Recipe - Earth Day Pie (Vegan Veg and Gravy Pie)

My boyfriend has recently gone over to a vegan diet and I find I have been spending a little more time in the kitchen trying to make a good selection of fresh food dishes. We are very fond of hearty, winter food in this house and I had a fancy for a rich pie and mash type meal. I had a quick look over the internet and couldn't find exactly what I had in mind, so I thought I'd just put something together as I saw fit. As it's Earth Day it seemed appropriate to name this vegan pie, full of veg that can be grown in any small patch, after the day on which it was created! 

This pie went into an eight inch pie dish, which would serve four as part of a main meal. I served it up with mashed potato, sweetcorn and an onion and beansprout gravy.

For the pie you'll need:

• 1 1/2 pints vegetable stock
• 1 potato (baking size)
• 1 sweet potato
• 1 parsnip
• 1 medium sized carrot
• 4 baby shallots (or onions if you prefer)
• 2 large garlic cloves
• 2 medium sized mushrooms
• 1/2 pint vegan gravy (I used a whole sachet of Polish dark gravy in 1/2 pint of boiling water to make it really think)
• 500g pastry (I use puff pastry, but shortcrust works just as well)
• 1/2 tsp dried sage
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano (you can use a mix of your favourite herbs if you prefer, I just like sage and oregano as a combination!)
• rapeseed oil for frying (olive oil if you prefer)
• almond milk for glazing (soya milk can also be used)

Method

Pre-heat your oven to 200C

Put the vegetable stock into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Peel and chop the potato, sweet potato, parsnip and carrot into small slices or cubes and add to the stock. Remember that the smaller the pieces, the quicker it will cook, so I find that pieces around half an inch cubed or slices an eight of an inch thick are best. Boil for a short while and then allow to simmer until the veg is tender but not mushy.

In a small frying pan, heat a tablespoon of rapeseed oil. Top and tail the baby shallots, taking off any outer layers of skin that are dry or damaged, then add to the oil. Finely chop the garlic and add this to the oil. Finally peel and cut the mushrooms into quarters, before adding these to the oil as well. As with the root veg, you want to gentle cook until tender, but not overly cooked. 

When the root veg is tender allow it to cool a little, then drain off the stock and add it to a large mixing bowl. Add the shallot/mushroom/garlic mix to the bowl too. At this point you can pour in the think gravy and give it a good stir.  Set aside while you see to the pastry.

On a floured surface prepare to roll out the pastry. Before you start rolling, sprinkle the pastry with the dried herbs so these are pressed into the pastry as you roll. Use the pastry to line the bottom of a pie dish and neaten up the edges with a knife.

Give the veg mix a good stir and pile into the pastry case. Lightly press out any air and smooth over the mound ready for a pastry top. 

Brush the edged of the pie with almond milk and roll out the remaining pastry. Drape the pastry over the top of the pie and press down the edges to seal. Cut off the excess pastry with a knife and using a fork or something similar, press around the edge to bind in a decorative way.

Make four cuts in the top to let out the heat and brush the top with almond milk. Place in a pre-heated oven  for 35 to 40 minutes. Ovens vary a great deal, so I advise you to start checking it regularly from about twenty minutes in.... 

Here we have my Earth Day pie. You can really make this recipe your own. You could use any combination of fresh veg as long as it's par-cooked first and you could even add some vegan meat substitute if you wished. The most important thing it to get your gravy nice and thick (custard consistency!) so that is mixes well with the vegetables and doesn't just run to the bottom of the pie.

Potting Shed News - Potato Planting

I'm further behind this year than I would usually be, but today I have finally gotten around to checking the potato situation. For reasons of space, I grow all my spuds in containers. In some ways this isn't ideal as containers tend to suffer from heat  during Summer months. When the soil is fluctuating between being hot and dry in the day time, then cool and wet after an evening watering, is bound to upset your average potato plant. That said containers are convenient, easy to use and a great dig-free way of growing. 

In the past I have been known to grown many varieties, often Heritage ones, just to see what they turned out like and because I love nothing more than harvesting a bucket of differently coloured tubers of all shapes and sizes. This year I won't have space or time too get carried away, so I'm sticking to the tried and tested varieties of First and Second Earlies, 'Foremost' and 'Charlotte'. 

