A day filled with cooking. I lit the stove and started preparing the pumpkin soup that I'll take to St Nicks on Wednesday morning and help eat during the evening's event. I decided to use the preserving pan as this holds between 30 and 40 bowls full, and our next biggest pan (a 'Le Creuset' casserole) only holds about 8 bowls worth.
So, I fried some onion, leek and spring onion, and then added a large carrot and a couple of potatoes before lots of sliced pumpkin and covering with a kettle full of water. I set this to simmer on the stove, I'll add herbs, spices and bouillon later.
Straight after lunch I took the boys on their bikes down to Country Fresh as they wanted to choose a pumpkin each for the carving competition on Wednesday. It was good to see Shirley back, as she's been away for some while. I picked up two sacks of stuff for composting but lots of these items were apples, which I'll try to make space to dry.
I got home in time to go straight out again to the Monkgate health Centre where I had an asthma check and flu jab. I've had asthma since I was a child but no-one would know as I take a tiny dose of preventative every night. However, in my late teens I ended up in hospital twice with severe symptoms, and on one occasion I came close to dying and if the ambulance hadn't have come and scraped me up off my neighbour's doorstep, I might have done. This was when I lived in an unheated house with mould on the walls, no phone, and the day after a Hawkwind concert where it is just possible I might have inhaled some toxic substances! However, even with my much cleaner-living lifestyle, I could still get a bad chest infection if I got influenza.
I popped in to Sainsburys on the way home and then cycled back with some nice bread, some cheap tomato puree and a good selection of breakfast cereals.
Before I got home I stopped off at Freshways and Raj had a lot of 'freegan' goodies for me. I was able to share the chili sauce with my friend Simon and his son (who proudly tells anybody who will listen that he's growing the hottest chilis commercially available). I don't know many 10 year olds who are chili connoisseurs!
So, my next job was to cook some tea. I did a tomato based sauce with sliced baby tromboncino squash (good picture here) and pasties, potato and salad.
After tea I continued to add to the pumpkin soup, so we have a rather hot house tonight. I'll finish it tomorrow and put it in the fridge overnight before taking it in to St Nicks on Wednesday before my work in Leeds, as I'll get back with not much time to spare before the 5.30pm start of the pumpkin event.
A warm evening.
Showing posts with label pumpkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pumpkins. Show all posts
First thing in the morning (OK, after breakfast and emails, so at 10am) I went to Country Fresh to pick up the second lot of pumpkins for the St Nicks pumpkin festival evening next Wednesday at 5.30pm... fun carving and free food, all made with pumpkins!
I got 11 of them, another 10 for St Nicks and one to take home to form the basis of a pumpkin soup I've offered to make for the evening.
From St Nicks I went into town to see my friend Anita who is back from Spain for a week. She opened the door looking happy and slightly disheveled. A few minutes later Bruno came down looking equally happy. It's obvious they are delighted to be back together. Making up for lost time.
Anita made me a cappuccino and offered me chocolate bread, and all three of us had the most amazing discussion. Anita is someone I can talk to about anything as she's very broad-minded and experienced. And I'm glad to get to know Bruno a bit better. A very enjoyable hour.
And back home via Freshways who had two sacks of 'resources' for me. A good lunch, finished the tomato soup from a couple of days ago and started making another tomato-based dish as we are over-run with slightly sad tomatoes, perfect for cooking with and too good for composting.
At 2.15 I headed off to see David who is in the early throes of getting a publicity leaflet together. I was happy with what he'd done so far and hopefully he'll do an equally good job on the reverse side.
Home to an hour of compost heap building and at half five came in, washed and headed out again to the Minster this time, to meet Rachel Semlyen and Kate Lock who have been conspiring to do a 350 picture with a photographer friend they have, John from The Star. They had devised an ingenious way to get a really good image, using cardboard templates and LED torches, and the camera on a tripod with a long exposure followed by hand held flash guns from several different angles to get the best lighting. The results are amazing and I'll post it here when I can. The photo will be sent to 350.org and will probably be shown internationally with many others. Tomorrow is a big day with loads of symbolic actions to show our 'leaders' how much we care about the outcome of the Copenhagen talks in December. I'll be attending the York Wave tomorrow morning.
I got home feeling very elated and Gill had made a pasta, cauliflower and broccoli bake with the tomato thing I made earlier. What a team!
I really REALLY enjoyed seeing a programme on one of my favourite bands, Kraftwerk. Brought back loads of brilliant memories. I grew up with this predecessor of hip hop and dance music and somehow got myself an early album of theirs... it's pretty industrial but interesting textured sound. The cover looks like this:
anyone know what it is, as there is no information on the cover, or, if I remember correctly, on the discs inside?
