Doing a Runner

My runner bean plants are now producing a couple of kilos (more than 4lbs) of beans a week, which is far more than we want to eat. I've already made a year's supply of chutney, to preserve some of them. So I cut a huge batch of them, blanched them and then froze them in bags of 500g each. That should keep us going through the next few months.

There's a Met Office Weather Warning, with severe gales expected in the next few days. That could be the end of my runner beans for this season. I'll be picking them daily until it hits us.

High culture

The organic veg box gets delivered each Thursday, so on Thursday nights I use up all the week-old veggies that are still in the fridge. Stir fries, soups and casseroles are all good ways of using up assorted veg, but last night we had a veggie curry, with naan bread and popadums, couscous and salad.

I wanted to make a courgette raita as well, but discovered we'd almost run out of yogurt, so today I made some more. Like bean-sprouts, I've been making my own yogurt for years. It's easy and it's cheaper than buying the stuff. It's also satisfying and fun to make things.

You boil a pint or so of milk (skimmed will work just as well as full-fat or anything in between), then cool it to blood temperature, which is a bit hotter than you think. Then you stir in a tablespoon of live yogurt. I use the last bit of the old batch unless it fails or goes mouldy, in which case I buy a small pot at the health food shop. Then you need to keep it warm for a few hours. I have a yogurt maker that is a sort of wide-necked thermos flask, and another type that is more like an electric incubator. I have to say the incubator type is more reliable.

After a few hours (or overnight) you'll have thickened plain yogurt. You'll want to chill it because warm yogurt is kind of yukky. You can add syrup and fruit to make it more like shop-bought fruit yogurt. I like it with sliced banana and maple syrup. Or you can use it for cooking, for salad dressings, smoothies or frozen yogurt and even make a kind of soft cheese. I'll talk about that in a future post.

One of these days I will make yogurt with milk from my own cow or goat. I'm looking forward to that.

Courgette Raita

Grate a couple of courgettes, mix with a teaspoon of ground sea salt then put them in a colander and leave them to drain for an hour or so. Squeeze any remaining liquid out of the courgettes with clean hands, then mix them with about a half pint of home-made plain yogurt. Heat 1 tsp black onion seeds in a dry frying pan and keep them moving until they start to pop, then quickly tip them onto the yogurt/courgette mixture. Add freshly ground black pepper, and a crushed clove of garlic, and more salt if necessary. Stir well and refrigerate until needed. Serve with crudites and mini popadoms as a dip, or as a side dish with an Indian meal. It is excellent for cooling your mouth when eating very spicy dishes.

Jammy

Here's an idea for anyone who has spent longer getting the flaming jam labels to print out properly than they spent making the jam in the first place. Aren't these labels brilliant! Just create a full page of "blackberry jelly" (or whatever) repeated over and over in a pretty font and colour. Then run your sheet of labels through the printer with complete disregard for the label boundaries or careful positioning of the text.

Sadly I can't take credit for this excellent idea. It's from Mrs Nesbitt's blog. I'll certainly be making use of her great ideas on presentation.

Steph's here

My sister, Steph (who sometimes leaves comments here), came to visit for a few days. It's always fun when she comes, especially when she brings her two children TJ and Rebecca. We usually do something creative together. Today we made a big batch of chutney. Then after dinner we took all the kids to the park at the end of our road to pick blackberries and sloes.

It's 9 o'clock at night now, and the kids are theoretically in bed. They seem to be making quite a lot of noise up there though. We're just ignoring them. The chutney is still simmering, and Steph is strumming her guitar whilst I type this blog entry. There's a glass of red wine waiting for me when I'm done. The good life? I'm living it.

Damson harvest

Damsons are funny things. Last year our tree gave enough fruit to make two poxy jars of jam. The year before wasn't much better. But this spring we had an inkling things were going to be a bit different when the blossom was stunning. My neighbour noticed the same thing with his damson trees, so I think the late, wet spring must have suited them.

Yesterday I picked over a stone (15lbs or 7kg) of damsons from our one tree and I only got about half the fruit down (the tree's quite tall). And my neighbour promised me all her fruit earlier in the year. So I'm thinking a big bucket of damson wine.

Sam and I went to Congleton farmer's market. We actually made it this time. Shouldn't have bothered - it was a big disappointment. Most of the stalls were bog-standard British manky market variety - cheap bathtowels and mobile phone fascias etc. We did pick up some home-made cakes and some ostrich sausages from the few genuine farm stalls that were there. We also bought some cheese in the covered market from a trader who was very surprised when I asked where the cheese came from, and if I could taste it before buying.

Flea market

We tried to go to Congelton farmer's market today but we got the wrong day and it was a flea market instead. Never mind. We had fun browsing and each of the kids brought home a new toy, so it wasn't a wasted trip.

I was busy in the kitchen all afternoon making 24 cheesey potato scones, 10 portions of chicken soup and a large batch of gooseberry and marrow chutney.

It's encouraging to see a lot of people have voted in the poll on this page challenging you to only boil as much water as you need. The challenge was inspired by Andy Hamilton on Selfsufficientish.com. He emailed the customer service people from Typhoo, Yorkshire Tea, Tetley, PG tips and Twinings to suggest they include advice on their packaging or adverts not to boil too much water, and he asked other people on the Selfsufficientish forums to do the same. I emailed them and got replies from Yorkshire Tea and Tetley. If you're sitting at the computer with a few minutes on your hands (and I'm guessing you do - you're not reading this blog for your work are you?) why not click on one of the links which will take you directly to a "customer comments" page and ask them to advise tea-drinkers to help save the planet. Coffee drinkers beware - we're coming after you next!

