Produce at season's collision

This bowl is full of vine leaves, usually a spring treat. The dry weeks, followed by the sudden wet have produced a second flush of new leaves and I am wrapping meats and layering cheese with the wreckage of tearing off tendrils that were about to invade next door's garage. The grapes... probably won't ripen this year. Rain and dry at all the wrong times.



The yellow cherry tom came on some bizarre plants from my sister-in-law. Unusually for tomatoes, they had rounded, smooth leaves (I discover that this is called potato leafed, which might explain my anxiety over the fruit being poisonous -- it's not, of course). I've had trouble finding what it is (she couldn't remember). Blondkopfchen, maybe?  Galina's? Tumbling yellow? None seem quite right. Or it might just be a mutant Sungold, I suppose!

The dull looking medium tom is Pennard's First in the Field. It's a tough year to judge a tomato on, but it didn't come early and the flavour's not going to stop you in your tracks. To the bench with that one next year.

Last but not least, that's a Nosferatu chilli, fully ripe. I overwintered the plant indoors where it sulked mightily all winter while wilting under pests apparently manufactured from thin air. It's still not the healthiest looking plant, but it's now covered with fat spiders and ripening its chillis nicely. When you slice them, the black/purple colour shows in the pith, and each time I see it I think it's a pest, just for a moment.

The first flush of delicious Krims all got blossom end rot but only one or two went to the slugs (as below). The rest had their ends chopped off and went into a puttanesca sauce to go with Sunday dinner. Wonderful.