seasonal eating - The Bridge Cottage

Garden & Kitchen News from Bridge Cottage June 2020

June 28, 2020/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Sue Reed

Glastonbury 1985

It’s June 2020 and as I write this, the wind is howling and the rain is lashing down, It’s proper Glastonbury weather. It would have been Glastonbury’s 50th anniversary, but due to Coronavirus, it’s been cancelled. I last went in 1985 – it was a sea of mud, and I can’t remember who I saw. Now I’m happy to leave the thronging crowds to the youngsters, and spend the summer months in the garden.

Mangetout and Broad Bean Tips

June is a busy month in the garden, and welcome crops have been making themselves known in the Bridge Cottage kitchen. We’ve had our first tastes of mangetout, with a fabulous purple variety this year, Mangetout Snow Pea, Purple Shiraz as well as the more usual green variety. In the trug in this photo, you can also see the tops of broad beans which have been pinched out to deter blackfly.

Both mangetout and broad bean tips only need to be steamed for a couple of minutes of added to a stir fry and cooked lightly to be enjoyed.

Garlic bulbs drying under the eaves of the roundhouse

Our garlic crop has been harvested and is now hanging under the eaves of the sauna to dry. It got rust right at the end, but doesn’t seem to have suffered too badly for it. Soon the onions will be following suit – not with rust, but by being harvested.

Organic Comfrey Feed

The black liquid of our organic comfrey feed is starting to drip into the container beneath the compost bucket and this rich feed will now be added to water and be fed to my tomatoes and other fruiting crops. The hanging baskets, dahlias and sunflowers.

Making Organic Comfrey Feed

Growing Food in The Bridge Cottage Garden

It’s time now to think ahead to the winter and make sure you have winter veg sown. It’s not too late to set seed away for next Spelderflowerring’s Purple Sprouting Broccoli or kale and cabbages for over winter.

Salad crops too can be sown every month to ensure you have a regular supply of lettuces and not a glut all at once, and then a barren time. It’s too hot in the greenhouse now to grow rocket, but we’re having good success with rocket and cut and come again lettuce grown in containers on the patio.

Growing Food in The Bridge Cottage Garden

The potatoes are growing well and Tim has been earthing these up to allow as many potatoes to grow as possible.

The chard and spinach are both wonderful, and over on The Bridge Cottage Kitchen page, I’ve written out a recipe for using chard. We have kale ready for eating, and I’ll be getting some tonight to go with our Sunday dinner.

It’s strawberry time now, but we have lost our crop to the blackbirds. They were new plants in this year, and we should have thrown a net over them to protect them from the birds. Oh well, the birds are welcome to them. We have plenty to eat with rhubarb still going strong, and the gooseberries ripening nicely.

Gooseberry and elderflower ice cream

I thought I’d better use up the soft fruit that is still in the freezer from last year and made a delicious gooseberry and elderflower ice-cream, which you can try for yourselves.

Talking of elderflowers, now is the time to gather them, not forgetting to thank tree and bough. I’ve made elderflower vinegar, and will be mixing this with olive oil for a delicious summery salad dressing.

Elderflower cordial

Of course, elderflower cordial is a must, and can be frozen in small plastic bottles for use throughout the year. I only take a few blooms from each tree, saving plenty to turn into elderberries, which we’ll come to again in the autumn.

Elderflower recipes

The front of Bridge Cottage is laden with pink roses, and I thank whoever it was who was here before us and planted them. I’ve been drying rose petals to use in herbal teas. Now is a fabulous time to dry herbs, petals and leaves for use in the kitchen and for making tea, and this can see you right through the winter.

Roses on Bridge Cottage

Elderflower and mint tea

See my post over on the Bridge Cottage Kitchen page on using summer herbs for cooking and for teas. In June, I’ve been able to dry mint, lemon balm, sage, elderflower, rose, and rosebay willowherb. I’ve also made a couple of jars of herb salt, which will add delicious seasoning to our cooking.

The big news this June, has been the finishing of the pizza oven, and we’re enjoying lots of alfresco dining. If you’d like to see the movie we made about the build, head over to YouTube by following this link: the Bridge Cottage Pizza Oven Build. Tim’s worked really hard on this, and we’re very proud of him.

This is just a snapshot of some of the goings-on at Bridge Cottage this June. Head over to the other pages to get more in-depth writing about:

As ever, we’d love you to share your thoughts, either by leaving a comment here or one our social media pages, where this article will be shared.

You can find the Bridge Cottage Way on Facebook Twitter and Instagram. and sign up to our mailing list.

Welcome to the Bridge Cottage Kitchen & Seasonal Eating.

June 28, 2020/0 Comments/in The Bridge Cottage Kitchen/by Sue Reed

Welcome to the Bridge Cottage Kitchen and our introduction to Seasonal Eating. 🙂

Welcome Bridge Cottage kitchen

In this section of the website, we will look at seasonal eating to help you understand when different fruit and vegetables are ripe and ready. It is offered as a complement to the page, The Bridge Cottage garden, where we hold your hand as you plant and grow your crops. We will offer tried and tested recipes to enjoy home-cooked food when it is at its best, fresh and locally produced. We will also look at pickling and preserving to help your precious produce last into the winter months.

There is much food to be gathered from the hedgerows, foraged for free. We will discuss the ethics behind foraging, and how to gather food from the wild without impacting on wildlife.

