Making soup is a regular ritual for me. Whenever we have a chicken I ensure that it gets popped in the big pan and boiled up to make stock which is then portioned up and frozen, ready to be used for my next mega batch of soup. It's always preferable to use whatever is in season and needs using up before it spoils.
Over the summer it's usually courgette which needs using up but this year we easily kept pace and didn't have a glut at all that I can remember.
I ditched the pumpkins of yesteryears which are difficult to cut, peel and use all in one go and instead I grew two types of butternut squash and uchiki kuri (red kuri). These are brilliant for using in soup from the day they ripen on the plant all the way through winter as they will happily store for months. The flavour of these squashes is far superior to pumpkin and they are much easier to handle although I would mention that holding the peeled flesh dries out my skin and I look particularly crusty of hand the following day.

• One large or several small chopped onions - sweat in generous blob of butter until soft
• Add a teaspoon each of curry powder and (smoked) paprika , stir and let the aroma develop for a minute or so
• Dice into approx 1cm cubes 3 or 4 small aubergine and about half a small butternut squash and pop these into the pan, stir
• Add in a can of chopped tomatoes and top it up with stock of choice, I use my homemade chicken for extra flavour. Season with salt and pepper, stir, bring to the boil then simmer for around 25 minutes
• Ensure it's all soft, take off the heat and blend when a little cooler. 

The celeriac we grew are very small this year. They are such a slow growing vegetable that if the conditions aren't right, or they have a late start you will never end up with a good crop. The little veg scrub up alright so I teamed them with some ugly parsnips to make a creamy white soup. Again, start with onions. This time add a few cloves of garlic once the onions are soft. Add sliced or cubed veg and top up with stock but if in doubt add too much liquid as the celeriac and parsnip thicken things alarmingly. Blend!
I did want a good broccoli soup recipe and the one I found from a well known chef was essentially just broccoli, stock and a drop of cream which I thought was a woeful effort. I at least added onions but mine was uninspiring.

Take care,
Sophie

We had a little pear tree, nothing did it bear...
I haven't made mention of the 'orchard' patch in terms of the trees on the blog mostly due to having reaped virtually nothing off them. Their original site was the main plot but once we took on the extra half they were dug up and moved, so we lost a year while they were settling. A few years ago we had very hard frosts while they were in blossom. I remember is trying to wrap them in fleece which not only didn't keep them warm but knocked off a fair amount of blossom in the process. The years we have grown fruit it either fell off, got eaten or never amounted to more than a handful. The cherry tree produced enough for one jar of jam last year.

However, this year we were shocked to see so many pears on our little pear tree. The other pears being devoid of any fruit, of course. I assumed many would fall off in due course as the season progressed, but no! About 6 weeks ago I decided to take one off the tree which did have a glimmer of pink and give it a try. Ok, so it was quite a 'firm' eat, not juicy but had a lovely flavour. I took around a dozen off over the next week to give away and eat myself. Since doing that I was told that pears don't ripen on the tree and need to be picked and stored to ripen. Now you tell me!!!
The weather had other ideas and the hoolie that blew in, you guessed it, knocked all the pears off bar a couple, leaving them in a heap around the tree. Of course, I was dismayed at the prospect of all the fruit going to waste so we gathered them up in a big trug bucket. Aside from maybe 5 which weren't going to make it, the rest seemed absolutely fine, I suppose the short fall onto a soft surface hadn't hurt them. Even so, I was concerned that any mild bruising might lead to the fruit rotting so we pondered what to do with an enormous bucket of potentially damaged pears.
Being a pudding glutton I was keen to make a pear sponge. I did find a recipe which sounded pleasant again on Delicious Magazine which I already had all the ingredients I wanted - always a winner. The ground almonds were previously used by C for his horrible healthy cookies and had sat opened but unused for months so I was doing a good thing by setting about using more of them up. I've made a big thing of my journey to try eating more nuts even though they are not something I enjoy at all. Anyway, ground almonds are a fairly innocuous way of consuming a nut portion especially as the crunch and texture of nuts is a significant part of the reason I don't like them. I did make this sponge three times in total though the last time was with a lovely little pear which lingered sadly in the fruit bowl with two surplus bramleys. I didn't change the recipe at all except for I didn't use the lemon juice on the fruit, just chopped it quick, added a spoonful of water and a little sugar. One time I chopped up a stem ginger ball and added some of the ginger syrup to the fruit which added a lovely wintery warmth. I didn't add the rosewater or almond extract as I don't have any but I wasn't after an especially almond taste.
The main thing we did with the fruit was to 'can' it in jars. A while ago, C bought a canning machine which basically looks like a big slow cooker. Apparently 'canning' relates to the process rather than the vessel. He had intentions of ale brewing but safe to say that's not happened in there as yet. We squirrel away all jars, bottles and glass containers in boxes, ready for such occasions as this but even our stock wasn't going to cope with this alone so we did buy some nice tall jars from Wilko to go with our mostly mayonnaise jars. The pears were peeled, cored and quartered-ish. C made a different syrup on each occasion, one was lightly spiced and the other was vanilla spiced. We had put a used vanilla pod in a kilner of sugar which resulted in a lot of highly scented sugar - this recipe put some of it to use, finally!
Pears were plopped to jars and filled with syrup then left to bubble away in the canning machine.
Unsure how they were going to turn out I opened a small jar a week later to test for whether they were edible or pleasant; it's no good giving away anything that's no good to eat. We'd forgotten to label soon enough so they're all pot luck on flavour. The pears were absolute heaven. Soft and tasty, sweet and utterly delicious. They will last a long time too so we can keep a few, while giving away some too.

