Rainbow Chard and Leek Quiche

We have an abundance of rainbow chard at our allotments and some leeks ready to harvest so I decided to make a Rainbow Chard and Leek Quiche for our lunch.  The stems of the rainbow chard are so colourful and a contrast to the rich green leaves.  Both are delicious, it is such a shame that the stems don't retain their vibrant colour after cooking.  They do make a great addition to a salads when finely chopped and lightly blanched, I also use them in stirfries, stews and other dishes to ensure nothing is wasted.  We have chard and spinach regularly as a side dish but I wanted our colourful homegrown rainbow chard to be the main feature of a dish instead of being relegated to 'steamed greens' status.

Rainbow Chard and Leek Quiche

For the pastry:

225g plain white flour 8p

pinch salt

110g cold unsalted butter, cubed 49p

1 medium free range egg yolk 9p

Cold water

Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl.  Add the butter and rub into the flour until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.  Add the egg yolk and a little water.

I add a tablespoon of cold water then add more, if necessary, a teaspoonful at a time.  Mix to a firm dough and press out to a disc shape.  Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it to rest in the fridge for half an hour before you attempt to roll it out.

  

For the filling:

1 Tblsp oil 1p

1 leek, white part only, finely sliced

1 large bunch of rainbow chard, leaves shredded and stalks finely sliced

5 free range eggs 90p

200ml milk 10p

100g grated cheddar cheese 13p

1 tsp dried mixed herbs

salt and freshly ground pepper 

Preheat your oven to 200C/180C Fan.  Roll out the pastry into a circle about 0.5cm/5mm thick.  Line a greased loose based tart tin with the pastry, mine measures 25cm in diameter.  Line the pastry case with non-stick baking paper and baking beans or dried rice and blind bake it for 15 minutes.  Leave to cool whilst you prepare the filling before removing the baking beans and paper.

Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan or saucepan over a moderate heat.  Add the leek and chard, cooking until the leek softens and the chard wilts slightly.  Pour the vegetables into the blind baked pastry case.

Beat together the eggs, milk, cheese, herbs, a few grinds of pepper and a large pinch of salt.  Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables and bake the quiche for 25 - 30 minutes or until set and golden brown.

I'm entering this quiche into Extra Veg, a monthly blog challenge created by myself and Helen from Fuss Free Flavours to encourage us all to add extra vegetables to our meals.  Helen is hosting this month.

I am also entering this recipe into Credit Crunch Munch, created and hosted alternately by Helen and Camilla.  Camilla is hosting this month.  The chard and leeks were free and the rest of the ingredients cost £1.80 (not including energy costs to cook the quiche).  This quiche was a thrifty and filling lunch for our family of 5, we did have large slices and it could have been stretched over 2 lunches if accompanied by more salads and crudites.

5 comments Allotment, Basics, Dinners, Gardening, Lunches, Meatfree Monday, Vegetarian

Allotment Update - Autumn Harvest

Over the last few weeks we have been steadily harvesting produce from the allotments we tend.  It is so rewarding being able to eat what we've grown ourselves, the product of much hard work.  Here's a sample of the harvest we bought back from just one session, there has been such a bountiful harvest we are very grateful and feel very fortunate to have had successful crops.  I've made many jars of jams, bottles of cordials and containers of compote from the fruit trees and various berries grown in the fruit cage as well.

We spent a couple of hours at the allotments both days of this weekend. My husband battled the nettles and grass with a strimmer which made both plots much easier to work on and they looked a lot tidier after he'd finished. I had a go with the strimmer as well, I do rather like power tools! We harvested a lot of produce, weeded nearly all the beds and covered most of them over for the winter. Only those with winter hardy greens and vegetables not quite big enough to harvest were left uncovered. The weather was sunny but crisp with a brisk cold wind at times, thankfully no downpours.

On Saturday we harvested 12 leeks, 4 cauliflowers, 4 cabbages, 10 swedes, 5kg of potatoes and loads of chard. On Sunday we harvested more chard, 3 broccoli, 10kg potatoes, 8 beetroot and 3kg of some rather large carrots which had been obscured by some of the chard, ooops!

