Monthly Archives: August 2015

Bottling Apricots

The finished product - apricots bottled in syrup.

Having already made two batches of apricot jam, and a gallon of apricot wine, we decided our next adventure in apricot preservation would be bottling. The bottling of fruits is a centuries old tradition, nowadays all but replaced with tinned fruit. We don’t have the equipment necessary to tin our own fruit, so we decided to give bottling a go. We’d never done it before, but in the River Cottage Handbook on Preserves, Pam Corbin covers the process in some detail, including a very helpful table which shows, by fruit and by heating method (more on this later), the heating…

Blackberry and apple fruit leather cut into strips and ready to eat.

I mentioned in my post from the Friday before last that we had plans for the blackberries that the kids picked in the garden. We were all very excited about this as it is something that we’ve never tried before but have been meaning to do for some time: making fruit leather. Fruit leather is simply fruit dried into a thin, chewy sheet. In the River Cottage Handbook on Preserves, Pam Corbin has a recipe for a blackberry and apple fruit leather, so we decided to give that a go using the blackberries from the garden (topped up with the…

Homemade apricot wine fermenting in a demijohn

After making two batches of apricot jam, and with our neighbours still offering more fruit, we decided to look for other methods of apricot preservation. One of my first ports of call is always Brian Leverett’s Winemaking Month by Month book. As usual it didn’t disappoint. Leverett’s standard apricot wine recipe calls for sultanas to improve the body of the wine. However, he does offer a variation of the recipe which doesn’t use any sultanas, instead using more sugar than the standard recipe. Leverret says that wine made by this variation of the recipe lacks the body of the standard,…

All from the borders of the vegetable patch - great fun for adults and younger helpers alike!

I took a day’s holiday from work today as we had things to do in the morning. We had finished all of the important things we had to do by late morning, so we took the opportunity to get the kids out into the garden to harvest some soft fruits. We have several plum trees in and around our garden that are laden with ripe plums. In truth there are too many, they are mostly self-seeded and are too close together. Lately when I’ve been working in the garden they’ll be a small thudding sound every five minutes or so,…

The first instalment of apricots from our neighbours.

Our neighbours have had a really good crop of apricots this year and have been donating us their surplus in instalments. They also offered us their tried and tested apricot jam recipe. It is pretty much the standard a pound of sugar per pound of fruit recipe, but they were quite specific on how to process the kernels, and how many to use. We love jam in our house. The children particularly love it. Thinking about it from a child’s point of view, what’s not to love? It’s fruit and sugar, probably their favourite ingredients in the world aside from…

A donation from a neighbour - some windfall apples and some overripe gooseberries.

The gardens here are filled with apple trees. It was a beautiful sight when we moved in back in May and they were all in blossom. It’s beautiful now too, as the fruits are really starting to fill out and the different varieties are starting to show their own traits. We had strong winds the weekend before last, and one of our neighbours gave us some windfall apples from her trees. This time of year they are nowhere near ripe and so far too tart to eat raw, but she wondered whether we might find a use for them. Now…

The pumpkin patch is coming on leaps on bounds.

Just a quick update from the garden. It’s amazing how much it’s come on in the two months since we really set to work. Particularly the crops that we didn’t plant until we moved in, for example everything in the pumpkin patch (every single plant in the image above), the runner beans, potatoes, beetroot and parsnips, to name but a few. Much to the kids’ excitement we’ve recently started harvesting our blueberries (potted plants we brought with us). Our potatoes have started dying back too, so the kids can get their hands dirty harvesting them soon (probably their favourite garden…

Charred, soft, moist and slightly salted courgette slices.

Last weekend we harvested our first courgettes of the year, and we’ve been doing so regularly ever since. The week before had been a busy one for me, and I’d barely found time to get out into the garden. I’d seen that there were some courgettes just about ready, but I left them for the weekend. The weekend came and we were away visiting family all day Saturday, and it wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I got out into the garden. There had been a lot of rain on Friday and Saturday (I’m sure I heard somewhere that we had…

Slightly Self-Sufficient

Tasting The Good Life

Monthly Archives: August 2015

Bottling Apricots

Making Fruit Leather

Making Apricot Wine

A Fun Day Harvesting in the Garden

Apricot Jam Recipe

Putting Windfall Apples to Good Use

Early August Garden Update

Griddled Courgettes