A big pile of ...

Of all the wonderful attractions that North London offers, my current favourite has to be the City Farm. Yep, I just love it.  I'm a simple soul at heart.

The non-urban dweller may not appreciate the full impact of being able to pop in to a working farm on a regular basis with small children.  We smell and hear it before we get there - chickens, geese and ducks wander freely around the yard.  A pair of pigs rootle happily in squelchy mud, horses are saddled ready to be exercised around the neighbouring roads, goats wander over to say hello and sheep nurture their spring lambs in fields under the railway arches.  Three orphaned cows are constantly pestered by crowing cockerels and soon frogs will come to spawn in the pond.

Great stuff, and yes I do know a rhyme or song for every animal (and sing them).  But my favourite view is this:  a great big pile of steaming poo. Isn't it marvellous? (And, yep, there's a song for this too.)

Well, not so much poo exactly as horse manure and stable sweepings which, as we know, will rot down to very useful soil improver. A sight to gladden any gardener's heart and free for the taking (as long as you ask nicely first and then they'll bag it for you, or so I'm told).

I mention this simply to illustrate that in the Veg Patch's third growing year, our thoughts our turning to muck and soil which is just how it should be at this time of year.

It's been a while ...

Well, I'm back.  I've noticed that quite a few bloggers step out for a while in the winter months, being busy catching up with real non-gardening life, I guess.  For me, it's because there's been absolutely nothing to report.  What with the weather having been unforgiving for so long and any good gardening days invariably clashing with my work days.  And do you know what?  It's been quite nice to not have to think about writing up non-events in my online 'diary'.  (News that my gardening catalogues have arrived and I've idly marked a few interesting seeds for the year ahead is hardly riveting, is it? )

I confess I've been giving some thought to letting it all go.  I do try to be upbeat about things but, looking back over the last year, gardening seemed to be fraught with problems to be overcome rather than a source of pleasure.  Looking forward, I can see the same issues waiting for me:  no outside tap for watering, foxes and cats waiting to dig it all up, neighbours helping themselves without helping.  Really, is it any wonder that I long for a nice large back garden to call my own?

• • • • • • • •

P.S.  Since writing the above, my sanity has been rescued by a friendly neighbour who has come outside to support me with tidying up the post-winter veg patch.  My intention was to clear the beds ready for any growers who might be interested but, in doing so - and finding strawberries and herbs springing back into life, I've started to consider what I enjoyed most about last year's growing season and may be here for a while yet - albeit concentrating this year on gardening with the children.  

Here's Archie (a very reliable and enthusiastic assistant) helping with clearing the monster beetroot/s.

An unexpected victory…

:: Trick or Treaters from The Nightmare before Christmas (6 inch pumpkin) ::

If only I hadn't succumbed to the 'flu, last weekend would have been just marvellous! Remember the pumpkin carving at Fortnums that I wrote about? My sister, nieces, their kids, my son, me - all got together for the day and entered our respective pumpkins. My son and I swiftly carved a couple of pumpkins in the morning (mine, above) before heading off for lunch whilst the rest of the family put a bit more preparation into it, going out to select their pumpkins from a nearby farm:

… and then devoting an evening to the carving. It paid off: I'm thrilled (and very proud) to announce that my niece Kate carried off the first Golden Pumpkin Award in the shape of a bespoke Fortnum's broomstick! Here she is, collecting her prize from Fortnum's jovial judge Simon who dreamt up and organised the whole shebang.

She also won the luxury Windsor Hamper; what luck! we had a sort of pre-nup agreement that whoever won would divvy up the spoils between the family. That was a pretty solid deal for the rest of us as Kate is generally known as a luck magnet. I've got my eye on that hamper basket ;) (fat chance mate!) …although I'd happily settle for the Magnifici florentines and the caviar instead!

The standard of entries was quite overwhelming; the competition was opened up to double the numbers - I think there were over 150 entries, some of whom obviously took the whole thing very seriously:

This King of the Wild Things was carved into an Atlantic Giant, with extra stalks added. Impressive! But it didn't win because it failed in one of the categories - luminosity;  the carver hadn't hollowed it out.  So there you are, hot tip to remember for next year. 

