Long overdue update

Last year September to November were among the busiest months on the blog but this year things took a very different turn and those months were among the quietest, without even a single post in both October and November! And that's not because there was nothing happening in Cowick Garden Cafe, on the contrary, we've been very busy. I must confess I let other commitments get in the way of the blog but hopefully I will make amends over the coming weeks.

There's quite a lot to update you on and quite a lot of recipes to upload too! This year was a very good year for vegetables but not such a good year for fruit. Sadly, we had very few apples this winter, not only did many of them rot on the tree, but there were also far fewer than last year to begin with. That was very disappointing. Although we did make some comforting apple crumble as well as a delicious new recipe by Nigel Slater - caramelised apples with apple ice-cream. Delicious! 

Another bit of disappointing news is that we had to say bye bye to the blackberry bush. It became infected with almost every single pest and disease that has ever visited Cowick Garden. It became the hub of pest life, where they all congregated to discuss their next plan of attack and in the process they ravaged and ransacked the poor blackberry bush. Blackberries are normally hardy plants but it didn't stand a chance against the force of all the pests in town.

We're thinking of replacing that patch where Black Berry used to live with a flowering creeper. It will be good to have some flowers near the vegetable patch to attract more bees and helpful insects. We haven't decided what plant yet but as we'll only plant it in spring there's still time to decide. If anyone knows of a good flowering creeper to plant near vegetables, please let me know.

We hardly had any nectarines this year either and very few strawberries. However, this is the first year that we've planted strawberries and apparently they always produce very little in their first year, so next year should be better.

Anyway, enough of all the bad news. Now for some good news. The tomatoes and chillies were our biggest success. We had so many! We made so many spicy pasta sauces, tomato soups, oven-roasted tomatoes, bruschettas, that at one point we had no place to store everything in our tiny fridge. The beetroots were a success too though the slugs and snails did help themselves to the leaves every night. At least not to the extent where it prevented the root from growing so we had a number of beetroots to enjoy over several weeks. The spring onions did well too and so did our parsnips. 

We only dug the parsnips out of the ground yesterday as they can stay in the soil well into the autumn, up until the first frosts apparently. Interestingly, our parsnips didn't quite resemble the neat-shaped parsnips you find in the shop. On the contrary ours looked like mutant creatures from another galaxy. Didn't stop them from tasting good though. We made some spicy parsnip soup with many of them last night and that's what's for dinner tonight!

More photos and updates coming soon. It's good to be back!