We have ideas about being able to can more things in a similar way next year too.

Take care,
Sophie

It wouldn't be autumn without going blackberry picking - the annual foraging tradition loved by so many. An apple and blackberry crumble is the classic way to use them and I admit to having neglected this some years, more through missing the boat rather than not feeling like it. I come from a dynasty of crumble makers. Us women have produced hundreds of these over the years and yet most have fallen short of their full glory. There's nothing worse than a crumble which disappoints. With my complete lack of instinct when it comes to cooking, baking and anything to do with food assembly, I always rely on a recipe to guide me through choppy waters. I wince when I say that my previous go-to recipe was a 'healthy' option which not only failed in texture and taste but really offered little in the way of healthy benefits either. It was time to try something else. Google offered me a recipe from delicious magazine which looked suitably different and I gave it a try. Actually I'm going to be searching there for lots of recipes in future as they have a lot of mouthwatering dishes over there - plus they are easy to print off.

Is it ok to make it three weeks on the trot? Because that's what your girl did. Did I mention I love desserts? Here's my slightly tweaked recipe from the original:

Ingredients:
Approx 1100g bramley apples
250g or thereabouts carefully rinsed and sorted to ensure no stems, cobwebs or creepy crawlies have joined the party
3 teaspoons of cornflour
70g caster sugar
240g plain flour
150g unsalted butter cut into cubes. I prefer to use this from the fridge as if it gets too warm you make paste.
120g demerara sugar

Method:
Pop the flour in a large mixing bowl along with a pinch of salt and rub in the butter a few cubes at a time. Keeping this cool will help. Once it's fairly fine, don't worry about the odd buttery lump, mix in the demerara sugar and set aside. Pop the oven on to about 160 oC for a fan oven.
Stir together the cornflower and caster sugar in a bowl.
You'll need to work through the apples quickly as they start to turn brown very quickly. I use a vegetable peeler and a small knife to peel and remove the core, and keep them chunky before slicing them at the last moment and adding the blackberries. Sprinkle over the cornflour and sugar mix and stir around the fruit. Grease a chosen baking dish, I prefer a deeper one than too shallow as the fruit always cooks down and if too thinly placed you hardly end up with anything.
Stir round the fruit again then lay it out in the dish, even it up roughly then gently spoon the topping over. Pop on a tray with a teflon sheet as the fruit can bubble up and escape during cooking.

I check mine after around 25 minutes at which point you can tell if it's looking 'perfect' ie golden-ish with a few blobs of oozy fruit round the edge - which would be done or if it still looks much like when you put it in - in which case try again in 10 minutes.

They stay hot for ages so no rush to eat but ours was demolished with a shocking volume of custard.
Even C agreed this crumble recipe was an absolute triumph. Super buttery with the sugary crunch and the syrupy fruit wasn't overly sweet. The original recipe called for more caster but we preferred it with less.

This is one I'll be returning to over and over again. It's hard to say how many official portions it makes but I'd suggest 6 for gluttons like myself. Plus it's pretty much a breakfast dish too, so make a weekend of it.

The blackberries are past their best now, we did gather a small handful for a pie but there were slim pickings indeed.

Have you been crumbling?

Take,
Sophie

In years gone by we've had mixed success with foraging sweet chestnuts. The roasted delights you buy on the Christmas markets are plump and beautiful but in the majority of our foraging expeditions the fruits of those spiky shells are significantly smaller than their counterparts.



I'm not entirely sure when the best time to attempt finding the best ones dawns. Is it the first ones to drop? Or the ones that ripen on the tree then spill out onto the floor or the oldest hanging around on the forest floor? No idea. Either way, it's easiest to pick shelled whole nuts, then the partially opened shells and finally to prise open a sealed shell. They're prickly and the spines are dense. Feet or a couple of sticks are your best bet. They are ripe when brown.
We stumbled across a pretty decent fall of nuts so were able to pick and choose a little more. There's no point roasting tiny ones, they shrivel up to dust.


