It's back to the kitchen today. Something I love to have for breakfast is a bowl of homemade baked beans - very satisfying and a complete meal although I always like to top it with a couple of eggs. The recipe I follow uses many ingredients that I can source from the garden. What prompted me today to cook this, was the arrival of a few red peppers. A challenge to grow in such a cool summer as we've had here. Happy to be able to add to those my own carrots, tomatoes, onions, garlic, borlotti beans and some herbs. I made plenty to have now and store away in the freezer for later.
As the weather outside wasn't very welcoming I spent a little extra time in the kitchen and pumped out some fermented chilli relish. Haven't made this recipe before but with plenty of red chillies, thanks to the few recent warmer days, and an abundance of coriander leaves due to the cooler days before that, I had all the ingredients (along with my garlic, some olive oil and salt) to make this colourful treat. It will be one long month before I can sample this relish but good things are worth waiting for - right!?
Not to waste an opportunity to obtain a yield (another of my favourite permaculture principles) I put some of the seeds from my best chillies aside to grow next years crop. I have been saving seeds from two varieties that I sourced 5 or 6 years ago. One from a guy called Frank and the other from a guy called Stan, hence the name of my seeds. I'm hoping that sticking with these varieties and saving the seed each year, slowly the plants will become more and more adapted to the local conditions and flourish more and more.
Using up some of my stored beans prompted me to grab the pile of vines from the greenhouse that have been drying. It's a bit of a slow process getting the beans from vine to store cupboard but bit by bit you get there. I at least pulled all the pods from the vines and brought them inside. At some point I'll sit down, probably in front of YouTube, and get the beautiful seeds finally out.
Not much work on the chicken coop today due to the inclement weather, however, I did get my bearers cut and stuck together. A day wait while the glue dries is good for its strength and a little while extra for the concrete to cure doesn't hurt, so all good - be back out there tomorrow!
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