Eating from the garden
21.08.2023 - 12:02
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
I’m not the kind of person who creates a meal plan and shopping list every week, and then sticks to it religiously. I do like to have some idea of what we’re going to eat, however, as this cuts down on the number of nights when there’s nothing for dinner. Our current methodology is to fill the fridge and the freezer with things we eat regularly, and to eat them in rotation to avoid food waste. It’s a mix-and-match, ‘that will go nicely with this’ kind of thing, rarely looking more than 2 days ahead unless there’s a special event happening. It works for us, and we have very little waste.
Adding both meat and veg boxes from Abel & Cole into the mix when we moved into this house (two years ago now!) has greatly increased the variety in our diet. It allows us to opt out of things we really don’t want, but that’s a very different ball game from selecting the same handful of species from the supermarket each week.
And now that the garden is fully-functioning, we need to learn how to add eating from the garden into the mix. As the garden has developed over the last two years, we’ve added little things to our food. Last year there were lots of alpine strawberries, and mint for Pimms. We began cooking outside more, and I planted a bed (well, two actually…) of asparagus when we discovered we really like it. This year we’ve discovered the joys of sage and herby baked feta, although we haven’t cooked outside as much. We miss it, we’ll do more again next year. A triffid has joined the ranks of ‘must-have plants’, and I love that the garden is evolving its own personality.
Some of the larger harvests for the garden have been easy to incorporate into our diet. We’ve been munching our way through the onions and shallots for week. I’ve just
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