The fruits of late summer

After some truly torrential rain over the last week, it was a relief to see the sun make an appearance on friday afternoon (in your own time sunshine!)

Time to get out and about and make the most of it. With blackberries, plums and sloes in abundance it could mean only three things jelly, jam & gin! A very lovely way to spend an afternoon in the warm late summer sun, picking fruit. The most satisfying kind of food, seasonal, local and best of all, free. It just takes a little time & effort to make the jams and jellies. Store some jars away and enjoy it in the middle of the cold dark winter, ‘ansome! Find the recipes for Plum Jam & Bramble Jelly here. Sloe Gin is very easy to make, again just a little time invested from picking the fruit through to the making. Its worth making a couple of bottles if you can, one to drink this coming Christmas and save one for the following winter or longer still, the flavour matures enormously over this time, so if you can bear to wait that long, do so!!

Finally, here’s a very lovely and thoughtful meditation on blackberries.

above: bottling up the plum jam

above & below: Sloes ripe for the picking.