Allotment blog love :)

hehe, I like this write up of The Green Grower blog over at Dobbies Gardening Blog:


"The Green Grower
In a bid to break free from the 9 to 5 world of work and a flat without a garden, Steph Jones embraced the beauty and enjoyment of an allotment. The Green Grower documents her journey from her very first day on the allotment. Since then Steph has shared her developments and offers good advice on growing all manner of things. Best of all there are plenty of tasty allotment recipes, including chocolate courgette cake, vegetable spaghetti and plenty of fruity booze."

PS: I am hoping to be back up the allotment sometime this week so hopefully blog posts to follow...
PPS: "Hello!" to anyone still reading :)

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!