Straight from the land onto the plate

 Today was a real from spade to plate session. First we went to pick raspberries for the raspberry fool

We then walked to the allotment to harvest peppers, (red, green and orange) some new potatoes, oregano, butternut squash and a pumpkin.

 

When we arrived home we made this 'Greek new potato, courgette and pepper one pan recipe which turned out very well. So well that we voted to put it in our next cookery book. The only thing we changed was to parboil the potatoes before frying them and adding some roasted pine nuts at the end.

 

The butternut was turned into a simple and quick 5 spice butternut soup. We peeled the butternut, chopped into little cubes, boiled in stock until tender, then handblended it and added 5 spice to taste. Topped with some roasted pumpkin seeds, delicious!

Leek, Kale and loads of raspberries

Today we harvested some leeks and kale from the allotment to turn into a gorgeous risotto. 

Whilst there, we picked some sunflowers to take home.

The tomato, basil and mozarello kebabs were made by Manami and Keiko and went well with risotto.

and the raspberries were turned into a sauce to go over our waffles. Lovely to see everyone back again.

Apple pressing and Courgette spiralising

 Today we had another lovely day outside with Lailei, Emi, June and Carmen.

  

We did the last of this season apple pressing and with the huge courgette/marrow we spiralised it and made a lovely lunch.

 

Last week we picked apples from an orchard just outside Cambridge, the apples needed pressing as some they are starting to go rotten, so out came the crew who, chopped, sorted, pressed and tasted the nectar. 

       

 

At the end of the session we went to the allotment to pick some sunflowers to take home and brighten our houses.

A sea of Sunflowers

 The weather was beautiful so a walk in the allotment was a joy. We were welcomed by a mass of sunflowers. Most of them self set  from seeds dropped in previous years.

Carmen, Keiko, Emi and Hiroe started with picking raspberries as a treat to take home. We picked both red and yellow ones. The we picked masses of spinach beet for our Vegan Spinach and Ginger soup.

   

Before we went to the allotment, we made the dough for wraps, as it needed to rest for 15 mins.

After picking sunflowers we walked home, prepared the  freshly harvested filling for the wraps (our first orange sweet peppers, carrots, cucumber tomatoes) and made our wraps 

      

Together with soup a gorgeous lunch and the ladies went home with a big bunch of sunflowers each.

First session back after lockdown

Today was a special day in our calendar as for the first time, we saw each other again in person.

Miho (who was pregnant when we last saw her) came with her baby son, who slept all the way through the  session, Simone our first ever member was back again for a few weeks before she starts work again and then we welcomed Maiko a new member.

Armed with hand sanitisers, masks and face shields, we made picked raspberries from the garden for our dessert,

 

The chickpeas we used later in a chickpea salad,  we made some Lazy dough which was then turned into some flatbread to go with the salad.

We had a little walk to the allotment, where we cut some runners of the strawberries, to plant into the bottles of our vertical bottle garden. We tasted the apples, tomatoes, yellow raspberries, nasturtium flowers all fresh from the garden.

What a lovely start we had.