The busy season

Summer is a busy time in the garden and the kitchen for us. I went through a jam making phase: strawberry, plum and rhubarb. Then I decided to try and pickle gherkins! We didn't actually grow them, maybe next year... our local green grocer sells them in buckets of 5kg, so I got one of those and tried out three different recipes... verdict in 6 weeks!

We've also just harvested our pumpkins... 24 of them! Hopefully this year they won't rot like last year. We probably ate about a dozen pumpkins in 2 months so they wouldn't go to waste!

Ooooo

A few months ago, olives trees were crawling under the weight of their fruit. We didn't get organized early enough to pick some for pressing (next year's goal!), but we did pick a lot for pickling: 17Kg! That's a lot of jars. They fill pretty much a whole cupboard. I can't imagine what would happen if there was an earthquake... our cupboards are old and far from quake proof!

After rinsing the olives, sorting them and putting them in brine, they are finally ready. Home pickled olives are the best. That probably goes for anything home pickled! Next time I'm going to try gherkins. I used to eat gherkins straight out of the jars in France, but here most of them are sweetened and they taste horrible.
maybe I should have a giveaway of a jar of olives!