July 28th, 2009 by Rich

Since I last posted we have been harvesting courgettes like there is no tomorrow, it is proving quite tricky to eat them all! Hmm I wonder six plants – two adults, too many? nah We have been doing the usual things with them, plenty of fried up with garlic and served with pasta, courgette frittatas, courgette on pizza (yes it does work!). We have also been looking for some new ways to use them, one recipe we have found is creamy courgette lasagne which is brilliant. When I have it to hand I will try to post it on here.

In other news, my shoulder continues to give me grief so I went to the doctors to get it checked out, this ended up being a complete waste of time. After waiting 25 minutes past my appointment time (in addition to the 10 minutes that I waited for due to arriving in plenty of time) I finally went in to see the doctor and it was a rubbish experience. I personally expect a doctor to be able to listen to what I say, to be able to read information off of a computer screen and understand I am talking about an accident 5 weeks ago NOT last year!!!! I was then asked what I wanted her to do, WTF you’re the doctor with the years of training! Needless to say I ended up leaving with no real idea how it was healing and with no treatment. If I need to go back I shall make sure I don’t get that doctor again.

In other news, I will be taking a test ride on a new bike this week, a Ridgeback Flight 05, this ticks all the boxes for me so I hope it rides well. Sadly my employers don’t participate in the cycle to work scheme so I will have to pay full price. I really don’t understand why they don’t do it, the amount of effort required is minimal, in fact as a government scheme I think it should be mandatory for companies to take part if employees want to get a bike on the scheme.

When I rule the world it will be different!

July 15th, 2009 by Rich

Hmmm it’s been a while hasn’t it! What has been going on since I last posted …. from the lottie side of things we have been happily harvesting cucumbers, courgettes, runner beans, potatoes, peas, garlic, broad beans even a few raspberries and strawberries. The feeding is good but we are starting to hit the usual “argh not courgettes for dinner again” point, this means I will have to dig out he courgette recipe book to find new and interesting things to do with them!

Our harvests to date have been good and we are mainly happy but we have come to the realisation that some crops just aren’t for us and top of that list are peas. Every year we spend time and money trying to grow peas, fresh peas off the plant are a simple pleasure in life that we enjoy. Sadly every year we end up pea moth problems, as a conservative estimate I would say we end up composting something like 75% of the peas we grow as they are riddled with the little maggoty buggers. So that is it, we give up on peas and will use the space normally allocated for something else, after all we seem to struggle for space every year!

On a non allotment note, I had a great night out drinking high quality smokey beer from zero degrees wishing a work colleague a farewell, I then cycled home and right outside the door fell off. The next day I went to casualty as I decided shoulders shouldn’t look like mine did. Ended up that I had a severe sprained shoulder, the x-ray made me laugh, this was not the reaction the doctor was expecting! That was several weeks ago, it is healing and getting stronger but still gives me some grief. I really don’t understand what happened … after all as a teenager we were all protected but the god of drunk cyclists and never came to harm, shockingly our god has deserted us!!!

Erm what else ….. we spent some enjoyable time down in Cornwall visiting the oldies who treated us to a lovely meal at The Three Mackerel in Falmouth. The food was brilliant, the service friendly and the young waitresses in tight leggings with pert behinds and no vpl ~ does it get any better?

In breaking news I can also reveal that Chicken Club has been given the go ahead from the council, now we need to do a bunch of stuff to make it happen but more on that another time.