At the moment there are doll quilts winging their way across the Atlantic between England and Utah. Pattilou and I posted the quilts within a day of each other. And because I can't visit Pattilou in real life, I have visited her blog, and seen that she has had a bumper crop of peaches. Coming from a country where you would need a walled garden, an expert gardener and an extraordinarily good year to grow your own peaches (a long winded way of saying it is virtually impossible), I have to confess to a slight wave of envy. When we were in Poland this summer the peach trees in my husband's cousin's garden were laden with fruit, whereas last year they rotted on the tree. So this summer was the first time I had ever eaten home grown peaches, and very tasty they were too. Pattilou has made lots of peach jam... which got me thinking... so I took a trip to the greengrocer's and came home with peaches from Italy and nectarines from Spain, which combined with English apples and lemons from I can't remember where...
... gave me the ingredients to start experimenting. Hooray it worked! Here is the video if you want to have a go. Welcome to Loree Ellis, the latest follower - thank you for joining!
One of the true great joys of late summer and autumn - blackberries! It is worth all the scratches from the brambles to get at the fruit. Last week I went out hacking back the nettles and checking the hedges around a couple of fields near home, getting well and truly scratched and stung so I could have enough for a nice big bowl of perfect blackberries. When we were in Poland in August the blackberries were just finishing, and their brambles are a different variety to ours - not so widespread and rampant, and not half so tough and prickly. Our brambles are complete thugs compared to theirs, and the fruit starts to ripen about a month after theirs have finished. The fruit here will keep on going for a few weeks. I could stock the freezer if it weren't already full.
And because the freezer was full, I had to make jam straight away. So here's the video if you want to give it a try. Linking up today with Liz's blog Brambleberry Cottage (how appropriate) for Time Travel Thursday so you can see lots of other projects, including recipes..
I went out looking for blackberries yesterday, but it is still a bit early so I didn't find many, despite braving five foot high nettles to hurl myself into the brambles in the hedge. Then I found a bush that was absolutely laden with these little beauties - sloes! Tiny wild black plums, far too bitter to eat off the bush, but combined with...
... apples they make wonderful jam.
So I spent most of the day in the kitchen. It was a hot day, bright sunshine, a real Indian summer day, and I was working over a hot stove. The result? A dozen jars of jam, and at one stage, this marvellous colour combination to gaze at. I've already tasted the jam and am looking forward to a nice leisurely breakfast on Saturday. With a bit of luck there might be a new Youtube video up by then... Welcome to the latest follower, Leslie - thank you for joining!
This is where I have been spending hours over the last week or so, with my head stuck in the blackcurrant bushes. It is a bumper crop this year, and one of the bushes has currants so big that the branches are weighed down to the ground. I am already running out of freezer space, so it was fortunate that I had enough jars in the house to make the first batch of jam. Every batch of fruit has to be washed and have the stalks removed, then put in the freezer on the same day, otherwise it won't keep. Making jam in hot weather is pretty daunting, but I've done it. I couldn't face the prospect of doing it all in one day, so I stewed the fruit on Monday, left it in the pan overnight, and added the sugar and finished the job off on Tuesday.
And here's the video. I only kicked the tripod once.
Last year it rained non-stop and I let the birds have the entire fruit crop on the allotment. This summer (we didn't have one last year) is a different story. At the moment it is scorching, with temperatures in the 80s, and I am getting in the fruit as it ripens. The whitecurrant bush is the first one that is ready.
They are easy to pick from the bush, but it takes ages getting them off the stalks. This batch of whitecurrants will be ready to go into the freezer later today. Whitecurrants are quite bitter, with lots of hard pips, but they make a lovely jam or jelly with the strained juice because they are high in pectin. They are very handy to use with a fruit that is low in pectin, such as pears. 2012 was a nil jam year in my kitchen. This year I am worried that the freezer will be full to bursting if I don't collect enough jars very soon.
