New Day, New Challenges

Up early today as this is the only day for the next five days that we will get dry weather - so the powers the be say.

So off to survey, repair, recover and weed up the allotment. It is so very wet, but needs must.

I also have to get back and make a new rain cover for the bantams run, as theirs is ripped to shreds. So it will be a busy day.



After vacuum packing and labelling my tomato puree mixture last night,it was getting late so I just flopped on the sofa, put a relaxing CD on - Dire Straits - and read my book. A rare treat for me. Pat was out bowling, so no television, and I got the whole sofa to myself - bliss.

Free Food

Free food – who can resist a freebie?

Have you every sat and thought how much food you can get for free – and with a bit of imagination – and work – you can turn it into delicious things to eat.

Those of you who grow vegetables already realise, that from one seed – for example a runner bean seed – you literally get dozens and dozens of free food – and if you let a few pods grow large and save the seed – then you get next year’s crops for free – ad infinitum. So seed saving should be high on everyone’s list at this time of year.

I try to save the seed from peas, and beans, but often other seed is hard to save as the plants do not always come ‘true’ unless you have them isolated of course.

I have left one plant at the end of this row of my first to crop beans for seeds for next year.

This is a later sowing of beans, and I am leaving one plant in the middle that has unusual colourings for seeds too. That is the fun - wondering what will grow from them.

The pea and bean family seeds are so easy to save and keep over winter for next season, but I have never been successful with salad seeds. Onions are a good one to try, but the inclement weather often means that you lose them to the wind or rain unless you keep them covered. Pumpkin and courgette seeds are others that are easy to save – but are notorious for cross ‘breeding’ so you won’t know exactly what you will get until they grow – which often doesn’t matter.

Today I have been very industrious and have been on the hunt for free food – well fruit in particular to use to make jam.

My horoscope yesterday said that I would be getting a windfall – a large sum of money from a long lost uncle of aunt (a bit difficult as I don’t have any) but it did make me laugh.

Instead I got windfalls of a different nature – apples – bags of them, which I have been peeling and packing for hours.

Coming back from a visit to town, I notice a lady walking along a lane with a carrier bag.

‘That lady has got a bag of apples’ I said to Pat. ‘How do you know that it has apples in it?’ he said, ‘it could be anything’.

‘It is definitely apples, as she never walks from that direction – there have got to be windfalls along there somewhere’

He laughed disbelieving me, but good humouredly he took the next left turn past the windmill and along the lane – driving slowly (there wasn’t any traffic) whilst I scoured the front driveways for the tell tale box or bags – to no avail. But I was convinced that there were apples around there somewhere. So we did a U turn and went towards the mere and lo and behold we found a stall outside a house. Carrier bags with windfall apples in for donations to a local charity – out I jumped and donated for three bags.

When I returned home, in the porch was a bag of apples – windfalls – a neighbour had been given them. She had taken a few out to make a pie and had left me the rest. I rewarded her with half a dozen eggs and a jar of jam.

Another friend called me to say that she had a bag of apples for me, and got her husband to drop them off in the porch too!

I was mindful of the saying ‘one good turn deserves another’ and felt incredibly grateful for people’s kindness – and told them both so. But they reminded me that since I have had my allotment, I have deposited a lot of ‘free food’ on their doorsteps too – but I didn’t do it for any reward – I did it for the pleasure I get from seeing their faces and knowing how much they appreciate fresh grown veggies.

So fast forward to this afternoon – when we had hailstones would you believe – and I was sat in my conservatory with a tray on my lap, bags of apples to my left, and a huge bowl to my right, and a recycle bin in front of me.

After cutting out all the bruises, and ‘dodgy’ bits, I still ended up with 13 pounds of apples. I have 11 bags prepared and vacuum packed in the freezer, I made Pat (and me) a huge blackberry and apple crumble (which we will be having a little of each day.


I made another batch of blackberry and apple jam – which turned out brilliantly, and I still have half a bag of cooking apples left. So I shall be raiding the freezer for frozen fruit to make even more apple & jam combinations.


My windowsill has a row of ripening squash (mini pumpkins) on it, and a butternut squash that narrowly escaped decapitation by the lawn mower as it had broken out of it’s enclosure, together with others and was growing across the lawn, hidden under some huge leaves.

From a few seeds, I have dozens of pumpkins and squash – free food in my mind as one seed replaced itself hundreds of times.

In the coming days, I hope to gather some hips, haws, and berries, to make some more concoctions – together with some windfall apples too.

