64 days ago
The white flowers on bindweed are stunning but the plant is a pest. I do not know about where you are but in these parts it has been a bumper year for bindweed. It is everywhere. I try to control it, pulling it down as it strangles what I have planted and tossing it on a growing bonfire for November. But it is a losing battle.
65 days ago
With fresh raspberries and blackberries and strawberries frozen earlier in the summer, I was able to serve up a birthday treat summer pudding for Joshua. I have enough of all three in the freezer to do the same for Jaya on her birthday in November. The blackberry season is almost over but i hope to take the kids for one last big forage to add to our stores. I pick and free more raspberries almost every other day, the harvest has been enormous.
69 days ago
The sister of the Mrs was around so as soon as the kids were in bed she was off to the Hare. Left home alone, I had a chance to catch up in the Kitchen. Joshua’s birthday looms and like that of his mother, it will be a four day affair with events each day to celebrate. So there is cooking for that to do plus the storing of other produce for the Autumn.
79 days ago
What you do not see is a tray of blackberries flash frozen and packed away in the freezer for making winter summer puddings and another litre of ice cream (blackberry) now on its way to the same place. However…
83 days ago
The raspberries, largly golden, are the gift from the garden that just keeps on giving. It took me just a quarter on an hour to clean the bushes yet again and the bowl that I brought in was enough for Joshua to grab a few, for me to make another litre of ice cream and to have enough left over to flash freee a tray, as you can se below.
148 days ago
Okay the bread and sugar was bought in but the raspberries, blackcurrants and strawberries were all home grown. With my weight now down three stone this year at just 14 stones, I broke my rigid diet and had a small portion with a bit of cream. It was delicious and the family demands that I make another pudding this weekend. We might be a tad short of raspberries so for pudding two I have bought some blackberries from Tesco to add to the mix
150 days ago
The strawberries keep on coming but as you can see below we now have blackcurrants aplenty and the first raspberries, golden and red. It is almost time for summer pudding. Meanwhile I have been active in the top field where one day I hope to keep goats.
155 days ago
The freezer is starting to bulge. The strawberry patches have now been bearing fruit for almost two weeks and there seems no end. Each evening a new basket arrives in the house: a snack box for Joshua, strawberries for my porridge at breakfast, snacking strawberries to help give the Mrs 5 a day. Then some will go into ice cream, the freezer now holds six litres ofthe stuff. The rest go on trays to freeze and then into bags which are also piling up in the freezer. the good news is that raspberries (golden and red), dessert gooseberries and blackcurrants are also now ripe so this weekend I shall be serving up, but not eating myself, the first summer pudding of the year.
164 days ago
I rather wish I had not bothered watering my vegetables today as God has just watered them with a vengeance. Wales really has been wet this summer which, like the drought of a couple of years ago, will be cited by the GroupThink as definitive proof of global warming.
512 days ago
With all home grown: cherries, black currants, red currants, raspberries, blackberries (okay foraged and frozen), dessert gooseberries and strawberries this was a triumph. Okay the juice missed a bit at the bottom but the sliced bread held and allowed me to turn it out almost perfectly. With lashings of cream it was excellent. The first half was last night, we will polish it off tonight. Yum, yum!
513 days ago
A mixture of sweet and sour cherry trees were among the first things I planted at the Welsh Hovel after clearing the jungle. It was three and a half years ago that I planted eight trees alongside the wall that overlooks the track down to the house. I have added a couple since with fanciful ideas of cherry blossom falling onto the road.
514 days ago
The only cheat is the blackberries which Joshua and I picked last September and froze. Everything else I just picked in the garden this lunchtime: strawberries, three of four very early raspberries (red and golden), dessert gooseberries, red currants and black currants. I shall cook this evening and serve tomorrow night with lashings of cream. Photos will follow. Summer is well and truly here.
3022 days ago
I noted in my culinary bible that is a Darina Allen tome a recipe for summer pudding without raspberries. Darina uses cake as her padding I stick with the traditional white bread. Armed with the last of the blackcurrants from Shipston as well as the last of the dessert gooseberries I started to improvise. Having cooked both fruit until they popped in sugar water the overwhelming taste was blackcurrant. The juice was like concentrated ribena. But cripes there was not enough mixture for both bowls.
