Harvest Monday - blackberry and apple loaf

After a long period without much rain we finally had a decent downpour last night, hooray. It was quite windy at times too but there doesn't seem to have been any damage.

 

This week the harvests have picked up even more, loads of runner beans, courgettes and cucumbers. I haven't photographed them all but you get the idea....

Couldn't resist a little face, hehe

Several batches of beans like this

More self-sown chard too

And kale

I've made a tasty curry (freezing a portion of leftovers)

And a big batch of a more Mediterranean - type thing, with courgettes, tomatoes, red onions, lots of garlic and rosemary. My red onions are teeny, the slugs really attacked the stems, which hindered their growth.

I also added in some kale plus some haricot beans which I cooked-up today in the slow cooker, after soaking them yesterday. Haricots seem to be one of the quickest pulses to cook that I've tried so far (they're quite small).

This week I've harvested the first sweetcorn, it was really good, mmm, didn't even need any butter. On the whole the corn hasn't done too well but we'll get a few cobs.

Onto more fruity things...

First tiny sweet peppers with a pen for scale (I think they're meant to be bigger!)

A crown prince squash from one of my plants plus a spaghetti squash from an allotment neighbour. I'll try roasting the spaghetti squash - I cooked one that way years ago which I think is nicer than when just boiled. I'm not sure how many winter squashes I'll get this year, they sulked for a long time before doing much, so we'll have to see how the next few weeks go weatherwise.

I've had a couple of nice big bowls of tomatoes though

Picked today

I'm continuing to remove lower leaves and thin out ones higher up to let in more light and air..this is the 'after'. I'll remove some more soon too.

From the allotment I've had a few apples including these below. You can see some codling moth damage (and the caterpillars were still inside). There was still a good amount of edible apple though.

(A joke from my childhood "Q: what's worse than finding a maggot in your apple? A: finding half a maggot")

I cut into these apples rather than biting into them and risk finding half a maggot!

These were better. There were a load more windfalls too, which I combined with blackberries, ginger and cinammon, and froze in tubs (after a shuffle round in the freezer to make more room).

I used the peel and (non-maggoty) cores to make a couple of batches of cider vinegar - just add water and a few teaspoons of honey. Mix around, cover with something breathable (I've used kitchen towel), leave for a couple of weeks to bubble and ferment (check occasionally to push any poking-out bits back under the liquid, otherwise they might develop mould), then strain out the liquid and leave it to mature a few weeks or longer (I use old cider vinegar bottles and feel rather good when I see a price sticker still on them, knowing I've just made some for virtually free)

Talking of honey, my friends who have a couple of hives in their back garden in the city gave us a jar from their latest harvest, mmm. By the sounds of it they've had a bit of a nightmare with swarms this year but the honey looks good.

My friend Andrew has a greengage tree on his plot. The fruits all seem to ripen at different times, which means you have to keep checking for windfalls, but they've got quite a nice flavour

I've picked a couple of big tubs of blackberries again (and eaten quite a lot straight from the canes). There are some lovely big plump ones which attract your attention but also when I tried a few tiny ones of a different variety they were super sweet. The smaller ones take longer to pick but it's worth adding a few to the mix. There are so many though, I can't pick them all (well I would if I had more freezer space).

I wanted to use some up in a cakey-thing so a Google search came up with Blackberry and Apple Loaf on BBC Good Food. I simplified the recipe by just using Demerara sugar and didn't bother separating out any of the mix. I also doubled the recipe to make two loaves. Some blackberries get gently mixed in whilst others are popped on top. Oh, also I didn't include any orange zest but it didn't seem to matter.

Turned out nicely!

And it wasn't too sweet either. I gave half a cake to our neighbours, shared some with friends and family, and we ate quite a few slices ourselves, hehe.

We're having a picnic with friends at the weekend so this recipe may come in handy again, especially as there's so many blackberries around at the moment.

 

Thanks for reading this week, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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Harvest Monday - slow cooked leeks and a spot of geocaching

So last week I lifted the first of my leeks from the plot. I sow these quite late (in pots) and then plant out after I've harvested all my early potatoes (which takes me a while). Although the leeks don't get particularly big it means they miss the leek moth caterpillars (which have munched their way through my onions and leeks in the past.) I also don't really have space to plant them out any earlier so works out quite well.

I like to use the better quality dark green bits as well as the main shank - might as well make the most of it and I think it has a good flavour. It's a bit tougher than the lighter coloured parts so either needs cutting up a bit smaller or cooking slightly longer. We made a soupy thing in the slow cooker with some chard I picked from the plot, plus leftover roasted squash...it was rather yummy

On Wednesday (my non-working day) it was actually sunny so I spent a couple of good hours on the plot....lovely. Though as soon as the sun dropped it got a bit too cold to be weeding. It was due to rain lots more over the next few days so I harvested a few goodies while I could.....some beetroot, chard, a surprisingly big parsnip, more corn salad and a couple of small red onions from the shed.

Not bad. These and the parsnip were originally sown in late spring inbetween my rows of autumn broad beans. Because of the shade from the beans, the undercrops grow slowly until the bean plants have been harvested and cut away (I leave the bean roots in the soil to break down and release nutrients) but then get away nicely.

