Days of plums, damsons and brass

September has been such a good month for plums and damsons hasn't it?

The Victoria plum tree on the allotment was heavily laden this year...

And so there was picking to be done...

I was also given a few pounds of damsons....my friend Jo didn't know what to do with all...every day she came to work with carrier bags of them, and I think she fed the whole newsroom. I exaggerate , she fed those of us who can make puddings and jam. The sports boys in the corner wouldn't know what to do with a damson if it hit them in the ear. 

I however do....and made this lovely Nigel Slater's plum cake...captured just as it was going into the oven. The flavour of the damsons and the texture of ground almonds and polenta made a delicious treat for tea.

Back to the Victoria plums, some of which I froze or stewed and served cold with ice cream.....

But I also tried a new recipe this year...plum gumbo. Made with plums, sultanas, sugar, fresh ginger which adds a certain zing, plus other bits and pieces, it's very tasty with bread and cheese.

In fact the only thing that's wrong with this batch is that I didn't make enough! In the meantime, there's still plenty to do in the kitchen with a preserving pan - time to sort the apples out.....

Not tonight though, it's now dark,  and I'm back in the kitchen just about to get the supper ready. While the vegetables are roasting and the pasta is on to boil , I've been listening to a group whose music always seems to fit this time of night.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are from Chicago, but moved to New York. They're a world away from my my cottage in a tiny village . but at twilight, with a glass of red wine in my hand, with my toes tapping our worlds collide and I hope that one day I can see them perform live.

An apple a day.....

 

 

This year has been a very good year for fruit at the allotments. Pounds of blackcurrants, gooseberries and some lovely raspberries, especially the autumn variety which have a lovely flavour.

 

But this year, the apple trees and plum trees are the starts of the show....they are absolutely laden with fruit. There's two of each, and the first apples to pick have been these - I think they're discovery apples.

  

 

The fruit trees are on the outermost edge of the allotment site about ten feet away from the road. There's lot of nettles around, so even though it wasn't cold exactly, I had a thick pair of trousers on, boots, and a long sleeved jumper and gloves on as I picked the fruit.

Oh and sunglasses, even if the sun wasn't shining.....I'm so accident prone, I tend to get caught in the eye by a rogue, sadistic branch or two.

Luckily I escaped unscathed and came home with these....

 



 

 

These are  tasty desert apples, so what am I going to do with them, plus the rest on the tree that Laura ,my friend and co conspirator at the lottie doesn't want?

 

I've already made a rather nice tarte tatin, a big waldorf salad, and have been taking some into work to eat with lunch. Well, you know what they say..."an apple a day keeps the doctor away."

 

And apparently this proverb from Victorian times is right. Well, so researchers at Oxford University said last Christmas time. Apparently, they calculated that if all adults aged 50 and over here in the UK were prescribed an apple a day , there would be 8,500 fewer deaths from heart attacks and strokes each year.

 

That's good enough for me! But I need some more recipes using dessert apples instead of cooking apples. I've been looking in my two "must go to "books on fruit by the wonderful Nigel Slater and the late, great Jane Grigson, plus the Riverford Farm Book has some good apple recipes in too...but I fancy something new!

 

 

 

 

 

 What's your favourite way of using dessert apples?


As we're in the last days of August, I thought today's music track should be this - set in the last days of summer...Choices. It's performed in a garden by To Kill a King (love), Bastille (love too) and some of their friends. The song builds up from two voices and acoustic guitar to violins, cello, brass section and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Delightful....

 

The day when the beans fought back...

I planted my French beans and runner beans  earlier this year at the allotment with such optimism....but the first lot were decimated by slugs and the wet weather of early summer.

I wasn't deterred, I wanted beans...and lots of  them. "Bung slug pellets everywhere " I was told by friends and fellow allotmenteers. But the thing is, I don't like using slug pellets. Granted I hate slugs even more ...slimy, ugly things they are...but no, slug pellets were out of the question.