C cuts a cross into each one to avoid an explosion but even so we did have a couple of casualties. The inner shin which is like a hairy thin layer of card can be eaten if your nut is being a nuisance and refuses to peel off it's coats. Obviously roasting in an open fire would be most poetic but failing that, the oven will suffice.
There are plenty of recipes which revolve around this seasonal wonder but I prefer to savour them just as they are, plus a sprinkle of salt.
Are you foraging chestnuts this year?

Take care,
Sophie

I've made no secret of my dissatisfaction with my fitness over the last year or so. Things have changed, I've changed. Life is what happens while you're busy making plans. Well, I don't recall specifically making plans.
How many times have I written about how I'm thinking of adopting a new healthier lifestyle and how I hope it will give me the motivation to claw my way back to feeling fit again instead of glum. Is this post any different? Who knows but at least I'm trying.

What went wrong? That's what I want to know. At one time I was going to bootcamp twice a week, zumba and running two or three times. Meals were probably more sensible and with less snacking. It was a case of getting in from work and straight into workout gear for something, but that came at a price. I remember pushing myself to expend energy regardless of whether I had anything left to give and I'm not entirely sure that was healthy either.

Balance. When it comes to being selfish I can either be expert or fail altogether. People who are extremely fit must surely be selfish to achieve this... in order to eat what you need to and make time to get your workout/yoga/mediation in must have to pull the plug on anything and anyone for that spot of time. Laundry? Forget it, I'm working out. Cooking? I'm eating my own thing (which you won't/don't like). And sometimes I do this and sometimes I don't.

It's hard to juggle a full time job, a relationship (and home), your own health requirements and actually having a life. My idea of a life is fairly straightforward in terms of growing things, walking locally and photography. Blogging is for that little bit of time between feeling too tired to do any more chores and bed. It's not as though I demand to go out on great excursions, see people or undertake lengthy activities. Yet still it doesn't work trying to fit it all in and keep everyone happy.

With regard eating, I struggle so much on three points:

• Feeling the obligation to make/eat meals we both like
• Feeling an obligation to eat allotment produce
• Enjoying all the unhealthiest of foods and snacks

I know there's no such thing as 'bad' food but more the quantity in which you eat it or in what company it keeps but looking at what I shovel in (and guzzle) does not appear to be balanced enough.

What to do about this. Well the only thing I can suggest to myself is to once again be selfish and say I'm cooking for myself and that's just tough because I'm fed up of how I physically feel and the effect it's having on my overall outlook.

I need to undertake a new policy of this is my time, no ifs or buts which can mean I decide what to do in it. That hour can be exercise if I'm up to it or a bit of meditation if not. Either way, it's mine to decide where it gets spent instead of feeling like I have to fit things in to an existing schedule. Joining a gym is not an option unfortunately due to where we live/having the dog with me/gyms nearby having limited opening hours/limited equipment and generally C being adamant that a gym membership won't solve everything. The dark evenings are looming now, so the couple of runs I've started during the week will soon be off-limits. My Mum has introduced me to Joe Wicks the Bodycoach and his HIIT style workouts and I do admit they have been good, I've done about 6.

In terms of fitness standards, mine is less than a couple of years ago but I'm adamant that I'm still doing ok. I'm stronger than I used to think I could be. I can run, spring, jump, lift myself, stretch, balance. All is not lost.
Maybe I can draw up a flexible schedule of workouts/runs/stretches to fit in during a week, with some goals to reach. Much as the scales are a tad pointless, I'll have a weigh in to start with, take measurements and see where I'm at in 3 months. It's a bit weird to give out starts so better to just compare by waist X- 1 inch or something. In the hope of progress.

What better way to pick myself up and get back on track than with a smashing new pair of gym leggings. My normal choice is black and always long length. These super colourful Wildor leggings from OW Fit are not only really stylish but a fabulous fit too. The material is completely different to my other pairs; it's incredibly stretchy, but thick and they look like a capri pair until I pop them on, when they miraculously fit like a glove. It's like a super supportive second skin. I'm in awe of technology! They come in a 'one size' which fits UK 6-12 (which I was dubious about) but they basically fit to your shape, very clever. I wore these for a couple of workouts recently and not only are they very comfortable, but don't show your pants or budge at all. There are loads of stunning artistic bright and colourful designs, so you can find some really individual styles to suit how you want to dress. This pair are suitable for crossfit so are super hard wearing. At £60 they are more than my lower quality alternatives but I would say they represent excellent value as they wash and wear well.

Aim high!
Take care,
Sophie
Thank you for OW Fit for sending me this pair of leggings to feature. All opinions are my own.

