Food bargains and my garden update

 If you have a Farmfoods shop near you it's worth a visit.  The beans are three for a pound. little chickens are 1.99 and the butter is 99p. We've bought three each of  borlotti, cannelini, butter beans, chick peas, red kidney beans and black beans. Food is likely to become very expensive and if you can afford to stock up you'd be wise to do so. Don't buy the chickens with the green writing as they're smaller. They put those in the first freezer at our Farmfoods.  The ones we buy are in the third freezer along. We also bought a punnet of huge nectarines for 99p. 

And I've been busy moving things around in the garden.  I took the yellow GreenStalk out of the porch, mixed up the colours and placed one each side of the new arch. I'm really pleased with how it looks. 

Treat myself to some books

 It's a while since I bought myself a new book so I've treat myself to a couple from Amazon. Our own lovely Lyssa Medana who blogs as Sybil Witters On has written quite a few books and many years ago sent me a signed copy to read. I've just bought her latest and another crafting one. 

More preserving

 I've been busy adding more jars of goodies to my fermenting tray. Apparently grapes can be fermented and they taste a bit like olives. I picked a bunch off our vine and set them off fermenting.  I'll let you know how they taste and whether I'll do some more.. They might be utterly delicious.  And then again they might not. There's plenty more bunches of grapes on the vine so I can afford to experiment with some. I've set some jars of apple slices on the tray so that they can become apple vinegar and I've set some off fermenting.  I'm going to be so filled with probiotics I'll positively fizz. 😃 

Preserving tomatoes

 I can't get over just how lovely and warm it's been today. Usually by now the temperature is much lower and my garden is starting to look tired. It hasn't happened yet and I'm still picking tomatoes and courgettes by the kilo. We had friends over for a meal last night and I was able to give them plenty of produce from the garden to take home.  This morning I picked a load more tomatoes so I've set them off fermenting. They'll last several months in the fridge and will be lovely on some crusty bread or crackers. Tomorrow, after I've been for a walk with my friends, we're driving over to Northallerton to stock up on coal briquettes for the fire. We'll only be using the stove if we're entertaining as it's far cheaper to leave the heating on low. Tony and I can't stand to be too warm and rarely have the heating higher than 17 degrees in the middle of winter. It keeps the house just comfortable and we set it to 15 through the night. We're big believers in putting an extra layer on if we're a bit cool.

I roasted a big tray of tomatoes then simmered them to remove some of the water.  When they'd reduced down to a thick puree I put them into my silicon tray and dehydrated them till they reduced by half. I froze them then bagged them ready to use as stock cubes.  I've got another batch freezing overnight then I'll add them to the bag.  

And yesterday I pickled a few more jars of the cherry tomatoes.  We had a jar of my previous batch the other day and they were really tasty.

My garden on 3rd September

 Tony and I have been to our folk dance club tonight.  It's the first one since late May and we had so much fun learning new dances. We'll be in Leamington Spa next weekend so we will miss our favourite ceilidh. I could kick myself for not checking the diary before I booked. Oh well, we'll be at a different one the following weekend.  Here's my garden from yesterday morning before we built the arch 

 

Our beautiful arch

 Tony and I have just put this gorgeous garden arch together. I'm amazed he didn't throttle me as I'm utterly useless when it comes to putting this kind of thing together.  I'd have had to take it apart a million times before I eventually got it right. Tony on the other hand just looks at the instructions and knows immediately how to put it together. In my defence, I never played with Meccano as a child 😃 

Isn't chard beautiful

 Although in all honesty it doesn't have a huge amount of flavour, chard is one of my favourite veg to grow.  The stalks are so vibrant and beautiful. They keep their colour when cooked too.  Tossed into a mixed salad and stirred through with a dash of mayonnaise they add so much crunch and colour. Here's what I've just picked this morning. Before going to my carving club last night I picked a nice mixed bag of vegetables for my friend Jim. It's lovely having enough to share with people that appreciate good vegetables. 

It's September already

 I've noticed that the light levels are changing as we head into autumn.  It's dark driving home from carving club now and it won't be too long before it will be dark driving there. I'll be making some big changes in the front garden towards the end of the month. It'll make the space even more productive.  Here's today's harvest.

The grapes are ripening nicely

 I've added a bunch of grapes to this morning's harvest. Unfortunately they aren't seedless but as they're really sweet they get to stay. They have definitely earned their place in our garden 

It's glut season

 My courgette and tomato glut is storming  along. After I did my daily harvest Tony and I popped out to pick up a few things from Sainsbury's. I've seen a lovely chicken escalope recipe that uses crispy onions instead of breadcrumbs. We managed to find the onions in Sainsbury's so watch this space.  Here's the harvest that I pucked this morning. 

When we got back I decided to harvest any tomatoes that looked as though they might split. We'd been forecast heavy rain and I didn't want to lose my tomatoes. Several of the big heavy tomatoes had snapped off so I was pleased that I'd checked the plants.  This little haul weighs in just short of 5kg. Obviously some aren't ripe yet but give them a few days and they'll be lovely. 

I did a bit of research about the cost of organic beefsteak tomatoes.  They average around £10.40 a kilo.  This tray full would have cost me nearly £50 if I had bought them from a supermarket. I made a huge pan of minestrone soup with some of the veggies. It tastes absolutely lovely and there's enough to last a few days.