Drink!

Wine

We did a quick review of alcohol yesterday. 4 demijohns of wine went down the drain, there really wasn't any hope of them turning good now as over two years old and they take up space. Over the years the only wines that I have consistently succeeded with are blackberry and elderberry, delicious! I'll occasionally experiment with other ingredients but those demijohns then seem to linger around for years whilst we wait for them to mature and hopefully improve in flavour, they usually don't. I'm not making any this year, we've been too busy harvesting our own fruit to get out and find wild berries and most of my demijohns have been stolen by J for his cider.

Apples and cider

Windfalls

Apple season is upon us. We have four trees in our garden but we don't eat many apples. Some will be bottled as apple sauce but the majority of them will be juiced to make scrumpy.

Plum/Damson/Sloe Gin/Rum update

sloes

Well, this has certainly been a popular post. So popular that I felt that I probably ought to add a few more details to how we do this. First the basic recipe:

• 1lb fruit
• 6oz sugar
• 75cl of gin or white rum

What can I say... tomato envy? It makes my collection of cherry toms look quite pitiful. Oh well, maybe next year!

Francis Pryor: in the long run

Preserving plums

Preserves

I've felt a bit 'bleurgh' this weekend so chose to take things gently. This conveniently tied in with getting on with making more preserves, not particularly hard work but I don't like to leave food alone whilst it's bubbling away.

First plum harvest of the year

Plum Harvest

 J got the step ladders out and picked our first haul for the year. These will keep coming now for up to another 6 weeks so I need to be prepared to deal with them. I would rather not leave good food rotting on the ground.

Easy Garlic Bread

Recently, this has been one of our favourite snacks, easy garlic bread. It is a buttered piece of sliced bread on which an inch of garlic paste has been spread over. A minute or two under the grill and it's done. You have to go easy with the garlic paste as it's pretty salty.

Ever since I've worked as a waitress many, many years ago, I have been making garlic bread. For the base I will usually use a decent bread that is beginning to go stale. I would mix up some butter, garlic and herbs to generously spread over. Always a bit of a faff softening the butter but worth it. It never crossed my mind to use boring sliced bread but it is ideal for using up the crusts that nobody wants. Unfortunately our paste is now all used and won't be replaced anytime soon. We're now on the fresh garlic thanks to our garden. So whilst garlic bread is still an option, it's not quite so quick to prepare.  

What a lot of gooseberries!

The morning's harvest

What am I to do with half a basket of gooseberries? As a child I would make gooseberry fool but I suspect that my boys won't touch it. Gooseberry jam? Definitely an option but probably for the adults and we don't tend to eat much jam. Chutney is another option but we have so many that we don't need yet another. A quick google seems to show that bbc good food have two ideas I fancy trying, cordial and sorbet.

I'll let you know if they are a success!

Just a little garlic

Garlic

We have harvested all of our garlic. They are currently enjoying the sunshine drying out. It's been a pretty good haul this year, half of which popped up from plantings that disappeared with the bad weather last summer. I wasn't sure what to expect of these considering that they had been in the ground for almost two years but I left them growing between the other plants as they appeared to be healthy, they have bulked up nicely and harvested you can't tell any difference.

My initial plan is to make a plait, I've always loved these and they are quick and easy to do. Long term I will probably mash and freeze the cloves before they start growing again but if they do sprout they'll go straight into a pot. Waste not, want not!

This years garlic was started off in modules thanks to our late spring. This has been such a success that I'll probably do it this way again. I tend to plant in spring as I've never had much success from autumn sowings. By doing this I can get away with using garlic purchased from the supermarket. I've actually achieved better plants this way than by using cloves purchased from the garden centre, it's better on my pocket too. Ideally I would plant from my own garlic but somehow there never seems to be any left over.