From Plot to Plate

and other pandemic projects

Thank you for all the support and comments on my post last week - what a fabulous community this is. The future is still uncertain but Mum is well and that’s all that matters, so moving on…

Time shifts, as days become weeks and weeks become years. The days shuffle and the sequence of events becomes muddled and sometimes I’m not sure when things happened. At least that is how it feels when I look back to those endless days of the Covid pandemic, one day drifting into another, each one the same as the one before, not going out, not meeting family and friends. There were no markers or events to differentiate the days and it can be difficult to recall when things happened, because despite it only being a couple of years ago it also feels like a long and distant memory.

I should add a caveat here that I’m quite sure that it is not like that for everyone, especially those who were sick, those who lost jobs and livelihoods and in particular those who lost loved ones. In that sense our family was fortunate

The page in my ‘Pandemic Art Journal’ confirming it was in June 2021

And this is why when I was trying to remember when I first actually got my allotment I wasn’t entirely sure. I would have said it was sometime during the pandemic, but I had to check and I discovered it was June 2021, so not during the height of infections and isolation etc but before ‘Freedom Day’ on July 19^th as it was called in the UK.

I certainly wouldn’t call myself a gardener, but I do enjoy pottering about outside seeing what does or doesn’t grow and not always knowing what is a flower or what is a weed, although latterly I tend not to worry about such definitions and if I like it, then it stays. I had dabbled with vegetable growing on a small scale in our previous house, but eventually the garden itself along with the house was becoming too large to manage and was one of the reasons that prompted our move and downsize. However it wasn’t long after moving that my interest in sustainability, the environment and other related topics started to grow. At this time I attended a great talk by Dave Goulson who is professor of Biology at the University of Sussex, and it stuck with me when he said that allotments can be one of the best environments for encouraging and sustaining wildlife, in particular insects and creepy crawlies. After reading his book The Garden Jungle (which I can thoroughly recommend) I was convinced that I needed to expand my garden space once more and so I applied for an allotment, which is how in June 2021 I became the proud keeper of a small plot of long neglected lumpy soil covered in couch grass and bindweed.

My plot after strimming, with it’s mound of nettles!

I started small that year, with two ‘no-dig’ beds (check out the work of Charles Dowding if you are interested) that I covered with cardboard and compost and before the summer was over I had a small but satisfying crop of tomatoes, courgettes and runner beans. I also learned how to construct some very wonky raised beds from salvaged materials.

My happy place… still working as the light fades!

More importantly, I had found my ‘happy place’ where I still go if I’m tired, fed up or stressed, because no matter how much I don’t feel like it, after an hour or so outside pottering about on the allotment I always feel so much better. That first year I had barely got a spade in the ground before a fellow plot holder presented me with a small plant in a pot and told me about the annual giant pumpkin competition. Every plot holder was given a seedling grown from the seed of her giant pumpkin from the previous year and we were challenged to grow our own giant pumpkin. I stuck the spindly plant into the ground without very much thought and pretty much forgot all about it for four months until the occasion of the allotment autumn barbeque and pumpkin weigh in. It turns out I had grown a monster weighing in at 11 kg which gained me joint first prize. The seeds from my winner were harvested and planted up for the following year’s competition, but that first time was definitely beginners luck as the past two years I haven’t come anywhere close to that first effort and this year despite growing lots of healthy leaves there’s no sign of any fruit!

This is now my fourth summer of growing and I have taken on some extra space. Each year I try growing something new and mix it up a little bit and each year some things flourish while others fail but I love it just as much as I did in that first pandemic year. I often find that I have reluctantly shared what I grow with the wildlife (it’s been a bad year for slugs and pigeons helping themselves), I’ll never be self-sufficient, and it certainly doesn’t save me money, but we are now in that lovely time of year where nearly every meal includes something home grown and organic. There are always plenty of courgettes, onions and potatoes but also beans, sweet corn, chard, mange tout, raspberries and rhubarb. My big success this year though has been broccoli. You really can’t beat picking something in the afternoon and having it for supper that evening.

Courgette & rice filo pie and roasted beetroot with blue cheese sauce - recipes below this post!

