Nuts Nuts Nuts!!!

Hello everyone,

What a wonderful summer we've had :o) It's still bright and sunny here today, though there is a nip of Autumn in the air and the days are getting shorter.

We love foraging for free food - and I don't mean that we go rummaging in the bins outside our local supermarket hehehe - no!! I mean stuff like this ...



We are lucky enough to have a huge walnut tree in the grounds where we live and one of the things we love about this time of the year is that this is when the nuts burst out of their husks and throw themselves on the ground - it's just a race between us, the magpies and the squirrels to see who can pick them up faster! We find little fledgling walnut trees all over our little garden, where the nuts have been buried and forgotten - we often watch the squirrels carefully digging a hole, dropping the nut in and patting the ground down to make sure the nuts stay hidden. To my surprise, magpies bury them too, poking a hole with their beaks and then painstakingly placing leaves, moss and so on over the top to hide them. Shame they forget where they are though!

After a very poor crop last year, this has been a bumper harvest and we've spent several days gathering, cleaning and drying the nuts ready to store for the winter. One of our favourite ways to enjoy them is in Walnut Pesto, using whatever herbs I have in the garden - a combination of sage and parsley makes a nice change.

The butternut squash harvest this year is NOT so impressive ...


The apple is only there for scale - if it was part of the butternut squash harvest that really would have been impressive wouldn't it?! Seriously though - that's it, that tiny specimen. The courgettes were rubbish as well this year, seems weird as it was such a long, hot summer and we did everything else as usual, very strange. All that watering for this tiny little thing. It was tasty though :o)

By the way, did you know that you don't need to peel these? I only realised recently, having spent years risking my fingers to peel the blinkin things, turns out it's not necessary at all - just thought I'd share that in case I'm not the only one who didn't know.

The next free food harvest will be the quinces, which should be ready in the next couple of weeks - I'll getting out my home-made jelly bag contraption again before you know it!

Thanks for popping in today, see you again soon.

Annie xxx

Comments

Ella Swan said…
Ooooh all those nuts!! NOM NOM!!! Sounds awesome all your foraging!
Ella Swan said…
Ooooh all those nuts!! NOM NOM!!! Sounds awesome all your foraging!
Lisca said…
We're all going nuts here! You with walnuts and I with almonds. But walnuts are really very expensive here (imported from California) so my coffee and walnut cakes are getting pricier by the day. I'll have to do more cakes with almonds...
What a disappointing walnut squash. Yes, I diod know that you don't have to peel them. The skin softens when cooked and is perfectly OK to eat. And if you decide to roast in the oven then you can just scrape the flesh off the skin. Easypeasy.