Simple

Simple is a good way to be I’ve decided. If you can enjoy simple things, then life will be very rich because so much of it is simple, straightforward, and to be had for the opening of your eyes.
Tasks. Things that make me feel comfortable and satisfied can be very simple-minded, like preparing vegetables, cutting them, washing them, savouring the aroma, the textures, the colour above all I think. And if you’ve grown them yourself, put the seeds in the earth and nurtured them, and then you’re going to eat them, that’s even better. Sharing that sort of food with friends and family, it does make you feel good. I must be a peasant at heart, because of the joy I get from the earth, the feeling of connection, the essential…

So from vegetable, to table, to a memory of a day much earlier in the year, to a colour snapshot which informs something I’ve stitched, indirectly or directly, to these things I owe my creativity. I get it from the earth.

Always liked the shape of eggs…the texture and colours. These are from our hens, Angel, Agnes and Mary, named for my students, which live at the allotment. I know you’re not supposed to wash them, but a bit of tepid water I think doesn’t hurt, and in a domestic setting the eggs get soiled, because the girls are not sitting on nasty, hurtful, thin bars…Frittata is a great tasty way to use them up when you’ve got a lot. Maybe you’re seeing too many eggs here, but I couldn’t choose between the plates, it was too difficult so here they both are…

This is Khol Rabi…Drew sowed it late into the soil, so the poor fellow will never amount to much – but I pass it each morning on the way to work and I love the delicacy of the colours, the subtle variations of greens and purple, and here, the frost has melted and left the leaves beaded and jewelled. I don’t necessarily have to eat them…

Cut onions reveal such lovely lines, a swirl of pattern and colour as well as the wonderful scent. What good would a kitchen be with no onion? And turnips, such a pretty vegetable! Was very smug to see them at 50p each in the supermarket yesterday, and mine just lined up along the path!

And finally for today, the last tomatoes harvested from the polytunnel have been washed and ripened indoors. I just left them in a tray in the conservatory, green and hard, and a couple of weeks later this ripe lushness stealthily evolved…the cherry ones I left on the vine because I think the sweetness develops better. The bigger ones look a bit tatty but they’ve been a long Summer in the making, and the skins will be left in the sieve anyway.
So, tomatoes halved, two finely chopped red onions, a splash of olive oil, salt, black pepper, golden caster sugar and a fresh grind of salt and black pepper, and Passata of a most divine nature fills the kitchen with its mouth-watering aromatic scent! This harvest made two big roasting trays, a little investment to go in the freezer…
And that, my darlings, is that for today, and all this talk of food makes me want my breakfast…