Post holiday bellies and leftovers

It's all very nice being on holiday and going out for dinner every night and eating lovely food but the great thing about being home is cooking in your own kitchen.

The 'ripe' tomatoes (or un-blighted parts of) were simmered with garlic, onions, anchovies and a few glugs of olive oil to become a pasta sauce base for a future quick dinner.

I thinned out the fennel and used the tender 'micro' ?!? plants in a creamy, mustardy, left-over-roast-chicken and almond bake creation with rice.

Some more of the ripe tomatoes, leftover roast chook with various other home grown veggies went into a curry (sadly the chickpeas are tinned).And then this wee beautie today went into a pork pot roast with some rescued windfallen bramleys...yum yum!

I think they look like trees when cut in half.

I've been mostly...weeding

and weeding and weeding...but beginning to see the results of our hard work.

The brassicas so far have survived any cabbage white butterfly/catepillar attacks because they were netted right after they were planted out. However in the meantime weeds have grown up around them and with that extra cover the slugs have advanced to attack them on the lengthening soggy nights....So on Wednesday night we took the netting off the PSB, Romanescu cauliflowers and the red cabbages in order to have a good weed around them and put down a warning dose of slug pellets.

Last night I gave the French beans and Borlotti the same treatment as they've been a bit slug battered too and I started on weeding around the courgettes as they're looking a bit powdery mildewy and could do with a bit more airflow around them.

But it's not just the weeds that are putting in late summer growth spurts. The winter squash are bulking up nicely (you can see how they've dwarfed the bricks I'd placed them on) and with lots more fruit setting I'm looking forward to a bountiful harvest.

Not long now...

Until we'll be reaping some of the rewards of all our hard slog over the last few months.

The first early potatoes are starting to flower and this is supposed to be a sign that they're ready. Although when I dug one up I only found 3 tubers...boo! I'll probably have to step up the watering and wait until more flowers have opened.

The peas have started to flower, can't wait for my first pod eaten, there and then! The broad bean flowers are now giving way to tiny little beans, so they'll need more watering too...sigh!

At the weekend we planted 20 replacements for the celeriac seedlings that got munched (an Ebay purchase) and 12 red cabbage plants that I couldn't resist buying at the garden centre the other day. The cabbage plants have been netted against the pigeons and butterflies and plenty of slug pellets put round all of them.