Self sufficiency stew.

Keela · Post by **Keela** » 15 Sep 2007, 20:47

Tonight I'm eating home-made stew.. in the real sense.

The beef (shin and brisket boiled) was reared by my sister. The potatoes, carrots, onions, peas, parsnip, leeks, tomatoes, courgette, and herbs all came out of my own garden.

I added salt, pepper and a little cornflour, also we're drinking some spanish red wine to wash it down (the home made nettle wine was a disaster this year

). Anyway it tastes good and I'm feeling just a tad smug at the moment......

However it's still gonna be a LONG time before I could provide a meal like this every day! All year round!!

Anyone else feeling smug about anything?

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 16 Sep 2007, 00:21

Got a small quantity of wine on the go, made with grapes from my back garden! That should be nice.

Have also made a couple of very tasty beverages using golden syrup with some added water, and berries from my back garden like blackcurrants and strawberries, all fermented. Has turned out kind of like a fruit mead type thing. Deeeelish!

Had some sweetcorn too last week, which I grew myself and roasted with a garlic and herb butter I made, the herbs I grew myself too. Tasted AMAZING. Slightly 'nutty' flavour in there, an extra dimension of taste to the sweetcorn I normally get from the supermarket.

Keela · Post by **Keela** » 16 Sep 2007, 07:04

Sounds good Andy... I'm curious about the golden syrup concotion. How did you make it?

I've 4 bunches of grapes this year on my 3 yr old vine, so I'm envious that you had enough to make wine.

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 16 Sep 2007, 09:51

Sally wrote:Sounds good Andy... I'm curious about the golden syrup concotion. How did you make it?

I've 4 bunches of grapes this year on my 3 yr old vine, so I'm envious that you had enough to make wine.

It's my first year with grapes on a 3 year old vine, the grapes were quite small, not grape-sized, but the vine went absolutely mad this year and I ended up with a good-sized wooden bowl full.

I squished all the grape juice out of them, added some extra water and sugar, and put the mixture (with a few squished grape husks for the yeast) into an old plastic coke bottle, which can take a huge amount of pressure. I release the Co2 every day and hopefully will end up with about a bottle of wine's worth or a bit more.

The 'fruit mead' thingy with golden syrup, basically I got a tin of golden syrup and diluted it about 2:1 with some hot water, then put the mixture into one of these old coke bottles. As the berries in my garden ripened (not all at once of course) I put them into the bottle, where they started fermenting (blackcurrants have yeast on their skins). Then when the bottle was full-ish, I liquidised the contents and let it ferment for a couple of weeks as per the wine above.

When it was done, I first sieved the contents and then strained the liquid through a couple of pieces of paper kitchen towel which I made into a funnel and taped into the top of a jug with a bit of paper masking tape, as I don't have any proper paper straining funnels. Worked a treat!

The result is absolutely delicious - I might try it with honey instead of golden syrup next year for a 'proper' fruit mead.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 17 Sep 2007, 22:07

We had massive elderberries hanging over the fence next to where we used to live. Nobody else wanted them and anyway you had to climb up onto the garage roof to reach them.

So I picked a load, put them in a massive pan (hey it's always useful to have one of those in the house!) boiled them til soft, hung them up in a big square of muslin to strain overnight. Boiled along some more to 'reduce' til it's like a kind of thin syrup, having put enough sugar/honey in to sweeten (sugar's cheaper but honey's good) we also found some wine-mulling herbs kicking about so in they went.

Well it was sort of an acquired taste this syrup: the kids quite liked it on their breakfast cereal, but it didn't get seriously raided til the middle of the winter when we all got 'flu. We all drank some every day, it really helped us feel better. We ended up referring to it as 'old-fashioned Vitamin pills'. And, apart from the sugar and some elctricity, all completely free!

tattercoats · Post by **tattercoats** » 18 Sep 2007, 08:33

Absolutely I make elderberry cordial most years - stew them up with a bit of water, mash them, strain overnight through muslin, boil up with sugar and bottle. Just given my daughter a cup of hot elderberry with honey for her sore throat and cough.

I usually make enough that we begin the winter by finishingoff last year's batch, but I ran out over the *summer* this year, we were all coughing our guts up. Glad I've got a fresh batch brewed up now.

