Had a fasting day today, so am starving. Really looking forward to breakfast tomorrow.
Spent the afternoon at a friends. She has a garden that is big enough for a small holding and asks me round to pick blackcurrants because she doesn’t get round to using them herself. So I have boxes of them now to process tomorrow. I shall make compote to have with yoghurt for breakfast, DP loves blackcurrant and apple crumble and I may even mix them with soft cheese and make a tart filling with them.
She also got me to pick a load of gooseberries. They have several bushes…and they don’t pick them because they don’t like them!! Why do you grow them then I asked? Because when we moved here it was the country dream and in the country dream, you grow gooseberries, she replied. People can be very strange.
Still, I am very grateful, I have loads of gooseberries too now. Lovely. I took her a jar of home made piccalilli which she was very pleased with.
Apologies for the rubbish picture. I forgot to take it until it was dark. There are actually 5 boxes of blackcurrants, and 3 boxes and the upturned cloche of gooseberries. So LOADS, lucky me.
By the time I got back home, it was nearly 7:30, no wonder my stomach was rumbling noisily. It hadn’t been given much all day, and now I was delaying what little dinner there was. It’s just gone 11pm now and I’m off to bed before I start gnawing on the kitchen doors.
Oh yes, what an interesting post. Looks like a good blog too
Yes, I think you are right about gooseberries being an English thing as my ancestry is mostly English (came to America 1640 to 1700) and my English friends here all swoon over the mention of them. I had to investigate the “Peasant Girl in a Veil” recipe. Turns out I’ve been doing a variation of it with my applesauce, plain yogurt, walnuts and a little granola. Now I can serve it up as something exotic due to the name! Did you see this explanation (about halfway down the page) of the name? http://arcticgrub.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/veiled-peasant-girls-a-dessert-from-the-land-of-the-midnight-sun/
I have quite a bit of jam, some I made last summer, and some from Approved Foods, so I shall do other things with this windfall. Readers have given me some lovely ideas, I’ll let you know what I make
Great to have friends with an allotment, lovely swapsies
Lovely freebies! We have a friend with an allotment who brings us fruit and veg; we give him back some of the jam and chutney we make. The other evening he brought us blackcurrants with more to come in a week or so; they are tucked up in the freezer until I can make jam.
I love gooseberries. Perhaps you could make something like the peasant girl in a veil with them, maybe with a little orange zest in the breadcrumbs.
I have always thought of gooseberries as quite a British thing, possibly even English. Because most people don’t actually cook much, gooseberries are a rare sight in the shops here. There is the odd sighting in a green grocer, very rarely in a supermarket. And if they do feature, they are in tiny plastic boxes at some exorbitant price. I have never thought of either of them growing wild.
My Mum loves them, we had them in pies and crumbles as a child
I love to have things when they are in season, they taste SO much nicer.
Shame we can’t swap fruit, what a lovely time we would all have!
That fruit looks intriguing to me. My mother loved both and picked them wild when she was a child and her family was homeless and living in a tent in the California Sierras. While living in a tent and washing in a creek was not a good memory, she would get very nostalgic about both fruits which my grandmother made into delicious desserts. I’ve only had commercial jams as there is no local source for either. Wish you could zap a taste of that compote through the air to me! Also wish I could share some of my ripe apples with you. I have started the annual apple giveaway. Anyone walking by gets a bag of them and I will still have lots left for applesauce. I vowed to take a year off from making that but here they are! I cannot waste them and the deer, raccoons, etc., only eat a few so I will soon have the pots bubbling.