Gill and I had a game of Scrabble and it was very close all the way through, but Gill won.
I got 11 of them, another 10 for St Nicks and one to take home to form the basis of a pumpkin soup I've offered to make for the evening.
From St Nicks I went into town to see my friend Anita who is back from Spain for a week. She opened the door looking happy and slightly disheveled. A few minutes later Bruno came down looking equally happy. It's obvious they are delighted to be back together. Making up for lost time.
Anita made me a cappuccino and offered me chocolate bread, and all three of us had the most amazing discussion. Anita is someone I can talk to about anything as she's very broad-minded and experienced. And I'm glad to get to know Bruno a bit better. A very enjoyable hour.
And back home via Freshways who had two sacks of 'resources' for me. A good lunch, finished the tomato soup from a couple of days ago and started making another tomato-based dish as we are over-run with slightly sad tomatoes, perfect for cooking with and too good for composting.
At 2.15 I headed off to see David who is in the early throes of getting a publicity leaflet together. I was happy with what he'd done so far and hopefully he'll do an equally good job on the reverse side.
Home to an hour of compost heap building and at half five came in, washed and headed out again to the Minster this time, to meet Rachel Semlyen and Kate Lock who have been conspiring to do a 350 picture with a photographer friend they have, John from The Star. They had devised an ingenious way to get a really good image, using cardboard templates and LED torches, and the camera on a tripod with a long exposure followed by hand held flash guns from several different angles to get the best lighting. The results are amazing and I'll post it here when I can. The photo will be sent to 350.org and will probably be shown internationally with many others. Tomorrow is a big day with loads of symbolic actions to show our 'leaders' how much we care about the outcome of the Copenhagen talks in December. I'll be attending the York Wave tomorrow morning.
I got home feeling very elated and Gill had made a pasta, cauliflower and broccoli bake with the tomato thing I made earlier. What a team!
I really REALLY enjoyed seeing a programme on one of my favourite bands, Kraftwerk. Brought back loads of brilliant memories. I grew up with this predecessor of hip hop and dance music and somehow got myself an early album of theirs... it's pretty industrial but interesting textured sound. The cover looks like this:
anyone know what it is, as there is no information on the cover, or, if I remember correctly, on the discs inside?
Gill and I had a game of Scrabble and it was very close all the way through, but Gill won.
A slow start to the day... I was able to have an hour of reading the NewScientist which was great... although I'm still 3 weeks behind!
But got up at 10ish and did some more sorting in the conservatory... taking down more dead Yam vines and collecting it all in a huge saucepan, and then taking off the little balls from the leaf axils and collecting them together so I can give them to people and plant more next Spring... I have hundreds!
Had a delivery of new bolts and wing nuts to hold the Composphere together, as the ones it was supplied with were no good, and I contacted the company, who said yes, this was true, and they'd send some different ones. I spent 20 minutes making the sphere spherical again.
Then I put all the Yam vines and tomato haulms together with a large load of other compostables and went down the garden to load up the Composphere. I also picked two pumpkins and a squash, loads of beans and some nasturtium seeds.
I also did a small amount of log splitting whilst waiting for our eldest son to come home, and I visited Country Fresh which has a new groovy green paint-job. Lovely!
Later in the evening I heard the excellent news that the power company E.ON have decided to not build the dirty coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, supposedly because of the economic downturn meaning that electricity consumption is down. I'm sure that the widespread opposition and criticism also had something to do with it. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/07/eon-cancels-kingsnorth-power-station?commentpage=1 for the announcement and the reaction; loads of comments.
I got a call from a friend who wanted some help understanding some forms which had arrived so I popped round and looked through them, and talked her through what I thought she should do, and explained her options. A little bit of advocacy work... I may need to help her fill them in.
Late on I sorted through a load of thrown-out pears to salvage what I could to dry. A wet and messy job, interspersed with trips back to the laptop to have goes on Scrabble.
But got up at 10ish and did some more sorting in the conservatory... taking down more dead Yam vines and collecting it all in a huge saucepan, and then taking off the little balls from the leaf axils and collecting them together so I can give them to people and plant more next Spring... I have hundreds!
Had a delivery of new bolts and wing nuts to hold the Composphere together, as the ones it was supplied with were no good, and I contacted the company, who said yes, this was true, and they'd send some different ones. I spent 20 minutes making the sphere spherical again.
Then I put all the Yam vines and tomato haulms together with a large load of other compostables and went down the garden to load up the Composphere. I also picked two pumpkins and a squash, loads of beans and some nasturtium seeds.
