If you go down to the pond today....

you're in for a nice surprise.

Some time ago I bought some more of the spent mushroom bags.... I waited and waited and no mushrooms grew. So, I carried them down to the other side of the pond and stuck my fork through the bottom of the plastic bag a few times. Then I dug a little hole in the mixture, put in a handful of garden soil and 2 pumpkin seeds. It was still cold back then so I pegged shut the top of the bag which made it like a little hothouse.

I put them down by the pond so that the roots will find the water later, and they might also help to smother a bit of the grass so I don't have to mow it. It meant also that at the time, I could sow the seeds without preparing the soil and without risking them being overgrown by grass before they got going.

After a while there was suddenly a hot couple of days and I forgot to unpeg the bag... and then I did unpeg it and it turned cold.... then it dried out.... oh what rough life for those pumpkin seeds and its no wonder they refused to appear for ages! One of them was then eaten off by a snail that left its slimy trail.

We have had a week or so of on and off humid, warm, damp weather.... nothing like the floods in NSW and Qld or the storms in SA, just quite pleasant really. In that week all 3 of the pumpkin experiments have taken off but not only the pumpkins.....

Mushrooms.... in summer! I could barely see the pumpkin seedling as the whole bag was brim full of mushrooms. They weighed more than a kilogram and were more than I could carry! Last time I looked there was only the slimy snail trail and the remains of a seedling and definitely no mushrooms!

So, guess what I am having for dinner, with my compulsory serve of broad beans!

 

Last night I had such a simple, delicious meal of broad beans and here is what I did....not exactly a recipe, more just an idea for you to adjust how you please and it began like this....Late yesterday afternoon I was sitting shelling broad beans and blanching them whilst listening to the ABC 891 Adelaide radio and hearing about the amazing rain and thunder storms which my mother had told me about earlier in the day. It got later and later and I wanted to finish the job..... soon I was hungry, it was 10 to 7 and there was no dinner in sight.... 

Crushed Broad Beans on Toast

.... so I grabbed a handful of hot, blanched broad beans and put them in a bowl. I crushed them coarsely (I had not cooked them much... just blanched) and added a slug of olive oil, some pepper.... all the while thinking about what to do next. I had a lovely, mini foccacia in the freezer made by Cam who sells them at the market here, so I thawed it out and toasted it under the griller. Into the bowl of broad beans I added some semi-dried tomatoes, some seeded olives and some mint leaves. I crushed it all a bit more. I wanted to watch the news at 7 so I did not add anything else, just piled it all on top of the foccacia and took it in the lounge on my tray.

It was so amazingly delicious.... I even told Pickle about it and he cocked his head on one side, as Jack Russells do, and looked at my plate; he'd eaten quite sufficient amounts of broad beans in the garden and then again while I'd been shelling them and dropping the occasional one on the floor in the kitchen. He had no desire for any more!

Bon appetit.