seasonal food | organised castle

Even with a relatively small garden the late summer and early autumn harvests are enough to keep idle hands occupied.

We have 2 varieties of Nashi pear trees espaliered and we have had them netted for the past 3 months to allow the fruit to grow and ripen unhindered by our feathered friends.

Today we picked all of the fruit from one tree. 70 Nashi pears.

GMan has been busy for several hours peeling, cutting and slicing. We cooked them in batches in the microwave and they are now cooling before we freeze them. We use the lightly stewed fruit on our breakfast cereal.

The fruit from the other tree will need to be picked before too long. Meanwhile the tomato harvest continues. This all from a single plant. We have enjoyed generous serves of tomato in lots of meals over the past few weeks. I think I will need to dice and freeze some of them for use in casseroles and other cooking during the winter.

Additionally, the cherry tomato plants are now ripening so I am simply destalking and rinsing them and freezing in 1kg bags. I can see some sauce making in the not too distant future.

You have heard of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’? Well, this is a little different.

Our meal this evening was Zucchini and Corn Fritters. You can find the recipe here.

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The accompanying salad was sourced entirely from our garden. Lettuce, cherry tomatoes and coriander were picked today while the cucumber is the end of the last one which we picked about 3 weeks ago.

We found that cucumber stored really well in the crisper section of the refrigerator. The lettuce is going to seed but in our mild climate there is a good chance that we will even have some more self-sown ones during the winter months. There are still fruit on the various cherry tomato plants scattered throughout the garden. We do not experience frosts here so it is likely that we will continue to harvest a few here and there but it will not abundance we have had during the summer and autumn. Coriander has self-seeded throughout our garden area and we are thrilled as the flower heads are particularly loved by the bees.

I made the sweet chilli sauce from chillies from my sister’s garden. The details and recipe are in an earlier post.

Seasonal eating means that we value and appreciate the produce from our garden. It is probably about 5 months until I next eat cucumber and I know that by then I will be really looking forward to that first crisp crunch.