Harvest time & freedom for Albert Whiskers!

Hello Friends,
Our veggie crops are really rolling in now, & if I'm not outside watering them, I'm inside picking, chopping & cooking them. I love this time of year. I have a really strong drive to cook or preserve lovely things to stash away in the pantry for the winter months. This is nature's bounty harvested this morning: 1.3 kg runner beans, 1.8 kg rhubarb, 2 kg tomatoes, 1 kg aubergines, 300g big shiny green jalopeno peppers (1 of those lush lovelies sliced onto a rather nice home made pizza tonight), a couple of courgettes & another cupful of blackberries from the rogue bramble poking through from next door & heading for a blackberry & apple sponge pudding :-)

I sat on the courtyard deciding what to do with it all & thought I may as well fetch the little bean gizmo & make a start on slicing those. It was quite a pleasant job, planning ahead what I was going to do with the tomatoes, thinking about our camping holiday to Northumbria next year.....all very peaceful until for some inexplicable reason, I started thinking about Boris Johnson standing as an MP, which rather shattered my tranquil thoughts & led to a more violent wielding of the bean slicer. I doubt he'll have much appeal north of Watford.......his appeal at The People & Cats Republic is off the scale......the bottom end that is, of the minus numbers. Hideous individual.......I don't mean the weird hair, that is what it is, & for all we know, there may be a chronic comb-shortage in London....I mean the scarily neo-liberal politics. Anyway, pretty soon, my beans looked like this.......

.........and I decamped to the kitchen. Beans blanched & frozen , ditto rhubarb (lots of crumbles there!), aubergine curry made & frozen. I've only recently discovered this recipe. Instead of using sliced aubergines, they are roasted in foil for an hour, then the flesh is scooped out & chopped before being added to the curry, making it really thick & rich. Made a batch of bread dough while deciding what to do with the tomato glut. I bloody love gluts! I've already made one of our favourites, a smoky tomato chutney.

It always looks a bit watery in the cauldron, but you just need to keep the faith, put some good music on, & it cooks down into a dark red, sticky loveliness which, with the smoked paprika, is a little bit different. 

The Big Hairy One would eat this on everything, so I think I will have to make another batch, as I only make it this time of year from our own tomato crop (food miles = approx 95 feet!). I turned the rest of today's tomatoes into Carluccio's basic pasta sauce. It's so easy, just fresh tomatoes (skinned & de-seeded), an onion, garlic, a little olive oil & some basil. After 40 mins, just zizz it up in the pan or in a liquidiser if you particularly enjoy having to clean up after that piece of equipment. So, 6 portions of that made too, & zero space left in the freezer. Hmmm. Shall get the BHO onto that on the grounds that it'll be like 'Tetris!' I'd quite like a chest freezer in the garage.......if we had a garage. We did have one once. It was horrible. The BHO & his Dad hit it with 7lb sledgehammers until it fell down. 

Albert Whiskers is so enjoying being a normal cat. He was allowed outside for the first time on Sunday. He didn't require any cat flap training.....& I should add that some of our cats have had to have Cat Flap Training Level 1 AND Level 2 (That tricky Level 2 is 'Coming Back In', in case you're wondering).

Anyway, he had a top day. We weren't sure how reliable he'd be at returning home, having been a stray, so we decided to have a BBQ to help lure him back, as he's a shocking pig, but when he saw the chicken & pork going onto the griddle, he thought it was his dinner anyway.......(in fact, we only just stopped him helping himself straight from the BBQ), so no problems with him going off a-wandering. He's mostly stayed in our garden this week. I think he likes to make sure he's always in earshot of the tin opener.

He's had two fights this week, one resulting in an injury, but he wasn't blameless. Valuable life lessons need to be learned here on not piling into cats who are bigger & imminently skankier than oneself!

Oh well, the battle against the tomato hoards will doubtless continue tomorrow, & as soon as I get on top of those, the greengages will be ready, followed by what looks like the biggest apple crop we've ever had. If you're watching East Midlands Today & there's a woman's hand sticking up tragically out of a giant mountain of fruit & veg while solemn music plays, that'll be me!
Till next time,
C x