Grey day

We're into the third day of grey rainy weather. The chicken coop has turned into a bit of a quagmire, and the weeds are coming up strongly in the allotment. The plants are even stronger though so I don't mind, but I'll have to get over there for some serious weeding soon.

I've been getting on with jobs in the house instead. I made some hot redcurrant and chilli jam using another Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe (from the Children's Cookbook) which is really delicious. I also made gingerbread men with the kids and chicken soup from the carcase of the chicken we had at the weekend. I painted a built-in cupboard Ed made to house the gas meter ages ago, and I reupholstered a dining chair.

What I haven't managed to do is figure out how to upload the photos from my mobile phone into the PC, nor fix my broken digital camera, so I can't show you any of those things. You'll just have to take my word for it. Hey, if I had wanted to lie I would have said I had met Nelson Mandela, run a marathon and played a live gig to hundreds of thousands of people in Hyde Park. But I didn't. Think about that.

Spuds, square eggs and blackcurrant ice-cream

Put some spuds in at the allotment. I thought it was too late for spuds but the nice couple who gave them to us said they'd be fine. We had a bare bit anyway where I'd planted some broccoli and cabbages that never came up, so now we have a row of spuds.

I can hear the red chicken from where I'm sat at the computer and she sounds like she's laying a square egg.

I made Sid's blackcurrants (see http://tinyurl.com/jcs8z) into blackcurrant double ripple ice cream. The recipe is from the book The River Cottage Year so I won't reprint it here. But it's on the River Cottage Website at http://tinyurl.com/zv8ry so if you want to make it you can look it up yourself. If you can get hold of blackcurrants I recommend you try it, it's absolutely delicious and also one of those recipes that look like you spent ages faffing on with difficult techniques, but actually it's really easy. I whipped up the first batch whilst I was also cooking dinner, as an afterthought, that's how easy it is. Of course, Sid's delicious allotment blackcurrants make all the difference, and I had enough for two batches so I've plenty of it. I think I'll save some from Sam until one of my sisters visits, because I'll bet they'd like it.

Baking Day

Good, eh, and I'm not done yet. There are still more cooked cherries in the pan which will make a few more batches of cherry choc chunk ice cream as soon as I buy more cream.

And there's good news from the chickens. They hadn't been laying well over the weekend, producing one or no eggs a day. I was waiting for them to get back to normal, and today they produced three egss. Someone is overachieving, but I can't tell who since they both produce identical eggs.

Cherry Jam

Add 6 1/2 lbs pitted home-grown morello cherries to the juice of 3 organic lemons and simmer until the cherries are soft. Add 3 1/2 lbs Whitworth's Jam Sugar and boil until it reaches 106C, or until a small amount poured onto a saucer which has been in the freezer wrinkles when pushed with your finger. Pour into clean sterile jam jars and seal. Wipe and label jars and allow to cool.

Cherry Pie

Add 1lb pitted home-grown morello cherries to the juice of an organic lemon and simmer until the cherries are soft. Add fair trade granulated sugar to taste (probably at least 8oz). Then stir 2 teaspoons arrowroot to 1 tablespoon water and stir until dissolved. pour the arrowroot mixture into the cherries and stir for 30 seconds until thick. Pour the cherry pie filling into a prepared pastry case (I'm not putting pastry instructions here. If you don't already have a favourite sweet short pastry recipe, Google for one), and choose one of the following options:

1. Open cherry tart - that's it. Bake your open tart.
2. Lattice cherry tart - cut strips of leftover pastry and lay them on the tart in a lattice pattern. Brush with beaten egg and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden.
3. Cherry pie - roll out a pie top and place on the pie, crimping the edges with a fork. Cut a hole or two in the top to let steam out during baking. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden.

Sign of the Times

I made this sign for the allotment. Steph suggested I put the address of the blog on it, and at first I thought that would just be geeky and sad. But then someone left a message on our allotment asking for my email address (they also left some seeds - allotment people are the best!) which made me think it wouldn't be a bad idea after all. I'm also tickled by the juxtaposition of old and new.

I picked a stone of cherries (14lbs or 6.5kg) off the tree in the front garden today, so this evening Ed and I will be de-stoning them and turning them into jam, pies, and ice-cream. I just looked up the price of cherries in Tesco and that's £44 worth of cherries. And by the time they're jam, pies etc. they'll be worth even more. I feel pretty good about that.

Life is a . . .

We have a cherry tree in the front garden, but normally the birds eat the lot as soon as they start to show any colour at all. But for some reason this year they have left them completely alone, and today Sam and I went out and picked a large bowlful, leaving plenty of unripe cherries on the tree for later.

They're the sour type so you can't eat them raw but they're delicious cooked with plenty of sugar. Sam helped me make some of them into cherry choc chip ice cream, and I froze the rest to make pie or jam later.

Cherry Choc Chunk Ice Cream

De-stone and chop 1 cup of ripe home-grown cherries. Put half of them in a pan with 1 tablespoon of fair trade caster sugar and warm gently until the cherries are soft, then whizz in a blender until liquid. Add 350ml organic cream, 3 organic free range egg yolks and 100g fair trade caster sugar and whizz until well blended. The stir in the rest of the cherries by hand, along with 1/2 cup of fair trade dark choc chunks. I put all this in an ice cream machine, or you could put it in a tupperware container in the freezer and whisk it vigorously every hour until it is too solid to whisk.