An urgent Appeal

Actually two appeals. Firstly, so far I have always refused offers of empty jars, thinking I've got so many clattering up our cantina already, I'll never run out. However, it has happened, we've run out of preserving jars. The litres and litres of tomato sauce I do on an almost daily basis are ok, I just bottle them in old beer bottles, no shortage of those. But the berry season has started. We already have a backlog of blackberries and elderberries in the freezer, because I don't have any jars to put them into, and the peaches and the second batch of figs are getting ripe and will want using.

So, PLEEEEEEEEASE, PLEASE, anyone reading this living anywhere near us, save us your empty jam jars and all and we will come and collect them!

On that subject, with the last of the jars I tried making a new preserve I have not tried before. I had read a recipe for an elderberry jelly on the internet, but I don't like adding artificial pectins and I can never be bothered with dripping jellies through muslin and all that hassle, so I came up with my own recipe for elderberriy jam:

1.5 kg elderberries (weight after de-stalking)
5 crab apples
1/2 untreated lemon
1 kg sugar

1. After collecting the elderberries, freeze them. That makes de-stalking them an easier and less messy job. Once frozen, de-stalk them by running a fork through the bunches. Chop the half lemon, skin and all and core and chop the apples.
2. Combine those ingredients and cook in a large pan over a low heat until the apples are soft.
3. Add the warmed sugar and boil rapidly until setting point is reached.
4. Now pass the whole mixture a couple of times through a tomato mill or press through a sieve.
5. Re-heat and bottle in hot jars.

Now to come to our second appeal. My regular readers will remember our cat saga. In November last year, just as the weather started turning unpleasant, a cat turned up on our doorstep, a red tom. Because of his canning resemblance with the cartoon cat, we called him Garfield. He seemed a nice, well behaved cat and we started buying food for him.

Shortly afterwards, he started bringing his girlfriend. She initially just came for meals, but did not stay the night. She was black and white with a black dot on her nose, so we called her Dot.

Now we were getting a bit worried, because she very much looked like a producing female. And right enough, a few days later she brought her kitten with her.

As she must have been born in the neighbourhood, that meant she was born under the shadow of the church of San Michele Arcangelo, who is also depicted on the stone relief on the wall opposite our bedroom window. So we called her Michaela, or Mickey for short.

Now, that we had two intact females in the house, we had to kick Garfield back out again. He has died in the meantime. He had evidently been attacked by a dog. Anyway, cut a long story short, we've had our two girls neutered, and they are still with us. However words has evidently gone around in the cat world that we are a bit of a soft touch for cats.

So a few weeks ago another regular visitor arrived, a very sad skinny looking female. We called her Tigger, because she is a grey tiger type. A couple of days ago she introduced us to her kittens, Rooney (originally Ears, because she is more ears than cat, but re-named after Susan noticed the floppy ears of Wayne Rooney at last night's match of England vs Holland) and NoSi (can never make up its mind, "shall I come, or not. No... si...").

So between them the five cats are eating us out of house and home. So any cat lovers out there, the PONZANO SUPERIORE CAT SANCTUARY welcomes any donations of cat food!

There's autumn in the air

Yesterday autumn arrived. This is not to say it has turned chilly and cold, but the last two nights we’ve had heavy rain, the first serious rain in 3 months really. There were odd showers before, it’s been threatening occasionally, but nothing that left proper puddles behind until yesterday. During the day yesterday there were a few showers too and drizzle on and off and there is now even a slight chill in the air, which is actually quite refreshing after weeks of constant heat.
Nevertheless we walked over to Arcola yesterday to pick as many ripe tomatoes as possible, before they would be attacked by rot. Made a few more jars of tomato sauce today with it. Above you can see the dark clouds threatening above our village on our way back home.

Today was a beautifully bright and fresh day again and after the rains I thought this should be the ideal mushroom hunting weather, but no luck. We went into the woods and came back with virtually nothing, just one tiny mushroom of unknown provenance. We found some blackberries though as you can see. Soon it’ll be time to collect chestnuts.

I have, lacking any further advice, started making beer from maize and hops. I tried malting it (soaked the maize in water for 3 days, then spreading it out for another 3 days, until it started to sprout) and it worked to an extent, but there was not sufficiently enough sugar produced to turn into beer. So I added a bit of sugar to come to a potential strength of 5% AbV. It’s bubbling away merrily now. The colour of the brew is an odd yellow and it does not smell as good as the real thing in a brewery, but it’s only a small experimental batch, so we’ll just see.

my new tomato press and other tales

After quite a hot spell, (even Susan dared the freezing waters of the river in Villa, although, after an unexpected encounter with some Dutch tourists the other day, she decided to keep her kit on…) today the weather finally broke with a brisk wind and a brief, but strong shower today. So no need to water the land today and I have a bit of time to write a new entry and to conserve some of our excess harvest.

We have been keeping very busy, despite the heat. Due to our general cash shortage, we have been cycling a lot too and leaving the car at home. We’re getting rather fit these days, I think I’ll enter Susan into next year’s women’s Giro d’Italia! Anyway, apart from the tedious and perennial job of weeding and chopping down bamboo, we have ploughed over another couple of terraces in Arcola. One of them we sowed with cavolo nero (Tuscan “black cabbage”), fennel, and various lettuces. Our daily harvests are sometimes too heavy to carry home on our bikes, especially climbing up the mountain back to our village in the afternoon heat. Here is a list of some of things we’re are currently picking, and no doubt I’ll forget something: tomatoes (big beefy ones, salad and cherry toms), aubergines, peppers, courgettes, melons, lettuces, picked the last pears, some late plums, rocket, cabbages, sweet corn, potatoes, celery. Since we started fighting back the jungle that was our plot 3 years ago this is the first time, that we really are producing more than we can eat, so we are busy preserving things.
My latest acquisition is the tomato press pictured above. It’s a great little gadget. All you do is roughly chop your tomatoes (I had about 3 kg spare today) and cook them for a few minutes in a saucepan. Then you throw them into your tomato press, turn the handle and on one side the skins and most of the pips exit and the other side produces perfectly smooth tomato sauce, which you then bottle with a sprig of basil and simmer for 15 minutes in a pan of water. Apparently it does 50 kg an hour and does not only do tomatoes but any fruit really. So because it was so much fun I did the same thing (save the sprig of basil) with the last of the pears. No need to peel and core them, just chop roughly and the result: a sort of baby food consistency pear sauce. Not exactly sure what I’m going to do with it. Maybe give it to someone visiting with a baby…? or serve it with some venison or wild boar (beg some of the hunters when the season starts…).

Our social life, despite limited funds, has not suffered. James and Alison, who normally bring us rain, are over from Northampton at the moment. We had them around for dinner the other day centred around the produce of our land. A 5 course dinner for 4 cost us a grand total of about €5, which isn’t bad going I thought.
Last night there was a concert in the inner court of our house. It was classical this time, chamber music to be precise. The internationally acclaimed Hyperion Ensemble played works from Vivaldi. The ensemble consisted of 6 musicians, a violin, a cello, an oboe, a flute, a bassoon, and a harpsichord. It was probably the highest quality concert we have seen so far at our house and the atmosphere in the inner court enhanced the virtuosity of the music. Only thing was the wind was starting to pick up and the musicians had to chase after their notes occasionally. To find out more about them check them out on http://www.ensemblehyperion.com/. It was only afterwards that we realized that they charged €10 entry for non-residents of the house.