, Mrs Trunky cut some today and we enjoyed them in our sandwiches for lunch.

Later on, while pottering about in the greenhouse, I was watering said pots when my trained gardener's eye spotted something which didn't look quite right in one of them.

Closer inspection revealed a wild field poppy growing in amongst the plants, with most of its leaves snipped off!

I am relieved to report no ill effects (so far) and although the sandwiches did have a somewhat 'hairy' feel to them, they tasted fine.