Strawberry fields

I have always loved strawberries, I remember my first large cross stitch I made was of strawberries I was in year 4 of school so around 9 I think. As a teenager I worked the summer at a farm picking them.

A few years back my dad introduced me to pick your own strawberrying. I had been completely oblivious that you could do that until he took us. It has now became a bit of a tradition we always pick tonnews of them then come home and make jam with most of them.

Stephanie loves strawberries as much as I do.

We picked 4 punnets of strawberries we gave one to the children's nan as a present. These punnets weigh between 700 and 800 grammes each. After we picked our strawberries we went in the farm shop and bought the punnet of cherries you see above with the strawberries.

I used some of the apples from the allotment tree thinning in the week so this is strawberry and apple jam. These picture make the jam look a bit darker than it actually is.

I popped to Asda first thing this morning and bagged a lot of yellow sitcker bargains. I have been continuing with the use it up challenge I estimate that there was about 1 weeks worth of food left in the freezer, as I am paid monthly I decided to shop now as I now have enough food in there for the month. I bought salmon, beef, turkey, chicken thighs, chicken wings, chicken breasts and a lovely looking pork joint. As well as a treat that the eagle eyed of you will have noticed in the left of the picture- I love ondant fancies and these were reduced heavily so I treated us.

Our harvest

I am so excited I have begun harvesting! So much promise. Trying to ignore that the peas and beans have not grown this year and celebrate what has. In the spirit of this I am going to add some bars to the side of the page which show what we harvest. I'm going to weigh what I collect and tally it up.

I have the most harvest of ripe food from  the raspberries at the moment. I decided to try thinning out my apple trees today after reading other people's blogs the other day I have decided to try this method.

I now have a bag of under ripe apples I plan to use them for the pectin content in jam making later in the week. Whilst at the allotment today we picked another tub of raspberries and some more elder flowers for cordial making later this evening. Off now to make side bars and then prep the food!

In the garden/ on the allotment this weekend

This weekend I have been playing catch up with all the plants that have been attacked  and decimated by slugs- essentially everything I have planted so far this year has been munched so much that it no longer exists. I have had to start all over again.

At the allotment I have planted out some young bean and pea plants. Then at home I have planted seeds for;
little gem
rocket
pumpkins
peas
beans
cabbages (2 types)
cauliflower.



I suspect I am now not going to get the larger harvest I had hoped for at the beginning of the year but if I get some, right now I'll be pleased.

I have harvested some yummy strawberries and raspberries from both allotment and the garden.


This evening I have been reading lots about thinning your apples on the tree to allow others to grow. So this sounds like my next job on the allotment as last year our apples were plentiful but not up to much, from this evening reading I suspect that it was because they all grew very close together and touched. So I am going to thin them out this year and try this recipe with the little apples I thin. I will need to have a little think to adapt the recipe so that it has no lemon/ citrus products in it for Stephanie to be able to enjoy it to. Perhaps I'll use apple juice where the lemon juice is called for/ or water. A little experimentation is called for. I'll let you know how I get on.

Summer summer summertime!

Look at this for yummy homegrown goodness;

I got one of these after I picked them in the garden as Stephanie scoffed the rest befre I could even blink!

These were picked on the allotment, there were more ripe than this but they never made it into the bowl.

This for me os the best thing about summer :-)

diy

I began today by painting the hallway and stairs this is a job I have had on my todo list for several months. I am pleased that I have finally done it as it looks much better now- Kitchen next!

After painting next we did some weeding down at the allotment I weeded under the apple and pear trees and the raspberry bush, Dylan weeded the potato bed. Dylan also finished fixing the compost bins while we were there. They had collapsed we have spent the past few weeks working to empty them so that they can stand up properly and be used again.

Whilst there I admired the neighbouring allotmenteer rich green foliage of his potatos they are really thick and leafy. Mine are looking bedraggled and slug eaten. I was feeling rather downhearted and wondering what I am doing wrong when he arrived with a large pot of chemical fertiliser, this has got me thinking. I don't want to put chemicals on my vegetables so is there something I can fertilise with? A quick internet search found me this nettle fertiliser what a better thing to use these things for? I will be going to give this a go.

After we had finished at the allotment we made a picnic and went to a local park for a walk through the fields and woods.

Mr frog came to visit us!

you're never to old to enjoy a slide!

Stephanie chanted "scary scary scary" as she climbed to the top!

Use it up challenge

Last Friday I posted about following the use it up challenge. I have used what we have in the fridge for most meals and supplemented that with what is in the freezer we have had;

Lunches

• cheese rolls
• Philadelphia rolls
• salad
• fruit
• yoghurt
• cakes

dinners

• jacket potatoes
• home-made pizza and dough balls
• pork chops and noodles
• chicken curry
• mackerel and tomato pasta

breakfast

• croissants ( i did buy these)
• toasted rolls
• cereal bars

All I bought during the week was some croissants these fed us for a couple of days and a KFC I could give you an excuse- there was an accident on the way home from work meaning I was very delayed on the day we had it, Dylan was on a school trip and I had to feed Stephanie and myself in the 45 minutes I had between collecting her from the childminders and going to the collection point to get Dylan back from his trip. I realise I could have done a quick and simple dinner for the 2 of us in that time but I was being lazy! LOL

This week resulted in most of the fridge being depleted. There are a some eggs, few carrots and a couple of parsnips still to use but apart from that everything was used. The eggs I will use tomorrow to make cakes for next weeks lunches, the carrots and parsnips for tomorrows roast.

I have been shopping today I bought some more fruit, yoghurt, fruit juice and cheese these are items we constantly use. Just buying these this week has meant that my shopping was less than £20.

I have some chicken bits in the fridge which I will use to make a roast dinner tomorrow and will go through the freezer menu planning for next week. I also need to look in the cupboard to see what I can incorporate from the tins etc to our meals as I am sure some of them have been lurking in the back a while.

How are you getting on with the challenge?

Incidentally I know June is the month for Mackeral fishing, one of our favourite fish- where can I learn how to fish myself??

A completed project

Today I have finished this beautiful cross-stitch;

I began my part of the stitching back in March, I am amazed at how much I like this piece, I almost don't want to give it to Stephanie for her room I want it in the hallway when I have finally finished decorating it. However, it was intended for Stephanie so she will get it. I do have another of Mum's cross-stitches I will hang in the hallway. I will show you that one another day.