The day of operation quince dawns. After retrieving the quinces from the random saucepans F had distributed them to, I weighed them out and discovered we had almost 8 kg. The preserving recipe used only 5lb, which left me with a new recipe dilemma- bet all the quinces on it turning out or do a trial batch? I went halfway, aiming for 2kg of cut up quinces (just over 3 before peeling, coring and removing codling moths).
I had some willing helpers, and we all managed to survive with all digits intact, despite my fears. The end result smelt and tasted devine, if very very sweet, but only 3 bottles of fruit and one of syrup. Not enough to last us the winter, but they do look pretty. Should have gone the whole hog!
That took us up to lunch, when I decided to knock off another one of my challenges, by foraging for edible weeds. What better place to start than our backyard? After all, it is full of weeds. The nettles and the mallows are teeny tiny babies, and the amaranth are gigantic monsters but I did find some purslane to eat with my tomato, quesadilla and baked potato left over from last night.
We then ventured out to buy some local tofu round the corner. I was envisaging a curry type of thing for dinner, til I realized all my curry spices were decidedly non-local. But on the way back from the playground I harvested some fennel seeds from wild fennel growing by the creek. Dinner eating was punctuated by cries of “yuk, licorice!”
Today’s challenges:
Preserving.
5 serves of local fruit and veg.
Foraging for edible weeds.
Local honey instead of sugar.