"Try putting egg shells all around them as a barrier" I was then advised. Dutifully, I saved eggshells...as we breakfasted on boiled eggs, scrambled eggs plus I made frittatas a couple of times for lunch. There still weren't  weren't enough eggshells to put around my bean plants...and by now, I was becoming egg bound.

That's when I remembered reading about coffee grounds being a deterrent, so I started saving those...and drinking more coffee. I love coffee, but you know when you've had too much of it....by now I was losing sleep and getting rather twitchy. So, feeling cheeky, I went into Almeida, the lovely little coffee shop right by the BBC studios where I work, and asked if they would save me their coffee grounds.

They said yes...and I was taking home carrier bags of the stuff...the car smelt divine...and I threw the lot around my newly planted beans. And do you know what - no slugs have been seen since. What a result.

Which means of course, my allotment and I are now full of beans!

This year I grew Firestorm runners from Thompson and Morgan..I've not done so before,, but definitely will do so again next year. Vigorous, lots of beans, with a really good flavour. As for the French beans....you can't beat Cobra....these were from Mr Fothergills Seeds - perfect to look at, quick to grow and by golly there's lots of them.


So the other Saturday, late afternoon, I was at the allotment with Boo the dog. She was running around the perimeter sniffing everywhere, and I was squatting on my haunches picking some runners at the lowest level. There were quite a few pounds of them, but as I stood up, the ligament on the side of my knee snapped..just like an elaggy band. My leg gave way and I ended up on the floor in an ungainly heap. I know I groaned, and I may have possibly uttered a few swear words. Actually, there's no possibly about it,....I definitely did. It was bloody painful.



The next day, I was driven into work to present the gardening programme followed by the local history programme, followed by a trip to hospital to get the knee checked out. It was. Knee was very swollen and stiff .Friends and colleagues asked how I'd injured it. Skateboarding, running and other physical activities were just some of the guesses but no one guessed that beans would be involved.

So no driving for four days....and this weekend at the allotment I was very careful only stopping to pick the beans and raspberries and get Mr Thinking of the days to do the watering.

There were pounds and pounds more beans to freeze and eat.
I took some of them into the courtyard to top, tail and slice while I sat in the courtyard enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.

Then there were more....

With so many, it took a while and became quite thirsty work.....

So that evening we had the french beans, boiled until tender, drained, and then put back on the still warm hotplate, with a couple of slices of taleggio cheese thrown into the pot. This magically melted on impact with the beans, into a delicious sauce .

Today's track...an oldie but still a goodie and so appropriate this week not just for me, but for all my local farming friends...

 

It's a new day, a new dawn and a new allotment....

It was going to be an easy going Sunday morning....get up late....potter about a bit....go out with my good friend Laura . We were only going to buy some potatoes from a nursery to chit and that would be it. Job done,with a  lazy Sunday afternoon to look forward to.

But it hasn't quite turned out like that. My mind is now racing, I've got a piece of paper out and I'm trying to draw the future.

Mind you, I hadn't even managed to get out of the house today and I'd already been distracted.And spent some money. I blame Fiona from www.cottagesmallholder.com  

She'd put up a blogpost about what she'd just ordered from Thompson and Morgan's online sale...Sungold tomato seeds for 20p? I couldn't resist....and also managed to find myself ordering cheap salad leaves, some runner beans plus some poppies I had no intention of buying.


I digress...by eleven o clock I'd picked up Laura and we were on our way to Brookside Nurseries , north of Leicester ,to get our potatoes for the coming year. It's where I've been going for the last three years for potatoes. So many different varieties , so tempting - so we both bought far too many.

First Early favorites for me are Arran Pilot, Rocket and I'm also going to try Lady Christl...but it's the salad potatoes which really get me going.....such as these, as well as Anyas and Charlottes

And that's why we've now found ourselves sharing a new allotment. Because we'd bought too many potatoes!

And onions...

Now getting an allotment in the UK in most areas is not easy.Some people have to wait for years on a list and wait for someone to die or become too incapicitated  before they can take over a plot.

I had to do that myself for one of my allotments...three years I was on that list. And I love it there...it's a single row of about thirty or so plots set between two rows of houses in town. It's fenced and a real suntrap ..and last year I grew pounds and pounds of peas, broad beans , french beans and tomatoes there.

