How are your stores going?

Latest Articles

How are your stores going?
Page Previous 1, 2

Downsizer Forum Index -> Grow Your Own

Author

Message

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 05 10:34 am Post subject:
Forgot about me carrots, still pulling 'em up.

judith

Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 05 12:52 pm Post subject:

Well, I've just used up the last of the spuds (Pentland Dell - won't do those again), and have got less than a month's worth of onions left to go. Plenty of garlic left. A few sad-looking leeks left outside. Plenty of root veg and spinach beet outside, and it won't be too long before the cabbages, PSB and caulis are ready to eat.

Jam supplies (marmalade and greengage) are looking good, lots of carrot chutney in stock and a few jars of apple butter. Still have all my jars of plum sauce, as it is still much too vinegary for my liking - not sure it will ever be edible!!. One jar of artichoke hearts.

Not a huge amount of frozen veg left - broad beans, runner beans (a bit soggy as I didn't cool them fast enough after blanching), and quite a few shallots. A couple of boxes of greengages, some apples and some blackcurrants that I forgot about!

Definitely not enough to live on through til June, but not bad for a first attempt at pacing stocks and overwintering stuff. Where is that smug git emoticon?!

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 05 1:00 pm Post subject:
I forgot about our parnips still in the garden. We also have some dried 'shrooms left. If only I can get bugs to eat them with me...

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 05 1:10 pm Post subject:

Judith wrote:

Where is that smug git emoticon?!

Well done Judith

Guest

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 05 2:27 pm Post subject:
Puffball sauce/soup in the freezer; quite a lot of bottled fruit left, jams, pickles and chutney, wine, cider and mead etc in the outside store. Leeks and artichokes in the garden. Flavoured oil, raspberry vinegar.

Marigold123

Joined: 06 Feb 2005
Posts: 224

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 5:03 am Post subject:

Didn't grow/gather much last year, but still have a ton of jam from the year before, some strawberry (from a mega-Asda 20p a box strawberrry opportunity), bramble, mulberry & apple, (both from our local Green), apple and redcurrant, (Asda cheapies & local free apples), some not very good peach, a lot of sour wild yellow plum, that I love, but which goes down very slowly, and various odd jellies made from sloes, elderberries and ornamental quinces, all gathered locally and made more palateable and set-worthy with local apples - except the quince, which I used neat. We tend to use these as condiments, though my youngest loves the taste of elderberries - the others hate them.

I've also still got one jar of green tomato chutney, (my own tomatoes), and a jar or two of apple chutney, (free local apples).

My latest batch of picked onions should be about ready to start on now, and even if they're not, the children will kill me if I don't open a jar this weekend. I've also got a few jars of pickled cauliflower, made with ordinary white cauliflower, romanesco cauli, small broccoli florets and a few button brussels sprouts as an experiment. It's not been very popular, so I think I'm going to have to either make or buy some pickled cucumbers and combine it all with a few of the pickled onions and make a sort of piccalilli.

I've completely failed to make marmalade again this year, and I think I've missed the seville orange season again now - haven't I?

I've got some sloe vodka and sloe gin steeping in the cupboard, which isn't ready yet, and a few dried fairy ring mushrooms and a handful of dried elderberries in small jars in my spices cupboard. When they're in season, I put fresh elderberries in my apple cakes, which disguises their flavour a bit and gives a very good 'blueberry muffin' result. I've been meaning to use the dried ones for the same thing, or for putting in a mixed fruit crumble.

I still have a few smallish bottles of elderflower cordial (of a sort!) still in the fridge. I used a recipe I had never tried and realised when I was half way through that it was too weak to be a keeping recipe. It was intended to be drunk there and then, but I'd made too much to use straight away, so I adjusted the quantities to try and increase the sugar levels enough for it to keep.

I was partially successful. It's slightly fizzy and has thrown a bit of a sediment, but it's actually rather good, in a scary sort of way. You need to dilute it, obviously, but you can still taste the fizz. I'm not sure if there's a proper fermentation taken place, and I'm a bit nervous of it, but I'm drinking it very slowly and nothing bad has happened to me yet.

The only herbs the chickens have left me at the moment are three rosemary bushes, but I dried a bit of thyme, marjoram, bronze fennel and mint before the chickens got at them, which I still have. Still, I've got lots of eggs, which sort of makes up for the lack of herbs. I'm buying a truckload of chicken wire very soon! I still have a bit of perpetual spinach growing in the vegetable patch, which will be getting frisky again very soon.

I think the last of the frozen blackberries have gone, as have the mulberries, but I haven't seen the bottom of my freezer recently enough to be certain. The frozen apples and pears from the Green are sadly long gone.

