Perhaps someone can tell me where the last three weeks have gone, I seem to have been running around in circles and achieving very little. Since my daughters wedding there has been a constant stream of things to do and all my energy seems to have been diverted away from everything non-essential. Also Georgina has had my camera, so a lot of what I have been up to has not been recorded for posterity, this may or may not be a good thing, but most of it WAS edible, honest. Especially the chocolate digestive fridge cake, the cucumber relish and the fish cakes made with fresh Pollock caught by my next door neighbour.
Looking back it’s been a good year, my first full year of trying to live a bit more sustainable, and while there have been a few failures along the way, think Dandelion wine, salad leaves and carrots, but most of my projects have worked, and I know what went wrong so next year hopefully things will be better.
On the plus side, I have over 3kg of berries in the freezer, ready for winter warmers, and have made a lot of Wine and Jam. Also there are still Tomatoes to ripen, Cucumbers and late Raspberries to pick and Strawberry runners to transplant for next year.
The tomatoes have been ready one at a time, so I’ve been keeping them in the fridge, I finally had enough to try and make a sauce, with onions, pepper apples and a peach that was looking a bit over-ripe.
Anyhow I chopped all the above up and boiled them in some vinegar (just enough to cover) with a bit of salt and mixed spice. When they were softened, I liquidised them and added about 600g of sugar.
Returning it to the cooker I boiled it until it thickened, and then bottled it. It probably needs about a month before using, but it’s added to the store cupboard
I did try a Spanish bread recipe, but with little success, it made good breadcrumbs but that was about it.
Georgina has been down for a few days, she returns to Picton shortly, but she asked me for Roast Gammon on Wednesday, without the meat! She just wanted Roast Potatoes, Veg and Gravy. This meant a load of Potato peelings and a chance to use my new toy.
It’s a lot easier than part cooking them in a frying pan, and this time I added them to onions, peppers and mushrooms, with some chopped Chorizo and garlic. It was so successful that I will be doing it again, very soon.
I also made some Stromboli, like the ones in my previous post; I took some to work, and tried it out on two of my Italian colleagues. They seemed to like it, and I found a good use for the last little bit I had left over, more of that later.
It’s been really windy here, and unfortunately my Tomato house has blown over, so I have had to prune the broken plants, I’ve put a load of green tomatoes in a paper bag with banana peel to try and get them to ripen. I think that the remainder of the plants will be OK, at least with them now being out in the open I don’t need to water them in the rain.
Jean next door presented me with a huge bag of apples this morning and I got Yvonne peeling them, whilst I cooked them up for freezing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough plastic boxes so I’m having to freeze them in glass jars.
Back to the Stromboli, for lunch I cut thin slices and toasted them, meanwhile frying up tomatoes with garlic and herbs. A drizzle of Balsamic glaze on the bread, then top it with the tomato mixture.
Anyway I'm sorry if this post seems a bit rushed, but I have a lot of catching up to do.
