Wednesday 27th September 2023 - Inulin, So Annoying and A Stunner

Since my last blog, we’ve spent a fair bit of time in the garden. While I have been doing some general tidying, Peter has taken down the runner beans and climbing French beans as well as digging out the last courgette and the remaining sweetcorn plants. Peter has also cut down the tall Jerusalem artichoke stems before starting to collect the artichokes. There was such a mat of roots in the potato bag containing the plants (they are extremely invasive, hence growing in a bag) Peter had to rip the bag open to retrieve the artichokes, followed by a tussle to pull the tubers from the mass. They are a good even size with not many knobbly protrusions, which make them difficult to peel. Since then, we have eaten them twice boiled and twice fried; we found the latter method the best. They have a bit of a reputation for producing gas, hence they are often referred to as, fartichokes! Briefly, they contain inulin which is a non-digestible carbohydrate. Reaching the bowel, bacteria work on it and produce……gas. Frying definitely seemed to reduce the build-up of gas….but not completely!

(F)artichokes - in case you wondered what these are!

I’ll move on now to my gripe of the day. You’d think with all the technology we have these days; weather forecasts would be accurate. Yesterday, rain with thunder and lightning were all predicted on the BBC weather app. I decided there was no point in hanging out the washing, instead I used the tumble drier and those items which can’t be dried this way, went on the clothes airer indoors. As it turned out the weather was dry and warm, topping 23°C, with no hint of rain. I’m definitely not complaining about the warm sun, which was such a bonus for the beginning of autumn, but it was annoying putting the bulk of the washing in the tumble drier when it could have dried on the washing line.

After saying in my last blog, this year’s September sunrises had not been impressive, on Monday morning there was a stunner; first back lighting the clouds and shortly after, providing a glow through the cloud mass.