A new 'tougher' thread... and so it continues

SDG31000

Coddle recipe coming up. It's really easy, but it is greater than the sum of it's parts. I've left quantaties out as you can make it for 1 person or 20. I've made a few trays of it for parties before and it always gets eaten. It's also pretty cheap as well.

Heat oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4.

Peel and thinly slice some potatoes (I use a mandolin, but have just used a knife in the past). Soak them in cold water to remove some of the starch.
Brown some sausages and fry off some sliced onions and bacon.
Grease a roasting tin and layer the potatoes, seasoning with pepper, garlic and herbs as you go. Recipe says use dried sage, but I use thyme or dried mixed herbs. You don't want the potato layers too deep as it takes too long to cook.
Spread the onions and bacon on top, top with the sausages and then pour on chicken stock. Not enough to drown it, so about half way up the potato layer. I use a stock cube.
Cover and bake for around an hour or until the potatoes are soft and melting.
Serve and resist the temptation to eat it all yourself.

I like it cold as well and tend to eat any leftovers for breakfast the next day.

Hope that makes sense and that everyone likes it

kidcat

Possession - last year I grew all of my stuff in Ikea bags, it was so easy as I could move them around the garden and when we moved we simply loaded them up and brought them with us. Potatoes were the simplest, and most prolific, I used some seed potatoes at first but then used some old potatoe sthat had started to sprout and they all worked well too!

Byatt

My garden is about the size of Haribo's raised bed, and I'm trying not to exaggarate. :rotfl:

My niece uses her front garden, the back garden is full of ducks, dogs and children, and she has grown lots of things, even though it is long and thin.

HariboJunkie

WCS, I have done pea shoots from dried peas bought in Tesco. Just sow them quite close together in seed trays and they produce edible sized shoots fairly quickly. No need to buy expensive seeds.

katieowl_2

westcoastscot wrote: »

Anyone know anything about growing pea sprouts to eat? Has some recently while eating out, they were stir fried, and would make a welcome addition to winter dishes. Do you just grow peas as usual and eat them when big enough?? Shouldn't take long on the windowsill. Or do you need specific/special seeds????

WCS

Do you mean those curly ends of pea shoots they put in arty salads?
We've grown those. I think it was Alys Fowler (TV gardener) who said in one of her books that if you buy the packets of peas sold dried for soaking and cooking that they sprout just fine, and were much cheaper than using veggie seeds and hadn't of course been doused in chemicals.
We bought a packet from Mr T and grew them in a couple of inches of compost in a seed tray, very easy to grow. Cut the shoots off with scissors when they are long enough.

Kate

lizzyb1812

mardatha wrote: »

I would like to know what coddle is too
I never know what hell to plant, they say plant things you like but I dont like any of them really But found kale indestructible and easy and most went into the hens but some went into soup. I make a lot of soup and throw green stuff in it.
This year tho I need grow stuff for hens as they costing me £2 a week in asda spring greens - they love that
Wondering how early I could go with lettuce inside on bedroom windowsills. Got 2 big huge south facing windows and one huge north one, plus kitchen smaller.
Baltic outside sun is out but nothing thawing. Was -7 at 8am.

You've got double glazing now so you should be able to grow lettuce etc indoors all year round. Move pots away at night if you can but if you grow a winter hardy lettuce/winter hardy greens they will grow. I've had bowls of salad leaves and peashoots growing all winter in my unheated polycarbonate greenhouse - and I mean growing well enough to be cut and eaten.

lizzyb1812

westcoastscot wrote: »

Anyone know anything about growing pea sprouts to eat? Has some recently while eating out, they were stir fried, and would make a welcome addition to winter dishes. Do you just grow peas as usual and eat them when big enough?? Shouldn't take long on the windowsill. Or do you need specific/special seeds???? WCS

I've been growing these for quite a while now. I had lots of ordinary pea seeds but didn't want to plant them to grow on as peas as they are not a success for me. Saw some v expensive peashoots in Mr S and decided to have a go. I just scattered them over a bowl of compost, pushed them in a bit with a pencil and then let them grow. You can cut the shoots once they are a few cm long and they will re shoot. Eventually they'll need to be resown. I eat them fresh as salad, but no reason why they can't be eaten in stir fries. And you can grow them all year round - I'll be having some with a chicken salad tonight.

