Monsters lurking on WTA!

Yeah, I know! I shouldn't have let these courgettes get so big, but hey, it happened...and these two monsters are being converted into four different varieties of courgette soup (see recipes I'm using in my links) as I write. Perhaps I should rename this bed the "Sigmund Freud Organic Bed" in honour of the incredibly phallic fruits that are abounding there! One of the 'mammoth courgettes picture has already made 5.5 litres of soup alone. In the past few days I felt like oneof the characters of the classic film 'Jaws' as I set out for WTA. I've known that lurking somewhere in that non dig bed is the mother of all over-sized courgettes that needs to be hunted down, harvested and then turned into some edible form!

The amount Courgette recipes on the net is astounding and exciting. Being a bit of a fan of Jamie Oliver I delved into his "Happy days" cook book and used his courgette salad recipe (See recipe links). The recipe is a corker and a great example of how British cooking has and is still being revolutionised by some creative thinking. My main challenge right now is to find and make a large variety of genuinely superlative courgette soup recipes...

Here's some courgette soup I made earlier!

The finished product...
with still more to make!

Faced with a further courgette surge The Hearing Scientist cleverly suggested we try char- grilling some of the smaller fruits emerging on the plants . A foray out onto WTA yesterday evening pr produced a a further three or four more kilos of courgettes. We then fired up the gas BBB in the back yard and formed a cutting and char-grill production line with the following results...

These Mediterranean -style delicacies are being frozen this morning and will be pulled out and eaten as and when needed in the autumn and winter.

Part of the onion crop (whites) Mariner Tim helped plant late last year were harvested this morning - a process that fed my increasing fascination with the onion as a plant and a desire to grow even more (I've already ordered some sets from Dobies and plan to grow more from seed rather than set in the coming year). Onions are a big part of my cooking and it's been brilliant to simply cross the road, dig some from the dark soil, take them back to the house and use them straight away. Mariner Tim is mucking about on boats with the glitterati somewhere off the coast of Monaco, but he might get to enjoy the fruits of his labours when he returns and the onions store well.

The 'Late' seed potatoes arrived this week so it won't belong before I have the little beauties in the ground in the next few days. A quick dig of some main crop spuds that are dying off was like uncovering a treasure trove of large, uncut white diamonds from the soil, cow manure and straw covering them.

Things are growing at a rate of knots with the warm weather we've been having and you can see from the pic below there's no shortage of great, fresh produce coming on. I'm just off to see what else is lurking out there...Grow well!