For the last 6 years we have had permission to pick the apples and pears from St Edmund College. This morning Mark and I went out to pick the sweet apples for Monday\s pressing.
The pears were ready to pick too and will be eaten for breakfast as they are too good to press.
Picking so many apples for juicing, I thought keeping some behind to make this Russian Apple Cake would be a lovely treat.
Saw this and want to make this for next year . This man is growing cucumbers but the same can be done for tomatoes.
As the vegetables are coming fast and furiously I am trying to use as much as I can.
So even the not so perfect vegetables are being used. Today I made this Quick vegetable pickle
Any left over peelings have gone in a bag in the freezer for vegetable stock
Marjolein's short bread biscuits;
100 gr butter
50gr caster sugar (I added lavender sugar)
50gr rice flour
100gr plain flour
pinch of salt if the butter is unsalted.
Preheat oven to 160C. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment
Beat the soft butter and sugar until well blended
Add the rice flour, flour and (if needed) salt and mix into a crumbly dough
Gather into a ball with you hands. Pat out a disc 1 cm thick
Cut into shapes of your choice
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Leave to cool
I have just come back from my first (of the season) fig harvest across the road. (14th August)
Although it has not been a particularly warm summer, they are sweet and huge. Now time to get some nice recipes as we will need them for a few weeks, before I will dry them (here is hoping for some hot sunny days)
As I picked so many lovely figs, I have decided to dry them in the food dehydrator, today
Today we made courgette bread and tomato sauce.
Having been away for a few days, the courgettes became too big and the tomatoes needed processing for storage. As I found this crock pot recipe for tomato sauce, I thought to try this one. There was a lot of juice, I made soup with it and used the thick tomatoes for paste.
We also roasted tomatoes to store in oil.
For a drink with our meal we made a refreshing cucumber and mint cordial
What to do with a glut of cucumbers ?
This cordial is very easy and tasty too. You will need 2 large cucumbers for a litre of cordial. I prefer it mixed with fizzy water others said they liked it in tonic water.
Today was the first time that a larger group joined me in the kitchen to make mung bean curry with rice and flatbread (we used 200g SR flour, 5gr salt and 50g boiling water) if you don't have SR flour, use the link for a similar recipe.
Afterwards we walked to the allotment to enjoy yellow raspberries that are just starting to ripen, tomatoes and we picked runner and french beans to take home. We even had a groups photo before the drizzle appeared.
crushed branflakes in the mix.Walnut leaves from Garden Walk.
Finally we have woken up with sunshine and warmth and hope we have enough today to dry the walnut leaves. These will be dried and used for teas for skin inflamation and hair rinses.
Yesterday I went to Lida and Graham and saw their lovely tree full of red apples.
They let me have some of them for our first apple pressing. Sadly they are thinking of taking the tree down to build an archive, so we need to enjoy the fruits even more. I also added some of Liz F apples, just to top it up so we can do 2 pressings. The apples from Emma were good but too sour, I will use them once I find a tree with some sweet eaters (probably some of Githa's and Paul's)
Bella and Kyosuke came to help me press the apples into some lovely juice.
The nasturtiums have been cheering up the garden with their yellow, orange and red flowers.
Their leaves have ended up in the salad, some of the flowers stuffed with cream cheese as a spicy but sweet treat.
The flower that were kept on have started to wilt and dry up, revealing their seeds. I don't use them very often but every now and again a recipe asks for capers, so I will be using these instead.
After 3 days in brine, I made the vinegar mix and poured it over the 'capers'.
Here are some recipes I can use them in.
Just harvested some young walnut leaves for tea and the older ones for a hair dye.
I have not used this before so a new experiment
This morning I was told that blight has arrived in the allotment, I have cut away excess leaves on the tomatoes and made this potion to hopefully stop this from catching my crop.
This weed thrives in our heavy clay soil as it has saved an entire potato crop from the dreaded blight.
Horsetail has powerful antifungal properties that are effective on blight and other fungal infections (in both humans and plants!)
Here’s the recipe we used:
1. In a large glass or stainless steel pot, mix 1/8 cup of dried horsetail leaves in 4 1/2 litres of unchlorinated water
2. Bring to a boil, and simmer for 1/2 hr.
3. Cool, strain, bottle and label. The infusion will keep for a month which is long enough for you to keep reapplying to your crop. Any left overs can be used as a wonderful hair rinse.
4. To use, dilute the 1 part horsetail concentrate to 5-10 parts unchlorinated water. Spray infected plants once every week or two in dry weather or daily if it is raining.
A busy morning today with 7 people joining in our cooking session. The courgette chickpea soup and garlic bread turned out very well. And as a bonus we made some sunflower petal infusion, to be used in a couple of months time and it will be turned into lipbalm and hand creme.
