allotment | Perfecting Pru

I have a bit of a problem. Blogging. I take the photos, upload them and then stuff happens and I never get around to showing you the photos. I am also very, very behind on posting photos of Brette’s kitchen which I know you will love – this is coming this week. I promise.

Last Sunday I spent a couple of hours at the allotment. With the weather finally dry and quite warm it was the perfect time to assess and damage from the rain and to kneal on the ground humbly and weed.

The entrance to the allotments.

I was so pleased to find that apart from a lot of weeds, everything is growing really well and there are positive signs for the future.

Weeding around the broad (fava) beans completed, next time = the peas!

Flowers turning into strawberries.

And here are a couple of photos of other allotments in our section.

The grassy one:

The perfect one:

I live in hope of making our allotment a bit more perfect, but we need to wait until the end of the summer before making many changes to the layout. Oh, if only to start all over again…

~ Pru

Sometimes I become infatuated with something. These past few months its been rhubarb. Soon it will be peas and then it will be tomatoes. But at the moment, rhubarb is the thing I dream about. I have been charting its progress at the allotment for the last couple of months, taking tiny peaks at it when it was kept warm and strong under an old tin bucket, and then when it finally emerged I have been thinking long and hard about when I could twist its stalks and start cooking it.

So it was decided, Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday would be the first day of eating our rhubarb. A milestone on the calendar. We would look back in a couple of years and reminisce about the rhubarb. Sadly, dad wasn’t that well at Easter and so mum and I ate the rhubarb on Tuesday instead. If you keep rhubarb in the fridge it is fine for a couple of days.

The first recipe for what will surely be a marathon rhubarb-eating month was Poached Rhubarb in a Vanilla Syrup. It’s a Martha recipe, although I did change it slightly, which I tried last year and loved.

6 stalks of rhubarb cut into inch sized pieces. I stop cutting once I hit the green.
1 cup white wine
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1 vanilla pod. Scrape the seeds out of one half and add the other half (whole) to the saucepan.
Whipped cream to serve

Boil the wine, sugar, water and vanilla for six minutes in a saucepan. Keep an eye on it as the liquid will quickly evaporate.
Add the rhubarb and turn down to simmer.
Keep an eye on the rhubarb. It should take only a couple of minutes to cook.
Take the rhubarb out of the poaching liquid and reduce the liquid to a thicker syrup and cool slightly.
Serve with whipped cream.

The thing with this recipe is that it isn’t too sweet. You can still taste the sharpness of the rhubarb but it is wonderfully complimented by the syrup. And mum and I am sure will look back on the first rhubarb of the year, the day after Easter Monday with happy memories!