Pick Your Own Fruit & Vegetables

Hello! How’s it going? I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine found me home alone for the first time ever on a Saturday morning, well since we moved in anyway! It was WEIRD!!!! I felt like I was house sitting. I’m so used to the place being full and noisy and hustly bustly and suddenly it was just me and Joni Mitchell.

It was nice though. I did some bits that were normal like wiping down some of the windowsills in the kitchen, hanging up my kitchen calender and sorting through a pile of papers that had gotten to the point of being so tall it was ready to topple.

I’m starting this week’s series of articles with one about picking your own fruit & vegetables.The PYO season started a few weeks ago with the first Asparagus but by June it’s in full swing and supplying those who partake with lashings of fruit and veg.

Gooseberries, are just about the hardest prickly balls to get your hands on and they try to stop you from disturbing their rest by arming themselves with huge spikes in the bush itself and then wearing a jacket of softer splinters.

I didn’t let this put me off though and managed to fill a small punnet with the fruit as we’re conjuring up a Gooseberry Clafoutis for the next Bake Fest Friday – ‘Something Sweet for the Weekend’

Red currants are also out and about at this time and are my favourite fruit, visually. I find them just a bit romantic. They have a colour that I find so tempting I want to smear them over odd pieces of furniture just to bring the same shade in to my home. It’s not something I’ve tried just yet though!

My main reason for heading to the nearest PYO site was for the strawberries. It’s funny, you look down the long, straw laden paths at the many strawberry plants and can rarely see anything resembling a strawberry. They make you work for them. Bending down low, pulling back the long arms of their leaves and hunting around for any fruit that is ripe for picking.

Some are still white green in colour, others have already been got at by various birds or pests but others are ready. And these are the ones you reach down for, plucking them out of the safety of their bush and dropping them in to the punnet swinging from your arm.

It takes time to pick enough to satisfy my own strawberry urge and having worked for them they do of course taste all the sweeter.

Arriving home with this amount gave me enough to eat some on the way home in the car, make six desserts for friends, save some for Robert the Husband and send some home with Jo for the twins and give a bowl to my Mum.

Here’s a snapshot of the gathering that took place last week. It was on the same day that we picked the strawbs, which meant we got to eat them at their very best!

More of that tomorrow when I’ll share the recipe in full.
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This past weekend I found something, by accident, that was only discovered once I got home and started to add up a receipt that I thought was a bit too expensive for what I had actually purchased. It took me back, in a rush of memories, to time spent in my nana’s bed on the mornings that we would stay with her. I hadn’t seen this image for YEARS, let me tell you, and this unexpected find set me on a road to create something in memory of all things ‘childhood’

As soon as I’ve taken some snaps I’ll show you my accidental purchase. I just couldn’t believe it, but I guess it was meant to be mine and taken home with me. Sneaky thing!!!

See you tomorrow morning.

Cx
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Cherry Menlove

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