Well, the pear season has come to an end in my backyard, yielding around 50kgs of delicious pears that were stewed, preserved, made into pear and almond cake, baked with dried apricots and almonds
and many frozen for delicious breakfasts of stewed pears with a dollop of local, organic natural yogurt, that will feed us well into winter, yum!
Feeling exhausted from the pears it is with a little trepidation I am eyeing the bounty of apples about to arrive in my kitchen. My son & I harvested just a few of the early ripe apples a couple of days ago filling two large bags. Out of interest and for my new record keeping project I weighed this first harvest at 16.5kgs. Again, I feel delighted that we are able to produce such a bounty of fruit with really very little effort on our part, however I brace myself for more hard work. I've researched apple recipe ideas and I will make more fruit leather,
try dried apple rings in the oven, make a chutney, stew many apples for breakfasts to eat with yogurt or stir stewed apple into my porridge and I'm sure there will be an apple pie or crumble mixed in there somewhere. I also found a recipe for apple and blackcurrant gin but as I am not a gin drinker I wondered if the recipe could be adjusted just a little to replace the gin with vodka!
My tomato harvest has begun to arrive too,
although this year there doesn't seem to be quite as many. However, there are still plenty for ratatouille (which also uses zucchini from the garden), sauce for our Friday night pizzas, and plenty to pop into lunchboxes to delight the children at lunch as they pull the bright red fruit from their bag, pop it in their mouth whole and explode the tomato with a bite. It doesn't get any better than tomatoes direct from the garden.
The biggest surprise of my week was finding sweet corn growing on my sweet corn plants! Now, you would think that this should be a given and an obvious place to find ones sweet corn, however as I mentioned in my last post I have grown sweet corn for two years with no success, or so I thought. I did think that the plants were starting to die, they had grown very tall and flowered at the top but the bases were looking dried out and brown. What a waste of effort for a second year I mused, but cheered myself with the thought that at least I had persevered. I was tempted to just pull them out, but didn't and how lucky I was as when I went into the garden to water during last week I saw with great excitement the corn growing from halfway up the stems. See, I said to myself, you just never know. I've done quite a bit of reading but nothing is quite the same as doing it for yourself. So if you are growing corn and feel disappointed you didn't get any corn cobs, just hold out a little longer and your wish may come true too.
Now I just need to know the correct point to harvest. I can't wait to bite into the corn just cooked quickly in boiling water, left on the cob, drained, a knob of butter melted on top with a twist of salt and pepper. That will be a triumphant day for me, for I will have conquered the mystery of the missing corn - it was called more patience.
Love
Emma
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