Feathers, Fruit and the Autumn Harvest

Flocks of birds have helped themselves to our vegie patch this summer.  They trade us exquisite feathers to find on garden strolls.  So many feathers.

 The beans were spared and we have now eaten all the beans anyone would care to, no matter how delicious and sexy they are. These bush beans grew beside towering corn plants, the cobs of which we are now harvesting and gleefully consuming, they don't always make it inside to be cooked. Each summer corn seems like such trouble, they are huge, take up much space, need side pruning, require heavy feeding and mulching, take an age to ripen, and are water hungry.  Come Autumn and those first juicy sweet bites of golden yellow, all is forgiven.

A mystery plant turned up amongst my corn and I was unsure what sister had mixed herself into the bean/corn equation. Finally they are ripe and the heavenly scent revealed them to be some type of rockmelon, only three melons but they grew without fuss and taste delicious, quite the rockstars. I am saving this mystery seed for another year.

Thursday I was filled with riveting conversation. "Gosh its windy!" "that wind is really strong", "that's a fierce storm out there". If there was a prize for stating the self evident I would have won it. It was the kind of day the weather could not be ignored as gale force winds buffeted against the window, threatening to take us to OZ. We had some big branches down, a few corn casualties and a leaning tower of mulberry.  We got off lightly compared to some Victorian towns, I just love the voice over on this video taken in Mulwala, so very Australian.

The branches lying around are a boon to our dog who like to pounce and attack them, dragging them with a gleeful trot and shredding gum leaves all over the yard.

Better gum leaves than pumpkins. I keep finding my pumpkins detached from the vine a little prematurely.  It seems Zef has a penchant for playing tug of war with the vine. The pumpkins certainly have a unique appearance this year, some sporting Freddy Kruger like slashes. I cooked a few smaller ones up recently and they were still tasty, if a little dwarfed in size.

Note the spud and onion box below (a lovely hand me down from nanna and pa), these two vegetables should never be put together as the onions encourage the potatoes to sprout, a serious problem when you have lots of potatoes.

Purple Sapphires, Purple Congos, King Edwards, Kipfflers and Dutch Creams. 

A healthier Autumn Easter egg hunt.

 I am a laggard with some things (like blog posting of late). This is my attempt at making the orange peel and vinegar cleaner that I've been watching everyone else make for years. Ridiculously simple.

 We have a tiny cumquat in a pot, this summer it grew enough cumquats to not do much with, but just before they all turned off waiting for me, I managed to make one delicious jar of my favourite marmalade. I am so excited the cumquats are the thin skinned extra juicy variety, that makes a wonderfully sweet and tangy marmalade, I will definitely give that bush some more love.

The nectarines were attacked by birds, they even got inside the nets, but the few that were left were so heavenly scented and sweet they were too good to waste, we cut away the bird pecked fruit and ate the remainder, savouring each mouthful. As we say every year, next year we will get those nets on early.

Cucumbers and zucchinis are filling my crisper with shades of green, pickles and chutney are on my to do list.

This year we have eaten a lot of grated raw zucchini mixed with herbs chilli, parmesan and olive oil on pasta, it is less soggy and sweeter than the cooked variety.

Tonight we had bruschetta with tomato and basil, so good. For the recipe visit Christine's blog
Slow Living Essentials, I was far too busy enjoying it to take a photo.

 In the evening gazing inside at us from outdoors are praying mantis  It seem a particularly favourable year for these fascinating and garden friendly bugs, they are hunting the moths and insects that are attracted to our house lights, they are awesome to watch, such speed and ferocity.

Unfortunately I forgot to turn the lights off at our house tonight.  I have been a supporter of Earth Hour since it began but somehow it slipped my mind, probably due to the deliciousness of that bruschetta and having one child away at Cubs camp, perhaps we will do a belated hour another night.

Making cumquat marmalade

I was in the garden and my daughter came out and said "why do we have a bag full of tiny mandarins inside"?

"Oh they're cumquats, for making marmalade" I replied.  These were gathered from a tree dripping with fruit going to waste, found after a great day of vegie grouping on Friday (read about it here).

 I suggested she could make it, not really expecting a positive response, but she nodded with excitement.

I explained what to do and came inside later to this vision, what a self sufficient little 10 year old she is.

All the hard work done, taking the pips out is the bad bit about making cumquat marmalade. 

I gave the cumquats some extra snipping with the scissors (my favourite lazy kitchen tool), they were a lovely juicy thin skinned variety. We weighed almost a kilo of cumquats and added the same in sugar and 1 litre of water - then the big one stirred and stirred and simmered and stirred and it took a long time to set.  I showed her the cold saucer test but the marmalade kept merging back to together - I would add less water next time. I actually added a jar of some homemade pectin to speed things along, I made this with Christine last year and was pleased to use some as we have heaps in our cupboard.

I was so proud of her persistence!  Scooping out any missed pips.

Watching the jam didn't burn for over an hour.

 I did the jar sterilising and ladling but almost all the rest of the work was done for me! Wonder if she will volunteer so readily again?

The end result, wonderfully set delicious cumquat marmalade - my favourite! We all enjoyed some on some home made fruity sour dough.

While all the production happened, the rest of the family played games.