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Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15984

Posted: Mon Oct 13, 14 8:15 am Post subject:
Lucky find. Not the most usual thing to find for foraging in the UK.

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 5:08 pm Post subject:

In my greenhouse, I have a vine. Very productive. But what to do with the crop? Been experimenting. The experiment was a success, in as far as it convincingly demonstrated that my brilliant idea was in fact Naff.

Idea = make raisins in my oven. Found a "quick" method on Youtube, cut grapes in half, put in dehydrator at 70C for 3 hours. I have no dehydrator, but I do have a super electric oven that will heat at that kind of temperature. It took ages to halve enough grapes to cover three baking sheets. Super ovens are not ventilated, so I had to frequently open the door, change the air and remove condensation. After 4 hours the grapes were (guessing) 3/4 of the way to being raisins. At this point I gave up. Next problem, what to do with 600gm of semi-raisins. Spent best part of an hour de-seeding them. Then bunged them into a cake mix. My other half is most impressed with the end result. Mind you, 4 hours work and 5 hours of oven time for one fruit cake is a bit excessive.

Cathryn

Joined: 16 Jul 2005
Posts: 19856
Location: Ceredigion

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 5:13 pm Post subject:
When will this wine be ready then?

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 5:20 pm Post subject:

oldish chris wrote:

Next problem, what to do with 600gm of semi-raisins. Spent best part of an hour de-seeding them. Then bunged them into a cake mix. My other half is most impressed with the end result. Mind you, 4 hours work and 5 hours of oven time for one fruit cake is a bit excessive.

600 g raisins in one fruit cake?

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 5:25 pm Post subject:

tahir wrote:

oldish chris wrote:

600 g raisins in one fruit cake?

OK, so I can be rather frugal

More like 400gm that had been "plumped up", e.g, by soaking in tea. The cake mix was based on 1lb of flour.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 5:58 pm Post subject:
I'm not knocking you, just worried about your digestive system

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 6:23 pm Post subject:

tahir wrote:

I'm not knocking you, just worried about your digestive system

If only you knew. Being a bit poorly, I'm having to take some medication that has some side effects. One of them is that I have spells that are not dissimilar to IBS. So far, grapes are one of the foods that I can tolerate. So, this month's organic cure for cancer is anthocyanin, I'm managing about 1/2lb of grapes a day. In 4 weeks time I'll be able to tell you that that hasn't worked either

The important issue remains Jamanda's huge find.

jamanda
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 22 Oct 2006
Posts: 35057
Location: Devon

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 6:49 pm Post subject:
I'm hoping there'll be enough left when I take a trug or so along next weekend.

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 14 11:35 pm Post subject:
If you sandwich the grapes (gently) between two plates, you can slice horizontally between the plates in no time.

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 14 1:43 pm Post subject:

wellington womble wrote:

If you sandwich the grapes (gently) between two plates, you can slice horizontally between the plates in no time.

and then? Do you have a dehydrator?

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 14 11:32 am Post subject:
Sorry, can't help with that. Just a tip for faster slicing!

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 14 12:55 pm Post subject:

wellington womble wrote:

Sorry, can't help with that. Just a tip for faster slicing!

Not scrounging (don't often get down to Bucks), just curious. Thanks for the tip, but I can't see me trying to make raisins again.

Straying way off topic, seems that prior to circa 1850, my ancestors (through the male line) lived in the Cheddington area of Bucks.

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 14 7:25 pm Post subject:
Really - we lived quite near cheddington.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15984

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 14 7:57 am Post subject:
My ancestors also came from Bucks. Think there are still some of the family there, but rather distant, so I don't know them. My great grandfather moved to Richmond some time late 19th century I think. The family had a farm on the Hughenden estate.

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Fri Oct 17, 14 9:44 am Post subject:
I know that too. I ought to point out that I don't actually live in Bucks anymore. I've recently moved up to the midlands and have failed to update my profile!

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