Beans Galore

The weather has been gentle since the days of extreme heat but the garden has suffered. A few things look shrivelled and may be past their best. I’m hatching plans for an Autumn make-over. When one door closes another one opens!

Last autumn I planted several lilies. They were called “Brasilia”. A beautiful pale lily with a pink tinged edge to the petals. Only one has flowered and guess what? It’s not a “Brasilia”! It’s a deep pink one. Still pretty but not the delicate beauty I was hoping for.

Not much to show in the flower garden until the asters and rudbeckias bloom. There are some interesting seed heads though and I spied a tiny green insect peeping out of one. See if you can spot it.

A lovely Goldcrest appeared in the pear tree by the house. A tiny, dainty bird with a streamlined little body, a sharp beak and a lovely golden stripe on the top of its head. Not something we see often in the garden. Such a pleasure to sit quietly watching as it bobbed about among the branches.

This week I’ve retrieved some photos from this time last year. So many lovely colours. I must replace some plants after the season is over and achieve the same results. Here’s a glimpse of past glory.

Fortunately the vegetables are mostly thriving. I only grow small amounts of what we like to eat but sometimes there’s a surplus. The beans are generous and come in three lovely colours.

The purple beans are striking to look at and have lovely delicate pinky-lavender coloured flowers.

They change to green when cooked.

The yellow beans are like a ray of sunshine. They keep their colour when they’re cooked and taste wonderful.

Runner beans are big producers but so far this year the weather has caused them to fatten the beans inside the pods much earlier than usual. We don’t mind because the pink beans are tasty too. If the pods have toughened I shell them to reach the lovely pink kidney beans from inside. They don’t keep their colour during cooking but they’re delicious.

I froze a few beans because if they’re not picked regularly they become tough and seedy. It’s very easy to do. I cut them into short lengths while I boil a pan of water. I put them in the boiling water, bring back to the boil and cook for 3 minutes. Then I drain and cool in very cold water. When I’ve drained and dabbed them a bit with some kitchen paper I spread them on a baking tray and open freeze them. When they’re frozen I put them into a container. By open freezing them like this they don’t form a solid lump and will shake out separately in the quantity needed when I want to cook some.

I need to preserve some ginger. Supplies are running low. I like to freeze some fresh ginger root but I also preserve some in sugar syrup like the jars of stem ginger you can buy.

To freeze ginger root, I wash and trim away any rough bits, cut it into useable chunks with the peel still on and freeze it in a container. It’s very good when thawed and handy to have for recipes which use fresh ginger.

For stem ginger, I wash, peel and cut the pieces of root into small chunks, cook in water until tender, then add lots of sugar and continue to cook until golden and syrupy. My instructions, if you’d like them, are on a previous post called “Woody Scents and Preserving Ginger”. Just scroll back to find it. Or the recipe is in my cookbook which you can find with this link: https://geni.us/eANQu

This picture is a bit dark. It’s really a lovely golden colour. Preserved ginger is so versatile and not difficult to do. You can add it to cakes, like my easy ginger sponge,

or to my Ginger Chicken one-pan meal. The syrup is delicious drizzled over ice-cream and puddings or with greek yoghurt.

I’m struggling with a new computer so I wasn’t able to put as many photos on as I would have liked. Hopefully by next week I shall be on top of it. So bye for now. I hope you have lots of good things to do and you’ll join me again next week.