The gluts have left the building (shed)
This is where I used to write about the gluts I get from my veg patch and the ensuing gluttony in the kitchen.
Now I write a weekly mostly-veggie recipe over on Substack, plus share tales from the veg patch and exclusive videos. You can subscribe for free by clicking on the link below and every recipe will be sent straight to your inbox. If you’d like more content (such as those videos I mentioned, interviews and printer-friendly PDFs of every recipe to collect) do consider becoming a paid subscriber. More on that here.
In the meantime, here’s an archive of my old Gluts and Gluttony blog:
Smoky Tomato & Chilli Harissa
If you have a greenhouse you will currently, most likely, find yourself besieged by chillies. Too many cold nights will have forced you to uproot the greenhouse plants and bring in what harvest you can. And so you have a lot of chillies to deal with. Well, there is relief for the chilli-swamped amongst us. And it is harissa.
Roast Tomato Soup
When the rain starts and the temperature falls and the nights draw in, my mind turns to soup. Specifically, tomato soup. Perhaps because tomato soup is, to me, the cure for all ills. As a child, a tin of Heinz tomato soup was like penicillin in our house: it could remedy almost any ailment from a grazed knee to a chill caught after a reckless trip in a rowing boat during a rainstorm. It was what you took on caravan holidays, where succour was always necessary. It was where you turned when you wanted satisfying, flavoursome coziness but couldn’t find anything to eat in the kitchen. It was what you stuck in the microwave to eat on a Sunday afternoon in front of Star Wars videos.
No-Churn Grape Ice-Cream
Last year a friend offered me some of her grape glut. Delighted (such a harvest feels especially exotic and precious in England), I went over to her house to pick a bowlful. But there were so many grapes that my pickings didn’t even put a dent in the crop and I wished for more bowls. (For the full story, and recipes, see here and here.) This year though, I have learnt my lesson, and when the grape glut call came once again I returned with all the bowls I could find and none of my English-restraint. So now I have eight kilos of grapes.
Raspberry Overnight Oats
The advantage of a raspberry harvest is that, unless they have crampons and head for heights, the mice cannot get them. This is the state I have found myself in: measuring the worth of our summer fruits almost entirely by their ability to withstand nightly raids from mice. Because the mice are legion this year. And now they are strawberry connoisseurs too, more’s the pity. Still, they haven’t sussed the summer fruiting raspberries…
Strawberry & Rose Ice-Cream
The strawberries this year are recalcitrant. They have taken one look at the rain and found there no incentive to put on a good showing since Wimbledon will undoubtedly be rained off and so the nation won’t be requiring any strawberries. As a general rule, the veg patch is usually quite happy about warm rain, growing lush and green and rocketing to jungle-like proportions. But enough is enough and everyone, me included, is in need of some sunshine.
Celeriac Soup with Pickled Rhubarb
There’s so much rhubarb in the patch that it is becoming a bit of a problem. Rampant and unwieldy, it is technically caged in a spot removed from the main veg beds to protect it from the rabbits, but I think the barbed wire is really to keep it from taking over the EVERYTHING. Anyway, its abundance means I find myself with the first of many main crop rhubarb gluts.
Roast Grape & Goat’s Cheese Bruschetta
A grape glut! Not mine. More’s the pity. My neighbour’s, who has a vine in her back garden, pays it almost no attention (in fact, I think it’s considered a bit of a pest) yet is swamped, literally swamped, with grapes. Now, when someone invites you to come and help yourself to their glut there’s an awkward moment of glut-pilfering etiquette that ensues.
Blackcurrant Yogurt Lollies
It’s my first year with a berry harvest. And, goodness, it’s been a whopper. A proper old-fashioned, sinks full of berries, break the scales, stain the trug kind of glut. Redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries, blackberries – we’ve had the works.
The Secret Pleasures of a Clandestine Wild Garlic Glut
The woodland is misty with morning dew. Badger trails crisscross the carpet of bluebells as it stretches away into the depths of the wood – gnarled, ancient, held upright by moss. A spaniel, my spaniel, clatters about in the undergrowth bothering a blackbird who was just looking for breakfast. But best of all, the air is thick with the smell of garlic. This is my Eden. And I imagine I’m not alone.