I got up quite early as I had a doctor's appointment as my ankle is still hot to the touch, still a bit painful, and I'm worried about turning on it again... I've almost gone over on it twice since breaking it, well, since the pot came off. I do NOT want to damage it again!
But I also had agreed to take 3 sacks of wood to my friend Anita, who's central heating has gone wrong, but has a woodstove. So I loaded the trailer up and cycled round to Monkgate. I settled down to read No Impact Man, as there's usually a wait at the Surgery, but today I was called in two minutes early! The GP, (Brendon, I think!) was a new one (for me) and he was really nice, and he gave me some good advice about exercises and strapping my ankle. He was also interested in my lipoma, as I told him I had an appointment to have it removed. I'd happily see this GP again.
Then I popped round to Anita's but she'd double booked and got an appointment at her bank in town, so instead of chatting over a coffee we walked into town together and chatted. We parted at the bank and I went to the Friends Meeting House to see if I could book a room for the Car Free York meeting. Then onto Alligator to pick up a small load of compostables and then to Country Fresh for quite a lot more. I then had a bite of lunch and a good session down the garden, loading up this material with hedge shreddings into the medium Compostumbler.
When the post arrived after lunch, I was pleased to get the document from the Criminal Records Bureau, an 'Enhanced Disclosure'. This means I'll be called into Woodlands soon, given an induction, and be able to help them with their log problem at the back of the building! Yay!! They get volunteer help, I get to take the unwanted tree trunks they normally put on a bonfire. There's at least a win-win-win there!
The boys came home from school, our youngest has started senior school so they came home together. They'd both had a good day. Thank goodness, we were thinking about them all day.
For tea I had a plate of noodles with a veg mix which included some chunks of tromboncino squash, Jack Edwards Pea Beans and thrown-away tomatoes. Several little boxes had been put in the 'unsalable' bag, as each had one or two squashy ones, and about half a dozen sound ones, and it takes too long to sort these out into good and bad... it's cheaper for the retailer to throw the lot and get on with a job which will have a bigger return, like making the trays of tomatoes look nice so customers buy them. I enjoyed my tea, especially as some of the ingredients were home grown and others rescued from material destined for landfill.
Later I dealt with all of the remaining Mirabelle plums, cutting the plum so the stone came out (it comes out really easily with the ripe ones) and stewing some, drying the rest. Bed at 2am.
Showing posts with label tromboncino squash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tromboncino squash. Show all posts
A kind of relaxing day, except that I had an accident with the blackberry and apple fruit-leather-to-be. I was using the vacuum cleaner to remove the fruit flies which were being a bit too interested in the tray, balanced on the big saucepan on the stove. I'd lined the pan with a plastic sandwich bag, as when the leather dries, it is really easy to take the sheet of fruit pulp out and peel the plastic off it and put the damp sheet on a rack to dry further. BUT the vacuum cleaner sucked the plastic bag and dislodged the tray, which spilt all over the top and side of the stove, hearth, and carpet in front. Whoops.
I was able to pour the rest of the blackberry and apple into a receptacle, as I hadn't lost all of it, but I then had to do quite a bit of clearing up. I was very annoyed with myself, as preparing the fruit took AGES!
The rest of the day was just fine. I received two books I bought yesterday from Amazon, using a gift voucher for £20 which I got for filling in a questionnaire months ago. As I've been asked to speak at the screening of Colin Beavan's 'No Impact Man' on 7th September, I've bought the book so I can read it first. I also bought Mark Boyle's book 'The Moneyless Man, A Year of Freeconomic Living'. So I've got a lot of reading to do now... as if I hadn't already!
I did some work outside too, picked beans and a tromboncino squash, and windfall apples for drying, and I dug out a dalek bin of very mature compost into sacks which I've stored in the broken Compostumbler, and half-filled the newly emptied dalek with material from the medium sized Compostumbler. I then started to fill that Compostumbler again.
I really enjoyed an hour of weeding the pond-to-be area, another patch of ground elder, it is most satisfying.
Apart from that, I did relatively little today!
I was able to pour the rest of the blackberry and apple into a receptacle, as I hadn't lost all of it, but I then had to do quite a bit of clearing up. I was very annoyed with myself, as preparing the fruit took AGES!
