Strawberry Season

The recent wet weather dosen't seem to have hampered the growth of the strawberries.  We, very luckily,  had a day and a half of dry weather on Monday whilst the old conservatory came down and on Tuesday when the new one went up.  The workmen had just got the roof on the new one when it started to rain again.

Since then we have had a deluge of rain, wind, thunder, lightening with the occasional glimpse of a watery sun, we don't like it very much, neither do the other plants and flowers but it is obviously fine weather for strawberries.

 I bought these strawberry plants a couple of years ago for £1.99 for six at Aldi, they produced some fruit in the first year and last year but this year they have excelled themselves.

 We've filled bowls full, taken some to neighbours, chopped them onto cereal for breakfast and eaten them with strawberry yoghurt as a pudding after dinner.

There are loads more to be picked and it's a race against the slugs but we pick them just as they are going red and ripen them indoors.

Yesterday I made a flan with some of them.  I cheated and bought a sponge base from the supermarket along with some vegetarian jelly mix.  It was so easy to do.

 As well as being very tasty served with some plain ice cream. 

It may be cold, wet and windy outside but there is a little taste of summer inside!

From the Garden

It's that time of year when the garden starts to produce lots of lovely goodies; not just for us but the wildlife too!

We have lots of cabbage, some new potatoes and courgettes to eat.

Also lots of gooseberries - I love sitting in the sun to top and tail gooseberries it reminds me of when I was a child and my job was to sit on the back steps and top and tail the gooseberries or pod the fresh garden peas into a colander ready for Sunday lunch. I always had to move for a while so Dad could sharpen the carving knife on the step ready to carve the Sunday joint.

We've already made gooseberry jam as well as a gooseberry crumble or two.

The tomatoes are ripening in the greenhouse or on our kitchen windowsill when they fall of the plants a little early.

Yesterday we collected enough blackcurrants to make both jam and cordial.

I also made some apricot conserve with some cheap apricots I saw in the supermarket. The cupboard is beginning to fill with enough jams and jellies to take us through to next year and to provide us with little gifts for people too.

Time for Summer Pudding

One of my favourite puddings is Summer Pudding, I try to make one every year. We bought some strawberries and raspberries yesterday so those, plus some cherries we already had and some blackcurrants from our garden have gone into the pudding. Try as I may I can never quite get my puddings to look like the one from my recipe book below but they always taste wonderful.

You need about 11/2 (one and a half) pounds of mixed summer fruit - try to have more red fruit than blue or black as it keeps the lovely berry red colour

Hull the strawberries and raspberries, trim the blackcurrants and stone the cherries and place them in a pan with 4oz caster sugar, the sugar will disolve and the fruit juices run; bring to the boil and keep boiling for about 3 minutes

Meanwhile take about 8 slices of bread and line a 1 1/2 pint pudding basin with the bread pieces

Make sure you overlap and fill in all the gaps. Then, reserving about 4 tablespoons of juice, place the fruit and the rest of the juice in the basin, cover the top with more bread. Place a plate on top so that it fits inside the rim of the basin and weight it down so that the juice soaks into the bread. When cool place in the fridge and leave overnight. If you find some areas of bread haven't soaked through then use the reserved juice to soak into those areas.

Serve with cream, ice cream, creme fraiche or greek yoghurt - Summer on a plate.
Delicious!