I've made blackberry cordial and grape cordial too by much the same method - we can only drink so much wine, and actually we get through much more in the way of fruit drinks here, and I have a squillion bottles of wine still in the brewhouse from when we were makign wine out of everything. Just as I have a cupboard full of jam. So now I make cordial instead - that gets used at the same rate I make the stuff.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 18 Sep 2007, 16:00

Andy Hunt wrote:
Sally wrote:Sounds good Andy... I'm curious about the golden syrup concotion. How did you make it?

I've 4 bunches of grapes this year on my 3 yr old vine, so I'm envious that you had enough to make wine.

It's my first year with grapes on a 3 year old vine, the grapes were quite small, not grape-sized, but the vine went absolutely mad this year and I ended up with a good-sized wooden bowl full.

I squished all the grape juice out of them, added some extra water and sugar, and put the mixture (with a few squished grape husks for the yeast) into an old plastic coke bottle, which can take a huge amount of pressure. I release the Co2 every day and hopefully will end up with about a bottle of wine's worth or a bit more.

Is that one of the 2Litre bottles?.. We have a small vine too, perhaps we should start keeping big placcy bottles!

Do any other fruit have their own yeast, so that you could do the same thing with them?

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 18 Sep 2007, 16:06

RenewableCandy wrote:
Andy Hunt wrote:
Sally wrote:Sounds good Andy... I'm curious about the golden syrup concotion. How did you make it?

I've 4 bunches of grapes this year on my 3 yr old vine, so I'm envious that you had enough to make wine.

It's my first year with grapes on a 3 year old vine, the grapes were quite small, not grape-sized, but the vine went absolutely mad this year and I ended up with a good-sized wooden bowl full.

I squished all the grape juice out of them, added some extra water and sugar, and put the mixture (with a few squished grape husks for the yeast) into an old plastic coke bottle, which can take a huge amount of pressure. I release the Co2 every day and hopefully will end up with about a bottle of wine's worth or a bit more.

Is that one of the 2Litre bottles?.. We have a small vine too, perhaps we should start keeping big placcy bottles!

Do any other fruit have their own yeast, so that you could do the same thing with them?

Yes the 2 litre ones . . . they are ideal for making these small quantities.

Blackcurrants and other currants have their own yeast, I think blueberries do too. Not sure about other fruits - apples do of course, just let a load of apples rot down and you have instant scrumpy!

Keela · Post by **Keela** » 21 Sep 2007, 21:14

Sounds good....

.... & it's almost sloe gin time...

creeping elm · Post by **creeping elm** » 23 Sep 2007, 21:17

I used to have a hobby of brewing beer when I was a teenager, it certainly produced better results than the wine. Though I made some good elderberry once, good for a cold.

You can make wine out of as many things as you can make ice-cream (apart from, perhaps, bacon-and-eggs), but you'd need some grape concentrate to give it the right vinous-winey-type taste.

And it's important not to let it sit on the yeast too long, so once it's stopped fizzing you really need to siphon it off and leave the yeast sediment where it is, or it will taste bitter. A cork round hte end of the tube will stop it churning up the yeast.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 23 Sep 2007, 21:43

Reminds me, my parents used to do a lot of home-made wine in the 1970s, I should ask them about it...

Actually those of us who are of a certain age, we should ask our parents about all sorts of stuff they would have made/done for themselves, which people nowadays rely on buying in. Better still get our kids to ask, that way the talking's more fun for all concerned

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 26 Apr 2010, 11:06

This is really weird, I was thinking about this thread when greeted with tonnes of Purple Sprouting Broccoli on return from hols...and here it is back at the top of the lizt.

The first of the broccoli went into a stir-fry, but sadly the chicken (and the ginger and rice) came from the shops

Keela · Post by **Keela** » 26 Apr 2010, 15:43

Whereas I read the title and thought... that sounds interesting I wonder who started that thread!

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 26 Apr 2010, 16:03

Keela wrote:Whereas I read the title and thought... that sounds interesting I wonder who started that thread!

When old threads get resurrected I quite often read stuff I myself wrote and don't recognise it.

Quite a shock when it hits home isn't it!!!

Keela · Post by **Keela** » 26 Apr 2010, 16:14

Keela wrote: it's almost sloe gin time...

Well Andy, this bit rings true...

Unfortunately the Sloe Gin's all finished yet again!