How are your stores going?

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How are your stores going?
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Bugs

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10744

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 05 6:22 pm Post subject: How are your stores going?

I've just made a tomato sauce in which the only home grown ingredients are garlic and the herbs which I've forgotten to get and now have to go out in the dark and rain to pick.

I was thinking about Cab's ground elder article that has just gone up, and Fiddlesticks Julie's store room article, and just wondered what people are still eating from their own crops/stock etc this time of year, just as things start to grow again (first egg of the year this week!).

We've a reasonable store of garlic and shallots; a few berries and some tomatoes in the freezer; of course bay, rosemary sage and thyme still going strong in the garden; dried mushrooms (I'm still afraid of them) in the cupboard, also dried beans, which need using up to clear space. And a few pumpkins (Marina di Chioggia really does improve with keeping and it was fab to start with).

Not sure we have much else unless you count wine.

What have you still got to remind you of last year and inspire you for this?

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45668
Location: Essex

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 05 6:29 pm Post subject:
Had a pathetic crop of garlic last year so only a little bit left, loads of chillis still. That's the only two things we try to be self sufficient in.

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 05 6:39 pm Post subject:
still using parsley from oustide the back door (not sure that counts as store!) Otherwise still eating redcurrant jelly, raspberry and strawberry jam and bramble jelly. Marmalade is in the cupboard, but I've only just made it, so I don't really think that counts either. Preserves are the only thing I really made this year to keep - sad lack of raw materials!

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 05 6:40 pm Post subject:

a good handful of onions are left in the bottom of the bag. There are a good 2 dozen pumpkins left and some rather tiny garlic. There were some spuds in the bottom of the sack but they've all sprouted and its a horrible job looking for something edible in there, fighting a way through the 'tentacles' so I gave up and bought some today.

In the freezer there are still courgettes and a meal or two of french beans. A couple of jars of jam and mincemeat remain. There is damson and strawberry ice-cream but its too cold to think of eating that at the moment.

Thinking about it I'm surprised at how much there is actually. And there may be other things lurking I've forgotten about..

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

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

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 05 6:52 pm Post subject:
We still have a few pumpkins left, a few shallots, a good string of garlic. We must try and get some brassicas in this year as I tend to treat the hens to some greens and we should be able to grow them all. Plenty of jam left and some dried French beans.

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 05 7:27 pm Post subject:
knew there was something - there's a Christmas pud left - and judging by the weather forecast, the weekend could be just the time to eat it!

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 05 10:09 am Post subject:

Lets think...

Still eating jam from last year, will have a comfortable stock when we make the first of this years jams (will be strawberry first, as ever).

Still using our plum chutney from the massive haul of wild plums last year; not much of that left, we gave a lot away at Christmas.

Dried mushrooms aplenty. Monstrous harvests of St.Georges, the prince, fairy rings, parasols and blewits mean that we're way, way up on those. Chicken of the woods mushroom still in the freezer.

Herbs are doing OK, we're eating rosemary, sage, thyme, parsley, marjoram, fennel, chives and chervil from the garden. About to start harvesting from our three or four purple sprouting broccoli plants, and we're fine for onion greens from our Welsh onions. Oh, and we pick sorrel from the garden all year.

In the lawn we have dandelion, daisy, cow parsley and chickweed, all of which are finding their way into our diets, and wild I'm picking plenty of alexanders at the moment (from a top secret location on Mill Road in Cambridge

), as well as ground elder.

We aren't self sufficient at any time of year, not by a long way, but we make our diet a lot more interesting using wild and home grown stuff.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45668
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: 45668
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: 45668
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: 28233
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.

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