Lunch from the lottie

 A couple of soups with all home grown ingredients.

 Firstly, "A rich root and cheese soup for a winter's day" from Nigel Slater's Tender - parsnip soup to you and me. The parsnips, onions, garlic and chillies were all home grown but I haven't managed to grow my own turmeric yet.

Then I decided it was time to use some of the beans I grew and dried last summer in a minestrone soup of sorts with tomatoes from the freezer, turnips stored in a bucket since November and kale picked freshly this week, with a little dried chill and oregano for flavour

after soaking

Lunch from the Lottie - winter salads

 Still managing to put together lunchtime salads from my allotment offerings. There's a rather wintry feel to them now with lots of cabbage and home-made pickles but I still have some tomatoes ripening in the kitchen and apples, beetroot and big blue radishes in store. One day when I find time though, I'm going to get back to soup making for lunch.

Lunch from the Lottie/Recipe Testing; Leek and Potato Soup

Leek and potato soup from Rose Elliot's New Complete Vegetarian - which has to be the easiest soup ever. There are two very similar recipes in the book - one being 'chunkier' than the other. Basically both are very simple - Put leeks and potatoes in water, add teaspoon of veg stock and some freshly ground pepper, boil till soft, mash and serve, possibly with more pepper.
It's quick, extremely easy and, best of all, it uses veg from my allotment.

Homegrown dinner

 A homegrown dinner today, rather than a lunch from the lottie!
We have such a lot of veg all ready to be eaten, and no freezer space left, that it seems only sensible to use it as much as possible.

 I was trying to use up the glut of tomatoes, runner beans, turnips and spinach, preferably in a way that could be served with our home-grown potatoes.
The nearest dish I could think of was minestrone - ok, without carrots or beans which I'd normally include, but close enough.
So I went for a sort of drier version.

Onions, tomatoes, a couple of small peppers, another which turned out to be a jalpeno chilli, chopped turnip and sliced runner beans all cooked through, then the spinach and a few leaves of red kale added at the last minute

It actually worked quite well with the potatoes - I mashed mine on my plate and soaked up the tomatoey juices with them. Next time, I'll check first for jalapenos mixed in with peppers!

Lunch from the lottie #14

Another batch of salad variations - how many ways can the same ingredients be put together?

Although there's still plenty of salad stuff cropping, the weather's turning colder so it may be time for more soups instead of cold lunches everyday.

Lunch from lottie #13

 I haven't been regularly posting my 'lunch from the lottie' status as it's still mainly a case of trying to provide a twist on salad - a few extra-hot 'blue' radishes or some yellow tomatoes

 but we have had a few different things for evening dinners -

a goulash using our tomatoes, pepper, chillies and potatoes

 a dish from the Abel&Cole cookbook called Swedeaphobia which helped use up some of my turnip glut

and a home-grown (apart from the fish) fie pie with lots of beans, peas, potatoes and, yes, turnip!

I meant to take a photo of this cooked with the final layer of potato all golden brown

but hubby served it up too quickly!

Lunch from the lottie #11

 It's quite a while since I've posted anything under 'lunch from the lottie', mainly because I've been having to rely on shop-bought tomatoes or cucumbers or such.









Well this last couple of weeks has seen an end to that with lots of salads made wholly with homegrown produce and even one dinner (though I can't grow the rice yet)
What I have available in quantity at the moment is spinach, tomatoes, cucumber and cabbage.



Fortunately there's enough beetroot, mangetout peas, radishes and onions to add variety - there's even the very strange pickled turnips!

This curry was a variant on Leek and Cauliflower curry from Rose Elliott's New Complete Vegetarian. I had to alter it as I had no leeks! So it was made with cauliflower, potato, courgettes, apple and French beans - all home grown!





I'm hoping now we're well into the most productive time of year that there'll be more lunches from the lottie!

Lunch from the Lottie - #10 - with the help of some stock

Two Lottie Lunches this week; the first using tomatoes and broad beans from the freezer with the last of the parsnips







and the second with stock, potatoes, leeks and dried peas.....


Normally after Sunday's big roast I have bones to boil for stock but this week's pork was boneless. All I had left to boil up were some lumps of overcooked hard meat - surprisingly it did look and taste like stock after boiling.

 I remembered this time to do my advance planning  by soaking dried peas overnight. These are home grown and dried and this is the first time for testing them.


After their 10 minute rapid boil, I cooked them in the stock with the, now softened, meat scraps and our potatoes and leeks.

 A really thick pea soup for a cold winter day.

Lunch from the Lottie #9

 It's a while since I posted anything under the 'lunch from the lottie' banner, mainly because there isn't a lot to be picked there right now. What we DO still have are potatoes - starting to grow spindly roots - and leeks. Add to that the freezing weather today and the time seemed right for leek and potato soup!

Lunch from the Lottie #8

 Went down to the lottie this week and found salad leaves and radishes so back to salads - with cabbage, tiny tomatoes, apple and pickled red cabbage.

Even managed an almost home-grown dinner - potatoes, leeks, kale and parsnips but not the pork!

Lunch from the Lottie #7

 Another of my 'use up all the salad bits' lunches though this is the last home-grown cucumber.

Dinner really not lunch - parsnip and leek curry. The rice isn't homegrown - though with how waterlogged some of the allotments have been, it might have been worth trying.

Lunch from the Lottie #6

A week of salads - leaves from the greenhouse, tomatoes ripened in the kitchen, pickled cabbage and 2 crystal lemon cucumbers!

Unmixed coleslaw - 2 cabbages, apple, onion and some not-fully-grown peas cleared before the frost

 Three Salad - 3 different salad leaves, 3 cabbages (green, red and pickled) and 3 tomatoes (they were very small and wrinkly!) with cucumber and apple. 

Lunch from the Lottie #5

'green salad' - ie chopped cabbage, rocket, baby lettuce, american land cress and cucumber - with tiny red and yellow tomatoes

'minestrone' with fresh parsnips and carrots and last year's broad beans and tomatoes from the freezer

chilli with 3 beans - french, broad and white. Used up lots of small wrinkled tomatoes, a variety of peppers and chillies, and added some fizzy ,turning to alcohol, homemade passata to thicken.

Lunch from the Lottie #4

 A lot of salads again - trying to make something different out of more or less the same ingredients each time

and for a change -- soup, with potatoes, carrots, parsnip and frozen broad beans from the freezer

Lunch from the Lottie #3

It doesn't really feel like the weather for salad lunch but I found radishes and salad leaves at the allotment so thought I should eat them!

"Green soup" made with runner beans, broad beans from the freezer, potatoes and parsnips in gammon stock.

another similar salad - red cabbage, beetroot, onion and cucumber mixed to make pink coleslaw.

Lunch from the Lottie #2

 Early in the week it still felt warm enough to eat salad for lunch - though I'm now running out of radishes and having to bulk up lunch with pickled red cabbage and home made gooseberry chutney.

 Mid week the weather took a serious downturn, so now soups are back in season.

We have lots of slightly damaged potatoes that need to be eaten as soon as possible and the first leeks are just coming ready so Potato and Leek Soup seemed like an obvious choice.