Nice to have some greenery from the corn salad - it sows itself around everywhere so I don't need to remember to do it myself :)

We had a tasty roast yesterday, with the beetroot (though I actually decided to wrap the beetroot in a bundle of tin foil with a splash of oil)

All home grown apart from the hummus (but I did make the hummus from dried chickpeas cooked in the slow cooker - a first for me and if I've done my maths right it works out about half the price of canned beans). We liberally sprinkled home-made cider vinegar over the potatoes and parsnips too, yummy.

Yesterday was also a lovely sunny day but instead of heading to the plot we decided to go geocaching again. We're lucky to be right near the city centre but also in walking distance of the countryside, so headed down the long hill to Trowse (a village on the edge of Norwich) and through the woods round to whitlingham country park.

We've walked past these places loads of times but would never imagine the things hidden away nearby!

Ladybird cache (called a bishybarnabee in Norfolk)

In the base of a brick

A suspicious-looking branch inbetween some roots

Aha, the cache!

I spotted some 'king Alfred's cakes' fungi on the underside of a fallen tree. Not edible unfortunately!

But pretty cool - named after king Alfred's burnt cakes. And I wouldn't have noticed them if we hadn't been looking for a cache nearby. I wonder what else we'll find next time! I'm going to read-up again on wild harvests to see what to look out for in spring.

So it was a great, free day out and made us enjoy a familiar route in a different way (although I felt a tad guilty about not being at the allotment....well, it's only January eh!)

That's it from me for the week, linking in with Harvest Monday, kindly hosted in January by Michelle at From Seed to Table

 

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Harvest Monday - spiced apple cake and sweet chestnuts

Well, this week has certainly been diverse. Mild, then cold, windy (very), calm, sunny, heavy rain and Saturday night....snow! I didn't get any photos but we had about an inch or so - I looked out the window Saturday night and was so surprised to see it - the west of the county was due some but I really didn't think we'd get any in the city. I had mixed feelings about it though - we were planning on going chestnut foraging the next day and a covering of snow would scupper that!

Sunday morning there was still a thin layer of snow but some rain cleared it all away ( phew? Also not great to be foraging in the rain.)

 

Anyway, earlier in the week it was my birthday and in keeping with office tradition, I made a cake for everyone. I wanted to include an element of 'homegrown' so made one with apples that I still have left from Jan's mum's garden. I found an easy recipe on the web (with the measurements in cups, so I used an old bread machine cup for this). The recipe is here - but I swapped the vegetable oil for room temperature goats butter and used a bit less sugar - it was still very sweet (but very tasty) so I reckon you could use a lot less (and I've just spotted in the recipe comments that lots of people have reduced the sugar quantity too). A really easy recipe though. I ended up baking it a bit longer than the stated 55 mins as our oven always seems to take longer than recipe times.

Yum! I cut it into 20 squares. The cake has cinnamon in too so it has an amazing aroma

It took four apples so I thought I may as well use the peels and cores to make another batch of cider vinegar. The recipe I've used is here - the comments thread is very thorough and worth a read too.

I managed to nip to the allotment from work one dry lunchtime to get some goodies - there is absolutely loads of lambs lettuce to keep picking - I'm harvesting plants whole by snipping them off just above soil level (it keeps the plants cleaner than if you try to pull the whole thing out of the soil, when generally a clump of soil comes with it too ). There was also a bit of kale and some chard, though these are growing very slowly now so I might not get much more from them until spring.

I made a red lentil soup with the kale

And salads like this with the lambs lettuce - still using some of my fermented gherkins from last year too.

We did get out chestnut foraging on Sunday, hooray. It was raining whilst we waited for the bus and during the journey there (a 20 min bus ride from the city) but when we hopped off the bus the rain stopped, yay. The rain had melted any remaining snow, so that wasn't a problem either.

We were a lot later than last year and most of the leaves had fallen off all the trees, so it was harder to look for the chestnuts on the ground, hidden amongst all the leaves. Plus I reckon the squirrels had already helped themselves quite a bit too. But we got a reasonable harvest and had a nice day out.

 

Next to a quiet country lane near the wood we spotted some windfall apples on the grass verge, so picked up a few of the best ones of those too - an unexpected bonus! We could easily have taken more (it didn't seem that anyone else had been collecting them) but they would've been too heavy to carry back.

We walked back to Norwich on the Marriott's Way - a dis-used railway which is now a walking, cycling and bridle route and found a couple of geocaches on the way, including this cute little hedgehog, hidden in a rotten stump, cool.

And finally, one of my exciting birthday presents from Jan - a Ghillie kettle! I'd been hinting about this recently, hehe.

The water is held round the outside and you heat it up from below by making a small fire in the bottom compartment.

I'd used one before but not for a long time (when I'd volunteered for a practical conservation organisation for a couple of years after leaving university).

Looking down the middle (Before lighting it of course!)

To put it to a proper test, I filled it right up (about 4 litres apparently) which did take a long time and a lot of sticks to keep the fire going before it got really really hot. But luckily I keep lots of sticks in the back garden, and we found that dried sweet pea stems worked well too. If you're just heating up a bit of water to make a couple of cups of tea etc it would be pretty quick I reckon. Plus it was fun! (And good back-up for power cuts etc, and when we build our own off-grid house (in our dream future!)).

 

Thanks for reading this week. Linking in with Harvest Monday hosted by Dave's Our Happy Acres

 

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