Monthly Archives: November 2015

The 2015 Squash Harvest

Winter squashes. Spaghetti, Pyjammas, Blue Banana, Tatume.

The 2015 winter squash harvest - more variety than you'd find in your local supermarket!

With the squash growing season now well and truly over here in the East of England, we are delighted to be able to able to share some photos of our very successful 2015 squash harvest. As long time readers will know, we only moved into our house and had use of its garden from May this year. We got off to a bit of a slow start due to other demands such as unpacking, work and raising children. But once we got the time we really went for it in the garden. One of our biggest projects was removing the…

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Cooking Beetroot – Two Methods

How to roast beetroot and how to bake beetroot

Roasted or baked - which is best?

We’ve had a great year for beetroot. We didn’t plant many seeds, but from the little space we dedicated to them we’ve had a decent crop. We’ve never actually grown beetroot before, so we haven’t had a lot of experience of cooking them in a way that makes the most of them. After our first harvest, we both fondly recalled an episode of the BBC’s Great British Food Revival, in which Antonio Carluccio simply baked a beetroot in a bucket outdoors and seemed to enjoy it immensely. We were eager to somehow replicate that experience, but with the days getting…

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Poached Quinces in Syrup

Poached quince with cream

Our homegrown quince poached in syrup served with some clotted cream - yum!

Here at Slightly Self-Sufficient HQ, we love quinces. This fascination started about four years ago when we followed a Nigel Slater recipe for a Christmas pudding which called for a couple of quinces. Neither of us had ever used one before, and we found them astonishingly difficult to source. Then, in a remarkable act of serendipity, I started helping at a local community garden and found that there was a quince tree growing there. It had been a poor year for them, but I was told to help myself. So I took the two we needed for the recipe and…

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