So much fruit

[Toddy]

See if you find yourself with a glut of jam....as one does .......and no longer have the bottomless pits known as teenagers in the house, it makes a really good fruit leather.
Just saying.

Best bit is, if you soak a bit of that fruit leather in a little hot water, it kind of re-jams itself. Handy when out, and you find the fruit cake in the Ratpack a tad dry.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

Cultivars of Malus bacatta, in all probability. Used all over the place as landscape ornamentals with fruit that's even unattractive to most wildlife.
I just gave away all my apples to my house keeper, they are on an apple sauce kick, loving every spoonful.

 

[Suffolkrafter]

This is perhaps stretching the definition of fruit, but here is common hornbeam, with the little nuts within the Samaras.


And here's it's close relative, hop-hornbeam, with different syructure holding the seeds:


I've never tried the nuts but I plan to, I believe they are edible.

 

[Toddy]

Those are good to see

Funnily enough, we've had two days of wind here, and the paths are covered in Sycamore keys.
Just now I don't eat them, but come late Winter and Spring, when they show up bright green against the dead leaf litter, those are almost a pea like munchy

 

[Suffolkrafter]

Those are good to see

Funnily enough, we've had two days of wind here, and the paths are covered in Sycamore keys.
Just now I don't eat them, but come late Winter and Spring, when they show up bright green against the dead leaf litter, those are almost a pea like munchy

There's a lot of things out there that until recently would have never occurred to me as potential edibles, and that includes sycamore. I'll add it to my list.

 

[Robson Valley]

Do your homework to determine the true edibility of odd foraged materials.

W. Gisslen's "Professional Baking" is a Cordon Bleu school text book.
Hundreds and hundreds of recipes and formulas, even blown hot sugar art instruction. Lots of used copies, mine is about #5 ed, I think.

WG says the best prep is to cook fruit pie fillings and THEN use those in pies and other sorts of pastries. The fact is that there's far less chance of the product boiling over in the oven. Cook up pie fillings and can?

I should find a copy of WG's other text: "Professional Cooking." I know it's full of all sorts of kitchen tips and tricks and recipes galore. EDIT I just did with abeBooks.com. I know there is abeBooks.UK I've ordered 3 versions of the text, with shipping, for $36.00 (maybe 25 BPS?) I can gift one if there's a lot of redundancy.

 

[Billy-o]

If you want to make a pie that has that real 'home-made' character in its flavour, mix a little bit of whatever the filling is into the pastry prior to rolling.

 

[Robson Valley]

I've considered cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg in the crust. Never the fruit as the cooking temp is certain to burn the sugars for a mess that I don't need.

Sprinkled white sugar and cinnamon on the tops just before going into the oven looks attractive.

 

[Toddy]

I have a confession to make. I watch a youtube channel
This one is of a couple with a 'country house' in Azerbaijan.....and it's the most peaceful quarter of an hour to watch

Real food, like our own, from a country that didn't lose it's connection between rural and urban.

Anyhow, today, they're making hawthorn fruit sweets

Lovely, I might even give this a go.

 

[TeeDee]

I have a confession to make. I watch a youtube channel
This one is of a couple with a 'country house' in Azerbaijan.....and it's the most peaceful quarter of an hour to watch

Real food, like our own, from a country that didn't lose it's connection between rural and urban.

Anyhow, today, they're making hawthorn fruit sweets

Lovely, I might even give this a go.

Nice to see some genuine real people out there!

Do you know their Facebook idents? I'd like to 'friend' them.


( Ironic Joke )

 

[Toddy]

I haven't a clue :blush: I'm a techno-avoider type, tbh.

Their hands though, those are working hands. Day in day out, year in year out, those hands work.

It's like someone looking at the teeth of the first farmers, and saying, "Look at the wear ! they must have eaten so much bread", and totally missing the point, that to make all that much bread took a heck of an amount of effort. I've ground flour on a quern, it's blooming hard work, a right drag of a job. They forget to look at the knackered bone joints elsewhere.

I see hands that look like they've worked all their days and I admire the industry, but I sympathise with the aches every morning and when it gets cold.

Their haw sweeties though, they look good. Walnuts and haws, that sounds tasty.

I looked at the video where she's rubbing the pulp through a mesh and I was doing exactly the same thing early this afternoon, but it was rowans that I was using. I picked the quince yesterday too, and I have it to deal with the same way, and then to boil it down, as she did the haws to make the paste, the membrillo/cotingnac. Quince sets firm so quickly though, no need to roll it in nuts. It 'plops' as it boils down and thickens, and I wrap up as she did because those boiling hot splatters hurt. Worse than making apple butter.

I wonder about her jar sealing tool and lids. I don't think I've ever seen those here.

 

[Spirit fish]

I find sloes hard to like. I know they make good gin, but really it's the sugar and just the general fruitiness that adds to it.
I don't like the leftovers, I think they're a waste of good chocolate.
Then again, I make and use and like Rowan Jelly, so maybe the sloe one would be good too

I've just finish kilner jarring the last of the rhubarb. I've run out of space to store fruits now unless I dry them. I still want apples and pears ready for crumble and pies though.
Pears are glorious dried sweet and almost toffee like somehow...make sure they're ripe before you use them for it....and apples are a perennial favourite. We fill three ten ltr jars with dried apples every year and we're just at the end of last years. Nice timing
To rehydrate them for cooking the best stuff I've found is hot apple juice, or even cheap cider.
Mostly we just munch the dried slices though.

Sloe jam is ok but making it is a slow process deseeding the berries by hand I have a jar in my cupboard

 

[Spirit fish]

On that subject of variety; Are these apples, do you think? Maybe ornamental. They sort of look and taste like apples. But they are red inside. Trees round here are full of them. About the size of grapes

There definitely crab apples possibly a john downie xwild crab apple hybrid

 

[Spirit fish]

There are some weird cross amongst the 'street furniture' type crab apples. Ornamental but not squishy, iimmc ? even when they rot and drop. It's supposedly nicer to use in the urban environment and doesn't attract vermin or even the pigeons.

There are two trees in a carpark in the next village along that look awfully like those ones in your photos.
All I could think of when I opened one up was malus of some kind

Bound to be someone on here who does

The john downie ornamental crab apples are awesome fizzy tasting I love those the orangey green oval shaped ones

 

[Toddy]

Sloe jam is ok but making it is a slow process deseeding the berries by hand I have a jar in my cupboard

My granny used to make Damson jam. I loved that stuff, but there were always one or two of the wee stones that hadn't been spotted when the fruit was boiling.
They didn't take the stones out before hand, just let the fruits split when they boiled.
Out of thousands of damsons used though, less than a handful got missed.
Wonder if the same might be true with the sloes ?
It works out okay though, because when you spread the stuff on the toast you spot the stones