I buy my seed potatoes from JBA Seed Potatoes, online if I'm organized enough, or from my local garden centre as they are a stockist. 

The ones I have chitted are really ready to be planted out, so at some point over the next week I shall get out there and clean out my patio potato tubs. Some of these tubers I'll be using at the cottage garden I volunteer at, where they will be dug into a prepared bed the usual way. I will watch with interest which fare better and produce more crops. I'll update the blog later in the year and post my observations. 

Potatoes are worth reading up on a little if you are planning on growing a healthy crop, more so if you want to keep yourself supplied with them for the whole season. Whilst they are one of the easiest crops to have a go with, understanding their cycle and optimum growing conditions will make the process far easier in the long run. Most people will have been told at some point not to eat potatoes if they're green. This green colouring they develop when left in the light is evidence that the potato is producing solanine. This substance, found in members of the Nightshade family of plants, is part if it's natural defense system. This toxicity deters animals and pests which may otherwise feed on it. It also delays the rotting process of the seed tuber. Although some folk say you do not need to chit potatoes, I find this process of starting of the tubers growth and allowing for some greening up worthwhile. 

Sometimes potatoes shoot from multiple places. While this is perfectly normal, it's likely that any shoots coming up from underneath will be broken off during the planting process or just fall away during handling. Often these shoots will already have evidence of small roots coming from them and it's possible to grow these on, independently from the seed potato tuber, into productive plants.

They don't always 'take' but I always give them a go by bring them on in pots until I can see if they are going to grow into decent plants. I've planted a couple of these shoots today, so I will keep the blog updated with their progress....

Potting Shed News - DIY Raised Beds

These were some raided beds we built on my allotment several years ago. The soil there was clay and I found it too depressing to work as it was like concrete in Summer and flooded in Winter, so I decided on raised beds. While it's possible to buy some lovely ready made ones or buy in fashionable railway sleepers for the job, our funds didn't stretch enough to that for the amount we needed. I think even if they had, I would have preferred to spend that money on plants or other garden supplies!

In the end we came upon a chap selling old cabbage crates. They measure 1 x 1 x 1 metre and he had an abundance of them available. (They are brought in containing imported cabbage or other veg and because its too expensive to send them back empty, they are then just broken up and disposed of!!) This chap, like me, thought this was an awful waste, so he had brought them and was selling them on for around £7 each. (As I say, that was a few years ago, but I have seen them for sale on the side of the road since for not much more)

For best value, just cut them in two and you've got a raised bed half a metre high, two long and one wide, which is a great growing space as (even if you're short like me!) you can always reach the middle. You can see that the ones photographed here were set up slightly differently. My allotment happened to be in the middle of a very exposed patch of Fenland, so for the beds along the side battered by the prevailing wind we left one side of the crate intact to provide half a metre of protection. As it turned out, it was also great for suspending protection netting from.

The crates were screwed together in a row for stability, lined with empty compost bags with a staple-gun and filled with soil. You don't have to use compost bags of course, you just need to get the crates lined with something to stop the soil falling through the gaps. Me being me I preferred to recycle an old bag rather than buying in plastic for the purpose. We also gave the beds a coat of wood preserver while we could get at all the areas that would eventually be covered up.

Whilst you can buy the soil in bulk to fill the raised beds, there are usually recycling plants offering it for free or for a small price as long as you come and take it away. We happened to know a local wholesale grower who was more than happy to let us turn up with our wheelbarrow and take as much of their waste soil as we could.

Advice: do be careful about the soil you fill your beds with. While free soil is always good, you want to make sure it hasn't got anything in it that will cause you trouble later on - i. e pests and diseases. Generally speaking, soil from a recycling plant will have been heat treated to prevent this, but it's always worth asking where it's come from and what has been done to prevent things spreading! The soil we obtained had been used for propagation of alpines, so although weed free it did occasionally contain a stray Sedum which we were more than happy to accommodate! 

If using second-hand soil to bulk up the bed I would still recommend buying a few bags of good quality compost for the top six inches or so if you can afford it (or if you haven't managed to make that much compost from your own garden waste yet! )

If you can't find cabbage crates, you could (with a little DIY skill) knock up something similar with pallets, with are probably easier to obtain now there are so many ideas out there for how to use them! 