I can afford to buy apples, etc. but when I buy from a supermarket, I can not be sure that they have not been radiated to prolong the life, or waxed to improve their looks, or been transported thousands of miles, sometimes from the other side of the world, or sprayed with any chemicals.

The windfalls might have the odd maggot hole, and some had earwigs in them (I can hear some of you say ‘yuk’and shiver.) But those creatures have just been living in the core of the apple – not munching the whole lot! And you can be sure of one thing – it won’t have been treated with anything nasty or they wouldn’t be there!

What a day! Weather wise and other wise.

I have just spent two hours looking for something that I have put away safely so that it did not get damaged, and I can not for the life of me find it. It is so irritating. We only have a small home – and I keep it tidy too – so why can’t I find this package. Grrrr

Best get my detective onto it tomorrow – maybe he has moved things around!

Well as the most horrendous weather stopped any outside work, I set too on doing things that kept me mainly indoors.

I am pleased to announce that the courgette mountain is now well and truly finished – but the squash mountain is in full swing.

Too good to waste – too many to eat right now – we would be sick to the teeth if we had them every day!

The solution – to make veggie burgers – a variation of the Greek recipe I featured earlier.

As usual I did a bulk amount using, different varieties of squash, potatoes, green tomatoes, onions, carrot, and seasonings, flour, rusk instead of breadcrumbs, and eggs.







We had some for lunch to try them out as you can see. (Two each is far too many, we could hardly move after eating that plateful of homemade sausages and freshly picked beans too). No potatoes - they are in the burgers, we are trying to eat sensibly. I also roasted them instead of frying them and it worked a treat. I had a big dollop of tomato ketchup with mine - just for the colour combination of course - it did look pretty though. I like colourful things to eat.

If anyone wants the recipe let me know and I will post it. I weighed things this time, instead of just throwing it all in!

I tackled a pile of little yellow pear tomatoes – cut them in half, removed the seeds, then put them in my food drier which is out in the studio.


I want to make some jars of sun dried tomatoes for presents – what else?


When I went back in to check on them earlier this evening, the room smelt just wonderful of tomatoes in the sunshine – now there’s a surprise. I think that for ones as presents I should wait and use the bigger varieties. In olive oil, the yellow ones might not show up so well. So the batch that I have done, I put on for a bit longer and got dried tomatoes. I am going to dry some green ones too – the big ones – so they will take up less space and I can use them not only in all sorts of recipes, but also to make some stock bags with some other veg – another idea I had – whether it will work or not I have no idea.



In between doing all the above, I made two batches of jam totalling 8 lbs. That may not sound like much, but it is when you are preparing it, and standing stirring and watching it, then bottling it. Worth all the effort though.

The first batch I made was a mixture – again one I threw together – as so long as you have the right ratio of fruit to sugars, then it doesn’t seem to matter which fruit you use – and if they are low in pectin you can just cut up a lemon and add a tablespoonful or so of juice.

First off was elderberry, blackberry, and apple, spiced with cinnamon. I read about it last night and posted the recipe on The Potting Shed forum (link on the right). In the book it was Spiced Blackberry Jam, but again, the ratios apply to that as well.

I have to say that it smelt wonderful, and reminded me of a trip to USA with some friends which coincided with my December birthday. We of course went to a shopping Mall, to get Christmas presents for everyone, and the smell of ‘Christmas’ spices wafted out of a fantastic little kitchen craft shop. They had all sorts of Christmas food for sale, and were dishing out hot drinks. (Nice how an aroma can transport you back to somewhere or remind you of someone.)

I bought a pot stand which was a hand made craft item. It was a ‘sausage’ of Christmas material filled with something like bean bag filling and wrapped into a Cumberland sausage shape to form a flat mat. It had Christmas spices in it, so when you stood something hot on it, the air was filled with the spicy smell. I still have it actually – and it is still doing it’s stuff.

- Off on a tangent again! Now where was I – ah yes the spiced jam. I made four pounds finished weight, and put some into those little jars you get in hotels at breakfast. Someone gave me half a dozen and I knew they would come in handy.

My son and daughter in law and baby are off to Japan later in the year, and her parents like the preserves I make, so I want to do a variety of small jars of all sorts; large jars being too heavy and liable to break.

This afternoon I made just over four pounds of blackberry and apple jam. I made it so that the blackberries appear all through the jam, some whole.

Poor Pat thought that the ones I had left were for an apple and blackberry crumble! Tish – we are supposed to be losing some pounds. (Don’t tell him that I sampled the jam from the preserving pan, just before I washed it.) Well I had too didn’t I? – I couldn’t risk giving it away untested now could I.

That is how I know that the spiced jam is wicked!