The rest of the day was just fine. I received two books I bought yesterday from Amazon, using a gift voucher for £20 which I got for filling in a questionnaire months ago. As I've been asked to speak at the screening of Colin Beavan's 'No Impact Man' on 7th September, I've bought the book so I can read it first. I also bought Mark Boyle's book 'The Moneyless Man, A Year of Freeconomic Living'. So I've got a lot of reading to do now... as if I hadn't already!
I did some work outside too, picked beans and a tromboncino squash, and windfall apples for drying, and I dug out a dalek bin of very mature compost into sacks which I've stored in the broken Compostumbler, and half-filled the newly emptied dalek with material from the medium sized Compostumbler. I then started to fill that Compostumbler again.
I really enjoyed an hour of weeding the pond-to-be area, another patch of ground elder, it is most satisfying.
Apart from that, I did relatively little today!
A nice late morning, although was woken by one of my offspring at sometime after 7am, I went back to sleep. So, up after 9 and a harmonious household.
I did a bit of housework and the day sort of disappeared. Richard rang and I cycled down to Country Fresh and brought back 2 big sacks and 2 boxes of resources. I felt comfortable to cycle down without my Aircast plastic ankle support, as it's feeling a lot better.
A bit later I dealt with a patch of garden which I've watched becoming more overgrown, so I weeded that path, pulling up ground elder and then cutting back a long length of hedge with the shears, which will allow the squash plants in the radiator raised bed to crawl along the hedge and have a secure hold. This is where I grew my prize pumpkin last year, with the roots in the radiator bed (which started off as a compost heap) and the vine growing along the hedge. This year, I've got Zucchetta Rampicante Tromboncino squash again and already there are some good fruits hanging down... one is already over 30cm long. I picked Jack Edwards Pea Beans and courgettes and brought them to the house for tea time consumption.
In the evening I spent an hour watching a Gardeners World whilst stripping electrical flex, cutting the plastic insulation with my penknife and removing the wires inside, then pulling the wire with the copper centre over the knife blade so I can separate the insulation from the metal. I bin the plastic but the copper is quite valuable, and I'll take several kilos to the metal merchant in the next few weeks...
I've been getting fed up with my email inbox filling up and sometimes messages bouncing back to their sender, so today I went onto the Tiscali website and bought £13 worth of extra space. Suddenly my inbox which was 99% full was only 8% full... Woo hoo! However, I will continue to try to keep it at a sensible size. But at least if someone sends me a huge file, it will be accepted.
The other thing Gill and I did today was to organise a little camping expedition early next week. I'm working in Pickering on Sunday, and am going up on the bus. I finish at 3, and will take the bus to Thornton Le Dale. Gill will go up to Thornton Le Dale with the boys and the tent, sleeping bags etc and put up the tent at the Prospect Farm Campsite in the village. Gill will take my jugglestuff home on the bus and I'll stay with the boys, for one or two nights here. If the first night is OK, we'll hire bikes and go up into Dalby Forest on the Monday. So, if no blog posts appear around then, that's where I'll be, giving Gill some space and peace and quiet!
I did a bit of housework and the day sort of disappeared. Richard rang and I cycled down to Country Fresh and brought back 2 big sacks and 2 boxes of resources. I felt comfortable to cycle down without my Aircast plastic ankle support, as it's feeling a lot better.
A bit later I dealt with a patch of garden which I've watched becoming more overgrown, so I weeded that path, pulling up ground elder and then cutting back a long length of hedge with the shears, which will allow the squash plants in the radiator raised bed to crawl along the hedge and have a secure hold. This is where I grew my prize pumpkin last year, with the roots in the radiator bed (which started off as a compost heap) and the vine growing along the hedge. This year, I've got Zucchetta Rampicante Tromboncino squash again and already there are some good fruits hanging down... one is already over 30cm long. I picked Jack Edwards Pea Beans and courgettes and brought them to the house for tea time consumption.
In the evening I spent an hour watching a Gardeners World whilst stripping electrical flex, cutting the plastic insulation with my penknife and removing the wires inside, then pulling the wire with the copper centre over the knife blade so I can separate the insulation from the metal. I bin the plastic but the copper is quite valuable, and I'll take several kilos to the metal merchant in the next few weeks...
