This isn’t strictly a lettuce soup recipe as much as it’s a recipe that *includes* bolted lettuce.

Loosely based on soup recipes I have worked on before…

spring onion, chopped
couple of potatoes, cubed
a small courgette, cubed
1 clove of garlic, crushed
glug or so of oil

…lob these in a pan, and sauté them for a bit. Then add

500ml (ish) of vegetable stock & mix it in
About a head of bolted lettuce, roughly chopped

…put the lid on and make a cup of tea.

Remove the lid and stir in the lettuce that has now turned into lettuce that’s doing an impression of being spinach. Put the lid back on and leave to simmer for a bit while you drink your brew. Use a hand blender to CAREFULLY blend the soup to be liquid and soup-like rather than lumpy and stew-like, watching out for the potential jets of red-hot liquid that might shoot out from the sides of the hand blender. You might want to take it off the heat for this bit. It won’t make it safer from a spurting liquid point of view, but you’ll worry less about setting the power cord of the blender on fire.

Serve when hungry, optionally with some tasty bread. A blob of soured cream or natural yoghurt would have been good on this, but we didn’t have any in (well, not on purpose – we’ve been away for 2 weeks, so there was soured cream in the bin, but it didn’t leave the supermarket that way). Pepper was a good addition, and Steve’s second bowl was doused in soy sauce, so maybe that’s a thing…

We over-planted one type of lettuce all at the same time. Rookie mistake, I know. Next year we will be planting a variety of stuff at spaced intervals, then we can just eat lettuce.

This year, we are finding ways to eat lettuce that has been around too long, and has become cynical and bitter in its old age. Obviously, the internet has been a big help, here.

Here is the obligatory arty shot of unmixed ingredients in a food processor… I lightly toasted the pine nuts to get that slightly-nutty flavour going.

Here it is mixed together. I added about half as much olive oil as the recipe I found stated, and half as much garlic – last time I made this, vampires were swooning for miles around.

Obviously, I can’t tell you how successful this was, as I made soup at the same time,  and we had that for lunch instead of pesto& pasta. I put it in a jar ready for Steve to dip into for either his lunch or an Emergency Dinner.

I didn’t notice the typo until I’d already printed the label. Let’s call this the deliberate imperfection I’ve put in so as not to anger the gods…

And here, for those who care to recreate, is the highly complicated recipe:

BTW this is vegan. Those who like to eat animal products can sub the “nooch” (nutritional yeast) with parmesan and you might want to add a large knob’s-worth of melted butter.

Because we don’t like grandparents/parents coming around and sitting idly chatting and drinking tea, I made sure that I harvested all of the remaining peas just before Dad & Gill we’re due to visit. Luckily, they were happy to participate in the functioning of a temporary pea-shelling factory, especially one where every fifth pod is emptied into one’s mouth…

I blanched (steamed for a minute, then cooled quickly under the tap) the resulting loose peas, then spread them out on trays to freeze. The following morning I was able to bag them up, and now they await many delicious pea-based dishes over the winter months…

In other news, I won the “guess the weight of the peas” competition that Steve and I did. This is (nobody’s more amazed than me that I won, that hardly ever happens) what just over a kilo of peas looks like…

Gardening, and no obvious glut as a consequence! I’m calling that a win, and I think we could expand our pea provision next time, with a bit of succession planting planned in!

We were at the gardening centre before they opened their doors this morning – my plan was to get some next-size up pots for potting into, some plants for the patio and a trellis for the vine. Steve was given a vine for his birthday last year, and so far it’s been wild & free – it needs some support!

Some might say we went a bit nuts, but it’s all going to be very useful (honest guv’nor)… or beautiful 😀

Firstly, the patio – I think this is more “on top of it” than we’ve ever been before. In fairness most of the ones in the picture below were already there, but the fuschia in the middle is new…

I love this standard chain pot – it was part-payment for a website that I put together for the woman who made it. Part of me wishes I’d got one of her larger pieces, but on the other hand, I’m not sure where we’d put them… I feel like this deserves more exposure – maybe I’ll move it, and see if Steve objects!

We’re very pleased with how the herb garden is coming along, today we added Fennel & Rosemary (I’ve had several min-shrubs in the past, but the one I had further down the garden has been subsumed borg-like by the surrounding bushes…

The vine is all sorted, of course, in a nice sunny position.

We did a load of potting, potting-up and planting on. The greenhouse is now pretty much full, unless we add new shelves, and there is a little floor-space.

There are over 10 chilli plants on the floor, which I’m looking forward to having do well, and I’m also very excited about the sweetcorn, which we’re starting off in pots and will eventually plant into the “old” bed that’s currently still under black plastic. Steve is a bit worried he might have killed all the cabbages by re-potting them but quite honestly if he hasn’t killed *some* of them, we will all end up looking like cabbages… we planted quite a lot.

And so to the end of the garden – here’s the pano (click to embiggen)

We got some protective netting – it just doesn’t feel right to plant out seedlings without *some* protection, even if it’s just against being dug up by cats. So there are nets over the courgettes (attempt #3, the ones I planted out 2 weeks ago have shown zero signs of life, I suspect they were swiped by feathered beings) and butternut squash (which I fear I’ve planted too close together – there may have to be some emergency moving later in the season) and another one over the lettuce, as they are starting to get large enough to look attractive to birds as well.

I’ve shored up the potatoes with more soil (although looking at this, they could probably do with even more soil).

I’ve put some fleece over the carrots, mainly because I found a piece in the shed that was the right side. And yes, I’m aware that at this stage I’m watching the horse gallop around the meadow, and there are probably millions of tiny carrot-fly enjoying/preparing to enjoy my carrots, but even putting it on at this stage makes me feel a little better, so nyer.

And lastly, I may make it a tradition to finish long posts about gardening with an artistic shot of the peas.

And this evening I now realise I should have put sunscreen on my neck. It’s really quite warm.

We got a greenhouse! Not a proper one, obviously, a fairly compact one that doesn’t involve pouring a concrete slab or any serious clearing of space for it.

The carrots are starting to peep out of the ground… while this is A Good Thing, I’m quite nervous – we haven’t covered them, and Steve didn’t get a strain that is specifically resistant to carrot-fly. I can hear the conversation I had with my mother years ago about the dangers echoing in my head, and also, I remember picking carrots that had been ravaged by carrot-flies, and having them basically disintegrate as I picked them, which was very disappointing…

And before anyone points it out, yes I know the plant immediately beside the stick that says “carrot” isn’t a carrot. It’s been taken out now. Or at least, I hope it has…

And these are our potatoes. Aren’t they *pretty*?! I’m loving the purple in the centre of the leaves. Sadly that seems to be going away as the leaves get bigger, but at this stage, I’m vey much liking them.

And am now going to go back to knock the dirt off of this one… I’ll never have a career as a gardening stylist, will I… 😀

We had some very stormy/windy weather a couple of weeks ago, and I took these pictures the day after when I went out to inspect the damage…

The seedlings are all small enough that they appear to have weathered the storm OK, although it’s now quite hard to pick them out from all the debris that’s been strewn all over the bed…

The screen of lilac trees across the back didn’t do so well – a lot of the flowers were blown off, so now we have a very attractive & sweet-smelling… compost heap :-/

I’ve also spotted, in among the legitimate plants, yet another rogue potato, thus continuing the tradition of me digging up potatoes I haven’t planted…