More food, and more alcohol — note the presence of a bottle of Rochefort 10-year-old, already declared on here as the world’s finest beer. But then, I am on holiday, and food and alcohol is at least part of what being on holiday is all about. Taken in the aptly named ‘Friends of Ham’ bar/restaurant in Leeds, at the start of a trip down South.
They start serving early at the Old Gate pub/restaurant in town. The condiments are set and prepared even before 10am. Off they stretch into the distance, like little table-set skyscrapers.
Witnessed in the Miners’ Arms, Garforth, near Leeds, this lunchtime. They did eventually arrive in person to consume their lunches; which if they were as good as ours were, were worth the wait (mild, unsolicited advertising).
And so ends July 2021, a month of refreshing normality, and the last complete calendar month before this blog reaches the end of its tenth year, on 25th August.
When the potatoes went in the ground earlier last year, May frosts killed them off. So we’re hanging back on planting these for a bit longer yet. Time for the sprouts to adopt their own interesting shapes, for all the world like a family of bunny rabbits sitting on some boulders (or have I spent too long indoors lately?).
The baby chard happily grows, waiting inside until things warm up — which going by the weather in the last few days, might be a while yet. I, on the other hand, just wait inside, not feeling like I grew much today, in any sense.
Time for a forage….. No, I’m not telling you exactly where this stash is. Somewhere in Hebden Bridge. I will say no more.
I subsist, at least in part, on a drip-feed of different places. Despite its privations 2020 has still seen its fair share of new locations, and already more than 2016, which only had 20 new ones all year. Tonight I find myself in Bath — new location number 27 of 2020 (and 327 in total). This is a city that’s been around in some form or another for nearly 2,000 years, since the Romans founded Britain’s first spa, under the building seen here. So quite probably, people have been selling tidbits in this spot for a couple of millennia, too.
Apples, rhubarb, blackberries, a leek (the leeks have done magnificently this year), kale, lettuce and I think there’s a blueberry in there somewhere. Not bad for half an hour up at the allotment. And, you know, a few months of work, mostly by Nature.
Ahhh. Rubus plicatus, one of the countryside’s great free bounties. They have found evidence in the stomachs of prehistoric peat bog victims that we’ve been eating these beauties for thousands of years. Who am I to go against such tradition.
A dull day in every sense. Also the last day of life for this chilli plant, which as you can see has put all of its efforts into this single great fruit, and spent itself like the one-hit-wonder pop group. The chilli went today into a very nice curry; and the plant, with our thanks, was put out of its misery.
