Last Autumn I planted a couple of rows of Radar onion sets, just to see how they’d go. Radar are a super early variety of onion. Although really I was super late in getting them in, which is why they’re only really ready to pull now. But my bad timing aside, these Radar onions have been a bit disappointing. I don’t want to give this variety a bad name because I’m pretty sure it’s all my fault.

You see, I didn’t bother to condition or feed the soil much before I put them in. I think I may have sprinkled a bag of compost over the area, but didn’t do much else. And I’d already grown potatoes, followed by leeks in that area. Our soil here is quite sandy and very poor in places, so I’m guessing that any nutrients that were in the soil were sucked out in the first year.

Of course last year I had grand ideas about green manure etc. But I got lazy, impatient and forgetful and hastily shoved the onion sets in and hoped for the best really. I did put fleece tunnels over them during the winter for a bit of extra help. But the result is that they’ve grown pitifully small this year. So when I cook, I have to pull up four or five, sometimes six to equal a ‘normal’ portion of 2 onions. And I love onions. In fact, I’m a big allium fan all round. So I don’t want them to go to waste, but boy are they annoyingly fiddly to deal with when you’re cooking.

So I want to come up with some ways to use them elsewhere. And I think possibly the only things I can do with my current limited time and expertise is to try pickling them. And maybe a filo roasted onion tart if i’m feeling particularly exotic that day.

I myself am not an avid fan of pickled onions. Rich loves them, and my cousin Deborah could happily eat them by the jar (and has been known to).  So I don’t know an awful lot about them. My Mum’s best friend Sue is one of those people that knows how to do almost anything, and do it well - cooking en masse, sewing a cushion/curtains/dress, plant up a beautiful hanging basket, knit, grow veggies, crush coal with her bare hands and make diamonds etc. But her pickled onions are legendary, so I may ask her for some tips. I’m not sure that these Radar onions will work - do I need specific pickling onions? Should I opt for shallots? All I can say is by the end of my onion chopping session this evening, my eyes were stinging so much that I could barely keep them open, so I think they’ll do. Forget pepper spray, if you want to deter a criminal from attacking, rub a couple of onions in their face. It was quite torturous for all of 2 minutes.

It’s a good thing there’s been a lot of rain about. Because I have been so overloaded with work, I’ve had time to do little else (apart from sneakily watch Harry Potter on You Tube whilst gobbling down my dinner). The Smallest Smallholding is falling into decline, the weeds are threatening to take over and it all seems to have slowed into a weird state of perma-slow motion.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse have started fruiting at a perculiarly slow rate, they’ve been suspended for what feels like weeks, plump and green slowly swelling in size. But no ripe ones yet. Last year I had the tomatoes growing in the conservatory, where it gets ridiculously hot in sunny weather. This resulted in a jungle of triffid-like leggy tomato plants that needed watering twice a day and churned out more fruit than we knew what to do with. This year it seems the opposite, like a strange waiting game. Growing in the cooler, unheated greenhouse seems to have produced stockier plants, but I’m guessing the tomatoes will be of a good quality. Mum grew hers outside last year and they did really well. Needless to say, the figs are in suspended animation and I’m wondering whether they’ll actually ripen this year…

Down on plot 101 at the allotment, the onions are a sight for sore eyes. Rows of juicy red and white onions are waiting to be pulled and cooked with. Last night I used one white (Hercules) and one red (Red baron) onion in my chana masala. THEY TASTE SO GOOD. Really makes all the difference. I’ve been told to treble my onion output next year. I’m definitely open to it. The garlic is also almost ready - smells divine when you pull it up. It’s currently air drying in the kitchen, can’t wait to use it.

I’ve been pulling up a few turnips to use in cooking. The thing is, I’m not so sure what to do with them all. I decided to plant an early-harvesting, fast growing variety called ‘Snowball’. And true to form, they’ve grown wonderfully quickly and only needed thinning out. They’ve pretty much taken care of themselves (always handy) but I’ve come unstuck because I have a crop that could be harvested right now, but not sure how I can use them, apart from being really unimaginative and chucking them in soup! Their supermarket counterparts seem to be harvested when they’re slightly bigger than a golfball. Mine are well beyond that, but still surprisingly tender and fleshy. I thought I’d let them get too big, and expected them to be quite woody. Glad I was wrong!

Carrots are going well, although the weeds are creeping in left, right and centre. I’ve been pulling a few carrot top stalks out to feed Bunbuns, nice frugal way to feed them, seeing as I didn’t manage to locate (or indeed grow) any kale this year. A bag of kale in Tesco costs 98p, in Waitrose costs £1.19…and I’m not sure it’ll be in the farm shop. The farm shop scares me a bit. I don’t know why. I think it’s because I’m not used to shopping in smaller, intimate spaces where you can be watched from the counter. But then, I’m probably spied on from all angles in the supermarkets, I’m just not aware of it (note to self, don’t unwedge knickers/rearrange bra/vainly check makeup in mirror down deserted aisle, someone is still probably watching!).

Mehh, anyway I digress. We’ve been battling to keep our chicken Pattie from sliding into seriously bad health. She’s got a mystery reoccuring ailment that’s not linked to our EYP. We think. So we’ve sent off a faecal sample to a vet lab in Nottingham to see if there’s something amiss. Should have results tomorrow. We’re also putting Yoko through some photoperiod manipulation, as her EYP swelling was getting too big. It seems to have worked - she basically goes to bed around 5pm and it seems to have made a huge difference to her energy levels and eating. And she doesn’t go and sit in her carrier-come-nestbox (she can’t manage the henhouse ladder at present) when she has the urge to lay (internally). We know she’s feeling better because she’s become a big, barging bossy boots again.

