So I made the decision to sell my little Ghillie Kettle. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it but after attempting to cook some bacon on it I discovered it wasn’t pratical to cook anything on, especially if theres more than one of you. Thats when I came across this neat little cooker on ebay and I instantly fell in love!
I managed to get it at a bargain price and after a little clean and maintenace it looked brand new. It has two hobs on the top, a grill and a little oven which is all run by gas, and the overall size of the cooker is tiny (I think they were originally made for boats and caravans!) I also brought a little table from Ikea for £5.00, covered the top of it with oilcloth and made a little patchwork curtain to hide the gas bottle underneath. It just so happened to be the perfect sized table to fit into my shed beside my vintage kitchen cabinet, and it was also the right height (and the price was great too!)
Once we moved it into the shed I just couldn’t wait to test it out, so we planned to have lunch up the allotment during the week and I wasn’t dissapointed at all… It worked like a dream! I cooked me and my Dad an omelette with cheese, bacon and some swiss chard freshly picked from plot 15C. There is nothing better then harvesting your homegrown crops and then cooking it up straight away, and the omelette was delicious too.
Now my shed is starting to look like a proper little kitchen and I just love how my little cooker looks sitting next to my 1950′s kitchen cabinet. I’ll be making a little shelf to sit above the cooker so my pots and pans can be stored there and the utensils can hang there too. My shed will end up looking like a little home, if only it was big enough for a bed! However, I did come across one big problem, I have no sink and therefore nowhere to wash my messy pans and plates. I have come up with a plan though and that is to create a little washing up area outside my shed consisting of a tall log with a galvanised tub sitting ontop so I can fill the tub with warm water from the kettle and wash my dirty dishes.
I do wonder what the neighbours will think when they see me cooking and washing up, or if I’ll be getting any orders for cups of tea!
The weekends usually consist of one whole day being spent up the allotment, I just love being there, It’s my favourite place and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather being doing! After a full week at work it’s nice to cycle up to Plot 15C in the morning with a long list of jobs to complete to spend the day in the sun shine weeding and harvesting crops (and remembering to put on suncream and a hat!) This weekend it just so happened to be a glorious day on Sunday (and poured with rain on Saturday!) so I headed to the allotment to do some much needed weeding. As a little treat I stopped at the local shop on the way to buy some supplies for lunch, both me and my Dad were spending the day on our plots so I decided to make us some lunch up the allotment.
I absolutely love my Ghillie Kettle, it makes the most delicious cups of tea and it’s so easy to use (once you get the hang of it!) You can also cook on it using the top of the kettle whilst it’s boiling and then you can finish cooking using the embers in the fire pit once the kettle has boiled. I have only ever cooked a pancake on the Ghillie so today for lunch I decided to cook some bacon and make some good old fashioned bacon sarnies! After spending the morning weeding it was nice to sit back and enjoy the sunshine eating a delicious lunch, something I would love to do more often on the plot.
Now here is an idea which has been swimming around in my head for the past week. I was thinking how nice it would be to cook lunch up the allotment every weekend and how even nicer it would be to cook the food I was growing. Then I thought how great would it be to film a sort of spin off series to my allotment videos but focus entirely on cooking little snacks and lunches like omelettes etc on the allotment. This is just an idea really but it would be great to hear any feedback on the matter? Would it interest people at all?
This weekend I am planning on cooking my fresh broad beans on the stove and adding them to a salad freshly picked from my Dads allotment, I just can’t wait!
So I tried to make a short, quick update on how my allotment is so far, whats been growing and what’s been done. Turns out I just can’t stop talking about my plot so the short video turned out to be 26 minutes long… Opps!
Sometimes it’s nice to just slow down, sit back and take a good hard look at nature. Isn’t it just magical and quite frankly beautiful?
As you can tell I had some fun with my telephoto/macro lens on my DSLR today taking close-ups of things growing up on my allotment. Theres tulips which are nearly on the brink of blooming, broad beans with beautiful curled leaves and pea shoots which decided to pop up on Wednesday. It never seems to amaze me that a tiny seed can grow into something so beautiful and so tasty!
I didn’t just spend the whole day staring at and photographing my plants, although I probably could have! I set my alarm and woke up extra early to dig my flower patch which is now ready for some ox-eye daisies, verbena and the grapevine which have all been waiting patiently to be planted. I also weeded the broad beans, garlic, lavender and the swiss chard before taking some pallets apart to be made into a gate (and inbetween all the work I had a cheeky cup of tea and a pancake cooked on the Ghillie!)
I also had a visitor on my plot this morning, Barry the family boxer dog came to say hello to the allotment for the first time (and to tread on my potato bed!)
My Ghillie cooking set finally arrived in the post so I packed up the bicycle trailer and decided to spend the day up the lottie. The sun was shining brightly and it was surprisingly very warm, in fact it was so warm it was even t-shirt weather! (I have been living in 5 layers all winter so this was great!) The cooking set comes complete with a saucepan, frying pan, handle grip, pot support and a grill for the fire pit, so it’s perfect for cooking lunch for one person (or could simply be used to serve portions one at a time!)
I’m still getting used to this fire malarky and learning which wood is best and that newspaper is a necessity to get it going! Anyway the great thing about the ghillie kettle is that you can have the water boiling for your cup of tea whilst cooking on the top, and then once the kettle is boiled you can use the embers or small fire to finish cooking. It was however, my first time cooking on the kettle so I decided to cook a simple and easy pancake as a belated pancake day celebration
The frying pan is tiny but it did just the job and the pancake was delicious! After spending all afternoon digging my root bed it was a perfect snack and I washed it down with a nice hot cup of tea.
I will be planting my early International Kidney potatoes tomorrow as we are forecast for a week of sun. Looks like Spring has arrived and boy aren’t we ready for it!
Being new to this gardening marlarky I was very unfortunate to have missed the Edible Garden series by Alys Fowler when it aired back in 2010. Thanks to Youtube I was able to start watching it and I am loving it! I feel so inspired after watching each episode that I try not to watch it before bedtime otherwise I can’t sleep with all the ideas floating around in my brain! I absolutely love Alys Fowler, I can relate to her so much and it seems we like the same things. I recently had a dilemma (if you can call it that!) over whether to buy a tea flask or a small stove to make tea and warm soup up my alloment and then lo and behold, up popped Alys on one of her Youtube videos making tea over a funny little fire stove. I just had to find out what it was! I searched the good old internet and came across a volcano kettle, then I came across the brand name Ghillie and popped down to one of the many local country shops to buy one.
It was a glorious day today so I popped up the allotments with my Dad to help him on his plot and to play with my Ghillie kettle (there was nothing to do on my own plot can you believe it!?) After I tidied his shed and he had tidied his cabbage bed we popped some twigs and small kindling into the small firepit base and started the fire. It took a little while for the whistle to blow mind you but I’m putting that down to us not knowing what we were doing! The verdict? The best cup of tea in the world AND it was so much fun! I’m going to get the cooking kit this week so I can make lunch on the lottie using my homegrown produce, maybe even a swiss chard omelette
