Marrow surprise, Hooligan harvest & Bilberry bonanza

I'm a week behind on this post. Bad Steph! Ok, so last Thursday I went to lottie to check it out and harvest the goodies. What a nice view from the car (above)!

It was raining a little so I tried to clear some of the weeds from around my sweet william, red lettuce, dwarf & broad bean seedlings. Then the rain got heavy so I gave up on trying to do that and grabbed the harvest I could before getting super-soaked! You can see at the top of the photo the area I weeded and the mass of weeds at the bottom of the pic :(

My vegetable spaghetti is looking good. Looking forward to trying this. I have waited a whole year as last time it didn't work.

I have LOADS of tomatoes on my 2 plants, but all of them are green and not looking like they'll turn. So I picked a whole bunch to make into various soups, jams and whatnot. They're in the fridge right now. Just need some time to make them - bit busy with 'Handmade Heaven : Funky Fused Glass' at the mo, re-photographing things and making new goodies.

I harvested some tasty goodies - beetroots, green & yellow courgettes another MAHOOSIVE marrow which I didn't even spot growing and was lurking beneath the leaves - it was a bit of a surprise I can tell you!, runner beans...

...patty pans, hooligan pumpkins (both upside down, drying here) and a couple of banana peppers. Alas the peppers were all soft and tasted horrid so they went to compost heaven.

I went to visit my folks and took the MAHOOSIVE marrow with me. I weighed it on my mum's kitchen scales and this made me laugh - 'ERROR' - I think the scales were saying "too heavy! get it off, get it OFF!" :)

So I took it to the bathroom scales. I think it was about 8.5lbs! A monster. 

Look how proud I am of my 'marrow bowtie' ;)

My folks and I went out to harvest some wild goodies. Free food - who wouldn't!? I picked my first ever bilberries. Absolutely delicious! A few may, or may not, have fallen into my face... ;) Hehehe! They're very stainy and quite time-consuming to pick as they only grow in ones or twos, hidden in the leaves of the bilberry bushes.

My mum said they were quite expensive to buy and I now understand why. The three of us were picking for around two hours and got this 700g-ish haul. I looked how much this would cost to buy and calculated it was around £32! Nice :)

We also picked 1500g of rowanberries. Lovely!

I'm at my big bro's place in Kent this w/e. We're about to go for a walk so I'm going armed with plastic bags in case we come across any blackberries or other fruity goodies. He has a plum tree in his garden so I am taking some of those. Just have to shin up a ladder! I've already added some plum jam & chutney recipes to the recipe list. Hope you're making the most of all the fruit & veg ready at this time of year. I really need to get in the kitchen and preserve all my goodies.

Chocolate Courgette Cake - nom nom!

• 120g butter (softened)
• 150g chocolate spread (Nutella, etc. I used 'Mr Choc' from Lidl - great name!)
• 100g caster sugar
• 200g soft brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 350g plain flour*
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 4 tbs cocoa
• 500g courgettes, peeled and grated finely
  (use the food processor if you have one, done in a jiffy!)
• 1 tsp vanilla

(*I've made this with normal plain flour, as well as gluten-free plain flour and it tastes almost the same either way. I did add some xanthan gum to the GF version, as per packet instructions.) 

1. Line a 20 x 35 cm cake tin with baking paper and set oven to 190deg C/350deg F/gas 5. (I have made this in a 23 x 23 cm and a 20 x 25cm tin and both worked fine.)

2. Mix the butter, chocolate spread and both sugars together until light and fluffy.

3. Add the eggs and mix thoroughly.

 

4. Fold the dry ingredients into the mixture, then stir in the grated courgettes and vanilla.

5. Pour into the lined cake tin.

6. Bake for 35-45 mins, then check with a skewer to see if it is cooked through. If cake mix sticks to the skewer, cook for a further 5 mins each time until the skewer comes out clean.

normal cake left, gluten-free cake right

For some of the cakes I made I put in a filling of chocolate spread and allotment-grown-blackcurrant jam. Nom nom!

The cakes are super-moist and absolutely delicious! I defy anyone who dislikes courgettes to be able to taste there is a vegetable in this tasty treat :) Hope you enjoy making your own. At work, they DEMANDED I make another cake, soon after the first one I made was eaten! I had a non-filled cake, warm, with custard but it would be equally nice with cream or a chocolate sauce...

This is a tried & tested adaptation of this recipe. I ditched the oil and replaced it with chocolate spread, and didn't bother with the milk as there is plenty of moisture in the courgettes. I've made 3 cakes so far (2 gluten-free) and I am currently in love with their moist chocolatey goodness!

Blackcurrant jam & blackcurrant booze!

This begins with maths. Maths and some improvising. The lbs of blackcurrants I picked were languishing in the fridge and I didn't want them to spoil so I had to do something with them. I really wanted to make a blackcurrant chutney, something different, but I've not found a recipe yet. I'll keep hunting and if you know one, let me know. Anyway, maths. There seems to be a fair few different ways to make b/c jam so I picked one which seemed most sensible and worked my brain to calculate how much sugar and water I needed, hence the numbers on the piece of paper in the 1st photo. I think I must've got it right as the jam seemed to turn out to a T.

Voila! Scrummy b/c jam on toast. Delish! Still got another bunch of b/c's to pick so more jam perhaps, or finally some b/c chutney. Might have to make up a recipe!

With the rest of the b/c's I made some b/c booze. I thought I had some plain vodka knocking about but no, I had to make do with raspberry vodka (not homemade). I think this is no bad thing and look forward to trying this in, alas, 6 months. Well, it will be a good Christmas! I kinda made this up from various research on b/c booze, so just stuffed the bottles with b/c's, squidged it down with the end of a wooden spoon and topped up with vodka. The bigger bottle I threw in some sugar too but I don't know if it will need it as the raspberry vodka is already pretty sweet.

Roll on Christmas!

Jam and whatnot

The raspberries are out in full force now. The other day I picked 1kg easily so now I have 7 jars of raspberry jam! Next time I am going to try some tray-bake recipes and cheesecakes, etc. Got to freeze the surplus too. Can't let good raspberries go to waste.

I gave some raspberries and sweet peas to my neighbours as they're lovely and always very helpful. I got some lettuce and rocket in return so this was last night's tea - a salad with black peppercorns, goat's cheese and sweet chilli sauce. Yum!

I followed that with raspberries and vanilla icecream. A very cheap meal! And so tasty too :)

When I went down the allotment yesterday @ 5pm - too hot in the day - I planted out some leeks and dwarf beans. I pulled out some peas as they weren't looking healthy. I also did LOADS of watering! Need to get some tomato food for my tommies and re-net the broccoli as it has grown too big! Spotted some frogs in the pond too which was good to see. Hopefully they're feasting on my slugs!

I also built my new bbq and one of those mini greenhouses, the ones like a wendy house. Not sure how long it will last but thought I'd give it a go. Need somewhere to grow my seedlings as the tommies in the shed are huge now, so no room for seedlings in there! Bbq-ing tonight :)