Passports, Newport, berries, booze
Aug. 21st, 2009 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunn Bit of a frantic week - lots of work, lots of volunteering, plus I suddenly realised that my dratted passport was about to run out and had to spend a day going all the way to Newport to get a new one. Now my passport is half in Welsh!
Newport was a surprisingly pleasant place to spend 4 hours mooching about. Remembering South Wales from my childhood in the 1970s I was expecting it to be pretty grim, but in fact it has a rather nice covered market with a reasonable second hand bookshop, a Waterstones, and at least one really nice cafe (Coffee 1, in case anyone else is stranded in Newport for 4 hours)...
Feeling that I may have slightly overdone the jelly thing, I've made some blackberry liqueur - though I'm not sure that any of the jellies are as nice as blackberry, so I may have to expand my Jelly Empire even further. It's *such* a good blackberry year, and also I have found some more crabapple trees.
Today I went out looking for my daily fig and there wasn't a ripe one! Have got used to the tree ripening one a day. There are lots of largish green ones though, so am hoping that there are still more to come.
The pheasantberry (Leycesteria Formosa) is starting to fruit. It's a very generously fruiting plant, and PFAF reckons that the fruit is not toxic, thought it's considered only dubiously edible as some of the fruits are not terribly palatable. So I tried it, and I'm in luck: my plant is one of the ones that produces tasty fruits. They are very sweet with a sort of smoky caramel flavour (you do need to wait for the berries to turn dark brown for sweetness).
I think we probably have enough jam for now, so I think I'll try them in a pie with some apples. Am also thinking that a cake might be interesting with pheasantberries in it.... hmmm!
Newport was a surprisingly pleasant place to spend 4 hours mooching about. Remembering South Wales from my childhood in the 1970s I was expecting it to be pretty grim, but in fact it has a rather nice covered market with a reasonable second hand bookshop, a Waterstones, and at least one really nice cafe (Coffee 1, in case anyone else is stranded in Newport for 4 hours)...
Feeling that I may have slightly overdone the jelly thing, I've made some blackberry liqueur - though I'm not sure that any of the jellies are as nice as blackberry, so I may have to expand my Jelly Empire even further. It's *such* a good blackberry year, and also I have found some more crabapple trees.
Today I went out looking for my daily fig and there wasn't a ripe one! Have got used to the tree ripening one a day. There are lots of largish green ones though, so am hoping that there are still more to come.
The pheasantberry (Leycesteria Formosa) is starting to fruit. It's a very generously fruiting plant, and PFAF reckons that the fruit is not toxic, thought it's considered only dubiously edible as some of the fruits are not terribly palatable. So I tried it, and I'm in luck: my plant is one of the ones that produces tasty fruits. They are very sweet with a sort of smoky caramel flavour (you do need to wait for the berries to turn dark brown for sweetness).
I think we probably have enough jam for now, so I think I'll try them in a pie with some apples. Am also thinking that a cake might be interesting with pheasantberries in it.... hmmm!