Tomatoes ripening on the vine

Supermarkets with their year-round array of fruit and vegetables have taken seasonal eating out of many folks’ consciousness, and with it, the taste. I don’t want to eat tomatoes in January that have been ground under plastic in Almeria in Spain, neither do I want to eat asparagus that has come from Peru. I want to eat English asparagus in the small window that it is available in June, and will wait for my tomatoes to be ripe and ready before I eat them. I guarantee they will taste like a different vegetable to the one that has sat on the supermarket shelf, wrapped in plastic, after having been shipping halfway around the world.

homemade jam

Do you have memories of your grandparents pickling and preserving fruit and vegetables? Both my grandmothers made jam, one with a shelf in the fridge door of strawberry jam, and the other who filled tiny paste posts with homemade raspberry jam. Mine were from the wartime generation who had to learn to make the most of what they had, and I believe we need to take a leaf out of their books and go back to those days. I wrote over in the Sustainable Living section of this website about how the bubble had burst. I strongly believe we need to reduce our spending, reduce plastic waste, and for the sake of the planet, reduce our carbon footprints. If I can keep out of the supermarkets I will. Never has it been more important to try and grow and cook as much of our own food as we can, and eat seasonally.

Gooseberry and elderflower ice cream

Over the year we will be making jam, jellies and chutneys together, drying herbs and making herbal teas, freezing summer fruit, churning ice-cream and making out own cheese and yoghurt. When Christmas comes, we’ll look at ways to keep it simple and homemade. So get saving your jam jars, don’t throw any containers or bags away. You’ll be needing them for in the coming months.

As ever, we’d love you to share your thoughts, either by leaving a comment here or one our social media pages, where this article will be shared.

You can find the Bridge Cottage Way on Facebook Twitter and Instagram.

You might enjoy some of the writing and ideas in other section of this website, as we look towards leading more sustainable lives by growing our own food and creating dishes in line with seasonal eating, or head to our handy ‘Month by Month’ guides to find out what is seasonal and on topic:

Many thanks for reading.

With Facebook and Instagram algorithms being fickle friends at times, be sure to get all new posts from The Bridge Cottage Way by signing up for the mailing list here. This will go our four times a year, around the Summer and Winter Solstices, and the Spring and Autumn Equinox. We of course will not share your details with third parties, and you have the right to unsubscribe at any time.

Why Bother? Gardening & Growing Food.

June 22, 2020/0 Comments/in The Bridge Cottage Garden, Outdoors, Sustainable Living/by Sue Reed

Growing Food in The Bridge Cottage Garden

Why do we go to all the bother of gardening and growing food? Indeed, a friend walked around our garden not so long ago and remarked, ‘this is my worst nightmare’. We have a large plot here, but whether you have a large or small garden, allotment or a few pots and a window box, growing food is, in our opinion not only rewarding and enjoyable but vital for the survival of the planet.

The taste of vegetables plucked fresh from the garden is incredible, not to mention the extra vitamins and minerals you’ll take on board compared to food that has sat on a supermarket shelf after making a journey halfway around the world. You will also be safe in the knowledge that your crops are free from pesticides, have not travelled for miles by boat or plane, and are not wrapped in plastic. you will also get outside, for fresh air and exercise. Studies have shown that gardening and getting our hands in soil is very good for both our mental and physical health. These should be reasons enough for all your hard work.

Growing Food in The Bridge Cottage Garden

You will learn to eat seasonally, in tune with the growing calendar, enjoying the excitement of crops as they become ready, and then just as you sicken of them, another crop will pop up its head up and off you go in the enjoyment of that. Through the Bridge Cottage Way, we will hold your hand as you plant your first crops, telling you when it is time to plant, and guiding you through the whole growing process.

In the section, The Bridge Cottage Kitchen, we will take our fruit and vegetables indoors and explore recipes for tasty meals as well as ways to pickle and preserve to help us through the winter months. As well as food from the garden, we will also be writing about foraging and collecting food for free.

We live and garden in Northumberland, which is at the centre of Britain. Haltwhistle, just a few miles down the road from us claims to be the actual centre of Britain. There is one heck of a lot of Scotland above us. We will be writing about what we are growing and when we are growing it. However, if you are down south or in warmer climes, then you may well want to do everything just a little bit earlier. You will be able to sow and grow without the risk of snow in June! The same applies if you are reading this further north – you may need to wait a while.

Growing Food in The Bridge Cottage Garden

We will write about all aspects of the garden, but with a particular focus on growing food. During lockdown there has been a surge in people beginning to grow fruit and vegetables for the first time. You might be visiting this site as a newbie, or like us, as old-timers who have grown food for decades. You are all very welcome.

You can visit the month by month section to find out what jobs need doing when, or use the search box on the home page if you are looking for a particular subject.

It’s time to pop out into the garden and pick some courgettes for dinner tonight, so we’ll say cheerio for now.

Happy gardening

Growing Food in The Bridge Cottage Garden

As ever, we’d love you to share your thoughts, either by leaving a comment here or one our social media pages, where this article will be shared.

You can find the Bridge Cottage Way on Facebook Twitter and Instagram.

You might enjoy some of the writing and ideas in other section of this website, as we look towards leading more sustainable lives by growing our own food and creating dishes in line with seasonal eating, or head to our handy ‘Month by Month’ guides to find out what is seasonal and on topic:

Many thanks for reading.

With Facebook and Instagram algorithms being fickle friends at times, be sure to get all new posts from The Bridge Cottage Way by signing up for the mailing list here. This will go our four times a year, around the Summer and Winter Solstices, and the Spring and Autumn Equinox. We of course will not share your details with third parties, and you have the right to unsubscribe at any time.

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