But the biggest pleasure (the broccoli comes a close second) has been introducing our grandchildren to home grown veg. Whilst babysitting a few weeks ago I had brought along a bag of raspberries for the children and my nearly three year old granddaughter asked if we could get more raspberries from ‘the shop in your garden’. So when they were all here at the weekend we had a little wander over to the allotment to find the last of the raspberries and to let her see that it wasn’t actually a shop.

“What ‘ave we got ‘ere… a coach trip?” remarked Ray, a fellow plot holder as me, six adults, five children and a baby strolled through the plots disturbing the peace.

The children pounced with relish on the raspberry bed finding the last little red jewels amongst the dying canes, stuffing them in their mouths as quickly as they found them. We then pulled up some beetroot and cut a courgette or two before I grabbed a fork and decided to see if there were any potatoes. The pleasure of seeing little people burying their tiny hands in the soil and pulling out potatoes like they were discovering buried treasure, was priceless. It was a joy to behold and hopefully a valuable lesson about where their food actually comes from. They all went home proudly clutching a little bag of home grown goodies.

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Another pandemic project if you like was the podcast that I co hosted with fellow artist Isobel Moore. For about a year I had been listening to Art Juice a podcast between two visual artists Louise Fletcher and Alice Sheridan who regularly chatted about painting and the life of an artist. Then one day in the summer of 2020, during one of my isolated daily dog walks I started to think about how it would be fun to do something similar but maybe with a focus on textiles. Before the walk was over the idea had germinated and without a clue how it might work, I sent a text message to Izzy merely saying, “Have you ever thought about doing a podcast?”

Now I should clarify that although Izzy and I had known each other for a fair number of years, through blogging and both teaching machine embroidery, we had only ever met a handful of times so at that stage our relationship was probably more along the acquaintance end of the friendship scale rather than bosom buddies. Yet despite that, with hardly a moment’s hesitation she pinged back with a resounding “Yes!” It turns out she had been thinking along similar lines and had earmarked me as a potential co-host. It turns out we were both a lot more similar than we had thought. After a few months of wrestling with ideas, in November 2020 we released the first episode of our podcast “Izzy & Gina… in stitches” which came out every other week for over two and a half years. Then last summer, Izzy went away on holiday for several weeks in August, and I went away in September. The plan was we would start again once we were both back home but of course life doesn’t always go to plan. Izzy had a close family bereavement and my Mum’s care needs increased and before we knew it several months had passed and somehow a podcast no longer felt like a high priority for either of us. We spoke during the intervening months and occasionally the subject of the podcast came up, but it was not until a couple of weeks ago we started to mull over the idea of having a catch up.

With all that has gone on with Mum over the past couple of weeks, it has taken a few attempts to set aside a time to actually record something but finally this week we did, and you can now listen to our 67^th episode “It’s been a While” almost a whole year since our last episode, on all the usual podcast platforms. We might come back and do more but at the moment we are staying non-committal and not making any promises. Much may depend on how it is received, so if you listen and would like to hear more, do let us know.

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If you would like to create my supper of Courgette Pie with roasted beetroot (all veg from my allotment) all the information you need is below. It also has the benefit of being meat free which is a win for the environment.

The Courgette and Rice Filo pie is from Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall’s Veg every day book, which I highly recommend if you would like to introduce more meat free meals into your diet. You can find the recipe by clicking the link.

The Roast Beetroot is less a recipe and more of a guide, adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe in last week’s Observer Magazine. You need two or three fresh beets, and a red onion. Prepare the vegetables and chop into bite size chunks (You can add other veg here… I have done it with courgette, potato and carrots too). Mix up in a roasting tin with some chopped garlic, a glug of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Roast for 45 mins at 180 - 190 deg F until the veg are tender. Conveniently this is the same time as the pie takes to cook. Meanwhile make a cheesy sauce by whizzing up in a food processor or blender 150g blue cheese (I used gorgonzola which NS specifically says not to use, but it was fine so use whatever you like or happen to have), a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise, about 4 tablespoons of natural yoghurt, a tablespoon of cider vinegar and a teaspoon of dijon mustard. You can play around with these quantities to suit your own tase. NS also adds creme fraiche but I didn’t have any so I bunged in a bit more yoghurt. Blitz until smooth and drizzle over the roasted vegetables.

You’re welcome… Enjoy!