A Fruity Start to Autumn

I've been really lucky this year with friends offering me fruit from their gardens. Juicy plums have been turned into pie filling for the freezer whilst my daughters made a delicious plum sponge. Apples, pears and damsons have been turned into crumbles and muffins and apple cake and yet more pie fillings. My freezer is beginning to look full of the promise of warming desserts to see us through the cold winter months.

Often, my kitchen will look like this...

...but the chickens enjoy picking over the waste before it finds its way into the compost bin.

I have a grape vine in my greenhouse and the crop of grapes this year has been the best yet.

The children aren't too keen on eating them because they are not seedless so I set about making some Grape Jelly. I found the recipe on the BBC Good Food website which is rapidly becoming my first port of call when I need inspiration. My father in law, who was staying with us at the time, kindly helped me in the kitchen and between us we made a beautiful bright red jelly with a gorgeous flavour and good set. The only disaster that we had (and it was a pretty major disaster) was that my one jar cracked when we poured the jelly in. We improvised and used a pyrex jug instead. It was the best solution at the time but it has been inconvenient not having my jug available to use and does not quite have the 'homemade jam' charm when brought to the table! On the plus side, the jelly is disappearing rapidly (delicious with scones) so my jar will be back in my cupboard soon.

I made a second batch of the jelly when I had collected some more jars. I hoped that I could save a jar to have with croissants for our Christmas day breakfast. I heated and mashed the washed fruit to release the juice and sieved it overnight through muslin.

I boiled it with Jam Sugar and lemon juice until it reached 105º on a sugar thermometer. I poured it into my jars which didn't crack this time. It had the same fantastic colour. It smelt divine. It totally refused to set!

I need my father in law back.

I may not have my Christmas day jam but I do have some rather tasty grape sauce - perfect for pouring over icecream.

Knit Your Own Zombie

The chill in the air and the carpet of autumn leaves is leaving no doubt as to the time of year and Hallowe'en is very nearly upon us. Usually by now, my house would be decorated and parties planned but I have been very slow to get going for some reason I have yet to fathom. I have, though, completed a craft project which combines my love of the macabre with my knitting hobby and made this handsome little fella.

The pattern is from Fiona Goble's Knit Your Own Zombie which I highly recommend (should you have any leaning towards knitting needles, yarn and the undead).

The protruding entrails do detach completely from the 'gut pocket' leaving plenty of room to insert a brown rat should you desire. I have made the rat but my personal preference is for the guts. I just love the colour!

One day I may progress onto sensible and useful hats, gloves, scarves and jumpers but for now, I'm having far too much fun.

Silent Sunday

Time to Turn the Central Heating On?

Changing Seasons

Although I can't help feeling a little sad that summer has come to an end, I actually love the transition between seasons. There is a great sense of ritual about packing away the outdoor summer toys and furniture and preparing for the darker days ahead. My hands feel a little raw from cleaning the hundreds of balls from the ball pool and battling in the high winds to dismantle the kid's gazebo this morning, but there is something immensely satisfying about it.

Tomorrow, the school term starts and my girls are ready with their new stationery and timetables accessed via the internet. For me it is a big day because my little girl starts nursery school, five mornings a week. We have been preparing for it all summer long and she is fond of saying that she starts school in SepTEMberrrrr!! Well now it is SepTEMberrrr and I am wondering how she will cope with the reality of it all. Grandma sent a 'Starting School' sticker book which we completed together yesterday with lots of chat  and her new coat and shoes  are neatly in her room waiting to keep a tiny body warm on the walk to school and make tiny feet look ready for a big girl's world. How quickly they grow up.

The apple trees in my garden have been laden with fruit this year and I am sure that there will be enough windfalls now to make a very fine pie. I am a bit squeamish about cutting into the less than perfect fruits. Just imagining the maggots brings back a memory with all too vivid clarity - a memory involving a morning cup of tea, an unwelcome addition to that cup of tea and a seriously unpleasant way of finding out about that addition. It will all be worth it though when that pie comes out of the oven, golden and aromatic and a wonderful way to celebrate the arrival of autumn.

