Autumn Blessings

Harvesting from our fruit trees....

Autumn is my favourite season of the year. I love the cooler crisp days, especially first thing in the morning when I let our dogs outside and go feed the hens.

I love the colour of the leaves changing from green to beautiful golds and oranges, falling on the ground below.

I love the opportunity to be inside more, cosy lamps and candles and warm blankets with good tea.

My sons say that I am the lover of all things cosy.

In March our apple and pear trees were absolutely laden with fruit and although the apples needed another few weeks to fully ripen we decided to start picking as the birds were enjoying them too much.

So I baked a few apple crumbles for dessert.

I bottled quite a few basketfuls of apples and a few of pears and made apple sauce, apple butter, and our feijoa tree started dropping feijoas at this time as well so I made good use of them which I think I mentioned in another post.

Preparations for canning the apples. I always make a light syrup of about 1/2 cup of sugar
to 3 cups of water.

Cox's Orange variety of apples.

Apple Sauce which I made sugar free so I could give some to a neighbour who is diabetic.

Bottled feijoas. I enjoy them on my breakfast or with apples in a crumble for dessert.

 Bottled pears.

This is my apple butter which I had never made before. I found the recipe online. I
would have put the apple butter into smaller jars but I had already used them for other jams and the jelly below. I was making do with what I had as at this stage it was lockdown and shops were closed. It has such a dark rich colour due to the spices.

This is feijoa jelly which I enjoyed making. I just love the beautiful amber colour, it is like jars of gold! However, I didn't make this jelly with my own feijoas. I discovered in my freezer a large bag of cut up feijoas that a friend had given me last year. I had completely forgotten about them as they were  in our garage freezer.
So in the spirit of making do and mending and not wasting anything, I decided to make feijoa jelly and I am so glad I did. It is delicious!
It can be enjoyed with both sweet and savoury dishes. A little spread on scones is delightful and it can also be enjoyed with roast chicken or with cheeses.

Thanks for reading and I hope you are inspired by how you can enjoy a country life in the city.

Have a blessed week,
Fiona

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34