bunn

On Saturday, I chopped an unfeasible quantity of ginger, and made four large pots of ginger and crabapple jam.

I still had a remarkable amount of chopped ginger and crabapple juice left on Sunday, but no jam sugar, so I bought lemons and sugar at the shop.  Then I found the fig tree had put forth a sudden late-summer-sun inspired profusion of figs, so I chopped them and flung them in as well.

This - or perhaps the lack of jam sugar, or not enough lemons - may have been a mistake.  It took about two hours of bubbling before the jam would consent to set.  But in the end it did, in a rather grumpy caramelised sort of way, so now I have... umpty tum assorted jars of  rather caramelly ginger, fig and crabapple jam.

And with the aid of Pp, I finally took down the awful broken old outside light and finally put up the new one that has been sitting in the porch for ages.   And I also fixed the side gate latch that Brythen broke!    Then I went blackberrying with my mother and the dogs.

I took some elderberries, and in my usual half-arsed kind of way that I cook things, I wined them.

By which I mean I added boiling water and sugar, let them cool, and stuck some yeast in (oddly it was champagne yeast, because for some reason that was what the shop I went to had). Then when it had bubbled for a few days, I thought I should probably do something with it, so I took the elderberries out and stuck the liquid in a demijohn. There wasn't enough to fill it properly, so not having any applejuice to hand, I topped it up with elderflower squash, reasoning that this is basically flavoured sugar-water, so should ferment as well as anything. It remains to be seen what will happen.

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I picked some rowan berries last week, which are now in the freezer, becoming milder and more edible in flavour before undergoing transformation into rowan jelly.  There seems to be a bit of a shortage of crabapples this year - most of my favorite crab trees are completely fruitless.   I think this must be down to the dampness of the spring, though it may have something to do with the lack of summer sun, too.    But I did find one tree that had clearly managed to seize exactly the right moment to flower, so I have enough crabs to make jelly.

My apple trees - well, they have *some* apples on them. But not many, and they are rather small crabby efforts: I fear we will not get many eating apples this year.  I think I have to put it down to a bad year.   It's been a bad year for figs too - just not enough sun to ripen them. I've only had three ripe figs all year, and none of them were really dark and sweet.

Blackberries, however, are everywhere, and I filled half a tub with them on this evening's dogwalk before Yogi plastered herself in mud and we had to go and find the pond.   A lot of the blackberries are flyblown already - all this rain definitely favours the flies - but a walk down the west side of the hill into the sunset found enough worth the picking.  Going back up the hill, the sun had fallen below the level of the mounded clouds overhead, so a golden radience flooded in over the shoulder of Bodmin moor, illuminating a goodly number of berries that I had failed to notice on the way down.

I wonder about the flies that lay their maggots in blackberries, are they a special sort of blackberry-fly, or are they generic flies just taking advantage?

( In which I am Baffled by 4th Century Iron Things.  )

Skipping back a couple of centuries, I am intrigued by Hadrian's Frumentarii secret service, but wish to put a cherry on the top.  Would it be ridiculous to invent a Senatorial secret service working in parallel and sometimes at cross purposes with the Imperial one? 

In other news, I am unconvinced by rhubarb jam. It doesn't seem to be very... jammy. It is more like a pie filling in a pot.

Today I had the first apple off the early apple tree.  Oddly, the top of the tree has not really set fruit but the bottom of the tree is weighed down with it. It's a good week or more before they are usually ripe, too.

I have also managed to find some more sheltered rowan trees that managed to set fruit this year - was it a particularly windy spring, I wonder?  The ones in exposed positions seem to have very little fruit.  But the little crab apple trees are covered: I have filled my bag with crabapples and not made a dent!  Jelly here we come!
( Wittering about the photo )( Random pony )

This year I have made two and a bit pots of rowan jelly ; turned out very caramelly.  And two and a half pots of bramble and apple jelly, which turned out rather too sweet.  I think perhaps because I used apples from my own trees rather than scrumping crabapples off the hill. 

I plan to make apple chutney next, as we have a major glut of apples!   Possibly also some more mint jelly, always handy with lamb.  Rosehips?  Maybe...

I can't make any more geranium and apple jelly as my geraniums all died in the Terrible Winter (greenhouse protection generally enough, but not this year!)  and I've not bought any more.

 ( passport disorganisation )
( BERRIES!  )

This morning I picked 5 1/2 pounds of rowan berries.  Rowan berries are much easier to pick than other berries. No prickles, you don't have to bend down and they are pleasantly firm and don't squish.  No maggots either (there was the odd earwig, but they are easy to spot, and I don't mind earwigs).   I was aiming for 3 pounds, but  I am bad at estimating weights. 

Then philmophlegm and I boiled them with some windfall apples and sugar, and now we have 5 lovely pots of rowan jelly.  YAY!  Rowan jelly that you buy in shops is pale and sort of yellowish, but mine is bright red.  Odd.  Will be interesting to see if it fades with time.   At the moment it's still hot so fingers crossed that it sets!   I think it will, because the dribble left in the pan set beautifully: that will be the apples. It's nice to find a good use for windfalls. 

 Well, that was 3 and a half pounds of them, anyway, as that was all that would fit into the biggest pan. I still have 2 pounds left.  I'm not sure what to do with them.  More jelly?  I'd be tempted by this recipe for Rowan Wine only I don't have any demijons so it would cost money. 

The Internet says that you should leave rowan berries till the first frost, but obviously I didn't do that.  I suspect that this advice comes from colder climates, but If there are any left by the first frost (which in Cornwall will be pretty late) I might try getting some more and contrasting the flavour. 

I could do Rowan Schnapps, I'd only need to buy vodka for that. Or this jam sounds interesting. 


Edit: found a suggestion that freezing them can improve flavour anyway, it's the cold that makes the difference rather than staying on the trees.  Therefore, I should freeze the remainder and contrast! 

In a second culinary experiment, we made cauliflower cheese with a purple cauliflower.  The whole thing came out a brilliant purple, which was very odd.