I've been getting fed up with my email inbox filling up and sometimes messages bouncing back to their sender, so today I went onto the Tiscali website and bought £13 worth of extra space. Suddenly my inbox which was 99% full was only 8% full... Woo hoo! However, I will continue to try to keep it at a sensible size. But at least if someone sends me a huge file, it will be accepted.
The other thing Gill and I did today was to organise a little camping expedition early next week. I'm working in Pickering on Sunday, and am going up on the bus. I finish at 3, and will take the bus to Thornton Le Dale. Gill will go up to Thornton Le Dale with the boys and the tent, sleeping bags etc and put up the tent at the Prospect Farm Campsite in the village. Gill will take my jugglestuff home on the bus and I'll stay with the boys, for one or two nights here. If the first night is OK, we'll hire bikes and go up into Dalby Forest on the Monday. So, if no blog posts appear around then, that's where I'll be, giving Gill some space and peace and quiet!
Quite a lazy first part of the day but a hard-working afternoon. I did quite a bit of removal of accumulated compostable stuff which has built up in the conservatory and is annoying Gill, and the children helped me, just a little bit, with some hedge-stick-chopping. After I got tired of composting I switched to harvesting.
I picked all the rest of the pea beans, and took down all the spent vines. I picked the last winter squash plus a huge number of small 'tromboncino' squash which are very like courgettes. I'll use them in a meal tomorrow. I also picked two cauliflowers and a few stray broccoli spears. I steamed the cauli, broccoli and the youngest of the beans and had them with pizza and potatoes for tea. I'm so glad I've grown cauliflower as this is the first year I've done so and it's not that difficult. And fresh-cut cauli is so much better than even the big ones I buy in Country Fresh. I also picked some apples, they are quite small but will be excellent for drying on the woodstove.
So, spent some of the evening sorting through various vegetables and getting them ready for storage or eating. Also wrote to my MP Hugh Bayley about the meeting he and I attended on Saturday, and played some facebook Scrabble whilst Gill watched Emma on BBC1.
I picked all the rest of the pea beans, and took down all the spent vines. I picked the last winter squash plus a huge number of small 'tromboncino' squash which are very like courgettes. I'll use them in a meal tomorrow. I also picked two cauliflowers and a few stray broccoli spears. I steamed the cauli, broccoli and the youngest of the beans and had them with pizza and potatoes for tea. I'm so glad I've grown cauliflower as this is the first year I've done so and it's not that difficult. And fresh-cut cauli is so much better than even the big ones I buy in Country Fresh. I also picked some apples, they are quite small but will be excellent for drying on the woodstove.
So, spent some of the evening sorting through various vegetables and getting them ready for storage or eating. Also wrote to my MP Hugh Bayley about the meeting he and I attended on Saturday, and played some facebook Scrabble whilst Gill watched Emma on BBC1.
Gill did the early stuff but I got up in time to get some bits and pieces together for my stint at St Nicholas Fields. I took some slightly damaged/bruised/beginning to rot fruit, some half rotted materials and some finished compost, to show a group of about 15 home-educated children and their parents.
They'd been out on the nature reserve but soon after 11am were ready to engage with me and my enthusiastic composting lesson. I always ask groups to put their hands up if they home compost or have a compost heap... and maybe I should have expected this, but they all did!
I ask lots of questions, and the answers help the session move forward, but I often soon ask them to look under the green grass of the lawn they are standing on and tell me what they can see between the soil and the living grass. There is invariably some dead grass and other decaying vegetable matter, which introduces the idea that composting is a natural process. I ask if they know what happens if fruit and veg material is thrown in an ordinary bin, and some of the older children already knew about landfills and methane, so the climate change implications came into the discussion.
I showed them a selection of compost bins including the one which has a perspex front which is revealed when the ordinary front panel is taken off, allowing the different layers of material to be seen... well rotted stuff at the bottom, semi composted in the centre and freshly added at the top. I also showed them the large New Zealand bins, where I found a slug, woodlice and a lovely staphylinid beetile, sometimes known as a cocktail beetle, similar to the rove beetle known as the Devil's Coach Horse. (another good image here)
Finally, on to the wormeries. The Can Of Worms wormery is a really good educational tool, as it shows the results of the worms' work in the lower layers. Children tend to really like worms, so this was a good place for me to stop and the new Education Officer to take over with a game based on statements about composting and a 'true' and 'false' pair of caddies to put the statements into.
