Showing posts with label bottling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bottling. Show all posts

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Home Grown

Our little garden in the inner city is working overtime this summer. We've just picked a basket of white nectarines off our tree which produced exactly zero last year.
I love white nectarines .... and these are a juicy and sweet and fleshy and luscious.
I love the way the juice runs down your arm and drips off your elbow. I've learnt from experience to eat them straight from the tree in the garden, or over the sink.
Last year summer was blisteringly hot and dry. So far, we've had a cool summer and lots of rain so the fruit is about a 4-6 weeks behind.
And there's lots more to come.
We've got a tree full of apricots not yet ripe, the olive trees are laden, our tomatoes are green but looking good, the lime and orange trees have set their fruit and we've got an abundance of apples and crab apples.
I need to check out what to so with crab apples (and what they actually taste like).
We planted the tree a couple of years ago - mostly for the spring blossom, but this year the tree is heavy with fruit so I need to think about what to do with it. I've heard of crab apple jelly ... so I'll see what recipes I can find in my collection or on good old google. What do you serve crab apple jelly with?
So as summer stretches before us, we're looking forward eating our fruit ... and preserving and bottling and making jellies and jams and curds. Posted by Picasa

Monday, May 24, 2010

Worth bottling















Look at these beautiful olives James picked from a couple of trees in our garden.
We had about 10 olives in total last year, but this year the trees have flourished after we freed them from the pots and gave them their own space in the back garden.

Aren't the colours gorgeous? Like jewels I think.

James soaked them in a water - changing it every day for a week.
Then I came home tonight ... and voila.


















We've got five precious bottles.















James bottled them with fresh herbs and bay leaves from our garden plus garlic and celery.
The bottles are in the pantry now while the flavours infuse.
We'll serve them in a couple of months, slightly warm, drizzled with olive oil and served with some crusty bread and a glass of wine...
Definitely worth bottling.
James, too, I reckon!
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