Celebrating seasonal, homegrown, and wild food
Cherry blossoms might be long gone by now this year, but if you joined me in preserving some of the young buds with the recipe in this Japanese Salt-Pickled Cherry Blossoms post then this recipe is for you! If you didn't preserve any blossom buds this year, don't worry you can actually buy them online if [...]
There's something magical to me, some sort of alchemy that happens when you cook over a simple wood fire. I know it can seem unpredictable and perhaps daunting to cook with fire, without dials and digital displays, but the flavour imparted to any ingredients cooked this way is unbeatable and I find it so grounding [...]
Flowering currants are a beautiful pop of pink in gardens, parks and the occasional hedgerow in spring. They are particularly abundant in March and April, but can still be flowering in early May in more northerly parts of the UK. I love their fruity aroma and gorgeous bright colour and they are just perfect as [...]
I know it's probably a little late now for cherry blossom buds unless you live fairly far north in the UK, but I've been sharing how to make these Japanese salted, pickled cherry blossom buds over on my Instagram stories and wanted to put together a post with all of the information in one place [...]
You might have noticed a hiatus in my blog posting over the last few months. Without going into too much detail at this point, my body wasn't taking no for an answer and the enforced rest was pretty much mandatory for a while! The good news is that I'm in full health, there is nothing [...]
Slurping delicious buckwheat soba noodles is a New Year's tradition in Japan. I know New Year's celebrations might feel like a while ago at this point, but we're still in January, and I'm certainly still in transition mode from one year to the next. I think we too often forget that this transition is something [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Plot & Lane 