Sunday Dinner: Thirty Years of Growing Our Own Plate

 There I was this morning , stood at the kitchen sink with a peeler in one hand and a carrot in the other, doing what I always do on a Sunday, which is drift off into my own little world while the radio mumbles away in the background. Sara reckons I go somewhere else entirely when I'm prepping veg. She's not wrong. Today my mind wandered right back to when Sam was in nappies and Iris wasn't even a twinkle yet, and it landed on a thought that stopped me mid-peel.

We are, without a shadow of a doubt, one lucky family.

No chemicals. Ninety-nine percent of what lands on our plates grown by our own muddy hands. And Sunday dinner, the same tradition it's been for thirty-odd years, still mostly made up of whatever we've coaxed out of the ground ourselves. I stood there holding that carrot like it owed me money and thought, honestly Simon, you jammy so-and-so.

Thirty Years of the Same Daft Ritual

Sunday dinner in our house has never changed shape, only the faces round the table. Thirty-odd years ago it was me and Sara, Andrea, Fionna , Heather and Sam as a baby. Now it's me, Sara, Sam, Fern, and Iris.  What has stayed exactly the same, through every single one of those thirty years, is that most of what's on the plate came off our plot rather than off a supermarket shelf.

Carrots, potatoes, peas, green beans, Brussels, cabbage. Say it out loud and it sounds like a shopping list. Say it while you're the one who watched every single item go from a seed packet to a full plate, and it sounds like something closer to a small miracle.

Iris wandered through the kitchen earlier, spotted the mountain of veg on the side, and said, "Blimey Dad, you'd think we were feeding the whole street." I told her it felt like we were with the way the world is now. She just laughed and nicked a raw carrot on her way past. Cheeky article.

The Bit Where I Get Embarrassingly Sentimental

I'll be honest, people , this is the part where I go a bit soft, so bear with me. There's something about sitting down to your dinner and knowing, properly knowing, exactly where every single thing on your plate has come from, that does something to a man. No mystery lorry, no plastic wrapping, no wondering which country your green beans have flown in from. Just soil, seed, a lot of bad-tempered weeding, and a family daft enough to keep doing it every single year regardless of the weather.

My dad started all this. He'd have loved seeing three generations of us still doing exactly what he taught me on his own allotment all those years back. I like to think he'd have approved of the cabbage this year in particular. He was fussy about his cabbage.

Where Preserving Comes Into It

Of course, it's not just Sunday that benefits. Anyone who's read this blog for more than five minutes knows we've been up to our elbows in beans and onions this July, and most of that isn't just for eating fresh. Sara's had the freezer working overtime with blanched beans, there are onions curing away that'll see us right through winter, and there's a satisfying number of jars pinging away on the side that'll turn a grey January Sunday into something a bit more cheerful.

So when I say ninety-nine percent of our meals are homegrown, I don't just mean the summer glut when everything's practically throwing itself at you. I mean January too, when it's a bag of our own beans from the freezer and a jar of Sara's chutney holding the fort. That's the bit that always surprises people. Frugal living isn't just about growing your own in July, it's about making July's efforts last you clean through to next July.

A Small Word on Frugal Living, Because Somebody Has To

I did a rough sum in my head while I was peeling that carrot, and I reckon between the two allotments we save ourselves a genuinely daft amount on the weekly shop. No fancy spreadsheet, just a bloke with a calculator and a stubborn streak. A bag of seed potatoes costs pennies compared to what a sack from the shop would set you back, and that's before you factor in that ours actually taste of something.

Sara's the real expert on making it stretch, mind. If you want proper frugal wisdom, the kind that turns a glut of veg into six months of meals without wasting so much as a pea, her blog Frugal in Lincolnshire will teach you far more than I ever could. I just grow the stuff. She's the one who works the magic that makes it last.

Crafts, Because Even a Jam Jar Deserves a Bit of Effort

Now this bit will make Sam roll his eyes, but I don't care. Sara's taken to dressing up our preserving jars lately, little circles of fabric tied over the lids with string, proper labels written out by hand rather than my usual biro scrawl that nobody can read by February. Iris has got involved too, and between them they've turned punnets of raspberries into something that actually looks like it belongs in a farm shop window rather than a garage.

I'll admit, when Sara first started with the fabric toppers I thought it was all a bit much for a jar of pickled onions. I've since come round entirely. There's something rather lovely about a bit of craft going into the preserving, not just for how it looks, but because it makes the whole job feel a little more special, a little more like an occasion rather than just another chore before tea. If you've never tried it, a scrap of old material and a length of string is all it takes, and it makes a very fine little gift too.

A Little Something for Your Own Table

Since a post about veg wouldn't be complete without something to actually cook, here's how we do ours most Sundays, plain and simple.

Simon's Sunday Garden Veg, No Fuss Required

Take your carrots and potatoes, scrubbed rather than peeled if you can bear it, there's good stuff in that skin. Parboil the potatoes for five minutes, then into a hot roasting tin with a splash of oil until they're properly golden and crisp at the edges. Boil the carrots until just tender, then toss them through a knob of butter and a scrape of nutmeg. Steam your Brussels and cabbage together for six or seven minutes, no more, then finish with butter, black pepper, and if you're feeling flash, a squeeze of lemon. Peas go in at the very last minute, straight from the freezer if that's your last of the fresh, boiling water for two minutes and no longer. Simple, honest, and it tastes like thirty years of practice, because it more or less is.

Right, Over to You

So there I was, up to my elbows in carrots, feeling thoroughly pleased with myself and a little bit soft about it all. It struck me that this daft little tradition of ours, the same plate, the same veg, the same fuss every single Sunday for thirty-odd years, is probably the thing I'm proudest of in the whole allotment adventure. Not the size of the marrows, not the state of my sheds, just a family still sitting down together to a plate we grew ourselves.

I'd love to know how it works in your house. Do you manage to get much of your own dinner from your own garden or allotment, even if it's just the potatoes or a few herbs? Or is Sunday dinner in your family more of a team effort with everyone chipping in something they've grown or made? Tell me in the comments, I do love hearing how other families do it.

Happy growing, everyone. See you on the plot.