Summer Fruits Pudding

I was very lucky that Mike got an allotment cookbook for his birthday and it just happens to have a summer pudding recipe and we just happened to have some picked on our latest visit to the allotment....and we had some spare strawberries in the freezer to make up the difference!  How very fortunate!

We didn't have any Cassis, so looked for alternatives and found a Delia recipe which said "using sliced white bread just will not do!"  Well guess what Delia, it does!

Mike did pretty much all of it, I was at the other end of the camera and the professional clingfilm cutter!

As per usual, what we actually used is in (italics)
9 slices of white bread - one day old
250g each blackcurrants & redcurrants and 325g raspberries (460ish combo of blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries)
100g caster sugar (just sugar)
2 T creme de cassis (juice from the berries)

line the bowl with clingfilm and then the bread and simmer the fruits until fruits are soft and sugar is dissolved.  The idea was that the softer fruits went in last, but we just chucked it all in.

Spoon the fruit into the breaded bowl and drizzle the juice so that the bread gets a coated a bit.  Cover the pudding with the last of the bread, then clingfilm, put a small plate on top with a tin on that, to weigh down and help the juice of the fruit get all over the bread.

chill overnight in the fridge.  Turn out and serve!

2 June 2012 - filling in the gaps

 The latest bed that was cleared of weeds, the toilet rolls have got the cauli in, so I don't pull up my last 5 seeds thinking they're weeds! - in this half theres:
chickory, purple cauliflower, green kohl rabi, kale, rainbow spinach and savoy cabbage.

In the other side of that bed is:
purple brussel sprouts, nasturtium, purple sprouting brocolli, pak choi and purple kohl rabi






at the very end of the bed are some old seeds - that may, or may not come up.... sweet pepper bush and a licquorice scented herb plant.... well, may as well give them a chance....

 Then there was filling in the other end of the roots bed, and filling in the gaps where no seedlings have come up.  Because nothing goes to plan (and I wouldn't have it any other way.....) one envelope split, so in my hand is possibly spinach beet, or beetroots of some sort.  I put it at the end and we'll see what we see!

we have some new flowers in the pond ;-)

the raspberries get bird-proofed

 

Have a look at the quick 30 second video - my first attempt at uploading one on here - the resident sheepdog rounding up the chickens! 
Round and round and round she goes - when she stops, nobody knows!

2 July 2012 - Croppage!

Some blackcurrants ready to pick, and lots more to come - we even got there before the birds!

A few raspberries are ready too - we've protected them against from the birds now.

The comfrey is growing like mad, will come in very handy later on as compost, but for now, we'll leave it to the bumblebees!

 Rhubarb wine soon - must go and get all the equipment (and instructions!)

Mike having a quick break, showing off our first turnip - we're slowly going to thin them out, by eating one at a time!

Now that the strawberry bed has been weeded (the grass tried to move in) we've got fruits!

 In this bed we've got the turnips, a few carrots, 2 corn and all 4 jerusalem artichokes (which the bunnies have taken a wee bit more notice of than I would've liked)

The first bed of potatoes is doing well - we've got 4 varieties in here (and you can just see the plastic bottle and toilet roll crops in the background!)

Here's what we took home - looks like it could be summer fruit pudding and turnip for tea then!

25 June 2012 - new growth

Pumpkin (possibly)

My brother very nicely got me some seeds for Christmas, I had planned to have a whole bed of my favourite pumpkins, but so far, all that's come up is the ornamental gourds!  Well, at least I've got something, but how do I get them to be ornamental?  I'm guessing I've got to get the seeds out, but you never see holes in the ones in posh shops.....Time to learn a new dark art!

ornamental gourds

I lost the label, so the plant in the root-trainer pot is possibly a pumpkin, marrow, melon or courgette!  You can see how well the roots grow in these pots (they split in half for easy access and reuse).

before....with weeds

after

Here's the "leaves" bed - at the front is brussel sprouts, then further back (in toilet rolls) is some cauliflower (plants & seeds), brocolli plants, amaranthus calaloo seeds, cos lettuce seeds and rainbow spinach plants.  Between the rows is leeks.
  

Purple brussel sprout

Turnips & Nasturtium

Corn & Jerusalem Artichokes

Globe Artichokes

We've got some fruit coming through - and plans to start making rhubarb wine!

Gooseberries

Cape Gooseberries

Redcurrants

Raspberries

Rhubarb v boot!

Plums

 

resident

relaxing after some hard work

6 June 2012 - fruits of labour

Today was mostly about mowing the grass because it was getting really long and our new toy arrived - 2 hours of mowing meant that I only had time totake photos of how everything else was going.

confirmed to be a plum tree!

The tree that we'd been keeping an eye on has now started showing signs of fruit - looks like we've got ourselves a plum tree after all!








 

 It's official, these are raspberry canes!

We've got lots of raspberries coming up, after trying to work out if they were currants when we only had bare canes to look at.










  

Cape Gooseberries surviving the outdoors!

The Cape Gooseberries have coped well with being outside, we've had a mixture of weather from very hot to very wet, but they're looking strong, and the slugs have stayed away, which is always nice!

plastic tree farm doing well!

The first 2 rows are Spaghetti Squash, which I planted straight out as seeds, but that was only last week, so early days yet. 

The back two rows are ornamental gourds which have been grown on the window sill, possibly a bit early to be going out, but they've got their own greenhouses.  I've extended the experiment to see if having lids on or off makes any difference.

6 June 2012 - new toy!

We got our lawnmower last week - I was so excited I didn't even get changed after work to mow our little plot of mud out the back of our place!

Took it down to the allotment today and had a wee play before Mike had to go off to marshall the TT races.

Here's some before and after pics.

before

new toy

after

before

after

 

and blisters, on both hands!