17 Comments
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Matt Inwood's avatar

Nice to start catching up on missed chapters… Good old Alan. Necessity be both the Mother of invention and the Father of inconvenience.

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Thanks for catching up, and yes, good old Alan.

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Felicity Jones's avatar

Imagine a world where butternut squash passed as a carrot. And blimey who knew they had been engineered. I shall also be reflecting on my distribution of rhubarb from the allotment to the polite lovely people whose food I adore this season!

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Vanilla Black's avatar

I’m sure they’re waiting for your rhubarb.

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Felicity Jones's avatar

If you’re in these parts, my rhubarb is kindly received by Tanvi and Richard who in 15 years time will be writing the Substack equivalent of setting up Tuck in Lancaster…

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Haha. We’ll look out for that.

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Neil Kramer's avatar

Ah Andrew, you have brought back memories about 25 years ago no 30 years ago. We thought we’d have a go at growing Jerusalem artichokes in my dad‘s vegetable patch. These huge plants grew they was the height of sunflowers 10 feet high loads and loads of plants in this patch about 8‘ x 6‘. Even one of the neighbours asked what was we growing and we said it’s not what’s above the soil that will all go to compost it’s below the soil. We ended up with a sack full, a potato sack of Jerusalem artichokes. We had never eaten them before I can hear you laughing now, we boiled them. We mashed them, we roasted them, we baked them, we chipped them too and of course soup too. Because we had so many, we didn’t do small portions either, “Do I really need to tell you the rest of the story ?” after the third day we were so bent up with stomach pain and wind we decided we might want to give these new Jerusalem artichokes a rest for a few days we found out they are also known as farty-chokes.

I’ve never eaten one since. Message to Donna if Andrew is on the floor laughing it’s all my fault.

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Haha, I can feel the pain. You learned a good lesson though 💨 💨

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Windy.

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Vicki's avatar

That soup I made was neon - I was suprised you all even tried it 🤣 out front was the best place for me, not the kitchen!

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Funny though.

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Mark Diacono's avatar

Lozza, Briggy and all the other names...poor Alan deserves a bit more

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Vanilla Black's avatar

A few other names were uttered.

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Shell Plant's avatar

Great story. I've never had a Chinese artichoke either, they do sound a bit of a pain!

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Thank you. Yes they are, a lot for not a lot.

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Mazza's avatar

Never had a Chinese artichoke, look too fiddly 🎻

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Yes, they’re a right chew on.

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