A cool collection of cucurbits....

...try saying that after you've had a few glasses of wine!

These are the cucurbits in question.........a mystery marrow (from a triffid-like self seeded plant in our front garden - where the plant has come from is anyone's guess!), a lovely round "Tondo di Toscana" courgette and a "Burpless" (yes, that really is its name) cucumber. All grown in the McRodd garden. Yum.

My plan was to use these veg to make some pickles for sale. As luck would have it, the latest Sainsburys magazine had a recipe for "spiced pickled marrow" - which I thought sounded....erm...at best, interesting, and at worst, downright weird...but with 6 big marrows sitting in the front garden, I was willing to give it a shot. After making the pickle (quite easy to do) I thought I should give it a taste, in the interests of quality control. Little did I imagine the development of a full scale addiction, rivalling only that of chocolate and rose wine! Blimey! So the upshot of this experience is that I am keeping all of the pickled marrow for myself I'm afraid, but I am going to post the recipe here in case anyone has a glut of marrows, courgettes or cucumbers and would like to make some of this addictive pickle too.

Spiced pickled marrow (makes 1.5L)

Peel a 2kg marrow, leaving a few streaks of green skin. Cut lengthways into quarters and remove the seeds. Halve the quarters lengthways again into eighths and cut into chunks about 2.5cm long. Place into a colander, sprinkle over 2 tsp of salt and mix, then put a plate directly on the marrow with a weight (such as some cans of beans on top). Leave for at least an hour to draw out some of the juice.

Meanwhile, wash your jars and lids in hot soapy water and sterilise in a low oven for 15 mins. They need to be warm when you add the pickle.

Rinse the marrow under cold running water and drain. Heat 2 tbsp sunflower oil in a large wide pan, add 1 finely diced onion and cook over a low heat for 5 minutes - do not let it colour. Add 1 red and 1 yellow pepper, seeded and finely diced and cook for 2 minutes. Add 570ml of white wine or cider vinegar, 450g of granulated sugar and 1.5 tsp of pickling spice. Bring gently to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the marrow; when the mixture is boiling, turn off the heat.

While it's still hot, use a slotted spoon to remove the veg from the pickling liquid, and pack into the warm jars as tightly as poss. Cover the contents of each jar with the pickling liquid. Screw the lids on tightly and leave to cool before using.

Enjoy, with salad, cheese, cold meat - or just straight from the jar dammit! Apparently it will keep for up to a year unopened, in a cool, dark place, although I don't think ours will last anywhere near that long, at least not if I get my hands on it!!

The wild plum detectives

Fresh from the mirabelle incident earlier on this week, we sniffed out another wild plum tree while we were out and about. The fruit on this one was smaller, and ranged in colour from yellow to amber to purple. The tree was also a lot smaller, so no ladders or grabber was necessary, which made the fruit picking that little bit easier! The tree was laden and the fruit was so ready to eat that it was dropping off the tree and straight into the carrier bag that I handily had with me..... (Girl Guide motto: Be prepared).........!

I picked about 2.5kg, and (of course!) made most of it into jam. The colour of this one is a much darker gold, compared to the mirabelle jam, but it is just as tasty! I have 7 jars of hedgerow plum jam for sale, all priced as usual at £2.95........

Operation mirabelle

At the weekend we went for a bike ride around Kidlington, on a bramble finding mission........ we found a few but most of them weren't quite ready yet (although I did manage to pick enough to make 4 jars of bramble jelly with, which are now available for sale!) On the way home we spied a tree with loads of very orangey yellow plummy looking fruit on it, most of which were completely out of my reach and were even difficult for my very tall husband to reach (so pretty darned high up!). A Google search later, I found out that the fruits were actually Mirabelles, also known as "cherry plums", which are of French origin and mostly used for jams and to make alcohol. Of course once I read the "j" word, I suddenly became v desperate to get my hands on as much of this fruit as possible for jam making purposes, so Kevin (very tall husband) and I hatched a cunning plan ("Operation Mirabelle") where we would return to the tree under cover of darkness with a ladder, so that we could steal....ahem...I mean "liberate" even more of them. After realising that the bit about going back under cover of darkness was probably highly impractical, we decided to go back to the tree a couple of evenings ago. Armed with a ladder and a Mirabelle grabber* (no patent pending, but there should be!) - a highly technical piece of kit invented by Kevin, we returned to the tree feeling v conspicuous and probably looking extremely suspicious. It's quite difficult to look like you're going about your everyday business with a stepladder under your arm! (I should probably point out now that this tree isn't in anyone's garden or on private land, but is on a piece of land leading to some fields, and it is definitely public access, but for some reason or other I still felt I was doing wrong!).

The amazing Mirabelle grabber worked very well, and after about 10 minutes picking we returned home, with 2.5kg mirabelles, a satisfied feeling, and no criminal record (phew!). All's well that ends well.



I have since made the mirabelles into some gorgeous jam (if I do say so myself!). It's a beautiful golden / orange colour and is quite tangy. Perfect on toast!



* It is amazing what you can do with one of those litter grabber thingies, some wire, a plastic bag and some clothes pegs!!