What to do with too many apples?

Spend too much time in the kitchen cooking them! But hey, it’s autumn so being in a warm kitchen making yummy-smelling food which might even keep you fed over winter isn’t so bad…

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Blackberry wine and apple fruit leather

Making booze from fruit is an idea that’s always intrigued me. It sounds too good to be true that we can pick fruit for free all summer and turn it into warming winter cocktails! But all the recipes I’ve ever seen seemed a bit complicated and I was too intimidated to give it a try. But once I realised how simple it can be, I knew blackberry wine would be just the beginning…

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First spring forages and food…

Spring is here and food is growing again woop! I’ve been foraging a couple of times already and I’ve even harvested a few things from the garden…

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What to do with rhubarb?

I don’t think I’d ever tried rhubarb before moving to the UK and to be honest I found it a bit weird and scary the first time it arrived in my veg box. I mean, it looks like stringy celery but it’s used in desserts??  The leaves are also super-poisonous which makes it sound even more suspicious. I tried making a typical crumble and it was ok but I couldn’t quite work up the enthusiasm other people seemed to have for this weird veggie/fruit thing.

But I kept trying different dishes and by this spring, I found myself smiling at the smell of those first sticks of rhubarb, picked from the garden. So if you’re not so sure about rhubarb, do stick with it. (sorry sorry bad pun!) Here’s a few recipe ideas to try…

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Apple and chilli jam

I heart chillies and pretty much anything spicy. So when I saw a tray of chilli peppers looking a bit lonely in my fridge, I knew I had to create something with them. You can always freeze chillies if you have too many but once I got the idea of making my own chilli jam I knew they’d never make it to the freezer!

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What to do with too much jam?

Is this a problem other people have? Possibly not, cause I’m a bit weird and I don’t really eat much bread so I don’t eat much toast and jam. But I’ve gotten really into making preserves over the past couple years so I end up with jars and jars of the stuff. Of course I give most of it away to friends, but you feel like you ought to keep one jar of each variety you make and even that ends up being loads more than I’ll ever eat. So here I am about to move house and trying to clear out the fridge – there are jars and jars of condiments that I refuse to throw away because I really love my condiments ok? So I decided to find some tasty recipes to finish off all those jars of jam instead!

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What to do with too many pears?

Back in the autumn I was given quite a few kilos of pears, from a tree no one else was harvesting. I hate the thought of all those other pears rotting on the ground and I was determined to put mine to good use. If you’ve got a few pears, of course you can just eat them as they are, but when you’ve got a few bags of pears you need some more creative solutions…

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What to do with sloes?

Back in October I went foraging for sloe berries for the first time. Foraging seems to be more and more popular at the moment and I had no trouble getting together a group of friends to join me!  We all went home and made sloe gin from our berries and Christmas is the traditional time to take that first sip you’ve been waiting for…

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