Bartering ..... and Drooling

I went to Mum's on Wednesday, on Tuesday night we were chatting on the phone and she said "if you have any spare apples could I have a few".  No sooner was I off the phone than I was out with my apple picker stick thingy bashing the hell out of the trees.

They released lots of lovely Bramleys from the tree at the far end of Chicken World and a few eaters from the other trees near the sheds.  So with the ones I already had in the fridge there were lots to share between us.  The freshly picked apples were washed and left to dry on a towel overnight, I didn't want to take any creepy crawlies in my car on the journey to Manchester!!

I also took Mum a couple of jars of the Bramble and Apple Jelly.  I managed to make eight small jars and four normal one pound jars full of this wonderfully tasting concoction .... 

.... and it had set perfectly, well I had to try a sample to check didn't I  ;-) 

When I got to Mum's we had a coffee and a chat and then set off for the Garden Centre.  I specifically said the only thing I needed to buy was some green manure seeds for the raised beds on the hillside.  At first we couldn't find any seeds, but after a large cup of coffee and a delicious lunch we set out to hunt down the seeds ... and we finally found them all laid in in the annual end of year sale.

This is how I like to buy my seeds .... at 50p a packet.  

My Dad taught me well, if you wait until September you will get virtually everything you need for the next growing year in the end of season sale at most garden centres.

I got quite a few packets of the things we eat the most .....

... and luckily for me there were two packets of green manure left ... PHEW!!

Mum got herself some packets of flower seeds and we left the garden centre as two very happy ladies who had lunched AND planned ahead for next year.

I got 18 packets of seeds for £9, adding up the prices on the packets these would normally have cost me £48.18 ... a real bargain.  And then when we got back to Mum's house and I was ready to settle up she said we were bartering our goods not handing over cash.

So apples, jam and spinach got me potentially

10 Marrows

12 Butternut Squash

125 Leeks

200 Carrots

200 Parsnips

605 Onions

1750 Spring Onions

and

1850 Radishes

Brilliant ...... I love a good barter  :-)

When I got home the remaining jars of jam were stashed in the now rapidly filling larder unit .....

... reminding me of the one I saw at the Garden centre, the one that I drool over every time I visit!!

A girl can dream  :-)

Sue xx

Nothing Goes to Waste

I'm trying to make the most of everything I harvest, okay I admit sometimes at the end of a tiring day making the most of everything simply means the chickens get a tasty extra snack, but  'Hey Ho'  ....as John from Going Gently would say ..... at least that means the trimmings get turned into the most delicious eggs for us to eat!!

But the other day I pulled up all the remaining Beetroot plants and the leaves looked so lush I just had to use them.  Some were wilted down to have with tea in place of Spinach, and the rest were turned into the contents of the jar you see above.

Hardly a Recipe - Any Leaf Pesto

Equal weights of
Leaves (Basil/Spinach/Beetroot/Radish etc, or a mix)
Parmesan Cheese (or any other hard cheese, or a mix)
Nuts (Pine/Almond/Brazil, or a mix)
Garlic to taste (lots if you like lots not so much if you don't)

Whizz these together in a food processor and then drizzle in enough Olive Oil to get it to the consistency you like.

There I said it was hardly a recipe!!

Put the finished Pesto into a clean jar and keep it in the fridge.  Whatever you haven't eaten after a couple of weeks can be spooned into ice cube trays and frozen.  Once hard pop out and put into a freezer bag or box.  It will keep in the freezer for years, but I doubt it will last long ... it's delicious.

This recipe has also been added to the Recipes I Use Regularly page at the top of the Blog for future reference.  Which also contains my recipe for Pesto Pasta Al Forno .... delicious and something I think we will be having this weekend with my lovely new jar of pesto.

While all that was going on the Beetroot was lazily cooking away in the bottom oven of the Aga. 

 Once soft it was sliced and packed into these jars and I topped them up with some spiced vinegar.  Which is simply vinegar that has been brought to the boil and simmered for about 15 minutes with some pickling spices  (around 1oz to every bottle of vinegar).  I buy mine ready mixed to save having lots of jars of spices I don't use that often.  

I always boil up much more than I need and pour the cooled, unused vinegar back into the vinegar bottle for future use ... make sure you add to the label that it has been spiced !!

So Pickled Beetroot and a big jar of Pesto, another days successful harvest processed for future use.

Sue xx

Homegrown Fruit .... and Costings

The next harvest to come in was the Blackberries, picked from the wild brambles in our woodland.  We only pick the ones we can reach from the paddock side of the fence, leaving all the rest, and there are LOTS, for the wildlife .... they have to eat too!!  

