Apples, again! Make your own mincemeat for Christmas mince pies :-)

We love Christmas cake, mince pies, Christmas pudings and anything full of fruits, so tasty:-)

Another good use for the windfall apples, and less than pretty ones, is to make your own mincemeat - ready for baking those mince pies that will permeate the whole house with heady scents of fruit and spices.

This is another really simple recipe, so you have no excuse not to try it.

I took:

400g grated cooking apples
100g margarine
300g raisins

300g sultanas

300g chopped dates

200g unrefined sugar
half a teaspoon each of cinnamon, mixed spice, nutmeg and cumin
2 lemons, zest and juice
4 tblsps fresh orange juice

60ml brandy

 

Toss everything, except the brandy, into a large ovenproof dish and stir thoroughly. I use a dessert spoon to measure out the margarine, and you don't need try to break it down into tiny pieces, it's going to melt to make your life easier!

grated zest

dried fruit

I grated the apple straight onto the lemon zest and juice



I used a spoon to measure out the margarine



roughly stir everything together

Place in the centre of an oven pre-heated to 115C for a fan oven, 120C, 250F or gas mark 1/2 for half an hour. Remove from the oven and give it a really good stir to mix everything. The margarine should be very soft and creamy now, and stirring well helps to coat everything with a fine coating of fat which helps it to keep.

place back in the oven

Replace in the oven for a further half an hour, then remove, stir again and allow to cool before adding in the brandy. Stir again then decant into containers and store in the fridge.



after an hour it will look like this



when it's cool, stir in the brandy

I admit to enjoying a spoonful in with my fruit smoothies at breakfast sometimes, on those grey, rainy days when I feel the need for more "comfort" food :-)

It's Zero (food)waste week, did you know?

Logging onto the Oofo site I discovered that it's Zero Waste Week! This is what they have to say:

"Monday 6th September will see the start of the third national "Zero Waste Week". This year's theme is 'Cooking for Victory' in response to WRAPS "household Food and Drink Waste in the UK" report. The report shows we throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink every year. Most of this is avoidable and could have been eaten if we had planned, stored and managed it better. In support of the campaign VegBox Recipes have created a handy guide to eating left-overs."

I try not to waste food, but I have to admit that occasionally, some food does get binned; not a lot, and not often, honestly, hand on heart etc. I'm a dab hand at turning left over veggie into curries or soups, and found it interesting that Oofo has compiled a helpful guide to using left-overs

Paste this very long code into your browser to access the page - I'm hoping they'll tell me how to paste a simple link here to replace it, but at the moment, this is all I've managed to copy, sorry!!!
 
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=adurgreens.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsut3.co.uk%2Fclickthrough.php%3FiD%3D4%26iItem%3D107301%26iLink%3D29281611%26strUnique_ID%3D11883656754ea3fa6f40738570b47f%26strUrl%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.ooffoo.com%2Fblogs%2F2010%2F08%2F29%2Fhandy-guide-to-eating-left-overs%2F&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fadurgreens.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F09%2F02%2Fzero-waste-week%2F
 
If you do find you throw food away, you might just discover some useful ideas to recycle your left-overs into something tasty - and imagine how virtuous you'll feel:-)

potatoes for free!

Last summer I grew potatoes from nothing, so to speak.  This year I've done the same.

I'm sure you must all have come across potatoes in your vegetable rack that look like this?  Yes?  So you snap off the growths and get on with preparing them for eating, yes?  No!  Not if you want free potatoes, you don't.

Cut off the growths with about an inch of the potato, and plant it in the garden.  Sometimes you can cut a potato in about half a dozen pieces, each with a shoot on, and plant each of them.  Each piece will grow into a potato plant, yes, really, each one a new plant.  Each plant will produce a crop of potatoes.

Admittedly, the crop will not be as large as from a seed potato, but then it's cost you nothing but a little time and effort.  The magic of nature works for you - aren't you lucky?

That's what I did about 3 weeks ago, and look at the growth they've put on!!  To obtain a larger yield of potatoes, simply pile earth up against the stems of each plant.  The obliging potato will generate new roots into this fresh soil, and they will produce the tubors for you.  Even better magic, and more free food :-)