This has been my first attempt at preserving. I followed the intructions from my Mum (thanks Mum!) on how to get the jars to seal (clean thoroughly, dishwasher is best, then put into an oven at 100 deg C for 30 minutes, add contents and put the lid on immediately, after a short while the heat should create a vacuum and the lid (which usually pops in and out in the middle) should pop in), and they sealed no problem.

I’ve got another load of onions now, and more coming in our veg box on Tuesday, so I’ll be making this again as we’ve already gone through half of what I made! It’s very tasty in sandwiches and of course with cheese. Highly recommended

Between now and mid December is the best time to plant your garlic, although the sooner the better. In theory you can just take some garlic out of the cupboard and plant it, but you won’t get a great return on it. Your best option is to go to a local garden centre and pick up some garlic bulbs designed for growing from and not eating.

To plant out the garlic, prepare either a small square area or just spots around the garden, mix up the earth with a little compost to give the ground some nutrition to help with the growing. Then take a garlic bulb, split it into the individual cloves (you don’t need to peel them), and then put them into the ground about an inch deep with the point/top at the top. Garlic will create quite a lot of roots so if you plant them together then try to keep about half a foot gap between each one. I’ll be aiming to fit about 8-10 cloves in one of our wooden troughs this year.

The garlic can then be left until the end of June to early July time. Eventually the tops will die off and dry out and the garlic can then be pulled up. You’re then best off leaving the garlic out in the sun to dry off, allow it to dry out the outer coating to protect the cloves inside, and you can then even have a go at plaiting what you’ve pulled up and hanging it up somewhere cool.

Garlic that we’ve grown in the past has lasted us over a year and doesn’t go off or start growing like shop bought garlic. Definitely worth a go!

So last week I wrote about getting some strawberry plants and raspberry canes back in the garden. I’ve chosen these two as they’re easy to grow and are effectively self replicating, so once you’ve got a few plants you will rarely need to buy any more. So how do strawberry plants work?

Strawberry Runners

First of all we start with strawberry runners from July/August onwards. These are like long stalks that grow out of already established plants (see the photo above). As the runners grow a little plant will appear on the runner and leaves grow. You need to get this plant to root into earth or compost. If the main plants aren’t already in the ground (e.g. like mine are in a pot above), then try to train the new runners into a pot or two, or place them on a patch of ground so they can root there. Once the roots are established then the new runner should be able to look after itself, as up until that point the main plant will feed it and give it what it needs to keep going.

You can usually get one or two new plants off a runner, although ideally you should only take one so that there is more energy going into that single new plant. I just pushed it to two per runner in the photo above as I want to increase our plant numbers. Once your new plants are well rooted you can cut the runner off and relocate your plants to a new patch. I would recommend to keep them separate from your more established plants so that you know the age of your various plants.

New Plants – Year 1

There’s a good reason to keep your new plants separate from the others. For the following spring/summer you shouldn’t try to grow fruit on them. Any flowers that appear, pick them off. This allows the plant to put any energy into establishing itself fully. You’ll still get runners off these new plants but again, I would cut them off and just let the plant grow strong ready for a few years of good fruit and runners.

New Plants – Year 2 to 5

For the following 2-4 years you should get a good crop of strawberries off these plants. You’ll also get one or two runners off most plants and that allows you to continue the process.

Over time you’ll get into a cycle of growing the new plants, getting strawberries off the established plants and then removing the oldest plants to replace with new plants again. A complete rotation system and you can easily increase your plants over time, or give some away. One of the cheapest solutions to getting probably one of the best fruits going!

Next year isn’t going to be as easy for us. We’ve got a baby on the way, due at Christmas, so any plants with a medium to high maintenance are just not an option next year. However, we still want to grow some fruit and vegetables, so what’s easy to do?

Potatoes

We’ve (aka I’ve!) decided to stick with potatoes as they’re really low maintenance and we loved the early potatoes (new potatoes) that we grew earlier in the year, hopefully the main crop will be just as good. I’ll have two wooden troughs and 2 potato sacks spare so I’ll get a set of early potatoes on the go followed by some main crop potatoes. Easy to manage and great to eat!