Oh, and a small basket full of small hazelnuts from some young ornamental trees planted on the Green a few years ago, that the squirrels ignore because the shells are way too thick. You need a hammer and a breadboard on the floor, and it's a bit of a palaver, but we're still eating them from Autumn 2003! They've not dried up or gone rotten, and the flavour is much better than when they were first picked.

I think that's it.

Whole family waiting impatiently for nettles and dandelions to start properly, as the dandelion salad and nettle soup went down really well when we tried them for the first time last year!

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 8:14 am Post subject:
Another thing I forgot, still got some swedes.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28238
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 9:24 am Post subject:

With no real veggie patch, our food stores are a little frozen apple and ginger chutney

Of course if we are counting booze, we excel with a might stash of elderberry wine and Sloe Gin. Though friends we gave a bottle to for xmas are now pestering for more

Which is a bit of a legal dilema, as well as a test of friendship the 7 large bottles left, are what we want to have a decent chance to mature.

Marigold123

Joined: 06 Feb 2005
Posts: 224

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 3:19 pm Post subject:

jema wrote:

Of course if we are counting booze, we excel with a might stash of elderberry wine and Sloe Gin.

Oh yes, definitely count booze!

Nanny

Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 4520
Location: carms in wales

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 3:41 pm Post subject: how re your stores going?

still have blackcurrant jam from '03 and other jams not yet started, there are a couple of jars of shropshire apple chutney (really nice on a cheddar cheese sandwich) and some green tomatoe chutney that i like but husband doesn't

also mincemeat (lots) in cupboard along with some mint sauce that i made 2 years ago is still going strong some of which we will have tonight with the weeping leg of mutton that is in the overn slowly cooking even as we type.

in the garden i still have a few sprouts, some sprouting broccoli, some kale, leeks and a few jerusalem artichoke plants that i must get up before they sprout in the wrong place

in the freezer are the runner beans that i can't finish off no matter how hard i try, i still find more and there are still several tubs of tomatoe sauce that i made in august and sept. i am fairly sure there are frozen green chilis in freezer no. 2 along with some elderflower cordial that i don't think went particularly well so am frightened to look

and up in the wardrobe is the christmas pudding that i made and stored in there and have completely forgotten about

oh yes ...in the freezer as well is a lump of dry cure bacon that i made in november and stuck in the freezer just in case

can't use it for rashers but great in lumps in boston baked beans and stuff...........

Bugs

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10744

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 5:44 pm Post subject: Re: how re your stores going?

Nanny wrote:

in the freezer are the runner beans that i can't finish off no matter how hard i try

If you have a look on the BBC site for runner bean recipes you should come across one with an odd name, which is more or less runner beans in a tomato sauce. I've made it a couple of times and it is really startlingly nice, much more so than you would think from the ingredients.

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 8:25 pm Post subject:

Nanny reminded me there's still a few jars of courgette chutney, plus damson vodka, Christmas spirit, limoncello, and beer. Oh and I forgot the soup - a good few pints of courgette and tomato, and marrow and bacon ( spot a harvesting error there...)

There are also a couple of bags of stewed damsons and some pureed strawberries in the bottom of the freezer, and a pint of elderflower cordial concentrate.

Thing is this is a continual process as I'm sure others will agree. So as we eat up the soup made last autumn so I'm replacing the space with cottage pies and home-made beefburgers, cakes etc, etc. Though at some time it would be nice to run the freezer down for a de-frost!

wildberries

Joined: 04 Jan 2005
Posts: 23
Location: highlands

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 05 10:32 pm Post subject:

Still have a good supply of dried herbs left.
Corriander seeds,lemon thyme, sage, mint,oregano, lemon balm for herbal drink, dried chilli, dried tomato. Also bought at shop but dried at home mushrooms & onions.

several different type of salami still drying.Hams= pork, venison & lamb still to try them yet.

Bacon sausage black pudding in freezer, frozen chillies.Wild plums blackberries & rasps still to be used up.

lastly the home made wines blackberry ginger rhubarb apple and sloe gin.

Marigold123

Joined: 06 Feb 2005
Posts: 224

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 05 6:55 pm Post subject: Re: how re your stores going?

Nanny wrote:

some green tomatoe chutney that i like but husband doesn't

I make the things that I like to eat! Whether anyone else likes them is co-incidental!

Nanny

Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 4520
Location: carms in wales

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 05 7:17 pm Post subject: store things
well i didn't know he wouldn't like it turns out he prefers store boughten branston so i get all the others to myself i slip some in every now and again and i shouldn't think he evern notices the difference............. what the eye don't see.............................

	Downsizer Forum Index -> Grow Your Own	All times are GMT Page Previous 1, 2
Page 2 of 2

View Latest Posts