Neglect

Well I've certainly neglected this blog in favour of my other one @ http://sawdustinmysocks.blogspot.com/

But I've still been quite busy growing and preserving. As I speak I've got a load of apples and raspberries in the food dryer and we'll be having our own cauliflower, cabbage, beans and potatoes for tea.

The allotment has suffered a little this year as there is no way we could get down there to water it as much as it needed so some crops look terrible (sweetcorn looked bad but now the mice have eaten it anyway, so that doesn't matter anymore!). But others, like the squashes, are doing well.

The raspberries are brilliant this year and from one row we're picking a huge punit each week.

I think I'll be putting some more in next year!

Fruit drying

Some of the early eating apples we got from my mum and dad’s don’t keep very long, so before they go rotten its time to get the fruit dryer out from the cupboard.

We brought this fruit dryer from Poland when we went on holiday there last year as it was only £30 compared to nearly £100 in this country.



To dry the apples I peal and core them before cutting them into slices and lying on the drying trays.




Then with the food dryer on I leave them for 24 hours until they’re crisp and seal them in kilner jars.




Kept in a cool dark place I’ve kept apples like this for a year and they’re great for snacking on.


As you can see in the pictures I also dried raspberries and blackberries. The raspberries are lovely and nice on cereal with milk but the blackberries went like burn currants and I wouldn’t recommend them (make sure they dont go in the compost either or you might as well plant brambles!).

My chilli peppers will be then next thing to have the drying treatment to make my own chilli flakes.