Gluts of fruit: leather, cordial and ingenuity

When you’ve got an allotment it’s probably best if you like the produce, know what to do with it and like the resulting concoctions.

I guess that sounds like a crazy statement.

Why would you grow stuff you don’t like?

Well it’s not that you don’t like it. It’s having the enthusiasm to use it.

For some Gardeners there’s an overwhelming abundance (glut) of specific things as their produce gets going. We avoid that by growing a huge variety of stuff so we don’t get too much of one thing.

But

We still need a produce focussed mindset. It would be easy to just get takeaway after a long day weeding.

That’s a confession I suppose.

When reading the interworld it’s easy to imagine that Gardeners are all amazing cooks, jam makers and preservers. Yet these are additional skills that need time to develop too.

And you need the inclination!

There’s also a need for knowledge. When faced with a bag of rhubarb, you need to decide what to do with it. You may find that you don’t like what you set out to make.

Since we started plotting we have developed some of the skill.

Jams obvious. I’ve shared some of the tips and tricks we’ve gained from that.

Crumble is another stalwart and a great fall back.

Then I started to evaluate what we actually wanted to eat. Curiously that’s something that can be forgotten.

That led to me experimenting with cordials and juices as it’s good to cut done on things that we would normally but if we can get a free, additive free replacement.

So we also make fruit leather now too.

Today I had

200g chopped rhubarb
150g strawberries
300g sugar

I found a great recipe on Tish Farrell’s blog here

So please head over there to check it out.

When is strained the fruit I tasted the sieves remains.

It was nice!

Last year I bought a dehydrator for about €24.00, that’s a bargain. It’s not fancy but I don’t need it a lot.

I’ve used it for garden fruits, pineapple, apple sliced and ‘sundried tomatoes.’

You can also dry things in the oven instead.

I spread the rhubarb pulp on grease proof paper that I’d cut to size. Then add the lid, put it somewhere that the noise won’t matter and switch on for a couple of hours.

It’s basically a hair dryer in a set of trays.

Here’s the red currant fruit leather I did yesterday.