Right. We’re all busy so I’ll crack on with it. There’s a time and a place for flouncing about in the kitchen letting your imagination run riot over making supper. (Ditto for rambling on about veg on a blog.) But this time of year is certainly not it. Not for me anyway. Too much going on and too many To Do lists. Suppers need to be a hassle-free haven amidst all this fuss and bother. Enter my Every Flavour Vegetable Fritters…

Poor gooseberries. The unwanted spare part of the idiom world. And so too in the kitchen I fear. Pest free (relatively), easy to grow in the UK and delicious, gooseberries should be piled high on our shelves at this time of year. But they are not. Instead our heads are turned by that golden couple raspberries and strawberries whilst the plain old gooseberry sits awkwardly on the shelf being, in every sense, a gooseberry. But not here.

My fig tree is a maverick. No straight and narrow for her. No conforming to the usual fig-tree stereotypes. No, not for her the trappings of traditional fig-tree identity built and reinforced through generations of oppression. She absolutely categorically refuses to produce a single sodding fig. Still, fig leaves are not a harvest to be ignored because when used to infuse a liquid they impart the richest, sweetest, most figgy of fig flavours you can imagine.

A glass of rosé, dewy with condensation. The low sun keeping the evening chill at bay. Perfume from the jasmine wafting over the terrace. Ah, June. On this sort of an evening it seems a shame to come inside to eat. Far nicer, don’t you think, to continue nursing that glass of rosé and nibble at a few bits and bobs whilst watching the sun set over the veg patch? And if those nibbles can be a celebration of that oh so picturesque kitchen garden, then so much the better.

The advantage of a raspberry harvest is that, unless they have crampons and head for heights, the mice cannot get them. This is the state I have found myself in: measuring the worth of our summer fruits almost entirely by their ability to withstand nightly raids from mice. Because the mice are legion this year. And now they are strawberry connoisseurs too, more’s the pity. Still, they haven’t sussed the summer fruiting raspberries…

The strawberries this year are recalcitrant. They have taken one look at the rain and found there no incentive to put on a good showing since Wimbledon will undoubtedly be rained off and so the nation won’t be requiring any strawberries. As a general rule, the veg patch is usually quite happy about warm rain, growing lush and green and rocketing to jungle-like proportions. But enough is enough and everyone, me included, is in need of some sunshine.

A busy week calls for a simple supper. And though it has been Broad Bean Week here at G&G HQ, I have, more’s the pity, not been frittering away the hours taking idolatrous portraits of broad beans or sitting in the garden meditatively podding them. Oh no. I have been busy with supper clubs and wedding cakes. So I am grateful to this quick and simple frittata recipe which I made for supper between canapé prep and cake icing. Not only because it is a doddle to make, but also because it offers the welcome opportunity to revel in the full glory of early broad beans – sweet, young and tender.

There are two reasons why everyone gets so over-excited about asparagus. First, it’s got a very brief season and, short of growing it in greenhouses in Peru (though this is, bizarrely, an almost plausible option now), there is no way of forcing, advancing or extending that season. So it’s rare. The second reason is that it’s a total sod to grow. Nothing commands respect like the ability to grow asparagus

A grape glut! Not mine. More’s the pity. My neighbour’s, who has a vine in her back garden, pays it almost no attention (in fact, I think it’s considered a bit of a pest) yet is swamped, literally swamped, with grapes. Now, when someone invites you to come and help yourself to their glut there’s an awkward moment of glut-pilfering etiquette that ensues.

It’s my first year with a berry harvest. And, goodness, it’s been a whopper. A proper old-fashioned, sinks full of berries, break the scales, stain the trug kind of glut. Redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries, blackberries – we’ve had the works.