Garlic

I’m also going to grow some garlic again, which we’ll be getting planted as soon as possible. Garlic is best grown from proper seed garlic which you can buy from garden centres from about now. They usually say sow on the shortest day (21st December?) and reap on the longest day (21st June), but it’s best to plant it out from October onwards, however you can also plant it in January, just leave it in for a bit longer (usually when the tops die off and dry out).

Garlic is grown by taking a bulb, splitting it into the cloves and then planting the cloves about an inch into the ground. I’ll be growing about 8-10 in a wooden trough. Once they’re in then I don’t need to worry too much about them. Also, the colder the temperature, the stronger the final garlic should be

Strawberries

Usually I have my strawberry plants in pots, however I’ve not had a great amount of fruit off them, probably a bit stifled by the pot and also pots don’t retain water as well as the ground does so they dry out quicker. Thanks to my Dad and husband, David, we’ve now got a clear area at the back of the garden after they chopped about half the trees down/back over the weekend! I’ve already got 8 strawberry plants in the ground now, 7 of which are from runners this summer (I’ll write about getting new plants off runners soon!). I’ll be transplanting more into the ground from the pots where there’s space.

Raspberries

Of course good plants to grow when you have little ground space are tall plants, and raspberries are perfect for this. I’m hoping to get 3-4 raspberry canes off my Dad and put them at the very back of the garden up against the fence. It gets some great sun now, during the afternoon, and in the summer will get plenty more. Again, it’s very low maintenance, you just have to take a bit of time to pick the fruit when it’s ready! Towards the end of the year (around now), you cut the canes back down to the ground and they’ll grow new canes the following year. No need to replace

Carrots

Hopefully I can get my Dad to start us off some carrots in a decent sized pot, and then we just need to keep them watered and remember to use them Smaller baby carrots are easy to grow in a pot or an old bucket with a few holes for drainage. You can sow them around the outside of a round pot and then pick every other one to allow the others to grow and expand a little more.

Tomatoes

Again, I’ve asked my Dad to see if he’ll start off a couple of tomato plants in hanging baskets for us. We’re not going to have the time or chance to start tomatoes off from seed and he has a better climate down south and more space than us. He’s just brought us a large 2l box of tomatoes and has some many more at home. Made a great roast tomato and garlic sauce for pasta and pizza usage

Lettuce

Hopefully I can keep a little bit of ground free to do some lettuce next summer. That’s the only plant I’ll probably grow from seed, and will probably go for the type that you can just pick leaves from and leave it to continue to grow. By then the new arrival will be happily sitting in the pushchair or can lie out on a playmat in the shade if it’s warm enough, giving me a bit of time to tend to some basic salad items

I’m looking forward to our garden next year. I think the clearing of the trees has given me a chance to plan planting a few plants in the ground here, which has given me a few ideas/reminders of what we can do. Even if it produces just a handful of fruit and vegetables for us, it’s still worth it for a taste that you just can’t buy in the shops

The new restaurant looks great. It’s nice and spacious and they’ve not tried to cram in too many tables, like a lot of restaurants do. Plenty of space to get past people already sitting. The interior is still quite cosy and inviting, with some great artwork on the walls from local photographers. The bar also looked well stocked! They even kindly got some Elderflower Presse in especially for me although I am working on getting them to stock something similar permanently

They also ordered 200+ mini cupcakes for the occasion from one of their suppliers – Cupcake Revolution, which I have to say tasted fantastic and a couple found their way home too!

Cromwells will be officially opening some time this week. We’ve already booked a table for next Saturday to take my parents there when they visit, so very much looking forward to some good food from the new place

(Photo taken by Alison Gow)

My first idea, naturally, was alcohol free wine. However, after looking in a couple of supermarkets I couldn’t find any! I eventually found a bottle in Waitrose, but at £5.99! That’s more than I pay for normal wine. So instead I looked at the grape juice offerings and found that there was a white, rose and red versions from Schloer, and also own brand top of the range ones from both Tescos and Sainsburys.

Schloer’s own offerings are very nice. The rose is a little like a dry rose wine whereas the red is a bit sweeter (I’ve not tried the white yet). The red reminds me a little of red lambrusco (which is the only style of ‘red wine’ I’ll drink!).

