a busy domestic blog of knitting, sewing and all kinds of needlecrafts, cooking my garden produce and preserving it

Friday 4 March 2016

Using up pumpkins and apples


Last week turned out to be a busy one making jam and chutney. First I discovered the end of the pumpkin turning frankly quite disgusting, so I salvaged what was left and made chutney.


 It's another of those 'adapted' recipes that I came up with a few years ago when I had a glut of gooseberries, and then altered slightly to make use of pumpkin instead. It's spicy (ginger and chillis) but fruity (orange juice), and my favourite even though it never turns out exactly as the previous batch.

 I still didn't use the whole pumpkin up but had a chunk, about 8oz, left over, enough for goulash.





Then the apples - I thought all our home-grown apples had been used up, but then we needed a cardboard box and checked what was in the one in the back porch ....and found some apples! Some were only fit for throwing straight in the compost bin, some were still fine to keep a little while but most were best used straight away.
I also have too many frozen raspberries, so I combined them, about 50:50. It's a lazy way of getting round the 'pip' problem of raspberries. I prefer jam made solely from raspberries to be sieved, but it's so time consuming. This way, with raspberries  making up only half the fruit, I don't bother.
I still have some left-over apples, but for last autumn's crop they don't look too bad and will soon be used in apple sauce or as stewed topping for breakfast cereals.