Mmmm, they do look delightful. As it turned out the season was already a good way through, many hips were a bit manky and soft so it took more effort to not pick the bad ones. Next year I will have to be quicker off the mark.
 These little pink plastic trugs were so handy for picking them. We struggled to find all that many of the little traditional bullet hips from the dog rose, a large haul of the (right) Japanese hips.

One thing I did overlook was that it was a bit of a prickly job as roses do have thorns. So more care had to be taken. Ouch.

In a very satisfying manner, we found all we needed within walking distance of home, which gave a particularly local feeling to the forage.
The softer Japanese beauties chopped up in a couple of pulses. Far more convenient. It's worth mentioning to anyone unfamiliar with hips that the seeds are known as itching powder, so mind where they go. I have a brilliant memory of chucking some down my brother's back when we were little (for which I was told off for) and he did end up crying. So be careful.
The two recipes varied wildly with the ratios of water and sugar to hips. In my opinion neither really hit the mark. One was virtually solid and the other was like dishwater, so my advice is to judge it yourself.
For the wetter mix the recommendation here suggested 2 litres of water to 1kg of fruit, which was very watery (it suggested straining and more water again, which I declined to do), then half the amount of brown sugar as fruit.

The fruit and water mix strained through muslins. It does look grim at this point.
Then after a lonnnng drippy strain and a messy squeeze, it's back to the pan for the liquor and to stir in the sugar.
Top: the dog rose very thick syrup with white sugar (recipe from the hedgerow cookbook which I bought and am totally in love with). I did add more water at the fruit boiling stage as it did seem very sticky-dry.
We bought cute Kilner bottles especially. I haven't tried the thick one yet but the dark runny one is an absolute joy each morning, I have a tablespoon of it after breakfast. It's packed with vitamin C and a whole lotta get-up-n-go (non quantifiable 'doing you good' things).
Does it taste like roses? Not at all, but a sweet, fruity flavour. Quite a delight.
Sophie

Writing this is a must. Why do I constantly gravitate towards terrible eating habits? Given the choice, I usually make poor judgements about what to eat and how much of it to have. Enormous portion sizes, snacks, filling the freezer with junk food...
It's not that I can claim ignorance because I know exactly how fatty and sugary all these processed foods are, it's more just that these are things that in my head seem like tastier things to eat. We usually don't buy biscuits or cakes or chocolate, simply because I'll munch my way through them in no time at all.
Weekends and holidays are usually the worst time when regular good habits all but completely evaporate. All progress made during the rest of the time is quickly reversed (and then some) and it's pretty disheartening when you realise how long it takes to make any progress at all.

The question I have is why do I want to eat all the rubbish, when I know it's going to make me feel disappointed afterwards. I'm sitting here after a fortnight of excesses and wondering why this keeps happening. My usual idea of healthy eating isn't too strict, too restrictive, it's not celery and lettuce leaves for every meal.

I'm left meal planning week by week (as always) and hoping that my willpower will last me a good bit longer this time.
Sophie

Last year saw my fitness regime all but completely evaporate and funnily enough, there were consequences. At the start of the year I stepped on the scales for the first time in a long time, met with something of a shocker which has only been corroborated by most of my jeans refusing to do up. I knew that something had to change, both in my weekly activities and in my head too. A healthy body goes hand in hand with a healthy mind, or something like that. Late nights and bingeing on junk food is no good for you regardless of how much you work out so I had to look at everything in the round.

As my strength is better than it's ever been, it was clear that cardio was where improvement was needed and running on the treadmill was the obvious answer. I can't lie, most of the time I still whine about having to run after work. It tends to be something that feels like it's getting in the way of relaxing and enjoying my evening but deep down I know I have to do the exercise. So after a bit of a dither (I still need to iron out the 'putting it off' stage) I don my running kit and hop on the treadmill four evenings a week. One hour of bootcamp still stands firm in my diary. The rest have been allotted to a run. My relationship with the treadmill is hate-hate. It's a machine and therefore will not negotiate nor show compassion which doesn't sit well with me. What I really want is to set a time and count down with a neat way of scheduling the speeds but so far no joy. The treadmill is sturdy and safe but as I've got a relatively fast sprint in me the speeds I whack it up to seem to end up with me running in a messy fashion with one false move potentially ending in disaster. Due to the insane irritation that the treadmill causes me, I try to vary what happens on each session; sometimes a short fast mile, a HIIT session, a steadier longer go... To be honest my longest encounter has been about 1.75 miles this year and my shortest run lasted ten minutes. I always get off the treadmill puffing and hot.
I'm getting there. Once it's light enough I'll be outside hitting the roads again. I want to fall in love with running again, looking forward to feeling like this is something I want to do and enjoy. It's progress!
Sophie