We've kept some of our harvest and also gave some away to friends and neighbours, there was a bit too much for us to use.  None will be wasted though, I've already cooked and frozen some in soups, stews and on it's own.  Luckily we have a chest freezer which comes with our rented house, so handy when we have a huge harvest like this.  We've thoroughly enjoyed the 6 months we've been able to work the allotments and look forward to more tending and harvesting.  I still need to prune the plants in the fruit cage, hopefully will get it done over the next week or so.

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Allotment Update - The Antipodean Visitor Edition

We've just got back from two hours hard work at the allotments for the second time today.  It was a warm sunny day and we enjoyed being out in the fresh air and getting some exercise.  There's nothing tastier than eating homegrown produce as fresh as can be that you've grown yourself.  It truly is much better and more delicious than buying produce from supermarkets which has probably been in suspended storage for more than a little while.  My Mum is visiting from NZ for a month and has been helping with gardening and watering duties, it is fab to have another pair of hands to help.

The School Allotment

The lettuces which had bolted have been dug out and new lettuce, leek and kale seedlings planted. We also planted some beetroot and turnip seeds on the bed where the Swedes are. Hopefully they will start to germinate and show signs of life over the next week or so. Three were weeded and we planted more turnip seeds, carrots seeds, over winter spring onion seeds and also spinach seeds.  Our Brassica bed is doing well despite a few being munched in places by an as yet unidentified pest. The netting has been raised so cabbage white butterflies cannot land on our precious plants and we've checked them all for eggs and caterpillars.  We've also made sure the netting has no gaps for those pesky butterflies to sneak through.

Our Shared Allotment

This allotment needs weeding again but will have to wait until over the weekend.  We weeded thoroughly recently but it only takes a couple of rainy days followed by a couple of sunny days for the weeds to come back in full force.

Our rainbow chard and potatoes are growing well, as are the tomatoes and rhubarb.  The currant bushes and raspberry canes in the fruit cage are providing produce for many jars of jam, jelly, syrup and compote.  Out salad greens are also growing well and our beans, after a slow start, are getting somewhat over excited.  We have a glut of courgettes and beetroot too so expect a few recipes using those to appear on my blog shortly.  I have harvested onions and a few corn cobs too.

My 3 girls also decided to forage for some wild berries in the hedgerow before harvesting yet more raspberries and currants from our shared allotment fruit cage.  We had a brilliant time today!  Lots of free fresh produce, fresh air and exercise.  If you can get gardening and growing we heartily recommend it!

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Our Allotments - growing your own is hard work!

A couple of months ago we were delighted to be asked to share an allotment with a friend and her young daughters.  It was too much work for her to maintain the plot so we eagerly agreed to share it.

We have also taken on the school allotment due to the retirement of the teacher who looked after it.  She is a gardening legend who has been very generous with her advice and tolerant of all my questions.  You see we are fairly novice gardeners and only usually grow as much as we can in our back garden.  Taking on two allotments has been a rather steep learning curve and we have realised it requires rather a lot of work.  Be at as it may we are undaunted and determined to maintain both plots and will be badgering friends asking for help from those keen to help out and grow produce to feed their families.  

Planting, weeding and watering two large allotment plots is a lot of work and whilst we are novices we're keen to learn and are in it for the long term no matter how hard it is.  Some years will be better than others as far as weather and harvests go.  We didn't want the school to lose an important resource, there are long waiting lists for allotments and if the school had relinquished it's plot it is unlikely the school would've been able to secure another later on.  

We're very glad of the extra growing space we've acquired as we found ourselves with far too many seedlings to fit on our shared allotment. We still need more seedlings but after tweeting about it a lovely bloke who owns a bakery in Huntingdon has offered to donate some seedlings.  I shall blog about that later.  

