There’s been some degree of performance anxiety in the house since the great marrow jam disaster of August 09.

We made a minor error of judgement when we told the whole, sorry, sloppy tale to the mother in law. Having triggered a nostalgic memory for jams of old she’s been threatening ever since to pull down her preserving pot and demonstrate culinary majesty over the humble squash.

Of course I am just too stubborn to roll over and admit that I’m plain useless in the conserve department. Instead of looking forward to a xmas present of beautifully presented preserves, I’ve been hoarding marrows for a future jam off. Not wanting to play my cards too early, they’ve been sitting in the veg rack going musky while I’ve been researching alternative routes to beautifully set jam, courtesy of Mrs Beeton.

Today we got to find out how the mother in law did with her entry into the challenge.

Courgettes are obviously quite popular in her house. By the time she came to prepare them, most had already been roasted and stuffed and the recipe needed to be halved. By the time the peeling, chopping and reckoning had been done it needed to be halved yet again.

Sugar, courgette  and lemon were left to marinade overnight just as I had done a couple of months earlier. The veg was then boiled and potted and left overnight.

Having just disposed of our runny mass of lumpy syrup, Lynn knew to cut straight to the chase with her line of questioning: “Did it set?”

Did it set?
Set?!
It was like flipping concrete.

Apparently Sheila (said mother in law) couldn’t make an impact on the concrete and unable to remove it from the jar she ended up throwing the whole thing away. The pan took her 2 days to scrub clean and that was after spending the previous 3 days trying to rub away the remains of burnt beetroot.

Maybe now I can relax and consign the flaccid marrow to the compost bin, pride intact.

I got quite carried away last year and came very close to investing in a £100 dehydrator for converting my courgette glut into dried stock granules. As it happens the glut never really arrived so I had a lucky escape and am happy to plough my money back into seeds for next year.

The harvest has been a bit light again apart from the chilli peppers which have gone positively nuts. I don’t have quite enough to go in search of a cheap Stockli but I do have enough to try out my new freebie dashboard dehydrator.

I spotted the idea on lifehacker but it originally came from the tangled nest. Seattle dashboards probably get to higher temperatures but despite pretty overcast conditions for the last few weeks the chillis do appear to be drying out. They also look pretty jazzy.

I’ve been coveting the great round marrow for at least a month, collating assorted round marrow recipes and gathering together the necessary ingredients for marrow jam.

I’ve never tried marrow jam but my Dad informs me that it’s “evocative” and the whole notion made the kids squeal with such horror that I just had to make it.

So the other evening I gathered every knife, saw and axe in the vicinity and set too with courgetty gusto.

I fought valiantly over the first slither but as it fell out onto the chopping board my crest was fallen. Deep orange fleshiness, indicative of a marrow impersonating pumpkin, threatened to scupper my child tormenting breakfast preserve plans.

I remained slumped for a while as the kids hooted and hollered but then I began to perk up some. I had a whole sack of squashy wonders that were earmarked for unsuspecting neighbours and surely a yellow courgette and patty pan jam would be at least as “evocative” as the absent marrow.

Most of the marrow jam recipes available on t’interweb require between 6 and 9lbs of deseeded and peeled squash. That’s way more torment than I required so I began to modify and combine the available combinations and techniques. This could very easily have been my undoing.

I warn all potential jam makers to skim read any recipe like instructions that slip into this post.
Do not repeat.

I started following the methodology from allotment.org.uk, chopping the squash up smallish and covering with a kg of special jam making sugar (complete with pectin) before leaving to do something over night in the fridge.

They came out pretty wet.

I then switched over to bbcgoodfood and continued with the latter stages of their instructions. This involved bagging up lemons carcasses, pips and peel in muslin and boiling away with the sugar and squash mix.

I got called away for an emergency Ikea visitation which delayed the boiling bit for a few hours but I wacked it up high on our return and let it bubble furiously in attempt to turn the courgette chunks mushy. The sugar appeared to caramelise under the assault but the courgettes remained unscathed.

By this point I’d been cooking the jam on and off for 20 hours and I was getting a bit desperate. The gloop wasn’t even remotely interested in setting and the internet suggested I may have destroyed the pectin in the special sugar by over heating. Curses!

I bottled it up regardless and it now sits in the fridge, taunting the children.

Two days later it still hasn’t set.
The yellow courgette slices spin happily in a golden yellow amniotic fluid, I think it is taunting me.

I can report that the taste is pretty good actually. Very marmaladey. A sharp gingery lemoness, that is really quite appealing. I may have another go soon but in the meantime I need to concentrate on getting rid of the pumpkin.

