What's in my kitchen

What is in my kitchen this week?  Well for a start there are quite a lot of flowers.

A jug of sweetpeas picked this morning and waiting to go to a friend. Every time I walk past the scent makes my head turn.

The cutting garden is producing so many dahlias that I haven't brought any cosmos inside yet.  I love these huge orange ones, Ludwig Helfert, next to Bishop of Llandaff and some Euphorbia Oblongata.  They are like a firework exploding on the table.

And the fact that the kitchen is full of flowers means that it is also full of vegetables.

Fresh peas are one of the glories of summer.  I can't pick them without shelling some and eating them right there in the garden.  I haven't been able to bring myself to do anything with these other than cook them briefly in boiling water and eat them with butter and mint.  I have a lovely recipe for pea and lettuce soup which I keep meaning to try but the peas are so young and sweet that making a soup with them seems a sacrilege.

And there are purple podded peas too.

We grow these because they look so beautiful but they taste just the same as the green ones!

There are tomatoes in my kitchen, coming in from the greenhouse, ripe earlier than usual because of early sowing and the long hot sunny days of July.  Eventually I will make tomato sauce and passata with the older crop but these are the early harvest so I am using them in salads.   I love what we have already, especially the old favourite Gardener's Delight,  but I am waiting for the ripening of the Black Krim, my favourite tomato of all.  Black Krim is a heritage variety with a firm dark flesh, close to black,  and a rich, deep flavour.  A single thick slice of Black Krim on fresh home made bread needs nothing else to make a substantial lunch, singing with flavour.

There are courgettes, of course.   I shot my bolt with courgettes in my last post.  There is nothing more to say.

There is a blackcurrant tart sitting on the top of the oven.  I am being very good about not eating this but Ian and Eric are eating it with thick cream or ice cream.

On the shelf above the wooden worktop the chickens keep an eye on the harvest, less destructively than they do when they escape the run in the garden and strip the chard and take the lettuce.

I can't give you exotic ingredients but I can give you fresh ones, and the whirling clown from early last century, the surprising shell from the beach not far away and the weights, lined up like chess pieces.  I haven't shown you the piles of boots by the door and the tools and twine and gardening gloves sitting by the microwave.  So that is what is in my kitchen.

I thought I would join in with this having read shabby chick's blog and she in her turn is part of a wider community of bloggers all over the world looking at what is in the kitchen with Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial.