Summer's End

Summer has come to an end once again & the kitchen garden is giving up it's wonderful delights. It is delightful to see how well the marrows, beetroot, tomatoes & potatoes have done.

The days are becoming shorter & have a faded deep glow to them. Hay & wheat is all harvested now & the fields all now have their earth all turned & ready to lay bare all Winter.
There has been an abundance of hedgerow fruits this year & the robins are back in the garden watching you work.
Holly berries are everywhere on our trees that line the front of our garden although at the present they are hard little green berries waiting to ripen into the pretty scarlet colour that we know so well.
The Hazel trees in the lanes & our garden are fruiting well, the squirrels & rabbits are making the most of the fallen nuts.
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Tomatoes from our garden.
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Harvesting beetroot.

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We have an abundance of raspberries so I made some muffins.

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The girls sunflowers have been blooming lovely.

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I made a honey cake from Beatrix Potters Country Cooking Book.

It was a lovely cake, I used honey from our village. We have a man who has bee's & just lives behind the church.

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Molly Cake.

A lovely lady on Instagram made this so I looked it up & used the Waitrose recipe online.

It turned out lovely & uses no fat or eggs.

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A lovely walk last week over the wheat fields, the weather was warm & breezy.

We have never seen cows before in this field, it was lovely to see them.

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The twins enjoying a ride on their scooters along the lane.

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The simple beauty of golden wheat.

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Daisies & wheat.

The wild flowers are beautiful in the fields around us.

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One of the wheat fields halfway through harvesting.

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We spot some blackberries on our way home almost ready for picking.

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Home grown Victoria plums, hedgerow blackberries & home grown raspberries make such a pretty colour for chutney.

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I have never used berries before in chutney. The colour was so pretty & it smelled wonderful when cooking. It is quite a runny chutney, we will see in a month or so when we try some if I will make it again.

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Daisy passed all her GCSE's, we are so proud of her.

She is now going on to study her A levels.

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Over the Summer we have been decorating our bedroom.

There were ten layers of old wallpaper over the beams so it took some work.

The quilt is very precious to me, I made it over a few pregnancies all by hand.

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I thought you would like to see our little 1930's electric cooker, we use this when it is to hot too light the wood fired cooker.

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Victoria Sponge.

I make this using the sponge recipe I have posted before.

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The apples are nearly ready for harvesting.

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The end of our garden is such a magical place.

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Sun shining through our hazelnut tree.

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Fresh eggs.

Thank you ladies.

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The twins enjoying the last week of Summer after we hung the wash out.

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Sweet George.

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Fresh raspberries for the twins breakfast.

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The marrows have done so well this year, I am trying to think of different ways to use them.

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Plum & greengage Crumble.

A few ladies on Facebook & Instagram have asked for the recipe.

This is the crumble recipe I use all the time, sometimes I add a few oz's of oats.

Rub 5 ozs of self raising flour & 3 ozs of butter together.

Then add 3 ozs of sugar, if using oats then mix them in now.

Sprinkle sugar over fruit & then crumble mix.

Bake in a moderate oven for about 45 minutes.

We had it served warm with cream.

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Ruth Mott's boiled fruit cake.

I make this often & would advise anyone to get her book.

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Victoria Plum Jam.

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I do love the sweet taste of this beautiful jam.

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All ready for the pantry shelved.

Both our eldest Son's gave me pretty Cath Kidston jam covers as gifts, they look to pretty on the jars.

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A few readers have asked for a selection of my favourite cookbooks so here they are.

I do have a cupboard full of cookbooks but these are the one's I use all the time, as you can see Ruth's book is in there.

Sorry it has taken me so long.

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I love this time of year when we harvest the fruits of our labour.

It has taken me a while to do this post sorry, the laptop lost it & I had to rewrite it.

Fondly Michelle

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