Runner Bean Chutney Recipe. How to freeze runner beans.
This morning John Coe and I went down to the kitchen garden to check what was available and edible. For the last few days, I’ve been back late and have gone down with a torch to quickly snatch the vegetables for supper. I discovered that we have finally got our longed for glut of runner beans. The Runner Bean Couple down the road have had their stand laden with huge bunches for the last few weeks. I wonder what they are financing with their takings which must be huge. Our production is not quite at their level so rather than set up a...
read moreSloe and Bramley Apple Jelly Recipe
This teeny jar of Sloe and Bramley Apple Jelly is the last one left in our larder, vintage September 2005. The jar is 1½ inches high and the ladle is in fact a mustard spoon. We ran up some individual portion pots for a friend of ours, as a joke. This one must have got left behind. She had made the mistake of leaving a large jar of our Sloe and Bramley Apple Jelly on the table, when she gave her husband Newmarket sausages for supper and he polished off most of it in one sitting. This recipe makes a good raunchy jelly to eat with red meat,...
read moreRaspberry gin recipe
This recipe can be used for blackberry gin and vodka Our autumn fruiting raspberries are late, but they’re finally here. Just a few of them. Succulent and tempting and the promise of more to follow. If you grow autumn fruiting raspberries you might like to have a go at making this delicious raspberry gin. The liqueur is delicate yet has a fresh raspberry bite that makes a change from the raunchiness of sloe gin. (This is a fresh review. I nipped out to the barn this evening to try some of our July 2006 vintage and it was superb. Fragrant...
read moreArbroath Smokies for breakfast
We’ve just finished a hearty breakfast of Arbroath Smokies and hot buttered toast. It was Danny’s turn to stay in bed, reading the Sunday football supplement, whilst I toiled below.I first saw these fish mentioned in Rick Stein’s Seafood Lovers’ Guide and wondered what on earth they were. We have since discovered that they are hot smoked haddock. He makes a kedgeree using smokies. We tried his recipe using ordinary smoked haddock and it was fragrant and delicious. I saw them on the Waitrose fish counter a few weeks ago...
read moreOur first honey harvest
All summer long we’ve dreamt about the first honey harvest from our very own bees. We live in the centre of a large rural village. As bees fly in a 1.5 mile radius from their hive, we reckoned that our autumn honey harvest would largely come from spring and summer garden flowers, flowering trees and clover. And of course, our honey would be exceptional.We spent hours looking at the colour of the pollen in the tiny baskets that bees have on their legs. You can match it to the pollen colours on a little colour card that indicates where...
read moreWindfall apples for the chickens
Chickens are strange creatures. I tossed in some windfall apples this morning and they fled behind their coop, peering at them suspiciously. After a long minute or so, Mrs Boss picked her way over to the nearest apple and regarded it closely with her head on one side. She took a quick bite and then another. By the time she was really tucking in, she was joined by the others.I can’t understand why Mrs Boss, a small bantam and bottom of the pecking order, is our most courageous chicken when ‘new food’ is introduced. The two...
read moreIt took me a year to drive to Beth Chatto’s garden
My sister, Sara, gave me a birthday treat today. We went out to lunch and then on to visit this famous magical English garden.Whenever I think of this garden, it’s the ponds that I remember. Vast stretches of water surrounded by water loving shrubs and perrenials. Exotic plants loll in the shallows and the architectural giant, gunnera, gives the pond garden a real Alice in Wonderland feel. We chatted and looked and breathed in the garden. We spotted some grey fish with a red flash on tail and fins. Leaving the ponds, we strolled through...
read moreBest cucumber pickle recipes. Special Awards.
Jo’s Award Winning Cucumber Pickle Recipe is at the bottom of this post. My friend Jo is great. She shares her recipes. Even her special ones.Three years ago she told me she had a great recipe for cucumber chutney, if we ever have a glut. I’d just given her a cucumber, one of our bumper “count on one hand” cucumber harvest, so I didn’t trouble her for the recipe at the time.This year, everything changed. I noticed that we had masses of flowers on our greenhouse cucumbers. Tiny dolls house sized cucumbers followed...
read moreDamson Cheese Recipe: for savoury and sweet dishes. How to freeze damsons/plums.
I opened the fridge door this morning and a small cloud of fruit flies floated out. What was going on? We had just given the fridge its quarterly spring clean. I investigated further and found a large bag of tiny damsons from Kent, that I’d bought on Saturday and now it was Tuesday. I washed and picked over the fruit. Only a few were turning. It’s surprising how quickly autumn fruit can go off, even in the fridge. At this time of year, we are given a lot of fruit for preserves. Quite often we pop them in the freezer (how to freeze...
read moreFigs
I love figs.When I bite into the first ripe fig of the season, the pleasure is overwhelming. There is something very sensual about this fruit. I bet Anthony and Cleopatra had a bowl of figs on their bedside table. Of course it’s the leaf, not the fruit, which has been endlessly immortalised in stone. I’ve never quite worked that out. Vine leaves are prettier and much more delicate. Perhaps the waxiness of the fig leaf was easier to carve. Biting into that first ripe September fig is an experience that is both familiar yet curiously...
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Recent Comments
{ I was thinking the same as Magic Cochin but then like you I don't have my phone attached by an umbilical cord wherever I go.... } – Wed 8 :47 pm
{ Good point but I don't tend to take it about with me everywhere 
} – Wed 7 :25 pm
{ Doesn't your mobile phone have an alarm setting? C x } – Wed 6 :32 pm
{ I would put it towards a bbq, it's just a shame you can't purchase some sunshine from b&q } – Wed 12 :04 am- { Hi Lesley The clucking means that she is brrody also plucking her own feathers is a sign too. } – Tue 11 :58 pm
- { Hi Lesley They have to stay in the broody coop 24/7. Could you put in a garden shed or garage? } – Tue 11 :57 pm
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