I also did a small amount of log splitting whilst waiting for our eldest son to come home, and I visited Country Fresh which has a new groovy green paint-job. Lovely!
Later in the evening I heard the excellent news that the power company E.ON have decided to not build the dirty coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, supposedly because of the economic downturn meaning that electricity consumption is down. I'm sure that the widespread opposition and criticism also had something to do with it. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/07/eon-cancels-kingsnorth-power-station?commentpage=1 for the announcement and the reaction; loads of comments.
I got a call from a friend who wanted some help understanding some forms which had arrived so I popped round and looked through them, and talked her through what I thought she should do, and explained her options. A little bit of advocacy work... I may need to help her fill them in.
Late on I sorted through a load of thrown-out pears to salvage what I could to dry. A wet and messy job, interspersed with trips back to the laptop to have goes on Scrabble.
Cuddly morning. Didn't get dressed til lunchtime.. the family had gone out to town by bus to get some clothes as the boys keep growing and not wearing them out but outgrowing them. They actually came back with a book, some material and stuff for a costume!
I got a phone call from Cycle Heaven saying Gill's bike wouldn't be ready til about 4pm, not 2 as was suggested yesterday, so I spent some time in the garden, tidying up frosted nasturtiums and picking off seeds and young flowerbuds for pickling. I've not pickled nasturtium buds yet, but since capers are flower buds, I'm trying nasturtium buds! The seeds are great, a lovely hot taste, good for pizzas and making bland grain dishes more interesting.
At 4 went to Cycle Heaven to pick up my bike with new, improved brakes (the disc-brake pads needed replacing) and Gill's which had been serviced. Also got two pairs of LED lights for the boys, as we're going out tonight.
So a bit of a rush to put the lights on their bikes, and a quick bowl of pumpkin soup which was very good, and left for St Nicks at about 5.20... picking up Maria's son on the way. The event was a York Rotters Pumpkin Evening, with a giant pumpkin competition and a pumpkin carving competition. I had purchased three pumpkins from Country Fresh (grown in Heslington!) and also took my biggest squash to enter into the competition. My little 2.5kg squash was dwarfed by Jo's big pumpkin, which itself was dwarfed by a giant 55kg monster grown by children at Bishopthorpe School... this of course won! The carving went well... loads of competitors / participants which meant loads of seeds for me to take back home to dry and prepare for my muesli. My eldest son won the third prize in the carving competition, which made him happy, and all three of them enjoyed themselves. Got home sometime after 7pm.
A very peaceful and happy evening...
Until, quite late, my laptop screen decied to give up completely, after several days of playing up and not behaving properly.
I got a phone call from Cycle Heaven saying Gill's bike wouldn't be ready til about 4pm, not 2 as was suggested yesterday, so I spent some time in the garden, tidying up frosted nasturtiums and picking off seeds and young flowerbuds for pickling. I've not pickled nasturtium buds yet, but since capers are flower buds, I'm trying nasturtium buds! The seeds are great, a lovely hot taste, good for pizzas and making bland grain dishes more interesting.
At 4 went to Cycle Heaven to pick up my bike with new, improved brakes (the disc-brake pads needed replacing) and Gill's which had been serviced. Also got two pairs of LED lights for the boys, as we're going out tonight.
So a bit of a rush to put the lights on their bikes, and a quick bowl of pumpkin soup which was very good, and left for St Nicks at about 5.20... picking up Maria's son on the way. The event was a York Rotters Pumpkin Evening, with a giant pumpkin competition and a pumpkin carving competition. I had purchased three pumpkins from Country Fresh (grown in Heslington!) and also took my biggest squash to enter into the competition. My little 2.5kg squash was dwarfed by Jo's big pumpkin, which itself was dwarfed by a giant 55kg monster grown by children at Bishopthorpe School... this of course won! The carving went well... loads of competitors / participants which meant loads of seeds for me to take back home to dry and prepare for my muesli. My eldest son won the third prize in the carving competition, which made him happy, and all three of them enjoyed themselves. Got home sometime after 7pm.
A very peaceful and happy evening...
Until, quite late, my laptop screen decied to give up completely, after several days of playing up and not behaving properly.
Cycled into town with Gill, which was lovely... had a hot choc with her and visited the Futon shop to get a cover for the futon Gill got in the summer. Then I went to Cycle Heaven to book both our bikes in for some TLC next week, and I came home via the Thomas's Bread Shop to get their 'Yesterbake' deal which makes life so much cheaper.
Lunch and did a bit of work in the garden before going to get our youngest and was very pleased to see the pumpkin monsters on sale, alongside Green Thumbs Biscuits, which sold out. I couldn't help but buy one called 'Viletta, who loves compost' made with the pumpkin and four pears plus other bits of veg... and two weren't sold so I was given them, so pumpkin soup tomorrow!
