Plumtastic Weekend

We had one of our mega home produce weekends together with a disasterous bird watch hour as rain, wind, thunder and lightning and then hail hit us 40 minutes in.  Our tally was just 1 coal tit, a pigeon and 2 dunnocks.  In the 5 minutes I was feeding the chickens this morning we had 4 coal tits, 2 collared doves, a pigeon, a magpie and a male blackbird.  Just think how many I would have notched up had I sat there for an hour!! Should we have cheated and waited until this morning when the stormy weather had left us?

Back to home produce and all those plums.

Autumn plums out of the freezer.

Back in September last year we just didn’t have time to deal with all the plums, picked from 2 trees, so had popped them into the freezer.  Here they all are Friday afternoon, as hard as bullets and heading for the cooking pot the following morning.

We spent what seemed like hours taking the stones from the now mushy plums.  Easier said than done as we had frozen quite a few under ripe plums, knowing that these would have more pectin in so would help with the jam making, which were reluctant to release their hidden stones.

For our jam we added 1.25kg of sugar for every 1.5kg of plums (and all their juices) – with 4kg of plums in the pot we did wonder if we would have enough jars.  We boiled for around 30 minutes and then started testing to see if the jam would set.  Plop a dollop of jam on a cold plate (we had stored ours in the freezer), wait for it to cool, run your finger through the jam, if creases are formed, the jam is ready.

Plum jam bottled and labelled.

Of course the only way to see if the jam is set is to now wait for the jars to cool completely.  Off they go to the garage.

Next it’s chutney.  Didn’t really weigh everything but this is roughly what went into our plum chutney, veg diced.  Half a large marrow from the garden (from our garage store), 1kg of onion (sadly our crop had failed so a supermarket purchase), 1kg of cooking apples again from the garden (softened then stored in the freezer in the autumn last year), 2kg of our plums (well, we had so many), 500g raisins, 500g soft brown sugar, 1 litre malt vinegar (only because we didn’t have white wine vinegar), 1tbls chilli flakes and a tsp of salt.

Bubbling chutney

Now here’s where I can’t tell you how long to cook your chutney.  We brought ours to the boil and then simmered it for hours.  When finished it had reduced by about half and had a nice thick consistency when I dragged my spoon through it.  It had changed colour completely from the light colour in the above picture to a nice dark brown.  Thanks to our neighbour coming to the rescue with a bag full of jars.  Here’s our hawl.

So much chutney!!!

Now, although you can eat the jam as soon as you would like to, it is best to leave the chutney to mature for a month or two as it will improve with age.  Believe it or not we are still eating plum chutney made in 2011.

Now for the results – and I have just opened a jar of each to taste and check for consistency – gorgeous.  Ooh, and the chutney does have a kick so if you don’t like a bit of heat leave out the dried chilli flakes (mine included the seeds).

Delicious Plum Jam

Plum Chutney with a kick.

And what else did we get up to.

Tasted our first homebrew ale. Ready in 3 weeks. Would really recommend having a go.

Pakaged up our Ebay sales.

Paul’s 5 minute charcoal sketch.

50p car boot table transformed.

Upcycled pine box with golden labrador chewed lid.

More work on the baby quilt.

Local gamekeeper brought us 6 pheasants.

Phew – Monday morning arrives, Paul has gone off to work so I have time to write this blog, bake a bit of bread and crack on with that quilt.

18 months on from The School of Artisan Food

This is by way of an introduction to me and mine and the place I now call home.

Having graduated from The School of Artisan Food with distinction in a Dairy/Butchery Diploma I moved in with my partner Paul to start a new life in Guilsborough, Northamptonshire.  I had spent all my life in Rugby, across the county boarder in Warwickshire, so what a huge change this was for me.

Guilsborough is a lovely village in Northamptonshire.  We have a wonderful local store/post office that seems to stock a little of almost everything you might ever need.  A pub that lacks a little atmosphere but has a great chef and stocks beer from the micro brewery next door.  A village hall that hosts  many groups and organisations, one of which is GMADS, the local (amateur) music and drama society. A school off the village green for the little ones and a High School on the outskirts with a great reputation.  We are also lucky to have a doctors surgery/health centre, a pharmacy and a hairdresser.  Last but not least are the eclectic mix of folk we have here that will all nod, bid you good day or stop for a chat.  We are so lucky to call some of them our neighbours or friends, and even luckier that some of them are both.

With Paul retiring in a couple of years time we have dreamt of moving to Corfu, France or even Italy.  But you know what,  we’ve decided this little village of ours isn’t so bad after all.  We are not far from the M1, A5 and A14, but can’t hear any of them.  We have Northampton and Leicester for Cinema, Theatres, Restaurants, Rugby and Cricket and Market Harborough is a lovely town in which to spend a few pennies.  We have award winning farmshops, butchers and pubs on our doorstop.  What more could we want.

So now we are about to completely refurb the cottage and continue our search for an acre or five to rent.  Our dream is to become as self sufficient as possible and supplement Paul’s pension with some small endeavour (make cheese, bake bread and cakes, paint, knit and sew…………and whatever else we can come up with)

Watch this space!!!!!