Other pumpkins were very well carved (top right: ma boy's carving of Oogly Boogly, top left: Cheshire Cat by my niece, Jen):

(Sorry, had to get those two in!)  Here's a couple more that totally appealed to me, they were so quirky - and of course included plenty of veg and flowers!

 Every table in the Ground Floor Gallery restaurant was covered in lit pumpkins as the evening got darker (wolfman, catwoman, haunted houses) and contestants with their families feasted on complimentary snacks and drinks: mulled wine or soft fruit coolers, pumpkin risotto (they've promised me the recipe, it was mega-tasty), sausage pumpkin puff pastry slices, chocolate chilli cream mousse - really, there was no need to make supper when I got home!  But I expect what you all really want to know is…  what did the winning pumpkin look like?

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B-O-O!

Trick or Treat, dearie?

(And, clever girl, she made the giant sweets on top and filled the inside with sweets and fairy lights!)  What?  Me, biased?  Surely not!!  Ha, ha.  Well done Kate!!
xxxxx

P.S. I hope that next year I'll see a few London based veg gardeners there with home-grown carved pumpkins?  And yes, I'm getting over the 'flu although I suspect it's all downhill towards a filthy cold.  So annoying! So much to do in the garden!

Pumpkin Muffins

Yesterday I spoke of baking pumpkin muffins and promised the recipe.  Here it is, hopefully in time for some Hallowe'en partying this weekend.  I like to offer iced cupcakes or muffins or decorated biscuits to Trick or Treaters instead of sweets - does that make me odd?  It seems to go down well and I find it a more appealing alternative to the bags of tooth-rotting sweets that the kids come back with in their loot bags. (Most of which, in my home, don't get eaten - the thrill being in the hunter/gatherer phase.)

This recipe will make 12 good sized muffins (those are Lakeland muffin cases in the pic above, so probably about 2 inches deep - to give you an idea of size).

You will need:

7 oz (200g) peeled, deseeded and chunked pumpkin flesh
half Tablespoon oil (sunflower or other light oil)
10 oz (300g) plain flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 egg (I used large)
150 ml (5 fl oz) soured cream
50ml (1 3/4 fl oz) milk
5 oz (150g) soft brown sugar
2 oz (60g) butter, melted

:: This is the recipe I followed but, as an afterthought, felt the muffins would be extra nice with some fruit thrown in (raisins, sultanas, cranberries).  A friend who works at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant in Old Street also suggested the addition of ground cumin (which sounds delicious!).::

Assuming you already have your carved out pumpkin flesh, allow an hour for this recipe due to cooking time.  Important to know this if, like me, you are prone to whipping up a batch of cupcakes in less than half an hour for hungry mouths.

So, let's start:

Preheat your oven to 190C /375 F/Gas 5 ready to roast your pumpkin flesh.  Put in a baking dish, drizzle with oil and toss to coat.  (Or put oil and pumpkin in a plastic bag and give it a shake to coat.)  Roast for about 35 minutes (careful not to burn), remove, cool and mash with a fork.

Then turn your oven up to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Sift your flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large bowl.  In another bowl lightly beat the egg, add the soured cream, milk, sugar, melted butter, mashed pumpkin and combine. (If adding raisins or sultanas and a half teaspoon of ground cumin, put those into this bowl with the other stuff.)  Pour this in with the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. 

Prepare your muffin pan:  either grease the wells or line with muffin cases.  Spoon large dollops of the mixture into the cases or pan wells. (See below for tip.) Bake for 20 minutes until risen and golden.  Leave to cool for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack.

I then carried on and iced mine as my tasters were mostly female and under 10 years old but I thought they were nice eaten plain from the oven (I don't have a sweet tooth) and of course if you've added raisins, they'll also add sweetness.

For Hallowe'en, think about icing with orange glacé icing (icing sugar and water) and chocolate stars or with white chocolate and then pipe spider webs over the top.

~Not my best photo - the lighting was poor and the cakes wouldn't last until morning! ~

This recipe is adapted from Susannah Blake's in the book Baking Magic - 280 pages of incredibly tempting muffins, cupcakes, biscuits - both sweet and savoury - with irresistable photos.

