We’ve started getting a lot of fruit from our forest of cucumber plants so we’ve made some chutney (with some apples from our tree), relish and pickled cucumbers to get rid of some of it.
We’ve also had some beetroot so now have a couple of jars picked for our lunches:
We came home from visiting Mummy and Nick this weekend to find that all of our tomatoes have been struck down with blight after the rains so, not wanting to lose all of our hard work, we picked all of the green tomatoes. As you can see, we had quite a few:
We’ve made 8 jars of green tomato chutney, which was delicious last year, but haven’t even dented the pile so I’ve found some recipes for Green Tomato Ketchup, Tomato Chilli Sauce and Green Tomato Tarte Tatin. We’ve got through 3 bottles of vinegar this week so need to get to the shops to stock up before we start are big green tomato cook-off.
We’ve also been making the most of Mummy and Nick’s produce wherever we could. When we were in Basingstoke at the weekend I made 4 jars of the now famous Runner Bean Chtuney, which is just delicious! As you can see, we’re building up quite a stock pile of preserves for Christmas presents:
Matt has also been busy baking, he’s made a Plum Custard Tart and a Red Onion and Goats Cheese tart, both of which were delicious:
We had some pastry left over so I made a vegetable quiche, seen here with some home grown salad, Matt’s homemade bread and some home grown borlotti bean salad – which we made from a recipe from Jamie Oliver:
Borlotti Bean Salad
Boil how ever many fresh borlotti beans you can get with half a potato, half a tomato and a whole bulb of garlic for about 40 minutes. When they are all soft, drain ¾ of the water off and mush the potato, tomato and garlic into a rough paste. Add this paste back to the pan with the beans and the left over water. Slosh in some good olive oil and vinegar (I used white wine vinegar) and some fresh herbs (I added parsley and chives) and serve.
Besides the food that we’ve been getting plenty of, we have also still been getting plenty of visits from our menagerie of wildlife. The squirrel was hanging of the bird feeder this morning along with some sparrows and last week we had 3 foxes in the garden – we think they are Geraldine, her older cub from the spring, and a younger cub (who is very energetic!). Here are Geraldine and her eldest asleep under the apple tree (you wouldn’t believe we lived in London would you?!):
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