Gardening is hard physical work and most people don't realise exactly how much until they give it a go.  I have been hauling two 10 litre watering cans back and forth from the water trough up to 20 times in total to water both allotments.  It is exhausting!  No wonder there are quite a few people who give up allotments after the first year.   We spend at least an hour or two each weekend weeding and checking on the plants too.  Yes it is hard fitting it in with our busy family life but our 3 children really enjoy being out in the fresh air digging, watering and finding minibeasts to study.  The allotment fees on our site are £18 per year, much cheaper than a gym membership and you get fresh organic produce to eat too.  

Growing your own produce takes a lot of energy but is well worth the effort.  It teaches us perseverance which is in short supply due to our society where instant gratification is commonplace.  We are determined to ensure that our children, and those who visit the school allotment, know where their food comes from and how much work goes into producing it. Hopefully they'll want to grow their own and waste less food once they know how hard it is to produce.  I shall blog about our harvests and what is (and isn't) growing well later.

4 comments Allotment, Basics, Budgeting Tips, Gardening

Allotment Adventures

My family and I love fresh homegrown produce.  We're growing as much as we can in our small back garden, mostly in containers and a couple of huge growbags which are like canvas raised beds.  When a friend asked if anyone was willing to share her allotment I jumped at the chance.  The thought of having much more room to grow fresh produce was very exciting.

I'm not sure if we are overenthusiastic or slightly mad but not only are we sharing an allotment with another family, we're looking after the school allotment too.  The teacher who looks after the allotment and organises gardening club is retiring so I offered our services to keep it tended over the summer and beyond.  It means there's lots of gardening and growing to be done and hopefully lots of fresh produce to eat.

Gardening is great exercise and the perfect excuse to get out in the fresh air, even dodging heavy showers like we were today didn't dampen out spirits.  There's nothing like eating something you have grown yourself, there is a real sense of achievement, not to mention freshly harvested produce tastes much better than the supermarket purchased variety.

This morning we left home at 10am and spent just over 3.5 hours at the allotments.  All the beds we had diligently weeded previously but not planted anything in had weeded over with the warm and wet weather.  I almost cried at the fact our hard work last time had been lost.  

However, with determined spirits we rolled up our sleeves and weeded all beds once again, turned over the soil and broke up any large clumps to prepare the beds for planting.  We then planted out beans, peas, kale, rainbow chard, courgettes, tomatoes and a dozen lettuces.  We weeded, turned over and planted out a bed at the school allotment too. 

Once everything had been planted it was all given a good thorough water, each of us carrying a 10L watering can back and forth from the water trough.  There are strictly no hosepipes allowed on the allotment so watering is tiring and time consuming.  It does however force you to conserve water and consider whether it is worth watering quite so much if a decent heavy shower is expected.  

We staggered home with 3kg of freshly harvested rhubarb, exhausted but proud of our achievements.

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Asparagus Quiche

I do love our shared allotment.  There are the usual nosey parkers, whingers and the like but also some lovely friendly folk to have a natter to and get advice from.  Yesterday morning I was able to swap some of our glut of rhubarb for some just picked asparagus.  Our household are big fans of asparagus and will gladly eat it as often as we can whilst the season lasts.  We were all rather hungry after working for an hour or so weeding so it was decided that I would make a quiche for lunch.  It was delicious and rapidly devoured by us all.

Asparagus Quiche

500g asparagus, blanched if large stems or not really fresh
4 medium free range eggs
300ml whipping cream
salt and pepper
100g finely grated cheddar
3 spring onions, white part only, very finely diced.
Shortcrust pastry case using this recipe or use store bought

Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan.

Once you have blind baked the pastry case, beat together the eggs, cream, salt and pepper until thoroughly combined.  Arrange the asparagus in the pastry case, sprinkle over the spring onion and grated cheese then gently pour over the seasoned egg and cream mixture.

Put the quiche in the oven and bake for 20 - 30 minutes until the top is golden and the filling is just set.

I am submitting this recipe to Simple and in Season hosted by Ren.

