Apples . . . and cooking from scratch

I have a glut of apples, as indeed I do every year. We picked perhaps a third of them yesterday, not including the tall Russet tree in the paddock which we have to pick up from the ground as it's too tall to get a ladder up to! Even my home-grown from seed apple trees have a bumper harvest this year. Needless to say, there is lots of appley cooking going on. Yesterday I picked some blackberries too and made a big blackberry and apple crumble, and also a huge Eve's Pudding (sponge top over stewed apple). Last week I made Crab Apple Jelly and Windfall Apple Chutney, and I have boxes and boxes of apples being stored out in the stable. They do us for puddings, jams, cakes until well into the New Year.

Windfall Apple Chutney

Home-made Stir Fry vegetables for the freezer - home grown carrots and leeks; mixed peppers; broccoli; onion; spring onions and courgettes. I prefer to make my own, as having bought a well known Supermarket's packet in the past, it was made up with very 2nd (or even 3rd) rate vegetables, the cabbage especially being the sort of outer leaves you would normally compost. Plus the price has gone up 50% recently, so all I buy is bean shoots and I'm going to start sprouting those at home now. My home-prepared veg is fresh, washed, and I can alter the balance of what goes in the pack according to personal taste.

Home-made Hob Nob biscuits.

Home-made soup now that Autumn has arrived. This has a can of spicy mixed beans added for extra flavour.

Wildings Apple Jelly. Isn't it a gorgeous colour?

Home made White Chocolate Chip Cookies.

This was supper last night, home made Cornish Pasties. I had a tray of lamb mince, and cooked that up in a tasty gravy, and used it up with some left-over boiled potatoes and carrots from the garden. Shall we say, you knew you'd eaten one when you left the table - VERY filling.

You save so much money making food from scratch. It distresses me to see women filling their supermarket trollies with ready made everything - right down to the Yorkshire Puddings . . . I saw a clip from the new Jamie Oliver programme recently and in one family the children had never EVER had a proper meal. Everything was from the takeaway.