Now all the building work is finished we are taking time to make our land look a bit softer, neater and hopefully eventually, take away some of the hard lines and industrial look that has been created thanks to the planning department in their wisdom specifying that in order to do as we wanted to make our entrance safer for all users, we had to have a huge turning area within our gates.
While we do this this we are repairing the damage that has been done to various parts of the place by large numbers of big booted workmen and big machinery in wet weather. So a lot of this has involved sowing grass seed. It would have been horrendously expensive and time consuming to turf everywhere so we bought half a dozen big boxes of grass seed, and Lovely Hubby has made it his mission over the last couple of weekends to make new grass beds where only rubble once lay, to fill in gaps and dips with sifted soil, raking it smooth and into the contours of the hillside and then scattering the seeds. Some of which took on a green tinge within days, thanks to this wonderful early Autumn sunshine and the rainy Welsh nights.
Just before he started on the area in the photo he cleared around the Rhubarb patch with his strimmer and decided to bring me all the remaining rhubarb. In total there was just over two kilos, so out came the recipe books and I quickly found a recipe for Rhubarb and Ginger Jam.
As it called for 1kg of Rhubarb I just doubled everything up and used up all the rhubarb in one fell swoop. I got eight full sized jars and a handy little taster in my mini enamel mug. Which gave us enough for a crackerful each to test the jam .....
... and a lovely dollop with some natural yogurt for my breakfast the next day.
Once cooled and labelled .....
... they neatly slotted into the 'Preserves' shelf of the tall cupboard in the kitchen which is filling up nicely with all this jam-making and pickling.
I've got a little list in the cupboard so I can see exactly what we have in store ready for a big food stocktake in a couple of months before the Challenge starts.
I'll put the Rhubarb and Ginger Jam recipe on my recipe page for anyone interested, but I found it in this book if you already have it. I'm currently making another recipe from the book also using ginger but this time it is cooked with Marrow as I still have a few of my enormous courgettes to use up :-)
Sue xx
I have that book from the charity shop for about £2. It is very good. I also use the River Cottage Preserving book. Between the two books, you have everything you need. My raspberry jam, piccalilli and Damson Gin are all maturing. :-)
ReplyDeletelooks lovely...what is the challenge you mention ?
ReplyDeletetessa
I'm making marrow jam this week as well. It is absolutely delicious. You can gently heat some and use as a sauce on ice cream yum
ReplyDeleteThat's what I'm making at the moment, but with some ginger added for extra warmth :-)
DeleteI have never tasted rhubarb/ginger jam. We have very little jelly or jam in the house because of the sugar content, but I do buy sugar free once in a while. Fun that you always have just a bit for a taste. Glad your grass is coming out well. Have a great week.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds delicious, I like rhubarb and ginger so the combination would be perfect :)
ReplyDeleteRhubarb and ginger is a great combination. One seems to 'uplift' the other.
ReplyDeleteI like the two together in a crumble too. xxx...x
Wondering about Rhubarb and ginger myself as a combo, I can how it works, the ginger heat taking the hit off the sharpness
ReplyDeleteA little of that delicious jam is glorious with Burma road…. (rice pudding's wartime name by late dad's parlance). We've almost finished our building work, and the Aga goes in tomorrow; jam by the weekend!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you're all done with the lawns before the winter sets in too. Jolly well done!
That sounds tasty.. must give that a try next year :o)
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