Thursday, August 11, 2011

But how high *is* an elephant's eye?

Not having to hand an elephant who was willing to stand beside my corn as a measure, I had to make do with a cat. 


It's pretty impressively high compared with a cat's eye, I think you'll agree.

And it's just "beginning to crop" as they say on Gardener's World and Question Time, back in the old country.  I don't say anything so laid back.  I say: "Corn!  Look!  Sweetcorn!  In the garden!  Is it ready?  How do you tell if it's ready?"  frrllrrlllrrrff (that's the sound of Sunset's Western Garden's pages turning).  "It's ready!  Frabjous day!  Corn!!!"



 Not to mention the tomatoes (she said, thereby mentioning the hell out of the tomatoes).  Here are today's pickings.


And beside them are the daily takings from a row of zinnias planted in the veg patch just for cutting.  (I always wanted a cutting garden and this is the start of it.  Zinnias, in a spirit of tribute to Ma Larkin.  (I used to be a terrible garden snob, but I reckon a row of mixed zinnias is proof that I'm over it now.  There's a hanging basket of petunias too (Ma Larkin, again), but it was a present and so I can't claim the glory.))

So far, so abundant.  But now we must turn to the courgettes aka zucchini and there abundance turns to something more bloated and alarming.  First, there was a bit of a glut.


Then I turned my back for seven minutes and there was a lot of a glut.


And now my freezer looks like this:


Some ice, some bread and eleven pints of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's roasted courgette and garlic mush.  Eleven pints or, in other words, boil enough pasta and I've got a light lunch for fifty. 

But it's more than balanced by the chickpea/garbanzo bean harvest.  Six little plants, $3 the tray, produced this:


Five chick peas.  Or 50c each and a 50c tip.  Not even in the organic, macrobiotic, Fairtrade, giftwrapped section of the Berkliest Food Co-op imaginable did anyone ever buy chickpeas at 50c each.

And not even in the height of the eighties in the depths of Kensington was a course ever served in a Michelin starred restaurant as nouvelle as the cuisine I prepared with my entire chick pea harvest.


Ah, but what about the flavour?  Well, the best way to describe it is to say that they tasted like boiled chickpeas.  The slice of tomato was nice, though.





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