Pickling

I just love this time of year when you can smell autumn in the air. It's a time to start preparing for the long cold winter. Wood is stacked, woolie cardi's come out, throws quilts and blankets are laundered and aired and the last of the harvest is dug out of the garden and preserved. We've had a glut of tomatoes this year and so have our friends so even though I'm generally not a condiment kinda girl, I decided to try and make some chutneys that I would like. I thought about spices and flavours that I like and banished any notions of vinegary, runny concoctions made with some stuff called 'ezi sauce'.

I looked at several recipes for quantities and methods but then adapted them. And I have been so pleased with the result. So for anyone who prefers a thick, sweet, spicy chutney flavoured with honey and all spice, I've put my recipe for Green Tomato and Greengage Chutney and Sweet Tomato Chutney on my recipes page, click the tab at the top.

It's very yummy with cheeses and cold meats. I'll share the beetroot marmalade recipe when I can find where I wrote it down! It's taken me several attempts to get this right, but it's absolutely flippin gorgeous. Even Maggie asks for "some of that red stuff". Happy pickling peeps.

Farm Shops

Just a quick little post about farm shops. This is one that I became a bit of a fan of during our stay on my Uncle's farm in Over Stowey in Somerset, England.

It's just simple, how life should be.

They grow it.

We buy it.

Bobs your Uncle. Farm fresh locally produced fruit and vegies. Come on, lets all just buy direct from our local suppliers, find them, use them, it just makes sense. It's just one of those little things we can all do easily to collectively make a difference.

Elderflower Cordial

Tonight after diner we went picking elderflowers in Uncle Johns fields to make cordial so I thought I'd share the recipe with you.

But first a note on the flowers. Pick the flowers early. Not too early that the flowers haven't opened, but not too late that they have started to turn brown and smell of cats wee.

 For 1 litre of cordial, you need to pick about 20 large flower heads.

The best flowers are often quite high so unless you want to carry a ladder/chair with you, I find it best to use scissors and 'jump and snip' so that they fall to the ground. Maggie then gathered and counted.

Use a heavy based large pan over a high heat. To 1 litre of boiling water, add 1.8kg of caster sugar and stir over the heat until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat. Zest and juice 2 lemons, then slice and add to pan. Add 75g of citric acid and the elderflower heads. Leave to infuse for 24 hours. Strain through muslin and pour into steralised bottles. Done. Easy peasy hey and a lovely gift.

This is where we walked home to our barn with our elderflowers.

Celery and Blue Cheese Soup

Yuckeroo is how I've been feeling of late. The Gale house has been poorly, poorly indeed. On Monday I managed to crawl out of bed onto the couch to brave daylight for a whole hour. Yesturday I braved standing and today I actually went out in fresh air in search of fruit and vegetables like a woman possessed. You see Kim, as wonderful as he is, is no cook. So after days of slut food (as I call it), I was craving my usual nutritious 'proper food'. Thank goodness, my cravings reintroduced me to this old favourite; Delia Smith's Celery Soup with Blue Cheese. Oh my goodness, it's just the best soup ever!!!! Try it, you'll love it.

Hope you've all been well and have managed to avoid the nasty bugs. Hehehehe it's been so long since my last post I even had to take a minute then to find the 'publish post' button. Cheers ears:)