I am also submitting this recipe to the One Ingredient created by How to Cook Good Food and Franglais Kitchen.  Laura is hosting this month and the theme is Asparagus.

I've also added this post to the #cookitblogit fortnightly recipe Linky over at The Diary of a Frugal Family.

10 comments Allotment, Basics, Budgeting Tips, Gardening, Lunches, Meatfree Monday, Snacks, Vegetarian

Our Gardening Adventures - The Lurgy Edition

Earlier this week my friend Lucy and I spent an hour eating soup and toast, having a natter then planning what we were going to grow in each raised bed in the Spring.  We then dragged ourselves out in the foggy and damp weather to weed, spread compost and generally tidy up the raised beds. 

There has been a bit of a brassica masacre courtesy of slugs so we have used some organic slug pellets in an effort to stop anymore of the plants being chewed to stems.  About 30% of the seedlings we have planted had been moderately damaged by the slugs so we are hoping some recover from being munched.

The final raised bed that was waiting to be tamed will have to wait a bit longer as we could only stand an hour out in the damp and fog before the desire for a cuppa and the warmth of the house became too much and we scurried inside whinging about the weather.



All we did was weed this bed and spread compost out on it.

Our excuses for being non hardy gardening types are that I have tonsillitis and my broken foot is still a little sore, and Lucy had worked crazy hours the previous few days so was exhausted.  It is Half Term School Holidays this coming week so we are all taking a week off from the gardening sessions.

We are determined to tackle the last raised bed though so bring on the session after Half Term, assuming we won't turn into iciles whilst weeding! LOL



The untamed raised bed on the left of the picture is what we will tackle next, weather permitting.



How do you keep up your gardening motivation when the weather is cold, damp and generally awful? Any tips for how to beat the inclement conditions?

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More Gardening Adventures - The Still Limping Edition

As I mentioned previously, I have a small fracture in a bone in my right foot due to an unfortunate rolling pin incident.  It didn't stop me from gardening today, I leaned on the shovel to dig instead of using my sore foot to press on it.  I also pulled out loads of weeds and was able to rake up debris.  Carrying 70 litre bags of compost did prove challenging though and after the first few I resorted to using a wheel barrow instead of the firemans lift technique.

There were 3 of us Mums at the gardening session today, our friend popped in to offer encouragement and have a cuppa but weekends are better for her so she'll come and do some gardening then.

We achieved a great deal this afternoon.  The bed that was planted out last week was covered with fleece to stop pesky pigeons nibbling our seedlings.  The remaining 3 vegetable beds were weeded, one of the beds still has work to be done as we were running out of time and energy by that point.

The weeded beds were covered with rotting leaves and compost which was then dug through.  We covered the beds with fleece weighed down with sticks so they can be dormant over winter ready for us to plant vegetables and in the Spring.  The bed we didn't have cover for was covered in cardboard which was then coated with rotting leaves and compost.  The leaves were from the local supermarket carpark as my friend asked the contractors cleaning up the leaves if she could have bags of them this time last year.  She is most resourceful and fantastic at scoring useful freebies for the garden such as leaves, cardboard and cuttings.  We purchased the compost and it was delivered on Monday afternoon in 10 large bags which are rather heavy to haul about.


From this . . . . . .



to this!

We had a very valuable helper too in the form of an enthusiastic 2yo boy who normally sleeps through our gardening session but was awake and enjoying digging today.  There were loads of nettles which needed to be cleared before he was let onto the garden beds, we all have loads of stings on our arms and legs.

Two beds planted out and covered, two beds dug over and covered, one bed to go.

Next week we will finish weeding the last raised bed, cover it with leaves and compost then dig them through.  After that we'll probably just keep an eye on the beds over Winter, weeding as necessary.  It's a good excuse for a buttie and cuppa too! ;o)

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More Gardening Adventures- The Limping Edition

Yesterday I had the misfortune of dropping a large wooden rolling pin on my foot.  It fell end first off the kitchen table and has left me with a bruised, swollen and painful right foot.  I may have broken a small bone in the aforementioned foot but am stubbornly limping about in denial of my damaged foot.

