Sweet dreams are made of squash
This has been a brittle sort of week. I don’t know if it the news, the waiting, the shattering rumble of the huge tractors and laden trailers through the village or the day-disrupting putting on and taking off of jumpers. Have you dug out your woolly socks yet? I have.
Monday 21st September. Mist. The most incredible mist. I drive to Shepton Mallet the long way, up to Staple Hill, down Ham Hill where the views reach all the way across the county, past Ilminster, and through the villages. The skies are huge and the views long, each hill in a different shade of grey. I am home sooner than expected and there are still droplets on the dahlias.
Tuesday 22nd September. My local farm shop. Although I have vines and vines of pumpkins at home, I cannot resist picking up a Kabocha. I grate it and make rosti. It cooks down to a beautifully soft but nutty cake. (I’d use a food processor next time, grating a whole squash was so tedious, even with a mandolin.) Topped with sauerkraut and a fried egg. Autumn on a plate.
Peel and de-seed a whole squash. Grate into a bowl and season really well. Add four tablespoons of flour (I used buckwheat) and two eggs. Stir and stir and stir. Fry on quite a high heat either in spoonfuls or spread across the frying pan like an omelette. Do not touch for five minutes. Flip over using a chopping board and then either let it sit over a lowered heat to cook through, or put it in the oven for ten minutes.
Anna Jones also has a recipe for pancakes (which are my favourite things) made of squash (my favourite vegetable) and ricotta (my favourite cheese apart from stilton). It’s here.
Wednesday 23rd September. There is a scent in the air. Dahlias don’t really smell, although dried ones do, oddly. It takes me all day to work out what it is. Quinces. A last ditch attempt to ripen them on a sunny windowsill has proven more successful than I ever could have hoped. I keep catching wafts of the most beautiful flowery notes. Did you know that Nigel Slater has twenty three pages on Quince in Tender? One of the recipes even states unripe quinces which is a relief, as like tomatoes, there are always some that never make it past green.
Thursday 24th September. A day of meetings and planning. There are lots of things going on with Gather and with the business, and my life generally, and I feel the tension of trying to even think about what next when so much is so uncertain. Family events that had been tentatively booked, cancelled. It doesn’t even seem worth discussing Christmas. We start thinking about a holiday in the most remote part of the west coast of Scotland in January. This is clearly an utterly ridiculous thing to do but the world is so crazy right now, it seems a positively sensible choice.
Friday 25th September. I’ve dyed things in the past but without commitment. I am going to be honest with you and say that my woad plants fried in the greenhouse before I had chance to plant them out and the wild weld fell victim to the neighbour’s strimmer. This is all about to change. Christine Lewis and I start making plans for our new (long-promised) guide to natural dyeing. I order the biggest stock pot I can find, and buy a litre of clear vinegar for making iron water.
Saturday 26th September. A delivery of the most incredible ribbon from The Natural Dye Works. Oh, and socks. Not only is this one of the most exciting things to have happened to me for a while, but it also marks the beginning of (whisper it) the stocking up of the Christmas shop. No pictures yet because they are so glorious they will have a photo shoot day all of their own.
Sunday 27th September. The sky is as clear as cornflowers and the sun blazing hot. There are some changes afoot. I lift some mypex that had been bringing part of the wilder end of things into beautiful no dig production. I am very very disappointed to discover quite a lot of very white thistles and an entire web of bindweed roots. I spread compost over it and put the mypex back. I had been planning to plant it up with whitecurrants and loganberries but that will have to wait. It’s been there well over a year so I am not sure what has gone wrong. This is part of a bit of a shift from flowers to food. I am part of a community group called Corfe Village : Green, trying to increase our resilience in food and energy and our decision making. It is time to step up and make some serious changes. Watch this space.