Celebrating seasonal, homegrown, and wild food
One of the goal's we've had for our allotment since the very beginning has been to grow as much as we can throughout the year so that we can keep allowing the land to sustain us, at least in part, through the winter months as well as the summer. Obviously we're far from being able [...]
Things have been slowing down for winter, the trees are once again bare and the ground is again familiar with frost and ice. Now is the time to make use of the stores collected and preserved over the year of berries, mushrooms, but especially spices. The word spices almost feels synonymous with far-off lands, yet [...]
The cabbage. An unloved, perhaps uninspiring vegetable to some, a saviour in winter for the allotment keeper! Cabbages are generally cool-weather veg with winter varieties that can grow slowly but surely through the frosts. There are the deep green crinkly varieties that fill you with the sense that you’re being good to yourself by eating [...]
As the weather turns cooler and the frosts start to creep in at night, for most people the main foraging “season” is coming to a close. Of course, the notion of a defined foraging season would have been nonsense to our ancestors who were relying on gathering their food from the wild in order to [...]
The joy of autumn is difficult to describe. Is it the leaf colours, the weather cooling, mushroom gathering, warming up around a campfire and how it feels all the more magical now the air is crisp and the dark evenings draw in? This year it feels accentuated by the sunny weather we've been enjoying after [...]
It's October again. The weather is getting cooler and the leaves are slowly turning their beautiful shades of orange and red. It's a time to savour the last of the vibrancy of summer, and to start getting used to the darker evenings and crisp mornings. The jackets are out, the gloves are on, and scarves [...]
I've mentioned our apple glut quite a bit over on Instagram, but we've also got a pear tree that has been just as abundant. I have plans to make plenty of chutney, and perhaps to freeze a few, but I love to preserve them in a flavoured syrup too and enjoy them with some ice [...]
As much as I love whiling away an afternoon, or indeed an entire day, cooking something elaborate, I tend not to want to take forever making lunches during the week. The flip side is that I still don’t want lunch to be boring, and so I have a few recipes up my sleeve that I [...]
Wild plums are often smaller than shop-bought varieties, more alike to the size of a cherry hence one of their common names being "Cherry Plum", but what they lack in size they make up for in sweetness and flavour. They're also known as Mirabelle plums in France and are incredibly popular there, particularly in the [...]
A trip to the coast isn't complete without some seaweed foraging if you ask me. We've recently taken ourselves away to Cornwall to enjoy the rugged coastal paths, refreshing sea breeze, delicious local produce, and cold-water dips - it's been absolute heaven! We were lucky to be visiting around the time of the full moon [...]
Plot & Lane 