Autumn also means falling leaves. It is my intention this year to keep the leaf blower handy so I can regularly tackle the gathering masses of leaves on my lawn and hopefully stop too many blowing into my pond. It seems like a never ending war but one I am determined, if not to win, at least to not be totally defeated.

As I look out of my window now, I can see the trees bending in the wind and the first drops of cold rain hitting the glass. It will soon be time to turn the central heating on and look forward to long, cosy evenings  in front of my fire, probably with a glass of wine. Who needs sunshine!

Apple Season

I love good food and I  love to cook. Sometimes I will throw a bag of oven chips and a pizza in the oven and open a can of baked beans, but when time allows, there is nothing as satisfying as preparing a wonderful, well thought out meal and having it enjoyed by my family.

Most of all, I love to embrace the seasonality of cooking. Don't get me wrong, if I want fresh strawberries on Christmas day I will buy them, but I can guarantee that they won't fill me with the same joy as the first succulent red fruit of the summer from my garden. Better yet if that fruit is picked and eaten straight from the plant, warmed by the summer sun.

At this time of year, there is no shortage of windfalls from the two apple trees in my garden. The trees are very old and seem to harbour quite an extensive ecosystem of bugs and fungi. This does not create an environment conducive to the production of perfect fruits. They do tend to be a bit scabby and ... well maggoty! It takes a braver person than I to actually bite into one without a preliminary exploratory! I suppose I could fight back with insecticides and fungicides but it goes against my principles to live as natural and organic life as I can. I could tackle the problem with the alternative green solutions but if I'm honest, I don't really have a problem with the bugs taking their share as long as there is some left for me.

I do still buy apples from the supermarket for just straight eating, but for cooking, my garden apples are great. My favourite use is for Apple Crumble.

My family never tire of crumble. We vary the crumble topping by using different sugars (from regular white granulated to the dark muscavado) and adding oats of different grades (from fine oatmeal to jumbo oats) and sometimes using a range of different chopped nuts as I have available. No two crumbles are ever the same! I also vary the filling by adding small amounts of other ingredients. Summer fruits from the garden that I have frozen are a family favourite but my personal favourite is to mix some pear in with the apple. Served with cream or ice cream or custard it never stops being a treat.

I have recently started going to a local ice cream farm that sell 30 amazing flavours of ice cream. I am already imagining an apple crumble served with their sticky toffee pudding flavour ice cream.

As much as I love variety and experimentation, there is also something thoroughly comforting about my mum's apple pie. 

My mum is amazing. You give her a giant bag of cruddy old windfalls and she will return the following week with a beautifully crafted home made apple pie for me and one for my sister. They are always identical. They are always delicious. As long as I keep giving her the apples, the apple pies keep appearing. I make sure I keep giving her the apples!

I will finish with a story from 'apple season' a few years ago.

My husband is a darling. Every morning, for as long as we have been together, he brings me a cup of tea in bed.  He is a morning person. I am not. I can barely open my eyes without that first injection of caffeine. This particular morning, as with most mornings, I was thoroughly enjoying my morning brew whilst relaxing into my plumped up pillows. I am a 'drain the mug dry' sort of person and that is exactly what I did. There was something a bit odd about that last mouthful though. There was something solid in it. Thinking it was a lump of scale from the kettle I rolled it around my mouth with my tongue to identify it and get it into a position for easy ejection. It didn't feel like scale. It felt more meaty somehow. Could it be a large grain of rice that had become engorged with the boiling water? No, it was far too big for that. I was absolutely horrified when I removed it from my mouth to see that it was a grotesquely bloated, pink headed maggot. It must have migrated from the gathered windfalls in my kitchen and found its way into the mug that my husband had left by the kettle in readiness for his tea making duty. Even now, thinking about those moments that I rolled it around my mouth with my tongue make me feel a little peculiar.

It is a testament to how much I love my husband that I was able to forgive him!

This post was inspired by 'Oui Chef"  at http://www.beckicklesie.com/ 
"Mum's Cooking".