This didn't take long and I was soon ready to go home and have a late lunch.
At 1.30, just before I had lunch, Martin and Bob from the Green Festival came round to sort out the last of the financial transactions from the festival.
After lunch we got a phone call from our eldest's school. He had received a bump on the head somehow and therefore the school needed to tell us. He didn't want to come home though... but a short time later we got another call saying he had a headache and did want to come home. So Gill hopped on her bike and cycled up there, and walked him home. He certainly does have a big lump on his forehead... we were able to joke about it being like my lipoma, a fatty benign lump I've got on my forehead. (mine is similar to this one)
I collected our youngest. And then as Gill was spending time with the boys, I made tea... a nutloaf with walnuts and rice (plus the usual breadcrumbs, peanut butter, grated and chopped vegetables, egg and assorted flavourings) cauliflower cheese and roasted Tromboncino squash (sometimes known as Zucchetta Rambicante, and here's the best set of photos of this vegetable).
This was well recieved and very filling. I'm glad this weird long squash I've grown are so tasty... although not quite as good as butternut, the metre long fruit I just cooked (in chunks) was easy to grow and is quite productive. I'll try to find these seeds again.
A quiet evening, washing up, drying bananas, facebook, blog, telly. The usual.
They'd been out on the nature reserve but soon after 11am were ready to engage with me and my enthusiastic composting lesson. I always ask groups to put their hands up if they home compost or have a compost heap... and maybe I should have expected this, but they all did!
I ask lots of questions, and the answers help the session move forward, but I often soon ask them to look under the green grass of the lawn they are standing on and tell me what they can see between the soil and the living grass. There is invariably some dead grass and other decaying vegetable matter, which introduces the idea that composting is a natural process. I ask if they know what happens if fruit and veg material is thrown in an ordinary bin, and some of the older children already knew about landfills and methane, so the climate change implications came into the discussion.
I showed them a selection of compost bins including the one which has a perspex front which is revealed when the ordinary front panel is taken off, allowing the different layers of material to be seen... well rotted stuff at the bottom, semi composted in the centre and freshly added at the top. I also showed them the large New Zealand bins, where I found a slug, woodlice and a lovely staphylinid beetile, sometimes known as a cocktail beetle, similar to the rove beetle known as the Devil's Coach Horse. (another good image here)
Finally, on to the wormeries. The Can Of Worms wormery is a really good educational tool, as it shows the results of the worms' work in the lower layers. Children tend to really like worms, so this was a good place for me to stop and the new Education Officer to take over with a game based on statements about composting and a 'true' and 'false' pair of caddies to put the statements into.
This didn't take long and I was soon ready to go home and have a late lunch.
At 1.30, just before I had lunch, Martin and Bob from the Green Festival came round to sort out the last of the financial transactions from the festival.
After lunch we got a phone call from our eldest's school. He had received a bump on the head somehow and therefore the school needed to tell us. He didn't want to come home though... but a short time later we got another call saying he had a headache and did want to come home. So Gill hopped on her bike and cycled up there, and walked him home. He certainly does have a big lump on his forehead... we were able to joke about it being like my lipoma, a fatty benign lump I've got on my forehead. (mine is similar to this one)
I collected our youngest. And then as Gill was spending time with the boys, I made tea... a nutloaf with walnuts and rice (plus the usual breadcrumbs, peanut butter, grated and chopped vegetables, egg and assorted flavourings) cauliflower cheese and roasted Tromboncino squash (sometimes known as Zucchetta Rambicante, and here's the best set of photos of this vegetable).
This was well recieved and very filling. I'm glad this weird long squash I've grown are so tasty... although not quite as good as butternut, the metre long fruit I just cooked (in chunks) was easy to grow and is quite productive. I'll try to find these seeds again.
A quiet evening, washing up, drying bananas, facebook, blog, telly. The usual.