One of the crates we cut up into three shallow beds for taller crops. They were treated in the same way, with liner and wood preserver. Some of the slats we upended and used as a loose frame to suspend netting from. 

Whilst this seems a lot of work, especially if you're barrowing free soil into the beds (honestly, it feels like they're bottomless after a while!) these beds should, with a little care, ultimately be hassle free. They are easy to weed and because the soil hasn't been trodden down over the years, they are heavenly to dig! Crop rotation will help get nutrients in the soil and if you have some of them empty over winter you can also sow a small green manure crop to dig in before the start of the next season.

Potting Shed News - Plant Pots and Little Luxuries

I've been re-potting my beans today. They are already at quite a height, so I may have a crop in the conservatory this year too. I have sown another batch for succession and as a back up, as it's getting tempting to be putting a few outside. We have a mild climate and a sheltered garden here, so I often get away with sneaking a few out earlier than is wise. The one thing I haven't done yet is sown my tomatoes, so that is certainly a job for this weekend. My garden is small and well established, so much of my annual veg growing is done in various containers - usually recycled tubs and buckets. 

I don't buy plastic pots and I try to avoid buying plants sold in them (where possible I grow from seed or propagate from cuttings and division). Not only is this cheaper, it saves me having to deal with waste. Most modern plastic plant pots are designed to biodegrade, which is good if they end up in the ground and need to do that, but not so good if you want to reuse them! Over the years I've collected many vintage terracotta pots and they will last for as long as I don't smash them! Even when broken they are utilized as 'crocks' ( the shards that you put in the bottom of bigger pots to cover the drainage hole). It's possible to buy modern terracotta pots, but I will always look for vintage ones or those produced by artisan potteries first. I always avoid the mass-produced if at all possible; if I do have to buy instead of make, the independent crafter is the next best thing. This lifestyle isn't all about hard-graft and economy. It's important to have a few luxuries too, if only to remind us that this is a thoroughly modern way of life. That said though, these days I find that my luxuries are rather practical! A handcrafted plant pot from Whichford Potteries or a fancy rhubarb forcer from Errington Reay are the things dreams are made of! 

New Beginnings

Well here I am - Blog One

I'm not sure who is going to be reading this blog, but I guess my hope is that there are a few others out there on the same journey as me. It's not easy to give up the convenience of modern life, but it's my feeling that unless some of us start to, the planet may be doomed. Dooomed, I tell ya! In some respects it's doomed already. Animals made extinct because of human 'progress' and endless others teetering on the brink. Many of my friends wonder why I put myself through the difficulties of adjusting to a more eco-sensitive lifestyle, because one person won't make a difference. That might seem true, but unless individuals start making this change, the masses certainly never will.

I guess I should introduce myself really. I am a thirty-four years old (thirty five in eight weeks!) and I work part time at a nature reserve. I'm also an artisan (noun: 'a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand' ) I started painting at a young age and more recently I have had a go at a variety of crafts. It is partly this interest in making things instead of buying them that inspired me to move forward crazy idea of living a better life. Always aware that anything manufactured would likely have a heavy tag of pollution around its neck, I started getting involved in the handmade lifestyle and supporting other crafters. The more I started looking at the things I used day to day , the more I wanted to invest in reusable, yet sustainable, items. Avoid plastics where possible and reduce the amount of waste I created in the process. I have always preferred vintage and antique items over new, so thankfully I don't have a habit of buying new to overcome. 

I am also changing my eating habits. I am avoiding processed food, both because of the packaging and manufacture involved in such things, but also because processed food is unsurprisingly the most unhealthy. I have been vegetarian since birth as my parents had already made that change before I was born. In someways this makes things easier as the meat industry causes a huge amount of environmental damage in it's own right. I also already have a veg plot, so growing organically is already something I'm used to. I live  in Eastern England and we have a mild climate here. I grow in harmony with the wildlife that shares my outdoor space. I use no chemicals and over the years I've created a natural balance that I don't really have much of a problem with 'pests' . 

So there is a little introduction to my world. Over the next few posts I'll be talking more about changes I'm making and sharing some great ideas and products I've come across recently. Periodically I'll also be sharing some no fuss recipes, to show how I'm using some of the food I grow here at home.