August in the garden…

 Another month with a little more unintentional neglect than would have been ideal - with the Great British Beer Festival taking up the first 10 days of the month for us. Once again Mum stepped into the breach as hose-wielder, and as a result combined with some unseasonably heavy rain showers relatively little damage was done this time. 

The main harvest for most of the month has continued to be beans - both the runners and the yellow bush beans have cropped marvellously this year - after a slow start in the case of the runners - and most meals through the month seem to have come with some form of beany element, with the freezer being plentifully loaded with lots more to see us into the winter months too. That's one of the best things about having the ability to grow or forage stuff to feed ourselves - the knowledge that spring's effort and summer's bounty will be turned into delicious food to eat through the rest of the year - whether essentially "fresh" (frozen), or as chutneys, jams or whatever other form we're able to preserve things in.

Project patchwork shed continues - with the main focus this month being the area above the log store as once that was all done it would enable us to start work on the extended roof and side to the store - and that in turn would enable us to get the logs we bought in ready for the winter out of the shed, creating more room in there to actually get things stored away. Paper brick making has recommenced too now that the greenhouse is no longer full of seedlings - another example of work now meaning we're better set up for the winter months. There will be another blog post shortly about the log store, too… 

On the subject of seedlings though, some sowing is continuing - with troughs of salad and additional herbs being sown this month and already poking their heads up. I touched on my herbs last month - but truly, those are really one of my main joys from the garden this year, all the more so after the essentially complete lack of success with soft herbs last year. I have been regularly making small batches of pesto - albeit not a "classic" version as mine uses sunflower seeds and Padano cheese - and those too are stored away in the freezer ready to provide joyful little bursts of flavour in pasta dishes. I do still keep a keen eye out for herb plants for "rescue" as well - with the supermarkets and DIY centres garden clearance areas being good for those. Generally speaking there is little wrong with them that a re-pot and a proper watering can't fix!  The cabbages we sowed last month all got eaten - almost certainly by slugs and snails, so I am stealing a bit of greenhouse shelf space from the drying fire bricks to use for new sowings of those - I'm determined that home grown cabbages will be in our future! Hopefully being able to keep them off the ground will help ensure that they stay intact long enough to get to a size they can be planted out! 

We're now enjoying a decent supply of courgettes - albeit a lot of the plants are a long way behind where we might have expected. The chillies meanwhile are clearly loving life - the picture above shows the “Bishop’s Crown” variety with vast numbers of fruit swelling. Those peppers I photographed last month are still going well, too - we've got several at a size where we're just waiting for them to ripen, now!

We ate our first sweetcorn over the bank holiday weekend and it didn’t disappoint - we’d both almost forgotten the delicious sweetness of ears of corn picked and cooked within minutes! 

The tomatoes too are lagging behind and disappointingly don't seem to be fruiting as well as they might either - this could be related to the exceptionally hot temperatures we had earlier in the year which may have affected the flowering and subsequent fruit setting. That said, my little “Minibel” bush tomatoes are cropping prolifically- and it was one of those that gave us our first ripe toms, with plenty more still to ripen.

The other task that inevitably begins at this time of year is starting to make plans for next year's plot. We've decided that a shift of position for the "cucumber trellis" is a good idea, and following our successful growing of sweetcorn this year we've earmarked a suitable spot for that, too. The main bean obelisk may well move to the opposite end of the main bed - with the additional plants being grown up and over the arches/metal frames. I intend definitely getting some of the Tromboncino squashes that I know will climb over those too - I had planned that for this year but just ended up with different varieties.  We've been potting up the sturdiest strawberry runners as we have seem them - so should be able to increase our quantity of strawberry plants for next year while keeping our current mix of "Sonata", "Cambridge Favourite" and "Elsanta" - and we may try to fashion some sort of stand for those too, whether by buying or building is yet to be established! 

Robyn.

Frugal Friday…

Homemade Scotch Eggs! 

It’s getting tougher to be frugal isn’t it? While we are still doing many of the same things we did when tackling the original mortgage, it feels rather a lot tougher this time round, and particularly on the food front. Back in those days our monthly food budget was around £150 - and we used to save a reasonable chunk of that most months in order to enable big purchases like a whole lamb from time to time - now, £250 a month gets transferred to our groceries account and it’s frequently a struggle to stay within that! 

Of course, in reality, 10 years has passed since those £150 a month days, and while a lot has changed, a lot has also stayed the same in terms of our approach. We still mostly cook from scratch - although always with an eye out for a yellow stickered bargain that we can incorporate into our meals. We make most of our own bread and rolls for weekday lunches - although very much appreciate the odd artisan-type loaf as well, and of course if there are reduced price goodies in the bakery section that beat the price we could make bread for, then we are all over that! Areas where we are still very happy to spend a bit more are still much the same - eggs (always free range),  meat (chickens are always free range, and most of our other meat comes from the stall at our local farmers market, or at least the supermarkets “posh” ranges where we can be more confident of its welfare standards) and cheese - because life without decent cheese is barely life, surely?! We’re also not quite of the same mindset we were then - these days we are more inclined to go for slightly more luxury variations of things where there is a food or a flavour we particularly appreciate - I’ll pay a bit more for British tomatoes for example, or for a variety of apple that we really enjoy eating - we are probably far more inclined to buy based on “likes and wants” now rather than being quite so price-focused as we once were. That’s fine too - and while it does impact a little on our future plans, sometimes a good life now has to be prioritised over future planning. we definitely still aim to  make savings where we can though - and my recent discovery that air-fryer scotch eggs are an absolute winner means that this Scotch-egg fan can enjoy really good, tasty ones at a far lower cost than the better shop-bought options! 

Of course there are still areas where sometimes a saving comes along and surprises us - this year it was insurances. We always follow the golden rule of doing the comparisons for renewals roughly 23 days out from the renewal date, and never simply accepting an autorenewal. in spite of that the past few years have seen prices increasing, and the insurance claim I was forced to make when an idiot in a van rolled backwards in the region of 8' to smack into my vehicle on the way to work one day didn't help! Thankfully common sense eventually prevailed there, and that claim was changed to "No fault" on my part earlier this year after the idiot's insurance company finally paid for the damage. That combined with a general drop in pricing across the market to ensure that both MrEH and I saw a fall in our premiums this year. Breakdown insurance prices stayed much the same, and in fact I opted for an autorenewal there having looked at options elsewhere, and MrEH switched to the same company that I have been with. The home insurance surprised us both when the renewal quote came through with an immediate saving on last year's premium. As this was for cover we were happy with, and a quick look at the comparison site suggested we weren't going to make much - if any - saving by switching, we've left this one where it was too. 

As for the scotch eggs, if you want to have a go at making them, the recipe can be found by searching "Air-Fryer Scotch Eggs" on the good old BBC Good Food website. On this occasion I opted to use a budget supermarket's delicious chorizo style sausages, and some bacon that was bought yellow stickered a few weeks back, and popped in the freezer. The breadcrumbs are, as always the ends of loaves that have been blitzed up then frozen, herbs from the garden and the eggs were from one of those "15 mixed weight" boxes - often the most economical way of buying them. I reckon they cost me around £1.10 per Scotch egg, but it would probably be possible to cut that back a bit by using a more basic sausage and upping the seasoning a little. You could also omit the bacon, in reality, although it does add to the succulence and flavour. In any event they fed both of us for a couple of meals, and tasted delicious! On this occasion they were also cooked at a time when our electricity cost was super-low - thanks to our Octopus "Agile" tariff. As much as getting frugal is getting tougher - there are still ways of making a sneaky saving!

Robyn