On Christmas Day I made Apple Blossom Cooler, a refreshing non-alcaholic drink recipe by Margaret Fulton. The first step of the recipe requires making a sugar syrup flavoured of cinnamon and mint.
As luck would have it, the previous tenants had over 10 mint plants in the ring of herbs in my back yard. This was the very first 'harvest', if I was to be pedantic about it.
Since then I have also taken oregano for homemade pizza from the herb garden, as well as a few more mint sprigs for a strawberry, ginger and mint cocktail concoction.
I also used my herbs as well as a cutting of cucumber leaves, flowers and tendrils for a herb bouquet to decorate my table for a tiny dinner party on New Years Day.
But supposing that some think that a 'harvest' should involve the picking of a fruit or vegetable, the very first harvest from my new garden is this teeny cherry tomato! It went into a small lunch salad the following day along with some beans picked fresh from my flourishing garden.
Not a big harvest by any means, and though it was all due to the hard work of the previous tenants I still had a little thrill and enjoyed eating something which I had plucked with my own hands.
But how about you folk? How have your gardens been growing? Have you been able to harvest any edibles from them lately?
My basil and parsley plants are finally at a stage where I feel comfortable trimming them, and my cherry tomatoes are fruiting and should be ripe soon. Sadly the silverbeet is withering in the heat and the grapevine hasn't fruited at all. But most exciting of all is the established fruit trees in my yard. Last week I picked 1.5kg of beautiful apricots and over the weekend I made my first attempt at making my own jam. The set is a little softer than a store jam because I elected for a low-sugar, no-added-pectin recipe but the colour and taste is fantatsic. I have another half kilo ready and waiting in the fridge and more on the tree for more experiments next weekend :D
ReplyDeleteJess - 1.5kg?! That's a fabulous haul of apricots! I'm seriously jealous! How long ago did you plant the fruit trees?
DeleteWhat do you think you will do with the fruit leftover after making the jam? I wonder if it would create a half-decent cordial... Do you have a food dehydrator that you could use to dry out some of the remainder?
The trees are well established, I moved in about 3 months ago and the fruit trees have been here for many years.
ReplyDeleteI do have a food dehydrator, but I'm not sure if I'll have many leftovers :)