Preserving As A Social Activity

 One thing I mention a lot when I give my talks on preserving is how much I think it should be a social activity. It's far nicer to share the tasks and the harvests, it creates community, strengthens friendships and is just a down right productive use of your time. 

I'm lucky as I have a few friends that I can share this passion with. 

This week I did some of the social preserving I preach. My friend Lauren, who farms cherries and apricots, messaged me to say they had lots of fruit in need of preserving and did I fancy an afternoon working through it. 

Yellow Egg Plums Don't Grow True From Seed

When we lived around Evesham someone once told me that yellow egg plums grow true from seed. That's one of the reasons there are so many around that area, they'd often grow them around the outside of the market gardens as an extra cash crop. 

Well even though I know the science of why it shouldn't be true I took a punt and dug up a seedling from mum and dads farm. I planted it about 8 years ago. 

Jelly Bag Stand

 A while back I wrote an article for an online friend, Rosie who has a brilliant website for preserving. While we were chatting she asked if I'd be willing to make some items for her to sell as it can be hard finding people to make specific things. 

The item in question was some jelly bag stands, made from wood that could be easily assembled. 

I really like it when small businesses can work together so it was really nice to be able to make these things for Rosie and I hope they sell well for her. you can find the listing on her website here and the rather fetching picture of me!

It's always nice to tie two of my passions together and this certainly does that! 

Simply Preserved - Featured

Just before Christmas I got asked by Rosemary Jameson, who runs the preserving website, Loves Jars, to see if I'd like to write a piece for her free Bi monthly magazine "Simply Preserved".

I said yes, as it's great practice for my writing and I had a free reign of what I could write about so long as it was linked to preserving! I wrote about how much preserving is a part of our life and about my first garden club talk where I spoke about preserving to a room of seasoned veterans!   

 Here's a link to the magazine with the full article in it. I think I will become a regular reader as it's right up my street and has loads of information in there and I do love the meet the artisan section (although I'd never call myself one)! When looking for what style I should write in I went back and read most of the issues.  

Let me know what you think to the article and to the simply preserved magazine - great to have something free to read! 

Preserving Is A Family Affair

As our children have got older we've had to start putting more food away to last us longer. 

Luckily they all love helping and the last few weeks there's been quite a few times with  us all sat round a table prepping a harvest to preserve it. 

Cherries!

Few fruits I love more than properly ripe cherries 

But few things do I struggle growing more. 

We netted our trees but still struggle to get more than a few berries. Time to go to the professionals. 

Making Damson Jam/Jelly

Damson Jam is easily my favourite jam to eat. Sweet bit with a hint of sharpness! 

But with so many stones it can be a pain to make.

Here's a video of how we make it and make sure we have no stone in it!

Let me know what you think!

What's your favourite type of homemade jam?

£3 For 15kg Of Carrots

Now as many of you know I'm never one to pass up on a bargain!

And the other day I picked up a huge 15kg bag of carrots for £3. Bargain!

Now I must confess this isn't at the supermarket, instead I got these from the animal feed store local to us.

Dried Pears

I was helping with the cake cafe after school the other day and when it was time to clean up they were getting rid of anything that might go off over half term. 

I managed to bag us 10 bottles of milk and a bag of apples before I asked what was happening to all the pears in the baskets outside the key stage one classrooms. No way would they keep for a week over half term in that warm school, some had started to turn already.

Fermented Wild Garlic

With so much wild garlic ready for picking at the start of the month I wanted to properly take advantage of it this year. 

I looked online and in a few books to see what else could be done with this wild harvest. One idea that really got me curious was to ferment it. I've been wanted to try more fermented stuff and as I have a talk on preserving later in the year I thought that might make a useful bit of the talk! 

Lamb Stock/Bone Broth

Last night my good friend Kirsty (From rural retreat restoration) came over and we spent the evening canning lamb stock. 

I'd set a number of bones that had been taking up freezer space in a large saucepan along with some carrots and shallots to simmer for a good few hours.

 Then when Kristy turned up we strained it and sterilised the canning jars. Carefully filling them as far as the book said, we used half pints because it's going to be a fairly strong tasting stock.

 Then after messing around with the electric hob and it not getting to temperature we used my little camping stove that did it in no time!

 Then under 10 lb of pressure for 25 minutes they were ready to start cooling down.

Only one can didn't seal so not too bad.
We're determined to practice more with this canner as it hasn't been used to the fullest yet! I've got lots of chicken carcasses in the freezer so I think a more useful chicken stock next week.

What would you do with the lamb stock?

I'm thinking of a broth with pearl barley and chunks of fresh granary bread!

