Spiced plum and red onion chutney

This morning I have friends coming to see our horses, this is Andrea and her dad, Mick and her little boy Archie, Andrea and I did the stall together last week at Elvington.

So I'm trying to get a batch of chutney on, as time is a bit short today and tomorrow I'm away to Northumberland until Thursday.

I got all the plums stoned last night, and I've got about 5lb. This recipe is a bit of an adaptation of a recipe I've used for years, and I don't even know where the first read it! 

It's a really easy one as all the ingredients just go into the pan together and then it's simmer and stir for 2.5 hrs and that's it.

So into the an goes:

3lb plums - halved and stoned

1.5lb red onions - peeled and diced

1lb cooking apples - peeled,cored and chopped

2 pints malt vinegar

1lb Demerara sugar

1lb dark brown sugar

3 cloves of garlic - chopped fine

2 heaped teaspoons ground ginger

2 heaped teaspoons ground cinnamon 

1 heaped teaspoon ground allspice

2tbsp salt.

That's about it, go off and do something else for a couple of hours, popping back to stir it every now and then, especially towards the end. The pot up into sterilised jars and seal. It should be stored for a couple of months before eating, so ideal to be making now and perfect for Christmas.

Cherries and plums

Today was forecast be be absolutely dreadful, there had been large and heavy rain storms due, mainly down south, but expected up here overnight and today, so I have crammed all my gardening jobs in to earlier in the week to all myself to stay at home today. I assume planning on making something with all the cherries I picked and stoned on Monday.

I had decided to even clean the stones and use them to make pretty heat bags, ones where the stones  are sewn into a pretty cotton bag and then you can just warm them in the microwave for a short while and use them like a hot water bottle. However, it's proving difficult to remove all the fruit from the stones and having researched on the Internet, it would seem the only way is lots of washing, rubbing, rinsing and effort, so a bit undecided on this.

Cherries are also really low in pectin and acid, so it's hard to get a good set with them, I've seen a recipe for a dark cherry conserve, which uses redcurrant juice as a base to give more acidity and help with the set, so I thought I could probably melt some of the cranberry and redcurrant jelly I made a couple of weeks ago and use that.

I also have about 1.5 litres of juice, left over from stoning the cherries and a bit of amaretto syrup from bottling some of them and I'm thinking of some sort of syrup or sauce, still undecided.

I picked plums yesterday too from our little dark plum tree, I managed to get the majority before wasps took a liking and need to stone these and then either make chutney or freeze them. We have several Victoria trees, and I make jam with those, but these little dark plums are just a bit too sharp for jam.

Heliotrope

Of all the plants in my garden the one with the most amazing smell is one that's not all that showy, or that popular, it's an old fashioned plant that has somewhat fallen out of favour. 

Every time I walk past it, especially early mornings and late evenings I get the most heavenly scent, and the smell just cheers me and makes me smile irrespective of how I'm feeling.

I came across the plant a few years ago at a little garden centre and because it was purple, I bought it and I'm so glad I did, I now seek it out each year and usually manage to find it somewhere.

This year I bought it from the slightly mad, and rather eccentric gentleman who owns and runs his own nursery on the outskirts of York, he had bought them to raise into standards but he sold me 3 small plants at £1.50 each. Looking back at that last sentence, I wondered if he read this would he be upset, but actually I think he'd smile at my description of himself. I don't think I'd mind being described as slightly mad and rather eccentric.

Anyway must get on, not too busy a day today, just 4 customers to do and Mrs H to go and visit, however I rather badly stubbed my toes last night on the slate hearth around our wood burner and I think I'm going to have some difficulties putting weight on my toes, so will just have to see how I go. The forecast is good anyway.

Feeling the after effects of Elvington

Woke this morning with everything aching, went back to sleep for another half hour while mike was showering and getting ready - he has a full day golf today, so was away for 8am. Still didn't feel any better when I got up so rang and cancelled my only job booked for today and will have a quiet day getting cleared up after the weekend.

We did really well this weekend with our fresh food sales, Saturday was quiet and steady, but we expected that, as most people knew the Avro Vulcan was coming to do a display on Sunday and wow, was Sunday busy, the show organisers must be very please.

