What's growing?

This Spring sees the Hungry Harts venture into growing their own produce for the first time - well apart from a few cress heads on the windowsill with the kids and a few herbs in pots on the patio that is.
I grew up with growing so to speak. My Dad was an avid gardener, not only devoting much of our large family garden to veggies but also, I recently found out from my mum, owning two allotments when they were first married and had just built their house back in 1952.
Some of my earliest memories are of me making mud pies in the garden, picking peas and popping them in my mouth fresh from the pod and then, as I got a little older, actually helping out both by potting up tomato plants (I got a penny a pot) to be sold on in my parent's DIY and garden shop and also - oh how I hated this job - peeling endless shallots with my Nana who then bottled them and pickled them up so we had a fantastic supply of pickled onions all winter. I suppose the amazing end results were worth all the suffering and tears.
Have to say you couldn't beat being sent down the garden with a basket to pull spuds and carrots and pick a head of cauliflower or a cabbage, for example, to accompany a nice roast on a Sunday. Later in the day it would be back down again to pull a head of lettuce, some spring onions and a cucumber and some tomatoes from the greenhouse (is there any better smell in the world than a warm greenhouse full of ripe tomatoes?) to have with a nice bit of ham or a tin of salmon for our tea.
It's an experience I want my own kids to enjoy so we now have Pink Fir spuds chitting indoors, basil (the chef has big plans for pesto) and pepper seedlings growing on the windowsill, tomato seedlings taking root and ready to be potted out in grow bags in our own mini plastic greenhouse and a whole array of other seeds ready to go.

Other great foodie childhood memories:

Piggy potatoes - whenever we pulled potatoes we left the really tiny ones in the bottom of the basket then, where there were enough of them, they were washed, cooked in their skins and served just as they were with butter and salt. Amazing!
Freshly cooked and still warm beetroot - pulled fresh from the ground that day.
Stewed rhubarb and custard - we've got plans for our own rhubarb patch this year.
Home grown melons - very exotic for Northamptonshire in the 1970s believe me!
The first broad beans of the season - served with a boiled ham hock and parsley sauce.

And a far less pleasant memory was stewed gooseberries -always sour no matter how much sugar we used.

Away from the garden, I was also brought up on a diet of home cooking by my Nana Beal who incredibly produced everything on a two ring Baby Belling in her tiny kitchen. I mostly remember rabbit stew (complete with shot) thanks to the rabbits her neighbour Alan used to shoot and Tripe and Onions, a BIG favourite of mine as a pre-schooler. She also made a fine Yorkshire Pudding at our house every Sunday to go with the roast - and it was delicious cold for supper on Sunday evenings, sometimes with a bit of jam on but more likely with a bit of cold meat and a couple of those damn fine pickled onions I was talking about.

As we embark on our own growing experience this Spring and Summer, I hope to share our journey along with some recipes and more food memories along the way.