Welcome to Vegetable town!

My first contribution to Tara’s Gallery about all matters Food (week 105). It is somewhat late in submission, so apologies for that

It’s funny what analogies children use to express themselves. Way before we properly moved to the lovely, tiny Whitstable on the Kentish coast (and we used to come and go a lot overseeing minor building projects), my four-year-old son started calling it ‘Vegetable’ town.

He would ask: “Are we going to the Vegetable town at the weekend?” I suppose he chose that word as it rhymed best with Whitstable. My builder friend Mike used to chuckle at that!

Little did I know that in Whitstable I would re-discover my passion for cooking! What with all the scrumptious locally sourced vegetables (unlike that plastic-tasting supermarket lot) it was not difficult. Now we are only a short walk away from the Staines farm shop and I make it my job to stock up on vegetables every week.

A lot of inspiration for frenzy cooking comes from a special place and a foodie mecca in my eyes – that is the Windy Corner Stores on Nelson Road. Here I was again standing in the Windy Corner eyeing up a sausage roll, but by mistake got given a veggie one… Oh no, I thought – you made a mistake?! Then I tasted it and it simply melted in my mouth breaking into yummy mouthfuls of gorgeously baked beetroot, carrot and courgettes cooked to perfection.

And guess what? A day later I had to cook these “bad boys” for my family. I obviously improvised what veg would go in it (got particularly excited about putting a beetroot in my rolls!). I would then plan my jog to make sure I could pop back in to the Windy Corner and check a couple of key details. Then back to the kitchen to bake them.

Here is the mix of scrumptious veg getting a special treatment in a pan