The burger van man however was not, he came up to us on Sunday morning and had a heavy word with us about him having all catering rights on the site, and how we were flouting all sorts of regulations. Andrea and I were both polite and 'interested' in what he said, then laughed about him after he had gone. We had sold out of all sandwich fillings and bread by just after lunchtime and the cakes were all gone by mid afternoon. We did pretty well with our other stuff, and I'll cash up today and see what we actually have taken.

The Vulcan, as ever, was spectacular, we got a fly past as it went to do a couple of other events it was booked for, and then it came back and gave us all a thrilling 5 minutes. The noise is amazing and makes your heart flutter, I do wonder how wonderful it must be to be the pilots, but apparently they don't hear most of the roar of the engines. Anyway, a brilliant weekend all in, but paying for being on my feet for all that time.

Elvington model air show

Just up for day 2 of Elvington Model air show, day 1 was steady but not overly busy, I think we did ok with sales, it was a hot sunny day but the wind got up in the afternoon which had memories of last years event which was windy as hell on the Saturday and then dreadful rain on Sunday. So far so good this year. The weather is forecast as cloudy today, which will suit us as the difficulty yesterday was shading things from the bright sunshine.

We will be happy if we do the same trade as yesterday but are hoping for a few more people as the Vulcan is coming to do a bit of a display this afternoon.

Right, need to get packed up and then away to pick up Andrea who, I am sharing the stall with this year. We have branched out  into sandwiches and salad boxes on top of all our other things. They seemed to sell quite well, our only competition is burger vans, so we just need to try and catch people before they've invested in the burgers, difficult as the catering vans generally are right by the entrance.

Rhubarb ketchup

This morning I was weeding in the garden and realised that our rhubarb plant is massive again and needed a fair bit pulling out at it was swamping the beetroot in the same bed.

I'm not a great rhubarb fan, Mike loves it, but there was a significant amount, I'd say at least 4lbs of the stuff, so I've chopped up some of the pinker, smaller stuff and stuck it in a casserole in the microwave for 5 mins for him, and then I browsed my cook books for a rhubarb chutney, I made rhubarb and ginger jelly earlier in the year, it's a pain to get a good set, and it's not a big seller either, so didn't want to go down that route. 

I found a recipe in the river cottage cookbook for a variation on roasted tomato ketchup, which said to use rhubarb instead, I've as usual, upped a few ingredients and amended the recipe as it was much too thick, either that or my rhubarb didn't yield as much juice...although I did leave it in the oven longer than suggested - due to getting sidetracked with other things.

So...this is my version slow roast 2kg of chopped rhubarb along with 4 chopped large red onions and a handful of garlic cloves ( 6?) at about 180/gas 4 for about an hour ( I left it in at 160 for 2 hrs)

Now it says to sieve the mixture, which turned out to be a right pain in the behind, as did attempting to use the mouli, so in the end I stuck it all in the blender, ( in 3 batches).

Using a heavy bottomed pan ( with a lid) bring to a simmer and simmer for 25 mins, adding along the way 250ml cider vinegar ( the recipe said 100ml, but that just wasn't enough) 100g dark brown sugar and the spices, -a teaspoon each of ground ginger, celery salt, ground cumin and ground coriander.

Bottle up and seal with vinegar proof lids. Easy peasy! Tastes delicious.

A free Saturday..woo hoo

Today I have nothing to do, well, I've got loads that could be done, but nothing that MUST be done and that's the difference. No fairs to do, no other people to consider ( apart from Mike I suppose), no fruit to process into jams or chutneys, no orders to make up or anything like that. This is a very rare occasion for me and I don't know what I want to do to make the most of the day.
I rather fancy a few hours in the garden at my leisure doing just a bit of weeding, a bit of deadheading, we have a massive bonfire pile and if the wind is in the right direction, maybe I could get that going, especially as rain is predicted this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon was spent cutting down docks and other large weeds in the horses fields before the seeds spread, and all this needs burning so that the seeds are destroyed.
We have Sadie with us, (Mike's son's dog - they have gone on holiday) and we could go for a walk somewhere but I'm not overly confident about letting her off a lead.
Or I could just sit and play minecraft for a few hours!
A leisurely breakfast first. And I think I'll turn the laptop on and get some labels printed. I made lime and lemon marmalade yesterday, I've got the redcurrant and raspberry jelly to label and the cranberry and redcurrant sauce, I can then get them all put away rather than cluttering up the side, oh, and the strawberry/lime/Pimms jam stuff, which I'm still undecided what to call it.