However, there was the small matter of our regular garden session to attend to and I was not going to let a ore foot stand in the way.  My friend Lucy and I have been the only ones working on the garden for the last couple of sessions so I felt duty bound to attend.  It has been a bit of a "Little Red Hen" story for 3 sessions now with only 2 of us dilligently tending to the garden.  Despite Lucy badly burning her thumb at lunchtime we soldiered on and managed to double dig two beds and cover one in topsoil we were given by a neighbour.  We trekked it over one wheelbarrow at a time. 

We also managed to plant out one bed with cabbages and onions after making sure plenty of manure was dug through, along with some egg shells under each plant to deter slugs and provide calcium which cabbages love.  We also sprinkled eggshells around each cabbage plant that has so far managed to deter slugs on the other bed of brassicas.  There are at least 6 frogs and a large toad that we have spotted so I hope they are feasting on slugs before they get to our plants.

Here's the result of our 3 hours of hard work this afternoon:

We have a lot of work still to be done.  There are another 3 beds that need clearing and compost dug through ready to be covered over for the winter so that they are ready for planting in the Spring.  There are some leeks, chard and rhubarb in the beds, surrounded by copious amounts of weeds.  Once we are able to harvest the leeks we shall also move the rhubarb crowns and chard to the lovely prepared bed that is currently empty.  Next week we shall be weeding, clearing and then digging in 12 huge bags of compost that are being delivered later this week.



The rest of the beds that need sorting out.

We are looking forward to next week, ripping out weeds and digging in compost.  The soil is really hard and clumpy so we spend quite a bit of time breaking up large clumps of soil and trying to ensure that it is aerated and fine enough for plants to take root in.  Gardening is an excellent workout and we feel like we have been working hard the next day with sore muscles and feeling rather tired.  It is really fab exercise in the Autumn sun and the best bit will be when we harvest our produce that we have nurtured.

We also planted out some of the seedlings in my backyard on Saturday evening, compete with sprinkles of egg shells.  My 2 girls helped with the planting and we are looking forward to devouring more kale, tatsoi and purple sprouting broccoli.  We have more greens planted in the flower beds and in other containers around the back yard that are keeping us in greens until these ones grow big enough to harvest.

Anyone else gardening at home, at a communal garden or have an allotment?  What are your top tips?

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More Gardening Adventures - Planting Winter Veg

It was just my friend and I on gardening duty this afternoon and we prepared one bed for planting, dug through some compost and planted some greens and Brassicas.

Next time we shall be preparing another 2 vegetable beds, digging through compost and planting more greens and Brassicas in one of them.  We surrounded the plants with broken up egg shells that were diligently collected and then covered the whole lot with netting made from cheap (50p) net curtains sewn together.

There are 5 vegetable beds so three will be weeded, dug over, covered and left alone for the winter.



The results of our this afternoon



It was a fun but tiring couple of hours.  We spent an hour afterwards working on a Gardening Planner tool to plan what we will grow in Spring and Summer and also ordering compost.  We were browsing chicken coops too as we will get chooks in the Spring.  Recommendations for coops suitable for 4 - 6 chickens that is fox and badger proof would be most welcome. 



Our lovely seedlings and the second vegetable bed waiting to be prepared.



We planted some Red Curly Kale, Green Curly Kale, Tatsoi, Purple Sprouting Broccoli and a couple of  Cauliflower.

There are still Red and White Cabbages, more Cauliflower, Spinach and Purple Sprouting Broccoli left to plant once more compost arrives and we prepare the second vegetable bed.



It's amazing how effective old net curtains can be at detering pigeons from eating our seedlings.

My 3 daughters should be helping out after school next time, we need to make sure we have enough garden tools for all of us beforehand.  Their reward will be some baking to fuel our efforts (of course!) and free reign raiding the many raspberry canes in the front garden of my friends house. 

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