What helps in the enjoyment for me, is my new relaxed attitude to the whole show bench thing. Before now, in an effort to get everything in as fresh as possible, I've been on the plot on the Sunday morning picking everything in sight, then zooming home frantically trying to find 7 matching runner beans from the 500 or so that are in a massive heap on the worktop, in the space of a couple of hours before racing back to display everything.
Well, not this year! The strategy was to leave everything alone on the plot in the week prior to the show (er - except courgettes. I think we all know what happens if we leave courgette plants to their own devices for a hot sunny week in August), then strip the plot like a plague of locusts on Saturday afternoon.
Saturday evening is spent playing a giant game of vegetable snap, trying to match up the required number of as near identical items as possible in each class, all ready for Sunday when the lucky contenders are all taken to be put on display.The week before is not idle, though - cakes are made, jellies and chutneys and pickles all sorted out and labelled up.
Brilliant!
The day itself was a huge hit - the sun shone, the site looked fabulous with scarecrows and bunting and balloons; big sister Helen was up for the weekend and brought mum over with their cake entries.......
.........the band played; the judges were fair; the barbecue was delicious............
........as was the '100' cake which was enjoyed by all at the end of the afternoon.......
Helen did well with her fruit cake - beating Chris from down the bottom into second, and me into third. No gongs for mum's sponge cake, or my redcurrant jelly, beetroot, choc/beetroot cake or pickle - but there's always next year!
My veg did better than my domestic entries this year - my crowning glory was a second in the prestigious 'class 1 - collection of veg' - beating the the fabulously successful Jason in the process. Annoyingly, I have no photo of my entry.
I did well with Rhubarb, courgettes and won the 'odd shaped veg' class!
Everything was packed up after the prizegiving and raffle, and then back to mum's for our annual share out of the goodies! A great weekend!
Oh - and the courgettes? 63 and counting from two-plants-and-a-runty-one. Hard to believe that last year, I had no choice of courgettes to enter, just the first three courgettes to grow.
Stumbled across your blog by chance I will have a read when I get time. Question, have you ever salted French beans and if so how did they turn out? Glut of everything at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to have missed your comment - I suspect that the moment has passed, somewhat!
DeleteFor the record, however, I have never salted French beans, I always freeze them. They freeze really well even without blanching, I find.