I think I’ve mentioned before, but we got ourselves a curry leaf tree, for making our own Thai green curries (yum!).

So for that we then also got a chilli plant. It’s a crazy little plant: in winter it almost dies and then in summer it bears so many chillies, we can’t eat enough curries to munch them all. So we’ve made some sweet chilli sauce and even had extra to give away for prezzies. I’ve also regularly posted some chillies to Kezza, who loves them and may even have made some chilli oil I believe….

I also grew some Pak Choi from seed late winter, early spring, and that went straight into the curries 🙂

Then there are the herbs of course…. Some are grown from seed and some were bought as a tiny little plant. We have Chives and Dill Parsley Thyme RosemaryOregano Mint (perfect for lamb & mint burgers and also tea) Basil

And I grew some Red Spring Onions (they really seem to like the pissy English weather, so we had to eat them before the summer got hot).

The Lettuce grew nice and strong inside during February & March so by the time I planted it outside, the snails were outsmarted by it. So when I sowed some more, including Rocket) straight in the garden, they left it alone and drowned themselves in the beer traps instead 🙂

They did eat the courgette flowers though, so I never got any courgettes 😦 And the peas didn’t enjoy the move from the garden in Lee to a pot in Cleveley Crescent, so they just grew into jungle plants without bothering to flower or growing peas. Oh Well!

The tomatoes were a huge success though 🙂 Sowed them in hanging baskets this time, so no chance for the snails to get them 🙂 They (the tomatos, not the snails!) even survived the move and loved their sunny position on the fence and the outside garage wall. When we went to Portugal we left them just as there were tons of little green cherry tomatoes about to turn red. Nobody watered them in our absence, so I was expecting them to be dead. But they have this crazy mechanism, whereby the plant stalk and leaves completely shrivel up and dry in order to let the fruit ripen! So when we got back, Icebear and I made lots of pasta and pizza sauce and froze it for later. The rest went down nicely with some fresh basil, olives and mozzarella 🙂

And the point of all this? Well, while not quite self-sufficient, we had lots of yummie salads, curries, pizzas, pasta with some almost free ingredients. Saved us a little bit of money and was lots of fun 🙂