Easy Christmas Pudding

I have made this easy Christmas pudding recipe for years ever since my Auntie Win gave it to me.
So it is really called Auntie Win’s Overnight Christmas Pudding. It is a light flavourful pudding and is great eaten cold the next day.

Ingredients
1  375 gram pkt of Mixed Dried Fruit
1 cup of water
1/4 cup of sherry or rum or brandy
Mix the above ingredients together and stand all day.
Then add
1 cup of freshly made breadcrumbs
1 cup of Self Raising Flour
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
2 tablespoons of melted butter
1 small teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon of honey or golden syrup
1 or 2 beaten eggs
Mix well .
Spoon into a greased pudding basin.
Cover with buttered greaseproof paper.
Cover with aluminium foil.
Tie these around the lip of the bowl with cotton string.
Leave to stand overnight.
Next day boil the pudding for 3 hours in a pan with boiling water and a lid.
Remove from the pan, allow to stand for 15 minutes, turn pudding onto a plate and serve with custard, cream and seasonal berries.
This pudding keeps for months in the refrigerator or it can be frozen.
The original recipe had 1 cup of sugar which I leave out. Dried fruit, honey and sherry add ample sugar. I usually multiply the recipe by 4 to make 4 puddings and I substitute 1 375 gram pkt currants for the mixed fruit. Dried black currants add a wonderful flavour and richness.

Mulch Making Monday

We have been trying to find time to put all our winter prunings through the mulcher for weeks.

Today we finally managed in 2 hours to put this great pile of organic matter through the mulcher and spread it all over some of our garden beds as summer mulch.

I still have lots of dried grass cuttings which I shall use to put around small seedlings.

Lovely organically home grown and processed MULCH for our summer garden.

Lucky we put the mulch down today, tomorrow is going to be 35 degrees Celsius.

Adelaide has lots of rain in winter so dried grass cuttings provide ample mulch and summer prunings will be mulched and then composted.

Spinach Soup with Leeks, Garlic, Black Pepper and Pizza Thyme.

Sometimes you cook something which is absolutely delicious.

After a busy day I went into the garden to find lots of spinach ready to be cooked and eaten.

I felt too tired to make spinach triangles and as it is a cool rainy evening soup seems very appealing.

So I blanched some spinach, drained it, added some cooked baby leeks, black pepper, chopped new season garlic, salt, a little cornflour blended with some milk and a handful of pizza thyme.

I cooked this gently for a few minutes then pureed the mix.

I served the soup with a dollop of sour cream and voila! an amazing delicious, nutritious soup.

All fresh from the garden and more delicious than most soups I have tasted.

From Seed to Table - a great blog to read

The Blog “From Seed to Table” has a most amazing summary of what Michelle has grown, harvested and processed this past summer in California.

What makes it even more interesting is that what she is harvesting is just about the same foods that we are planting now and hopefully will be harvesting in the near future.

I am certainly going to try several of her recipes including her November 30th post recipe for

Slow Roasted or is it Quick Dried Chile Peppers.

Please check out this blog for new ideas of how to preserve and use summer produce.

Congratulations Michelle and thankyou for such a great blog.

 

The photos below were taken last summer in our garden.

Many South Australia gardeners are still planting up peppers, eggplants and chillies.

Others here are harvesting zucchinis, lettuce, spinach, onions, radishes, rocket, basil, artichokes and the last of the broad beans.

Tomato bushes are flowering and some folks are already picking early tomatoes. Beans, cucumbers and figs are growing nicely. 

It is apricot, berry and cherry harvest time in South Australia and fresh platters of mixed berries are appearing on dinner tables.

Eating local, organic and seasonal food is exciting. There is always some favourite fruit or vegetable reappearing at the dinner table.

There is always the anticipation of different things to grow, harvest and preserve.

 

Glandore Community Garden

Last weekend some of Adelaide's most famous Gardening Gurus from the Hills and Plains Seedsavers visited the Glandore Community

Garden for a pizza garden afternoon.

Many thanks to Lyn, Helen and Harry and others who made us feel so welcome.

It was a great afternoon, with garden tours of the plots and much discussion over the size of plants and what everyone was growing there.

There was always lots of laughter and great energy as we meet together and planned bumper crops for our own summer gardens.

In the Glandore plots there were lots of winter plants going to seed and lots of summer plants coming along nicely.

The pizza from the wood oven was delicious, thanks again Lyn for setting this all up for us.

There is always something new to learn when we wander around others gardens particularly when everyone there had many, many years of gardening experience.

Some Seedsavers had just come back from touring Italy and told us all about visiting Puglia, home of the Bari cucumbers we grow and an area where Cima di Rapa (another winter vegetable we grow) grows in abundance. We initially got some Rapa seedlings from Andrew who got seeds from an elderly Italian neighbour. We passed on many seeds & seedlings to many others in the group. The Bari cucumber seeds came to our group when an elderly Italian vegetable grower asked Kate to keep his cucumbers growing on. Several Seedsavers did & now we enjoy these unusual cucumbers.

We hope to go back soon for a seed swap and chat about our summer gardens.

Here are some photos from this delightful event.