The day started with a cauldron of food and ended with a pot of Ashes - Great!

Today did not turn out to plan - so what's new?

The idea was to do a bit of cooking then spend the afternoon up the allotment. I needed to try out the rotorvator, maybe after a few days rest it might decide to work properly!

I harvested so much stuff yesterday that I had to do something with it. The solution was obvious, a big cook up.

Carrot, Parsnip and Potato Mash.

To be truthful,it was supposed to be just carrot and parsnip mash, see recipes on my link to 'brilliant allotment web page', but somehow I got distracted by a phone call, and completely lost the plot!

I started off alright, peeling the carrots and parsnips and cutting them into chunks to be boiled in a little water - I did 1.5kg of those. Then for some reason I added potatoes, 3kg cut into chunks, and which necessitated in adding more water. At this point I went back to the web page to check the recipe only to find that potatoes were not mentioned. Doh!

Still,I had no intention of letting a little thing like 3kg of potatoes faze me! Especially as it took me so long to peel them!

When they were all cooked, I strained off the water, added half a cup of skimmed milk - that was all we had till Pat got back from golf, I then added some virgin olive oil, lots of freshly ground pepper and some salt to taste. Stirred it all up, mashed it to a lovely creamy texture, leaving a few small lumps of carrot and parsnip. I also added a bit more oil and a bit of reserved cooking water. It looked a lovely colour, and I tried some with our roast lunch. I put some in a dish and popped it in the oven for a few minutes to brown the top! Yummy.

I now have 24 generous portions in the freezer some of which are destined for my younger son's freezer!

In the next few days I will be thinning a row of Flyaway carrots, and some Tender and True parsnips, so John's recipe will be used for those. Watch this space!

It was late afternoon, and a friend visited that I hadn't seen for a while, so a couple of hours spent doing nothing, chatting in the garden made a lovely change, and then I simply had to join Pat to see England make those final runs to win the Ashes.