Apples? Make mincemeat of 'em.

It's been another good year for apples.  I still have Bramleys clinging onto the tree in the garden, which served as an all-you-can-eat buffet for the 7 magpies pecking away at them yesterday.  Crunchy russets are waiting to be transferred from the porch to the fruit bowl, and the early eaters from the allotment are, quite frankly, now fit only for the compost bin.

The very large unidentified apples from the allotment are great for cooking and store reasonably well, but I can only deal with a stockpile for so long… Therefore, to chip away at the apple mountain, one or two got turned into mincemeat today, to be offered up, encased in pastry, at my wreath making workshops in December (and guess what, you can even decorate wreaths with dried apple slices, just like the one on the website page….!).

To make mincemeat - mix the following:

•  250g of dried fruit (prunes, currants, sultanas, raisins, mixed peel or whatever  you fancy in the mix)
• 125g veggie suet
• 125g whole almonds, chopped
• 1 very large apple, peeled and grated.
• 60g dark brown sugar
• juice and rind of 2 lemons
• juice and rind of an orange
• 2 teaspoons of mixed spices (I used lots of cinnamon and ginger, with a bit of nutmeg)
• 60ml brandy 

I put it all into jars which I'd sterilised with boiling water.  They are now safely stored in a cool dark place and will be ready for eating in a couple of weeks.  Easy peasy - and one less apple in the store….

Abundant autumn

FINALLY got down to the allotment yesterday in a window between gardening for other folk and picking up children from school.  Grass needs attacking and weeds need clearing but yesterday's mission was to pick the remaining apples, dig up the potatoes (or what the slugs have left of them by now) and to get the last dahlias cut before all are laid low by frost.

How many more buckets like these will I see in October?

Recent rains had weighed down the big bonces of my dahlias and quite a few stems were hanging low, bent double by the weight, but they still form great dabs of colour against the fading autumn backdrop of the allotment.

As ever, I did not manage to knock off all of the tasks on my to do list.  Indeed, the apples were so abundant that after filling two huge plastic bucket/trugs, cutting two buckets of dahlias and picking a kilo or so of beans, there was no time to do anything more than ferry my bounty back up the steep hill to the main gates in multiple arm-wrenching trips.  The slugs have had their potato-feasting time exteneded until the weekend it would seem.

I'm still dealing with my harvests today - in the kitchen, apple and mint jelly is straining drippy vinegariness through a jelly bag, an apple and raisin cake lies in half-demolished ruins following its joyous breakfast-time reception by my children, a gooey toffee-esque German apple cake lurks in the fridge and I have apple slices drying in a cool oven.

Despite giving away a shopping bag full of apples to a neighbour and squeezing about 2 litres of juice to put in the freezer, I still don't seem to have made a dent in my bucketloads.  Will store some in the cellar for the coming months, and will doubtless get fat on puddingising the rest - needless to say, my children love this sweet-toothed time of year.