And Maureen-the-wonder-hen-that-never-moults-and-never-gets-ill has got a limp and hasn’t laid in 5 days. She’s so reliable usually that it’s worrying. So having to deal with all that is an ongoing trial. Poor chookies. They’ve been so used and abused in the intensive battery system, it’s no wonder they have these problems later on. Still, they are still enjoying life. And that’s the main thing.

This weekend I finally finished digging out the big veg plot. It’s not that big really - it’s only about 5 or 6 metres long, but when you consider that I have a crappy back, and Rich resolutely left me to do it all myself, you can understand why it’s been quite an undertaking for me. I managed to unearth about 12 small bag’s worth of rubble and hardcore (bricks, ceramic roof tiles, drainage pipes etc), about 30 ant’s nests (hens ate the eggs, bit of a delicacy) and untangled an underground thicket of root systems.

Last time we went down to Biggin Hill to see Rich’s family, his Dad gave me two bags of compost which have been put to use in the plots. Otherwise I’d be growing vegetables in dirty sand. The soil is so poor that I think it’s going to need some super manuring, conditioning and feeding over the winter. Still, my Autumn King carrots like it, despite their daily dose of being rolled and slept on by Lilla the cat. And the Hercules onions are coming along. I’m hoping to get my ’snips in (for a roast dinner without ’snips is a sad sight to behold) too.

A couple of days ago I also moved my tent cloche (another gift from Rich’s parents) to cover my newly transplanted Kilaxy cabbages. I’d started them off in seed modules outside, and they’d vastly outgrown my Primo cabbages that had been sown earlier. So I decided now was a good time to transplant them. I took the seed tray off the garden table and put it down beside me whilst I made little holes for the cabbages to go in. My back had been turned for a few seconds, during which time Yoko had strode over and discovered a tray of tasty morsels.

In the space of about 10 seconds, she’d decimated about 5 of my cabbages. Good work, Yoko. I think she thought she was helping - a sort of quality control and selection process, as I always make a point of growing a few extras. Feeling that her work was done, Yoko soon got bored and wandered off somewhere else leaving me to plant in the remaining cabbages. I didn’t want to take any chances though, and staked down my tent cloche. Because I actively encourage the birds to come and feed, I don’t want to inadvertantly invite a load of pot-bellied woodpigeons down to finish off the rest. I still have a tray left to plant down on the allotment, but have nothing to cover them in. So there it’ll be a case of blind, foolish beginner’s luck where brassica growing is concerned.

Today though, I have to resign myself to a few hours of cleaning. So I’m just about to brandish my Mum’s super duper Dyson in one hand (our vacuum is, for want of a better word, crap) and a bottle of Bishop’s Finger real ale in the other. BORING!

I love my food, there’s no doubting that. I’ll never be one of these stick-thin types, a) because I have child bearing hips and b) because food has an important part to play in my life - growing it, cooking it and savouring it.

I come from a family where every occasion is marked by some sort of meal or foodie event. We’re a bit continental, in that our extended family often gets together and feasts. In the summer and autumn, a lot of the food we eat is home-grown, and tastes all the better for it.

I really enjoy cooking from scratch. In fact, I rarely don’t cook from scratch, unless I’m whacking something like a beanburger on. It might sound extremely tragic to those that are living high-flying careers, but cooking my dinner is a highlight of my day. Rich is far more experimental than me with his dishes -I tend to stick to my favourites (I could live on home-made soups for months on end) and cook them on a rotation. He went through a phase of making proper italian pizzas, the dough, the tomatoes, the buffalo mozzerella, fresh basil, baked on the back of a hot cast iron dish. They were stunning. He inspires me to try harder.

We both like to cook, so a lot of the time we cook our separate meals, which sometimes results in jostling and cries of “can you get out of the way!” and “oi, I need that pan!” or “do you have to stand there?”.

This summer I’m aiming to find interesting uses for all the produce at the Smallest Smallholding. I can’t wait until I’m able to walk a few yards, ponder over the vegetable patches about what to pick or pull up, and what I can do with it. At the moment though, there’s not a lot of edible stuff here, it’s all growing, germinating or yet to be sowed. I still have yet to master the whole productive year-round and storage thing.

Which means that at present, I am relying on the supermarket (bleurgh) for my ’scratch’ ingredients. Veg, passata, frozen peas et al. Farmer’s markets are thin on the ground, a bit like my cash situation. No cash, no food from the market or farm shop. The supermarket isn’t so bad at the mo, there’s a nice looking security guard there that I don’t mind ogling from afar, much to Rich’s bemusement (”…but he always looks so moody! You’re weird.”).

ANYWAY - I will finally make my point. Cash flow is crap at the moment, thanks in part to humongous vet bills, quarterly sky-high gas bills (despite our best efforts to be efficient) etc etc. So we are on a very very very tight, strict food budget. I needed to go on a bit of a diet anyway. 7 chocolate brioches, a few doughnuts, cookies, cakes and crisps later and I’m not exactly looking my best. Remember I have this school reunion to go to - I really don’t want to be the “one that got chubby”.

But being on a budget means that I am actually eating three GOOD square meals a day. I can’t afford the extras. So it’s like putting a little in and getting the maximum out. I don’t understand all this “I’m poor so I can’t afford to eat healthily” stuff. If anything, money makes me fatter! I have no self discpline when it comes to cakes, biscuits, bread and crisps.