Had a peaceful evening still doing the reminiscence artwork prep for Dexter and Ali.
Lunch and did a bit of work in the garden before going to get our youngest and was very pleased to see the pumpkin monsters on sale, alongside Green Thumbs Biscuits, which sold out. I couldn't help but buy one called 'Viletta, who loves compost' made with the pumpkin and four pears plus other bits of veg... and two weren't sold so I was given them, so pumpkin soup tomorrow!
Had a peaceful evening still doing the reminiscence artwork prep for Dexter and Ali.
Up fairly early as was due to help one of Gill's friends Beth with some gardening. She needed to take out some shrubs but doesn't feel strong enough to do that kind of work, and I offered the use of my 'wrecking bar', a metal bar which is brilliant at helping take out stumps.
Gill took the kiddies to school and I got to the garden with the shrubbery removal job soon after 9am. I worked til nearly lunchtime, and came home with a trailer-load of shrubbery and sticks.
During the afternoon I shredded all the stuff I brought home and then at 3 went to get the boys plus one of their friends from school. He came for tea and then at 5.15 I cycled with all three of them down to St Nicks for the Pumpkin event. This was organised by York Rotters as they distributed pumpkin seeds at the beginning of the season, as pumpkins can grow well in garden compost-enriched soil, or even on old compost heaps. The event was a pumpkin competition, for the biggest, the most interesting, and the best carved, adult and child categories.
So I had bought two pumpkins for the boys, as mine didn't grow well this year. The friend's mum and younger brother arrived, also with two bought pumpkins. My friend Jo arrived, with quite a few bought pumpkins. More than enough to go around.
The event was well attended, including my friend Jim and his girlfriend and her kids, and Jim's mum whom I'm fond of. After signing in, and saying I had responsibility for my sons with knives, they got going with the carving. I chatted to a florist who works nearby about composting, and the competition's judge, a lady named Sue who's a fundraiser for Marie Cure Cancer Care, who may also take up composting...
When 7pm came the judging took place. Jean had managed to grow a specimen about 12 cm across, and won the biggest pumpkin section, and got a Can O Worms, donated by Wiggly Wigglers, lucky her, I paid nearly £100 for mine! John from St Nicks had submitted a tichy pumpkin about 2cm diameter, it won the most interesting pumpkin. Not sure what he got for that. The florist won the adult carved pumpkin, with a wonderful image of a witch on her pumpkin-lantern. Finally, the kiddies section, and amazingly, my eldest son won! He was so happy! He won a wormery, one with a thin cross section so the tunnels could be seen easily.
We came home happy, with the two pumpkins and the prize, and they went to bed very tired.
Gill took the kiddies to school and I got to the garden with the shrubbery removal job soon after 9am. I worked til nearly lunchtime, and came home with a trailer-load of shrubbery and sticks.
During the afternoon I shredded all the stuff I brought home and then at 3 went to get the boys plus one of their friends from school. He came for tea and then at 5.15 I cycled with all three of them down to St Nicks for the Pumpkin event. This was organised by York Rotters as they distributed pumpkin seeds at the beginning of the season, as pumpkins can grow well in garden compost-enriched soil, or even on old compost heaps. The event was a pumpkin competition, for the biggest, the most interesting, and the best carved, adult and child categories.
So I had bought two pumpkins for the boys, as mine didn't grow well this year. The friend's mum and younger brother arrived, also with two bought pumpkins. My friend Jo arrived, with quite a few bought pumpkins. More than enough to go around.
The event was well attended, including my friend Jim and his girlfriend and her kids, and Jim's mum whom I'm fond of. After signing in, and saying I had responsibility for my sons with knives, they got going with the carving. I chatted to a florist who works nearby about composting, and the competition's judge, a lady named Sue who's a fundraiser for Marie Cure Cancer Care, who may also take up composting...
When 7pm came the judging took place. Jean had managed to grow a specimen about 12 cm across, and won the biggest pumpkin section, and got a Can O Worms, donated by Wiggly Wigglers, lucky her, I paid nearly £100 for mine! John from St Nicks had submitted a tichy pumpkin about 2cm diameter, it won the most interesting pumpkin. Not sure what he got for that. The florist won the adult carved pumpkin, with a wonderful image of a witch on her pumpkin-lantern. Finally, the kiddies section, and amazingly, my eldest son won! He was so happy! He won a wormery, one with a thin cross section so the tunnels could be seen easily.
We came home happy, with the two pumpkins and the prize, and they went to bed very tired.
