Mangetout 'Golden Sweet'

In recent months, I've been thoroughly entertained by this yellow-podded mangetout pea, my first foray into mangetout growing. The peas were a rare heritage variety supplied by the Real Seeds Catalogue.   Fifteen peas were sown in mid-April and fifteen plants transferred to the pea patch in May.  The plants grew very fast, climbing to the top of the 5 foot high netting in no time and would have kept on going if there were something to cling to!

Mauve flowers

I don't know if this is true of all mangetout but this variety does put on quite a show.

Purple flowers

Every single flower dances through hues of light pink, magenta, mauve, purple, blue.....

Blue flowers

... and finally fades away to reveal the loveliest lemon yellow pod.

'Golden Sweet' mangetout

What a feast for the eyes as well as the tummy!

Bountiful

Salad greens

Direct from garden to plate, now that's what I'd call a garden salad!

Greens n flowers

First steps in May

I started sowing heritage and non-hybrid seeds in early May in recycled receptacles.  These were then left on the patio under cover of upturned clear plastic containers to do their thing.  Germination rates were surprisingly good and amazingly, most seedlings were in the ground by month's end.....

Bog rolls rule!

'Champion of England' climbing peas, 'White Emergo' runner beans,
'Summer Crookneck' and 'Pattison Orange' Patty Pan squashes,

'Russian Mammoth' and Aussie sunflowers, 'Hestia' dwarf runner beans,

'Golden Sweet' yellow mangetout, 'Cupidon' dwarf beans,
dwarf sugar snap peas, 'Double Standard' bicolour sweetcorn,

2 yr old Digger's Club heritage tomato seeds - every single seed germinated!

'Sanguina' beetroot,

Rocket in the fig pot,

and 'White Lisbon' spring onions

Climbing frame for tall peas

Teepee for beans, net frame for mangetout and yes,
the grass needed cutting!

Spring blossoms in April and May

Flowers from the fruit and vegetable garden .....

Purple sprouting broccoli

'Sunburst' cherry

Chive

'Brown Turkey' figs - inverted flowers

'Bluecrop' blueberry

Pear tree

'Conference' Pear

'Azure Star' purple kohlrabi

Real food

I am interested in good food, cooked the slow way and served steaming hot, preferably three times a day. I blame my parents. Let me tell you why......

I grew up in tropical Malaysia with parents who were incredibly passionate about food. Most conversations would swirl around what dishes to eat or to cook, where to find the best ingredients or the best restaurant for a particular dish, how to cook such a dish and what subtleties of flavours to look out for.

My parents were fussy about food provenance and would go to great lengths to source the freshest produce. There were bone rattling trips on pot-holed roads to pick vegetables from a farm or select seafood ‘off the boat’ from a fishing village. Every outing was an adventure in tasting and sourcing ‘real’ food.

Earliest childhood memories were of harvesting fruit from my grandfather’s trees and of collecting warm eggs from my grandmother’s chickens. Once, my dad took me to a durian orchard at nightfall to wait for the fruit to drop off the trees! We sheltered in a wooden hut with the orchard owner and listened to the ‘thud’ of these huge spiky fruit hitting the ground from a great height.

On my most recent visit home, I overheard a mobile phone conversation my mum had with her greengrocer. She wanted some papayas and discussed at great length the preferred taste, colour, fragrance and texture of the fruit so that he would know exactly from which tree to harvest the fruit. How wonderful if this was a way of life everywhere else!

We ate ‘village chickens’ – chickens which roamed outdoors pecking at worms and greenery (they were caged at night for protection from snakes). When I eat these now, I would get confused about what I’m eating. The meat is dark, tasty and very lean, quite unlike the fatty, bloated chickens now available at the supermarkets.

My mum could grow anything (and still does) - we lived three floors up on the main street of a noisy, bustling town and one third of that flat was an oasis of lush greenery. Monkeys, birds and once, a civet cat found their way to our sanctuary. Dad’s friends wanted to cook the civet cat for ‘medicinal purposes’ but we fed it bananas and at dusk, released it back into the wild, next to the zoo.

Food and gardening were part of the fabric of my life. When I left home to further my education abroad, I could not cook but I knew without a doubt what real food should taste like. A lesson in how to cut up a whole chicken with a large cleaver (!) was the beginning of many little steps towards cooking for self and loved ones.

I Skyped my mum this morning. The first thing she asked was: ‘Have you eaten?’ followed by ‘What did you eat?’.  Later, I spoke with dad, you've guessed it......