Picking our Purple Sprouting Broccoli

This week I discovered I wasn't the only one excited to see our Purple Sprouting Broccoli grow and develop, it seems the pigeons were too. And while I knew it might happen, I hoped my more regular visits to the allotment - albeit limited to weekends - might be enough. I'm sure those visits helped but as the pigeons, I'm assuming they're the culprits, have no restrictions on when they visit I was always going to be up against it.

As we arrived on the plot we did our customary walk round to survey what's happened since our last visit, which at this time of the year doesn't take long, we noticed that something had started to strip the brassicas leaves. Mostly the purple sprouting bit had been left, so there was only one thing to do.

And that was pick as much as I could!

We left with a couple of brown bags full of purple sprouting broccoli, which let's be honest isn't really a problem as we eat bucket loads of the stuff at this time of year and quite often in pasta with chilli.

While I was at it I picked the small cavolo nero too, just in case they moved onto that. We've eaten that already and very nice it was too.

A rookie mistake?

As we left the allotment we wandered around looking at the other plots to see how other purple sprouting broccoli growers were faring. And to try and work out if we'd made a rookie mistake. We left partly reassured as some plants looked in a similar state to ours, but others had taken more precautions to protect their harvest, so next year I've a feeling that we'll be following their lead and rigging up something similar.

But in the meantime we're munching our way through our purple sprouting broccoli mountain...

Home-grown is best, but you knew that didn't you?

It'll come as no surprise to you that I'm a fan of home-grown fruit and vegetables, even before we had our allotment I regularly grew tomatoes and more in pots in our back garden. So when I saw this infographic from Premier Polytunnels I was keen to take a closer look.

What I didn't realise was that polytunnels don't have to come in super-huge size, they can be as small as 6ft x 8ft which while it's not tiny, is smaller than I expected.

At the moment we're eating our way through our small mountain of allotment grown purple sprouting broccoli, so in the spirit of this infographic I thought I'd share my favourite way of cooking (and eating) one of my favourite vegetables.

Chilli and purple sprouting broccoli pasta

250g dried spaghetti or linguine
three or so handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli and its leaves, cut into bitesize pieces
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 anchovy fillets in olive oil
A red chilli

Serves 2

1. Fry the anchovies and garlic in olive oil - often I use the oil from the anchovy tin - on a low heat until the anchovies "melt" then add some chopped chilli to taste.

2. At the same time cook the pasta in boiling salted water following the cooking time on the packet, adding the purple sprouting broccoli for the last three minutes of cooking. Don't forget to add the leaves as well.

3. Drain the pasta and broccoli, reserving some of the cooking water.

4. Add the pasta and broccoli to the anchovy, garlic and chilli mixture and stir well, adding some of the pasta water as needed.

5. Serve with slices of fresh chilli and drizzled with chilli oil.
    

* This is a collaborative post with Premier Polytunnels, but all opinions are my own.

Excitement and clarity, but still work in progress

Well yesterday was new-table-Tuesday and I can't tell you how excited that made me!

We knew our new table was about due, but the call on Saturday afternoon to arrange delivery took us by surprise. By chance MOH was already planning to be at home yesterday so I added a task to his workload for the day - wait in for the new table!

It arrived within its timeslot and it wasn't long before it was assembled and I received this photo from MOH. 

PARTIALLY EXTENDED - IT EXTENDS A FURTHER 0.5M

As I said, it's still a work in progress. As while yesterday was new-table-Tuesday we're still waiting for a delivery date for our new chairs. They're due in the next couple of weeks so until then we'll be using the reproduction-style chairs because at least that way we can use our new table!

Already it's brought our dining area bang up-to-date (well if you ignore the chairs) and MOH who saw it in full daylight, said it's amazing how much lighter it is in that part of our house. Which is good as that's what we hoped would happen with a white glass table.

And I'm so impressed that he texted me a photo of it without prompting!  

Clearly my new table excitement was obvious.

SUNDAY IT LOOKED LIKE THIS...

THEN THE NIGHT BEFORE...

Now I'm super-excited for the chairs to be here.

Pinpointing the issue with our study (aka my craft room)

We've made other progress too this week, quite unexpectedly as it turns out.  As we now have a "spare" pigeon shelf to find a home for - as we decided against hanging them both in the porch - clearly not really a problem as I quite quickly knew it would be ideal in my craft room, or the room MOH still calls the study.

It's a room in the eaves so only has two straight walls, and one of those is covered with bookcases. This means there's really only one wall it can go on which we measured and of course it fits. What MOH didn't know was that I was really measuring to see if I could fit a pinboard in alongside it, but I'll let him know that nearer the time. 

So with its final location agreed (well the wall, if not the actual placement) we needed to decide on the colour. I'm loathed to have another pot of paint to store, which we'll never use again but the eggshell colours we have didn't go with the cream walls. I've written before that I wasn't sure about the cream being the right colour, and now rather than ignore it I had to face it head on.

MOH agreed. But each of us knew there's quite a bit of painting ahead. So our plan is to decorate half of our top floor, replacing the cream colour with something from the cooler palette.  MOH is keen for a pale green that we used to have up there, and I'm tending to agree.

And you know what, with that decision has come clarity. And renewed vigour to get the study in particular sorted out as it's the place that is storing the things we're not quite sure what to do with.

A revised to do list

1.  Finish painting the "spare" pigeon shelf to hang in the study

2. Repaint the cream in the study and the top bedroom a cooler colour (including the built in floor to ceiling open shelving unit)

3. Dejunk both of those rooms (probably before we start painting)

4. Find new homes for our reproduction table, chairs, corner unit and sideboard so that we can reclaim the conservatory before we want to use the conservatory as it was intended.

5. Finally hang the picture wall I've been planning in my head on the study wall.

Simple hey? There is, I fear much more to it than these five simple steps - I'll keep you posted...