Tesco Finest has all 3 flavours as well, and their white grape and elderflower is a very good replacement for white wine. Sainsburys do all 3 in their taste the difference range, and again their white grape and elderflower is quite nice although slightly sweeter than the Tesco version. However I found that their Rose version tasted a bit like bubblegum! However, a couple of drinks that Sainsburys does sell is their taste the difference lemonade and also an Elderflower Presse which is very light and refreshing. We’ve both taken a liking to the Lemonade however and it’s highly recommended!

All of these are still carbonated however they’re not extremely fizzy like your normal carbonated drinks such as coca Cola and Sprite/7UP.

If you want to keep up to date with how the process of their refurb is going then you can keep track on their Blog. They also currently have an offer on to purchase vouchers ready for their opening, where they will double the amount you spend (providing you use them before 30th November). Definitely a worthwhile purchase if you fancy good food for half the price! Their Double your Money offer ends on 30th September (2010).

20 minutes of cooking later and the bread was done and tasted extremely nice! A perfect accompaniment to our barbecued dinner of garlic and herb chicken wings, halloumi and sausages

The weather was glorious and the food and drink aplenty! There were a fair few stalls there, plenty of taste testers available and plenty of food cooking all around We took a wander around the stalls first, before it got too crowded to be able to see what was on offer, and then grabbed some lunch (ready cooked Ostrich burger for me and a Kangaroo burger for David) followed by dessert (frozen yoghurt with frozen raspberries in it), before heading home.

The only downside of the day was lack of space in areas and a lack of seating. I’m 5.5 months pregnant now and standing around is hard on my back anyway, let alone when I’m carrying our (almost) bundle of joy around too!

We left the festival with a few purchases:
Fudge (a plain clotted cream variety and chocolate and chilli – David’s choice)
Chocolate coated Cinder Toffee
Chicken and Ostrich ‘cushion’ (next Sunday’s dinner!)
Vegetable Samosas (for David)
Goat sausages
Chilli puree (called ‘Pure Pain Pleasure’ – also for David!)

Making bread is easy with a breadmaker, and for £40 it’s easily paid for itself. You can keep flour and yeast for quite a while in the cupboards, and even if you run out of bread, 3 hours later you can have a ready made loaf (quicker if you have one of the new fast-bake machines).

I’ve mainly stuck to packet bread mixes since I bought the mixer. Packet mixes work out slightly cheaper than buying a loaf of bread, and the ciabatta packet mix is great for making about 10-12 white rolls, which work out nicer and a lot cheaper than buying a decent bag of rolls from the supermarket. However, recently I’ve been venturing into more untried territory of using strong bread flour and yeast, and essentially cutting the cost of the bread even more.

My first attempt was with some strong wholemeal bread flour. It came out a little dense (but brown bread tends to be denser I find, even from the bakers) but more importantly it seemed a bit tasteless to me and I didn’t enjoy much. I tried a second time, adding a bit more salt and some sugar, as suggested on the packet, but found that the bread came out overcooked (I put it on the wholemeal setting instead of the basic bread setting, which I think was wrong!).

After chatting to my dad, a seasonal bread maker, he suggested mixing white bread flour with wholemeal or multigrain mixes, to lighten the bread. So today I used a third of a multigrain bread mix (as we’d had it for a while) and topped up with white bread flour to get enough ingredients for a 1.5lb loaf, the first time I’ve made a large loaf (usually stick to 1lb). 3 hours later and the results looked impressive, and once the loaf cooled we tried a bit and it’s nice and light and very nice with the grains through it. Only problem to me with it is that again it’s lacking in taste, but I didn’t add any salt at all so I just need to work on getting the right balance of seasoning and then we have perfect bread Cheaper than the shops and while it’s waiting to be cooked, much longer lasting!

Incidentally, the recipe and proportions I used were
165g Hovis Harvest Grain bread mix
210g Sainsburys strong white bread flour
1 tsp hovis yeast (slightly out of date but clearly works fine!)
155ml lukewarm water
1 dessert spoon of olive oil

Cook as a 1.5lb loaf on the basic bread setting (took 3 hours exactly).