The dogs hate the days we stop to pick blackberries, they like to keep moving not loiter at every bush.  At first they seem to find it entertaining, but like little children they get fed up with the novelty of Mum and Dad moving along sooooo slowly and soon want to move on to the next thing, not visit every bush along the full length of the paddock.  

We managed an impressive 1.5kg between us in just half an hour or so.

Added to the apples I mentioned in yesterday's post and some more that had fallen off the cooking apple trees by the next morning, I had a total of 1.5kg of mixed cooking and eating apples, so three kilos of fruit to process.

Lovely Hubby's request was for Bramble Jelly, so after bringing the fruit and 2 litres of water to the boil, and then simmering it all for around half an hour it was all tipped into my jelly bags and left to drip overnight.

There was a pesky fly buzzing around the kitchen so I draped everything with some tea towels ... I don't want wildlife in the jelly!!

I decided to price up what the fruit would have cost me to buy just out of interest, and I was shocked to find out that this amount of Blackberries would have been £20 and the apples would have cost around £2.60 ,  Wow, over twenty two pounds worth of fruit for free, how glad am I that we have this wonderful resource on our own land, and they just grow away with minimal help from us.

With the fruit pulp happily dripping through the jelly bags I was in 'squirrel mode' and looked to see what else I could do to save us some money and I found half a loaf in the breadbin.  Lovely Hubby loves a shop bought white tin loaf every now and then, but usually he leaves some behind when he goes back down south to work.  Mostly I'm kind and after it goes nice and dry I give the chickens a treat and break it up for them, but in 'squirrel mode' I decided this time it was for us.

So it was quickly whizzed up in my little processor and turned into breadcrumbs which were promptly tipped into a labeled tub and put straight into the freezer.

Having the price comparison site up while I priced up the fruit I decided to price up the breadcrumbs too.  I could only find plain fresh breadcrumbs in Asda which came out at £1 for a tub of 150g., mine weighed around the same.

Then I found these ....  

...  at just  £1.85 Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Lemon and Pepper Crust Breadcrumbs 135g tub.  (£1.37 for 100g)

You could buy a full quality loaf for less than this price, use some of it as fresh bread and then whizz up a few slices to make your breadcrumbs, a few twists of your pepper grinder and a quick zest of half a lemon and you would have something twice as tasty for a fraction of the cost and the satisfaction of it being homemade too.

Or of course you could buy a value brown loaf and make up a massive 800g of breadcrumbs for just 40p

As they say 'You pays your money, you makes your choice'.

I know what my choice is.  I'm off now for the final stage in my Bramble Jelly making  ... the best bit, I love a kitchen that smells of homemade jam  :-)

Sue xx

If you want to use mysupermarket to compare prices here is a link ....  http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/

More Apples .....

The apples are still raining down on me .... along with the rain!!  

Shaking the branches of the trees to bring a few more down. while I am there to pick them up straight away, brings down a deluge of big fat blobs of leaf caught rainwater ... and of course because you're looking up when you do this the blobs go all down your face, neck and shirt and it makes for a soggy harvesting ten minutes or so.

But it's worth it  :-)

Back in the kitchen after giving the newly acquired harvest of apples a quick wash I spring into action.  I finally succumbed after six years of doing this with a peeler, corer and knife and bought myself one of these nifty little peeler/corer/slicer gadgets, it speeds the whole process up considerably and cost me only £14.95 so money well spent, even if I do have to grit my teeth and store yet another gadget in the kitchen cupboard when I've finished.  

The only thing I don't like about it .... the suction pad sucks!!  

Well it doesn't  ... at all, it just doesn't stick to the worktop, and I've tried various things to stick it to, so it's not just our oiled teak worktop that's the problem.  I've tried a scrubbed wooden chopping board, a plastic board and even the oilcloth tablecloth.  The only thing I can't try it on is a glass chopping thingy.  I hate them, they ruin your knives so I don't allow them in the house, and grit my teeth when I have to use them in holiday homes etc.  Lovely Hubby said he is going to find me a suitable clamp to fix it to the edge of the worktop in time for next years harvesting .... or I might just go and have a rummage in the Man Shed instead of waiting   ;-)

Anyway I persevere and hold it down with one hand and eventually the apples get peeled/cored/chopped and dropped into cold salted water in the sink. 

 I've tried lemon juice in the water and yes, that works fine too, to stop the apples going brown while you prepare the big batch, but salt works just as well and is considerably cheaper, and I always have a tub of it next to the sink.  So salt water is my soak of choice.  Just make sure you give the apples a couple of rinses before they go into the pan for cooking!!

