Now that my legs are doing okay, my immune system has subsided into its normal bored and inattentive state, and the cold viruses are managing to get through again as they usually do round about this time of year. I've been waking up the last 2 mornings feeling distinctly fluey and chill so I told OH that despite the gorgeous sunshine I was going to give the allotment a miss today and would stay inside and process our allotment veg. There was a bag of kale to sort out, and 2 parsnips, and 1 kilo of poppyseeds from last year, and lots of dried-up bread to send through the moulinette for breadcrumbs.
OH took his leave as the first tunes of Derrick struck up on my laptop in the kitchen and went off to reposition the gooseberries on the allotment.
I started with home-made ravioli with a filling made of blanched kale, feta cheese, roasted pine nuts, onions, celery, held together by wholemeal breadcrumbs, made and roasted myself. Time-consuming but great fun. The pasta dough worked out very well -- velvety but not too dry -- and I ended up making 48 ravioli. Still had loads of filling left. It's going into puff pastry parcels in a minute, which I can take to work for my lunch.
Right now I am recovering from baking a Polish poppyseed pull-apart brioche with a lemon-sugar drizzle, again, quite labour-intensive, but I'm hoping it will be nice.
As I was washing up, OH came through the door, all red-cheeked and triumphant. He had dug up and replanted the gooseberry bushes, had muscled in on a manure delivery that our allotment neighbour was going to order in -- so now we're going full load and split the costs -- and he had also had a long chat with Tomato Seedling Man about committee politics. Alliances are being formed. However, according to OH, Tomato Seedling Man already has a lot of great ideas and seems keener on transparency, things written down, mutually agreed upon and properly minuted, and communal facilities that everyone can benefit from.
OH also found out today that we had apparently been very unusual in not only farming our plot for the full year but also farming a whole plot, not just a newbie-sized starter plot. Didn't even know these existed! But apparently, according to Tomato Seedling Man, few newbies cope with a plot our size and tend to throw in the shovel after a few months. This made me very proud!
Time to go back to the kitchen now where the last of today's dishes is awaiting my attention: a curried parsnip soup. Then dinner, Tatort and more knitting.
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