I think I wasted my time this morning lighting a new stick of patchouli and lemon incense. The mornings trip to the lotty resulted in a monstrous glut that could only mean an afternoon spent preparing chutney and a house oozing the homely charm of hot spicy vinegar.

There are a couple of cauliflowers in that shot but I’ve deliberately avoided a close up of them. I think cauliflowers are designed to be picked the moment you spot them, flush with their juvenile tight white heads. I was a little greedy and hoped for huge curds to rival my dads. I chopped a stray outer leaf off to protect from the sun and left for another couple of weeks to swell. Inevitably the severed leaf rotted and formed an ideal pied-a-terre for numerous detritivores which did their best to make me weep.

I’m not wasting them though, deep cleaning with a tooth brush and a heavy handed shave, left the heads in good enough nick to form the basis of a piccalilli chutney.

I’ve doctored the recipe from Greenforks who made a far more appealing looking sauce than me but then Waitrose had run out of turmeric powder – there has obviously been a run on piccalilli making.

I haven’t been down to the plot for a few days so there was a good quantity of produce waiting for my arrival:

Doesn’t that look delicious? In addition I filled a canvas sack with more beans and a stack of chard but it didn’t look quite so photogenic.

I’m going to make herbed summer squash and potato torte, a recipe that came from SmittenKitten, the best food blog I have come across so far. Honestly, you should take a look, it’s left me excited about cooking. I’ve made the irresistible lime meltaways already (see todays lunch) and will be trying out the chocolate hazelnut biscotti just as soon as my new food mixer arrives.

But I’m digressing, here are the questions:

Is this ready to pick?

It’s an aubergine obviously, and I’m sure you’ll want to know the variety but I forgot to look at the seed pack, in fact I’m not sure the seed pack still exists. Shakti insists it’s one of those especially special thin and delicious aubergines that I have never heard of, but I suspect she just wants me to start picking them so she can have one. I was expecting them to swell to mammoth proportions at some point. Anybody got any views on aubergines?

Final question is, what is this?

This is a massive plant that has self-seeded in the entrance to my green house and is doing a fine job of blocking my access. I let it grow out of curiosity and now it has turned into my most productive squash. Trouble is, I don’t know what it is. I’m wondering if it might be butternut squash as I had plenty of seeds kicking around and it is shaped correctly even if it is the wrong colour.

Anyone know if butternuts start off green, or is it a summer squash that needs to be devoured right now?

I have a substantial glut of ever so slightly over the hill rocket, last year I attempted to use it up by boiling the rocket but I won’t be making that mistake again. Yesterday I thought I’d risk a handful in a batch of home made pesto.

Eliane recommended The New Penguin Cookery book a while ago, and on the basis of her review I invested in it. It is indeed a damn fine book and has a recipe for assorted pestos including a rocket and walnut version. Having read and absorbed the details I then proceeded to ignore the instructions – a dodgy tendency of mine.

My version went something along the lines of a light grab of pine kernals pounded with 3 cloves of garlic, and an equal amount of basil and rocket, also bashed into submission. No walnuts because I don’t like them and no Parmesan because I forgot about it. I did add a couple of very stingy slithers of Manchego which were kicking around the back of the fridge and a small dollop of olive oil.

Very tasty – I served it with gnocchi.

I was intrigued yesterday to see a recipe for a shed beer fridge in Allotment Growing Diary Plus, and as it’s my birthday today I thought it was a fine excuse for enjoying cold beer on the plot.

The idea is that the terracotta pot cools following evaporation of the absorbed water.

It certainly seemed to work, within an hour the pot was very cool but I made the mistake of starting with warm beer. I was too impatient to wait for the full process had to make do with coolish, luke warm beer.

I’ve left a couple of beers in there and topped the tray up before I left so we’ll see how long it works for. Maybe there will be an icy beer waiting for me after work tomorrow.

And here’s a gratuitous flower picture. I’m so happy with these dahlias, I grew them from seed and never imagined they’d be so successful.

Thanks for all the graffiti advice in the comments to the last post.

I took the train to the plot at the weekend and discovered that every single flat surface (mostly sheds) facing the platform had been scrawled over with the silver spray paint. It looked a bit grim and so I decided that the shed should be re-painted. It will probably take a few coats as the spray paint is heavy duty stuff, but as I had to go out and buy a new tub of paint, I have plenty to go around.

They can come back as often as they like now, I’ll be ready for em.

They didn’t cause any more damage by the way – all my crops were left intact which is a blessing.

I picked up my new Brompton from the fantastic Wizz Bike this evening and went straight to the plot to photograph the new machine in amongst the potatoes.
The foliage just sets the colours off!

I was surprised to find that the beans are ready to start cropping, I had a trangia full of Borlotta and runner beans for my tea, shamefully mixed with a packet of curry flavoured supernoodles.