Preparing for Winter V

[Deleted User]

More plums coming ripe today so it will be plum chutney and some stewed plums to go into the freezer.  Inevitably more tomatoes too, I picked a kilo of them from the greenhouse in the evening yesterday and 3 cucumbers so I'll run the dehydrator again and try to dry them down to make tomato powder for using in soups in the winter. The sweetcorn are almost ready to harvest now, the tassels are turning a nice dark brown so this year I'm going to make sweetcorn relish with some of them so we can have a spoon on home made bean burgers which we both like.

Shropshirelass

Thank you all for your input on this thread, I don't get to read every day, but do catch up when possible. Thanks to you we have now booked our winter flu jab with pharmacy  in local town (Boots) easy to do on line, and they explain their safeguarding procedures. It looks as if they will be starting in September, and already some of the appointment times have been booked. We were getting worried as we usually go to local GP, who do a 'mass vaccination' in the town British Legion Club - won't be very practical for present circumstances.

My bits of patio plants have not done much yet this year, tomatoes, peppers, green beans still to ripen, but I'm hoping for a late harvest. Blackberries and baking apples are looking promising. Looking forward to freezing some to use in winter. We also have figs in decent numbers this year. I will pick them before the birds get them, and make green fig preserves from any not yet ripe.

Si_Clist

Laura_Elsewhere said:

I worked it out once and one jam tart is 20g, c.86 calories, 10g carbs, 4.9g sugars, 4.6g fat - compared to a quick google for Mr Kipling, from whom one jam tart is 35g, 139 calories, 23g carbs, 11g sugars, 4.7g fat. 
Quite a difference! 
(I also make fairy cakes - again, old-fashioned sizes so less unhealthy, but also for a giggle I make "pixie cakes" which are just like fairy cakes but smaller - 63 calories, 8g carbs, 5g sugars)

We've often wondered how on earth we could work out the "nutritional information" for the stuff we bottle, the jams we make and the stuff I bake, so do please tell how you calculate those figures

Laura_Elsewhere

@Si_Clist - there's a free thing I use called CRON-o-meter - https://cronometer.com/ - and it allows you to put in all the ingredients for a recipe with the exact amounts, and then tell it how much one serving is, or how many servings in one recipe-worth, etc., so I can enter into my daily thing "jam tart 1" and highlight it and then I get all the nutrients, how much Vit K or B12, how mcuh iron or selenium or potassium, etc. 
I use it for a month or two at a time, quite strictly, every single thing going onto it, and it means I can just keep a check on things I know I often don't eat enough of like calcium, and things I know I eat too much of like added sugars!

Edit: for homemade jams, you probably would need to enter slightly less liquid or more fruit or sugar or, er, something, because you can't enter the loss of water from steam... ie that if you make jam with 500g fruit and 500g sugar, the end result will no longer have equal amounts of them. But I got up very early this morning so I can't quite work out how you'd compensate for that...  

maryb

I'm trying to get my head round that.  Wouldn't you just calculate the values for the raw ingredients, weigh the finished product and spread the values over the smaller weight?  Evaporated water wouldn't take away anything other than weight.  Or does the app somehow already take that into account but doesn't show how it adjusts?

Laura_Elsewhere

@maryb I dunno! I think it doesn't take any account of cooking processes, so it would treat it as just fruit and sugar mixed, like at the start of the process. It wouldn't make much of a difference, so I never bother, tbh... 

PipneyJane

VJsmum said:

I make marmalade from the mamade tins of pulp but a batch usually lasts 6 months - it's nicer than most shop bought and no chopping all those marms    As part of a click and collect shop i accidentally bought a 5kg bag of sugar .  I did think about making jam but decided we'd only eat it when we didn't need to.  I will probably end up doing a batch of chutney as i can't see all my toms turning red now, which will use some of it up.  One batch of the chutney will last through the winter as we don't eat that much of it.  Otherwise the sugar mountain will very gradually get used in the mamade making and the odd cake or crumble.  We don't have much that's sugary, but when i make a cake i just use granulated sugar, CBA to bother with getting or making caster..
 

@VJsmum, if you are anything like us, it’ll last you 2-3 years. I buy 5kg bags of caster sugar from C0stc0; the last one was started mid 2018 and finished two months ago.  (Around here, that’s the cheapest way to buy sugar.)  It gets used for everything, and is almost the only sugar in the house.  (I do buy soft dark muscovardo sugar but that only gets used if a recipe specifically needs the rum-like flavour.)

I don’t make jam or chutney every year.  We don’t go through it that fast.  In fact, we’re still finishing up a jar of green tomato chutney from 2016.  The next batch made was November last year.  In the interim years, green tomatoes from my garden were dumped into a freezer bag and lurked at the back of the freezer.

I am currently making/straining rosehip jelly.  Yesterday, we harvested 3.8kg of rosehips from the rose bush in the front garden and boiled them up.   It’s going to take hours because my jelly bag isn’t large enough to take the whole pot at once and then there’s the jam making process. There’s still enough on the bush for another harvest, so I’m contemplating attempting rosehip syrup.  (I don’t remember when I made the last batch - 5/6 years ago? - but it was finished last year.  It mainly gets eaten in Jam Crumbly, which I bake at 180c for 20-25 minutes.)

- Pip

[Deleted User]

I made a big batch of Plum Chutney this morning, had intended to make it yesterday but it was just too hot to be in the kitchen stirring over the stove.  7 jars I got from this mornings batch and they are cooling on the kitchen table ready to label up and put into store.  I like to make chutneys and sauces in the autumn to stop winter food being samey and bland when the fresh product usually comes from overseas or out of storage here in the UK.  I make lots so I can share with the family and give the odd jar to friends which is a nice way of sharing the crops we grow in the garden with other people but mostly I make lots of jam and chutney because I enjoy doing it.  

This winter might be a bit different if we still have regional lockdowns because of spikes of covid in various areas of the country and I wonder if there might be less choice in the shops of fresh foods from overseas because they are having their own problems with the virus and shutdowns so I'm making an early start on Christmas presents and Christmas foods, I suspect there will just be the 2 of us this year, for the first time since pre children and I'd like to make it as festive as I can, thankfully there is the internet and face time/skype so even if we can't all be together in person we will be able to see each other and the grandchildren which will make a difference.  I think back to before the modern technology when very few people had a telephone in their houses and we'd have had to find a phone box and arrange for family to be with whoever had a phone where they lived just to be able to wish them Happy Christmas. It's so much easier now isn't it? 

We will try to enter the colder weather with a well stocked food cupboard, a good supply of fire wood and the knowledge that we've made the most of the harvest that we've worked at from spring to autumn and most of it is in my larder waiting to cheer up our meals, nice feeling.

Mummy2cheekymonkeys

Just finished making a batch of apple chutney from the apple tree in the garden. It seemed like a good idea when i started but the room thermometer got up to 28c and i started to regret the decision lol. Anyway all jarred and cooling down now. I never used to be a fan of chutneys and pickles but now i love them. I think i changed my mind once i started making them myself. As some else said earlier, I really enjoy doing it which helps. 

Laura_Elsewhere

Making a full roast dinner for My intended's last supper (!) at home before going into hosp fasting tomorrow morning seemed such a good idea a few weeks ago when I suggested it and he eagerly leapt at the chance for roast potatoes... 

Melting sightly already and we've only peeled he potatoes so far...!