🍆 facts! Part of the magic of the humble eggplant is that it somehow grows within the structure of its flesh millions of tiny black holes. The unusual thing about these singularities is they only consume limited types of matter. There are two types within the flesh of an eggplant: one consumes sodium chloride, the other consumes hydrocarbons only in the form of lipids. This explains why when you're cooking eggplant (aubergine if you must) it can consume a seemingly infinite amount of oil and salt without any apparent change in flavour. Yet the weight of the ingredients is, of course, conserved. (They're singularities, not wormholes! If you have wormholes in your eggplant that is a problem!) But, if you continue to apply too much heat to your eggplant the black holes denature and this is when your eggplant becomes a soggy salty mess. So ensure you stop cooking yout eggplant before your black holes entropise into your dinner. 👍🏻

Epic cooking arvo/evening. Not one but TWO batch cooks... turkey leg vindaloo, and "bog" (Bolognese) — the bog uses some of a batch of fresh passata Kat made. Both use a mix of our own and bought produce. All the meat is from within a mile of us. I also made a batch ot chicken/turkey bone stock yesterday, some of which went into the bog. Then for an encore: dinner is burgers. Large local beef patties and local smoked bacon, plus our own #allotment / #gyo produce in the form of: nasturtium leaves, tomato, fried zucchini strips, lacto dill pickles, pickled beetroot, and tomatillo salsa. (Kat had some of the tomatoe ketchup I made last season instead of the salsa.)

Right, got a useful #allotment trip in with an AM start! 🤯 Very unlike us, but the weather forecast was for wind and rain from mid arvo onwards so we got a wriggle on. Havest is mainly pears. We now have over 60 pears in the house. Not sure what to do with 60 pears lol. Think I'll get the dehydrator running with some pear slices in it. (I already have three jars of pickled pears.) The Cara potatoes have done pretty well it seems. This is our second harvest from fhe lond bed next to the polytunnel, and as shown in the second photo we have harvested only quite a small length of that bed so fat. Yield seems to be good.

On the recent #MakersHour topic of hoarding... I keep meaning to throw some of this glass out, but every time I look at it I think: I'm sure I could MAKE something with some of it, some day. 😅 (I have thrown out the small curved piece and smaller shards. The rest is now stashed somewhere out of the way.)

"ORIENTAL FRUIT" What an odd context for Cape Gooseberry, surrounded by various leaf veg, and labelled "oriental". 🤔

New #alloment tool. Spotted this cute little one in the local rural store. Have wanted a newt pointy ended pair of harvesting nippere for ages. Couldn't resist.

Hmmm... not bothering to peel garlic before blending into a spice mix. I mean, yeah, OK, it's getting cut up fine so the peel is just some extra fibre in the mix, right. I don't de-pod cardamom before spice grinding. But it's a new one on me: Anyone here put garlic into spice blends/pastes without peeling? #cooking

Dinner tonight is from the "fully carnt be arsed" department.

#Allotment postcard #36 — windy waffle 🌬️ octo-power preserving 🐙 first potatoes 🥔 tidying tomatoes 🍅

Hmmm... is my math right here... on the topic of batteries and day/night rate electricity. Say I have a load of 200W... so 4.8kWh per day? Or on Economy7 that's 3.4kWh day rate and 1.4kWh night rate... my day rate is 31.252p and night rate is 13.1093 p/kWh. At the day rate that is £350 worth of power per year. If I was (with 100% efficiency lol) to store 3.4kWh "night rate" in a battery and draw it from it during the "day" then I'd save £214 per year? If it was 500W then we'd be talking £535 per year? So if you could build a 40+ Ah inverse-"UPS" sorta thing that charges on Economy7 and discharges during the day for under £500 it'd pay for itself in a year? Or are (in)efficiencies a total bastard? I have no real experience with battery tech, etc. But I note that in 5 mins of web searching I can find a 280Ah 12V battery for £399.99:

eco-worthy-uk

12V 280Ah LiFePO4 Lithium Battery with Bluetooth | ECO-WORTHY

Explore our 12V 280Ah LiFePO4 Battery: Bluetooth Auto connection,Low-temp cut-off ,over 6000+ deep cycles, 15-year life & BMS – perfect for your ...

(obviously there is more to it than just a battery!) And that's before considering wiring in a solar panel, or 6...