The peelings and cores go to the chickens, but they're getting a bit fed up of apple now .... well they do have the majority of apple trees in and around Chicken World, so they get first nabs at the windfalls anyway.  The next couple of bowlfuls went to the compost bin instead,  I could tell it was almost more grateful than the birds ;-)

Then they were cooked in a big pan on the top of the Aga in just a smidge of water with a couple of spoonfuls of added sugar, until the majority of the apples were mush and only a few larger bits remained (this is how we like it and why I use a mix of eating and cooking apples), the apples were  swiftly decanted into hot jars straight from the warming oven of the Aga.

Of course for health reasons I now try not to use much sugar in my recipes, and as sugar is usually the main preservative in this sort of preserving I decided this couldn't be just bottled in my usual way. I also need this batch to be kept for a while as we are still eating our way through some bottled the year before last!!

So I did reprocess everything in my big jam pan to get a good vacuum.  Just 30 minutes of neatly steaming up the kitchen with each panful and everything was ready.

All labelled up and ready to be stored ..... somewhere, I'm not sure where yet, I'm quickly running out of storage space!

Then I went out to check for eggs in Chicken World .....

.... and found one egg and five more apples .... argghh .... off we go again.

Sue xx

Chopping and Freezing

I've been busy this week pulling off the huge courgettes that are trying to pass themselves off as marrows.  Simply chopping them up and open freezing them means I can preserve their goodness for adding to soups and stews all through the depths of Winter.

Making the most of what we have, preserving it for leaner times ahead feels so right at the moment.  As the growing season winds down a notch and plants ripen their last few fruits I feel duty bound to make the most of what I find each day.

And the thought of luscious bowls of homemade soup fills the growing need in me for simple food, grown well, cooked well and eaten when needed.  

With our Challenge looming only four months away, the fuller I can get the freezer with all the homegrown goodies from the tunnels and the veggie patch the easier things will be through the lean hungry gap of January to May next year, and the more money I will be able to save for later in the year when bought in stores start to run down.  

I still need to think of a name for this Challenge, I tried to think about it the other night lying in bed, but as usual I fell asleep much too quickly, this squirreling away and preserving is pretty tiring work  :-)

Sue xx

Edgings Day

This week has been mostly about getting the edgings in place.  The tarmac is due to be laid/poured whatever the correct description for the covering of the driveway with the foul smelling black stuff is, at the end of the month.  But first we needed proper edges all the way around the perimeter of where it will be.

It's made the place suddenly look neater ....

... and the roadway to the poly and net tunnels and the paddock has finally properly appeared.

We've discovered the covers to the soakaway system have been set too low, so they will have to come up and an additional layer or two of blocks put in place so that they will sit neatly at the road level, rather than six inches under the surface !!

It takes a little dip for the step to the back doors of the tunnels.

After photographing all that with the camera I just couldn't resist a backward shot of the house and hills,when I stopped to drink in the view during the doggy, and cat  walk.  It was a wonderfully clear evening as it has been all week.  But at this time of year a clear day and evening leaves for a very chilly night and the log burner has been lit a couple of times this week to keep the house at a more bearable temperature, while me and the dogs cuddle down to watch a bit of television.

There's a definite nip in the air even though we have been basking in really hot temperatures during the day, but the main thing for me is the pleasure in seeing the work finally coming to an end.  Another couple of weeks and the building work should be over.

Sue xx

Cats ..... and Lazy Folk

This picture of Ginger is simply here because I love it!!

I came out of the polytunnel last night after giving everything a good watering to find Ginger sat on the gatepost wating for me.  He likes to sit up on the posts, I think it gives him a real sense of being cleverer than the dogs if you see the look on his face sometimes as he watches their activities way down on the ground.  It had been a scorching hot day and even with the door left open all day everything was parched in the polytunnel, not bad for North Wales in September!!

I'm not complaining at all, this late in the season sunshine is lovely.

The 'Lazy Folk' part of the title .... well I bought this brand new full bottle of Sanctuary body lotion, my absolute favourite and one of the few perfumed things I can tolerate on my skin, for 50p at a car boot sale last weekend.  The reason the lady was selling it was that 'it was too hard to get it out of the bottle' !!

Yes it was, it just would not be squeezed out at all, so I simply took the whole top off and squeezed it all into an empty jar .....

... turning it upside down overnight to get every last little drop out of there, and even running my little finger round the inside of the neck of the bottle to get it all.  This would have cost me £5.50 if I had had to go out a buy one in Boots.  So for a bit of effort I have a bargain, and that's just it ... a little bit of effort is all it took.  

Is it just me or do so many people want everything super easy these days.  I appreciate things much more when I have put in just a little bit of my time and imagination to them.  Life shouldn't be all about ease and no effort, yes it's lovely occasionally, like having a ready meal now and then, but when you take the time to do something properly, like prepare a meal from scratch, the preparation or the squeezing out of every last bit of body lotion, becomes so much more a part of what you have.

I'm jumping off my little soapbox now ;-)

Sue xx