But I have another allotment which I share with Laura. It's not far from my house, it's in a windy, at times god forsaken field, which we share with rabbits, muntjaks  , allotmenteers and other  wild animals.

In my bit I grow fruit - blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries.I also grow potatoes and garlic.

Laura's American so she's got a blueberry thing going on, and she  loves artichokes ( or fartichokes as I call them). Not that I'm saying she has a problem in that department you understand, but the last time I went to France and the whole family had some - let's put it this way, we could have gone from Limoges to Nice only using about 10 litres of petrol. Definitely wind assisted.

I'm digressing again  though. Back to the nursery and a trolley full of potatoes, garlic , and Laura with the onion sets....

.I happened to mention that I'd heard there was half allotment plot going spare in the field. Laura's face lit up, and the next thing I'm phoning Monica ,who runs the allotment society ,to find out which allotment it was. Not that we're picky mind, but there are plots and then there are others. As with buying houses it's all about location, location, location. But at this stage, this was merely an enquiry as to which one it was.

Monica then gave us the good news. It's the plot right next to ours. Mainly covered with black plastic. We said Yes, and that was it. Until we had a little wibble and asked ourselves if perhaps we were taking on too much.

We took a detour on the way home - to our allotments.  Yes, allotments - in the plural.We've not only agreed to take this new one on, but we've seen Monica and already paid up our subs.

This wasn't quite what I'd had in mind when I got up this morning - but hey, it's a new day , it's a new dawn and a new allotment. And it's feeling good..

The only thing is, I haven't yet seen Mr Thinking of the days to tell him the good news yet.....

Guess what today's song is? I 've always adored her ...Nina Simone....

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Gin fuelled days

A wet, wild and windy week,so in the kitchen where all is calm...and warm, I've been busy.One of the loveliest moments was decanting some raspberry gin I've had hidden away doing it's own thing for about five months.

Summer in a glass.....the most beautifully flavoured raspberry gin.
Made lovingly in the summer with raspberries from the allotment...and tasting ...if I say so myself....bloody gorgeous!

It's a recipe that I was given years ago by Vivienne ,and it's not a just a case of throwing raspberries in a jar and adding sugar and gin. Oh no, there's an extra vital step.....so here's how I did it....

Gorse lane Raspberry Gin

Ingredients
2 pounds of ripe raspberries
1 pint gin
2 pints water
1 pound of sugar.

Method

Place the cleaned fruit and gin in a large ,screw top jar and leave to stand in a warm spot for 4 to 5 days.Shake the jar occasionally.

After 5 days, bring the water to the boil in a large saucepan, add sugar and boil gently for 10 to 15 minutes.

Allow to cool then add to the fruit.Screw the jar lid on tightly and store in a dark cupboard for at least 3 months occasionally turning the jar upside down.(Do be careful darlings - you did screw that lid really tightly didn't you???)

When you're ready , strain carefully through a fine jelly bag and decant into small bottles.

As you will have noticed, I've not actually managed to get out and buy some pretty bottles yet...but even so....the gin looks jolly good to me....













The gin sodden raspberries which were left behind didn't look quite so pretty.

However "waste not want not"being my new recession proof mantra, I decided to use them.It's too cold for a trifle this week, so decided to make a rather alcofrolic raspberry crumble.

I simply made my usual crumble topping, flung it over the fruit..baked and added double cream and hey presto! Wow - What a humdinger of a pudding and just the sort of thing for a cold, wintery night.
The raspberry gin took five months to mature - I wonder how long will it take to drink though? You know, I wish I'd made some sloe gin too....

The sloes are still in the freezer actually so I could make some for when the weather gets nippy next Autumn  , but until then here's a track called the Sloe Gin set from the bright and breezy Bellowhead at the Royal Albert Hall three years ago.

I saw them in August at the summer sundae festival on a nice warm weekend afternoon.They performed a rollicking set, were great fun,and got everyone clapping, tapping their toes and joining in. I dare you to sit stoney faced  and not moving to the music....