Battening down the hatches for winter

I've gathered in the last spoils of spring and summer sowing before battening down the hatches, in the kitchen garden anyway - and herein lies the dilemma. Vegetables are meant to be eaten, I know, but when they are so pretty, who can bear to? 

Take the pure white, shiny pattypans, that feel so nice in the hand and look like flying saucers with scalloped edges. They're meant to be eaten when a few inches in diameter, but like courgettes, they like to hide beneath their large leaves, so that some aren't discovered until they're a good deal larger. 

Steamed until tender, slathered with butter, they're quite delicious. But I prefer them gathered into a group on the sideboard, and interspersed with night lights. If they don't rot and have to be thrown out beforehand, I may use them as a Christmas table centrepiece, scattered with a little silver glitter dust.

Then there are the chilli peppers. Oh so many of them. Scotch Bonnets, Cheyennes, Cayennes, Apaches, Gusto Purple, all of which I grew to supply various shades of heat to guacamole, chilli con carne, casseroles...

Scotch Bonnet is supposed to be blisteringly hot but I'll never know, because I won't be using them in the cooking pot, but threading them onto cotton and hanging them on the dresser. So after growing all those chilli pepper plants in the greenhouse, it's back to a tube of chilli paste in the kitchen. 

Ridiculous, really, but having bought ready-strung garlands of peppers in Amalfi and bought them back in a suitcase, I know how lovely they look - not just for Christmas, but all year round. And I can always use them dried.

And then, of course, there are the pumpkins. What's the point of growing them if you don't get to eat them? What indeed. But I just can't bring myself to consign the beautiful turks' turbans to the cooking pot - or roasting tin.  Apparently they taste a little like turnip, a little like squash.

But again, I'm not likely to find out, because it's impossible to cut them up and cook them when they look so decorative, all in a line down the dining table. It makes sitting down and eating a meal rather difficult, because to tell the truth, they're rather in the way, but you can't have everything.

In January I will be working out my list of vegetable seeds for the coming year. I intend to be brutal, and grow no vegetable that I'm not prepared to eat.