Helpful tip - filling cake cases:  When making cupcakes or muffins, I can't be bothered with the faff of spooning the mix into the cases (waaaay too messy and time consuming) - I use my ice cream scoop (like this one: Ice Cream Scoop) i.e. a squeezy one that delivers just the right amount of mix over to the cases without mess.  I didn't realise they came in different sizes, mines about 5 cm diameter. 

Best for carving pumpkins…

Well, we're nearly at the end of October; I had the best intentions of thrilling you all with a daily dose of cooking inspiration with pumpkin as the main ingredient which - load me up with guilt - has not happened. Those particular seeds of inspiration have fallen on stony ground thanks to a several factors: a few autumnal tummy bugs sweeping through the home, extra large doses of domesticity being required from me as I have my twent-ager niece staying with me (I begrudge housework when I could be gardening) and getting my son off to a school trip to Spain (sooo envious) … not to mention Work.

The draw for my giveaway book took place (drawn by my son) and the winner is:  Pandora!  The book is now winging its way to Cornwall in time for some spooky and creative carving.  Thank you to everyone that entered, it was such fun checking out where y'all hail from.

And I found time to start my pumpkin carving experiments. Tomorrow I'm off to Fortnum's to see how the professionals do it (and will try and take loads of photos for a blog show-and-tell at the weekend).
In the meantime, for anyone about to start hollowing out a pumpkin, this is the tool that works best - for me at least:

Yep - a melon baller.  I spooned the orange globe into submission. My pumpkin was fairly small - about 8 inches diameter - and this really did the biz for final smoothing when getting the right thickness.  You can see the array of "tools" which I worked through:  Sharp knife, small sharp knife , spoon, grapefruit knife.  All useful but, seriously, with the melon baller we're talking icing on cake for speed and tired hands.  (Plus, I imagine that small, child-sized, hands could manage this easily.)  I've read elsewhere that ice-cream scoops can help; I haven't tried - yet - but I'd recommend one that has a clean edge for digging in to the pumpkin flesh.

 Did I mention cake?  By the end, I felt that I'd earned a treat and I baked all that lovely golden flesh into Spiced Pumpkin Muffins.  Yum, yum. Recipe will be posted later today - they're delicious eaten warm from the oven!

Last Day for my Giveaway!

There are lots of pumpkins appearing in the shops now and, (unlike me) if you were organised enough to grow some this year, I expect you've already harvested a few.  Are you saving any for decorating? You might want to know exactly how to deal effectively with all those innards (how to get the shell really clean so your decorated pumpkin won't start to rot and stink so soon), which tools are the best to use (and where to get them from) and how to be inspired beyond the spooky Hallowe'en faces.  For the more environmentally minded, there's even a project on making bird feeders from squashes - very important to keep the birds fed as the days get colder and there's less food around for them.

In which case …

… Decorating Pumpkins and Gourds: 20 Fun and Stylish Projects for Decorating Pumpkins, Gourds, and Squashescould be the very book you need (click on the book title for a 'look inside' linkthrough) and - more excitingly! one lucky reader will win a copy by midnight tonight … ~ahem~ by the time I wake up tomorrow morning.  Just leave a comment at the bottom of the original post (click here) (or at the bottom of this one - gosh I'm indecisive today) to have your name added to the Wellie Boot of Luck.  You can enter the draw even if you don't live in the UK! (A big thank you to everyone who has entered already.)

Regardless of your carving skills, what do you do with the pumpkin flesh?  I'd love to know!  I've heard a lot about American Pumpkin Pie so will try and track down a  recipe for that (anyone got a recommendation for me?) but check back tomorrow and I'll have a pumpkin muffin recipe for you.

And don't forget to save the seeds!  Keep a few back for re-sowing next year (wash, dry and store in dry place) and eat the rest!  Try this yummy way of cooking them: Chilli Lime Roasted Pumpkin Seeds from Roamyourwayhome, one of the members on Jamie Oliver's food website. I think these would make great grown up Hallowe'en snacks!