BitterAndTwisted

Possession: as advised you can grow things in almost anything as long as you account for the root depth. A couple of those Gro-Bags (Ikea blue sacks: brilliant!) could keep you in courgettes for the whole season. Or at least until you're sick to the back teeth of them.

Mardatha: those windowsills could repeat the Great Windowsill Tomato Glut of 2011. I expect you could get decent crops of all sorts of things. I know you don't like veggies of any sort but put your thinking-cap on about what you can tolerate, how often you are able to shop for them and the cost of buying them.

Will you people stop talking about seasides and coasts. please? It's making me feel very anxious and full of wanderlust. It's in my blood: Dad's family from Edinburgh (Portobello and the sea-water swimming-pool!) Mum's from a tiny fishing village on the Baltic with the whitest sand I have ever seen. Suffolk, Northumberland, the Lleyn Peninsula, the Gower, even friendly old Kent. My heart is aching for the sight, sound and smell.

Now, I must get on, there are veggies wilting away here needing to be made into soup for next week's lunches.

saratoga

Good afternoon everyone,I hope everyone is well,or as well as can be expected!
I've just peeled 5kg of potatoes,and my hands are freezing,we've got 9 to feed tonight(daughters boyfriend with big appetite so 10 really!) roast potatoes and a chicken stew made from Smartprice frozen chicken pieces.

We went to Asda this morning and I was shocked at the prices,they seem to have put things up but then rolled them back by a couple of pence so it looks like a bargain at first glance. You end up standing there for ages working things out. They have also stopped doing Smartprice toothpaste,but before I realised this fact I was stood in the aisle staring at the shelves for so long a Man ( not a shop assistant) actually asked me if I was alright,and did I need help.

On the growing front,we grow Pumpkins every year,but last season was a complete washout ,tons of massive plants but hardly any pumpkins and the ones that were there were very small.Tomatoes and Chilli peppers did well though,so we will do those again and probably some herbs. We are surrounded by blackberry bushes and elderberry,and have a lot of wild plum trees so I must make more of an effort to preserve them,at the moment there are three big tubs of frozen plums and damsons and 4 boxes of blackberries in my freezer and very little else. Catnip is a must as well,it is side splitting to watch the cats rolling in it,and at least they forget about chasing baby birds for a couple of hours.

We have some beautiful beaches in Cornwall,but it is just finding the time to go to them,we don't live right by the sea more in the countryside really so still beautiful (when there are'nt cows rampaging all over my garden!)but have to admit,it's a tad chilly today.

I've got to go and make some cookies now as my beautiful son stood in the biscuit aisle declaring how expensive cookies were and we should just make them,by we he means me as he does'nt like getting his hands sticky,he thens spends half an hour getting them clean again.

Memory_Girl

westcoastscot wrote: »

Anyone know anything about growing pea sprouts to eat? Has some recently while eating out, they were stir fried, and would make a welcome addition to winter dishes. Do you just grow peas as usual and eat them when big enough?? Shouldn't take long on the windowsill. Or do you need specific/special seeds????

WCS

I grow mine on the window seat next to my desk. I use seed trays. Sprinkle a couple of inches of compost and sow thickly with ordinary dried peas (supermarket ones will do) that have been soaked in water for 24 hours. Cover with compost, water well and then top with another see tray with a heavy weight on it.

Keep the compost moist and in a few days the pea shoots will begin pushing up the top tray. When they are a couple of inches long take the top tray off and let them green up. But with scissors and use as a salad topping, sandwich filling (egg and pea-shoot is lovely) or they are gorgeous and sweet added into a risotto for the last few minutes.

I tray lasts me about a week so I sow every Sunday in the winter.

MG