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Too good to eat
Filed under GeneralSep 12Ever since I met my partner there has been a real problem around this time of year. It’s not as some might imagine, any of the usual problems couples face in the autumn. It is not the start of the football season that drives a wedge between us, nor is it the start of an American TV series which will have me glued to the screen for weeks to come.
No, on this front at least we at least share our main hobby as she is just as fanatically into vegetable growing as me, if not more so. She’ll correct my Latin so I know my Daucus carota from my Pastinaca sativa and we both get excited when the latest book on unusual vegetables blesses our door mat.
There is no dragging her kicking and screaming to the plot. At present she is very heavily pregnant but that doesn’t seem to stop her, it is often her suggestion to wander down to the plot for the harvest. None of these things really cause the problem but they in themselves are the problem.
She is so keen on vegetables that during the autumn our house starts to fill up with them. One year we lived in a tiny maisonette barely big enough for the two of us and come harvest time it really began to cram up. We had beans on strings hanging from the ceiling, herbs drying in the windows, jars of pickles, jams, chutneys and jellies on every shelf in every cupboard and fruit leathers drying on the storage heaters.
All of these I could cope with, especially as a lot were my doing, however what I found infuriating were the squashes, the large pumpkins, butternut and marrow squashes. They were everywhere. Every time I pulled the hoover out of its cupboard one would roll out and hit me on the head, if I closed the curtains too quickly the same would happen with those perched on the valance box above them. They were a danger to us and to the squashes themselves.
Often I would feign accidents just so I could get to eat these vegetable giants. If I didn’t create these vegetable mishaps they would remain as artistic objects, mere ornaments dotted around our home. Herein lies the rub, as it does every year. I am happy to grow food, I am also happy to preserve food but, and I do insist on this, it has to be eaten! Pumpkins, as beautiful as they may be, are not ornaments and neither are jars of pickles or jams. They all need to be eaten sometime or we are just making cumbersome baubles to slowly rot in our homes.
I think this evening a little accident may happen to one of the Uchiki Kuri squash on the kitchen windowsill. I think it may be a little accident involving balsamic vinegar, basil and pasta.