Dehydrating Courgette/Zucchini

There aren't many certainties in gardening, but I can pretty much guarantee you one - you're going to have too many courgettes! 

I know I certainly have, well mine are summer patty pan squashes, but you get the idea. I hate seeing them go to waste, I have about eight plants producing heavily and the chickens can only eat so many. 

There's lots of chutneys and pickles that call for squashes but I haven't got the inclination at the moment and my pantry is still quite full of last years chutneys, so I looked at other ways I could preserve them.

It was time to crack out the dehydrator.

Dehydrating Yakon

 On my never ending quest to dehydrate everything in sight after buying my new, pink, dehydrator last month I decided to quickly dehydrate he last of my yakon before it all went bad.

a rather goofy picture of me with some yakon

Last year was my first year growing this unusual tuber, and I wondered how it would do in storage, kept in my frost free shed it kept well over the whole winter and only in the middle of April did it start to rot from the broken ends or where it joined the main stem.

Dehydrating ti was simple, I pealed it, cut it into slices and laid them out on a tray, I think I dehydrated it on the vegetable setting for around 16 hours, so they're really dry and really chewy.

They taste like a sweetened parsnip when dry, I can't say that I'm a 100% fan but I'll happily eat one or two crisps when I pop the lid. The kids, on the other hand, go absolutely mad for them, wanting them as an after school snack when they get in from pick up, the great thing is that as sweet as they are they can't digest any of the sugar they contain so it won't send them loopy!

A good way to use this harvest up and something I'll certainly be doing again next year, in fact I'm going to plant extra with this in mind. 

Dehydrating Rhubarb

Okay with my new dehydrator I've been looking for things to dry! 

I always have an abundance of rhubarb at this time of year (although I've managed to sell quiet a bit this year) and my wife isn't hugely keen on it. 

I decided to dry some and see if it's any good in my overnight oats that I've been eating. It's pointless to dry it if there's no use for it at the end. 

We picked a huge amount and set to cutting it up fairly evenly to put on the nine trays (I think I used eight as I cut the top layer a bit thick), my two assistants laid them out on the tray for me, it's funny watching them stealing bits of rhubarb and then having to spit them out - they took ages to learn that it's quite tart! 

I then set it to dry, I had no idea how long it would take so set the timer for 16 hours on the fruit temperature. I think in the end it was dry at around 13 hours. I don't mind if these go really hard as they're to be rehydrated before eating, not to be used as snacks like some dried fruit. 

It's comical how small this stuff gets after it's done - rhubarb is a lot of water! 

My eldest and me tried some in our oats yesterday morning (added in the night before) they had the texture of a currant as they weren't fully hydrated but with a sharp flavour, a really good and healthy addition to our breakfast with very little cost involved.

Have you ever dehydrated rhubarb? 

What use did you find for it?

Caramelised Red Onion Chutney

 So I've tried to start how I mean to go on with looking after the children. The second day Kirsty came over and we did some preserving. I'd been craving some more red onion chutney (simply the best thing you could ever put on pizza) and no matter how many jars of it that we make we eat them in no time at all! 

We did buy the ingredients instead of growing them for this as we were trying to make a huge batch. I'm not sure either of us were firing on all cylinders though, I did have to laugh as Kirsty chucked all our chopped onions into a rough old bucket we'd got for the peelings! We had to start again with that lot! 

The recipe for this chutney can be found here and I 100% recommend it as one of the nicest things I've ever made!

We also broke her food processor as it tried to process itself! Luckily she had another attachment to chop the onions or it might have been a much slower job. 

We spent the whole morning doing it (along with making some sauce) and the four (my youngest had to stay with me) children got on brilliantly, they spent most of the day playing in the garden and the Wendy house, quite happy just to play while we got on with preserving. We did most of the processing outside (on our new, not finished, patio area), it'll be great to get a gas hob out there as well so on a hot day all the preserving could be done outside. 

Divided up!

A morning well spent, each time we say we should make more but I was pleased with the amount we've got to put into the store. 

A good way to spend a Friday morning with the children playing outside and us adults still being productive.

What's your favourite chutney recipe?

Two Broken Preserving Jars

I've always looked at buying glass preserving jars as a long term investment, that's why I was disapointed on Monday when two of them seemed to break in the same place.

I was doing some baking and we keep a few items in La Parfait flip top jars. One after the other they both broke a small section of glass by the metal bit that opens the jars. The one put glass fragments into the food item so I had to chuck the whole jar full away. 

Two wasted jars now.

I was wondering if this is a common occurrence or just a defect that I happened to have with two jars? We've got well over a dozen of these jars and it's the first time it's happened.