Almost Free Pudding!

I love the start of autumn partly for the trees changing in colours but mainly because of all the free fruit.  I'm lucky that I live in an area with tonne of brambles. There's also apple trees growing wild and this year has been a bumper crop. I've stewed loads down but now my freezer is overflowing. This means one thing: time to bake!

First stop, my favourite: apple and blackberry crumble!

Here's how to make the topping. I use cups to measure ever since my mum bought me some US measuring cups for Christmas - its so much quicker than scales.

1 cup Plain flour 

3/4 cup of sugar (I used granulated as it was all I had in but demerara tastes better)

1/2 cup of margarine

Rub it all together until it resembled large breadcrumbs.

Put your pre stewed fruit in a baking dish. Sprinkle on the topping and bake for 35 mins on gas mark 5.

Enjoy! 

Mining for Pi

Here's today's blog offering and I apologise as its just a thinly veiled advert for something I recommend! Sorry!!

Remember how we all scoffed at Bitcoin and now it's worth loads? Well now there's another cryptocurrency you can mine on your phone. It's called Pi, it's fairly new and hopefully will be worth something some day.

So far I've found it uses no data, no battery life and you just get one reminder a day. The more people that mine the more it will be worth but the sooner you join the bigger share you get.

I figure I've nothing to lose as it asks for no real personal info and takes up 2 seconds of your time.

If you're interested here's the blurb that comes with it:

Pi is a new digital currency being developed by a group of Stanford PhDs. For a limited time, you can join the beta to earn Pi and help grow the network. To join Pi, follow this link https://minepi.com/Niley and use my username (Niley) as your invitation code.

Cheers for reading. Bigger cheers if you sign up using my link.

Harvest Time

One thing I've been trying to do this year is grow my own food and with the amount of snails in our garden it has been a challenge. They've decimated the peas, beans, lettuce and courgette.

Thankfully there's some things that the snails either didn't like or couldn't reach. We've had redcurrants, blackberries, strawberries, tomatoes and potatoes. I also seem to be good at growing herbs - we've had a healthy crop of sage, mint and chives and I have rosemary, thyme and lemon balm that seem to be doing ok.

Indoors I have peppers the seeds of which I got from a shop bought pepper, citrus saplings (I think they're lemons) and I've also managed to revive some celery.

Reviving celery is so easy to do. You use a head of celery, after you've snapped off the sticks take the remaining stump and pop the it in a jar of water - just enough to cover the bottom by a few centimeters. Within a few weeks it will start to grow roots, then not long after it will sprout more leaves. When it starts to sprout leaves pot it in soil. I've found the stalks dont get as big but you can still chop them and the leaves up and add to soups, stews and sauces!

I'm also lucky as close to my house are a large amount of wold growing apple trees. This was my haul from just one dog walk!

I stewed it down and it's now waiting in my freezer to be turned into a pie or crumble!

All in all I'm fairly pleased but I need to find a way to defeat the snails although I don't like killing them and can't put pellets down as we have hedgehogs. Next year I'll try copper tape I think!