The Rayburn is back on again and I've had to change my mode of cooking from stove top pressure cooker to everything in the oven. We're now having soups or stews casseroled in the oven every day, slow cooking from breakfast onwards. I'm alternating between carrot, leek and potato, mixed veg (potato, kale, kohlrabi, celeriac, parsnip and carrot) and parsnip, with an occasional butternut squash soup. The easiest dish is baked whole pumpkins, served with butter, salt and pepper. At this rate the pumpkins are going to run out before the New Year.
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| Kinda cute celeriac |
It's very windy again and we've had a fair bit of rain so the veg garden is looking a bit forlorn these days. Soon it will be time to dig beds over and tidy up. All the pumpkin plants joined the compost heap last week and Jim turned over all the compost; there is some lovely stuff to enrich the beds.
The fruit and veg wines are merrily fermenting away and we bottled the bramble wine the other day. Luckily there were two glasses left over to sample and very fine it was already.
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| Larbrax Bramble '14 |
Quite an absorbing hobby, this wine making.
What a fantastic celeriac, I'm dead jealous! The wine looks lovely, we've never managed to brew anything drinkable hence hubby's current cross-Channel trip to fetch supplies from the experts (plus his tractor so we can start mowing and tree-planting in the paddock). Maybe we should dust off the demijohns next year and have another go!
ReplyDeleteYes, do try again! Racking's a bit fiddly if you haven't done it before and you need the right equipment - syphon hose, racking cane, bottle wand and a big bucket. Temperature strips on the demijohns are also a good idea. We use an oxygen steriliser to sterilise everything. I find that the easiest and sterilising is key. We've got four wines on the go now and all tasted great at the last racking. I have high hopes for the parsnip wine and carrot and ginger.
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