We picked apples on Sunday. This warped panorama does not do justice to the numbers of apples currently residing in our entryway:


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We discovered we have a crabapple tree in the front garden. Chaos immediately ensued, resulting in this:


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I was faffing around on Saturday trying to convince myself to get my act together enough to Make The Apple Pie, and mumbled, “Or maybe I could just make a blackberry apple crumble, that’d be easier,” in the vicinity of our guest, who said, “I didn’t know that was an option!!!”, thus indicating I should do that. :)

I poked around the internet and ( Read more... )

I’ve been going out and getting nettle-stung in search of the wild blackberries that are growing in our garden. (Nettles offend me mightily. Plants do not try to kill you in the land of my people, at least, nothing but Devil’s Club, and Devil’s Club looks like it wants to kill you from forty feet away.) Anyway, I’m apparently too easily taunted by ( Read more... )

Iiiiiii have made an aaaaaaamaaaaaaazing batch of strawberry rhubarb jam.

Ted, who likes zingy strawberry/rhubarb jam, thought there wasn’t enough rhubarb in mine generally, so I did half and half instead of favouring the strawberries, and it’s rrrrrrrrrrrrrreeaaaaaaaaaallllly good.

I used jam sugar because I didn’t have enough regular sugar, and I ( Read more... )

I was in town yesterday and saw a fruit vendor with 1-kilo flats of strawberries for €5 each, which I thought was an excellent deal. I bought two, came home with them, and went back out not much later to get (other things also, but) four more.

The young lady at the booth looked at me a bit askance when I came up and asked for four flats. I ( Read more... )

Not very well, as it turns out.

I’ve been on a regular jam-making roll here, having made strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, strawberry-rhubarb, peach and cherry in the past week or so. Despite my cries of woe, the strawberry did in fact set up, so I have a wide array of lovely jams.

The cherry, though. Last year’s attempt at cherry jam was Too ( Read more... )