The next harvest to come in was the Blackberries, picked from the wild brambles in our woodland. We only pick the ones we can reach from the paddock side of the fence, leaving all the rest, and there are LOTS, for the wildlife .... they have to eat too!!
The dogs hate the days we stop to pick blackberries, they like to keep moving not loiter at every bush. At first they seem to find it entertaining, but like little children they get fed up with the novelty of Mum and Dad moving along sooooo slowly and soon want to move on to the next thing, not visit every bush along the full length of the paddock.
We managed an impressive 1.5kg between us in just half an hour or so.
Added to the apples I mentioned in yesterday's post and some more that had fallen off the cooking apple trees by the next morning, I had a total of 1.5kg of mixed cooking and eating apples, so three kilos of fruit to process.
Lovely Hubby's request was for Bramble Jelly, so after bringing the fruit and 2 litres of water to the boil, and then simmering it all for around half an hour it was all tipped into my jelly bags and left to drip overnight.
There was a pesky fly buzzing around the kitchen so I draped everything with some tea towels ... I don't want wildlife in the jelly!!
I decided to price up what the fruit would have cost me to buy just out of interest, and I was shocked to find out that this amount of Blackberries would have been £20 and the apples would have cost around £2.60 , Wow, over twenty two pounds worth of fruit for free, how glad am I that we have this wonderful resource on our own land, and they just grow away with minimal help from us.
With the fruit pulp happily dripping through the jelly bags I was in 'squirrel mode' and looked to see what else I could do to save us some money and I found half a loaf in the breadbin. Lovely Hubby loves a shop bought white tin loaf every now and then, but usually he leaves some behind when he goes back down south to work. Mostly I'm kind and after it goes nice and dry I give the chickens a treat and break it up for them, but in 'squirrel mode' I decided this time it was for us.
So it was quickly whizzed up in my little processor and turned into breadcrumbs which were promptly tipped into a labeled tub and put straight into the freezer.
Having the price comparison site up while I priced up the fruit I decided to price up the breadcrumbs too. I could only find plain fresh breadcrumbs in Asda which came out at £1 for a tub of 150g., mine weighed around the same.
Then I found these ....
... at just £1.85 Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Lemon and Pepper Crust Breadcrumbs 135g tub. (£1.37 for 100g)
You could buy a full quality loaf for less than this price, use some of it as fresh bread and then whizz up a few slices to make your breadcrumbs, a few twists of your pepper grinder and a quick zest of half a lemon and you would have something twice as tasty for a fraction of the cost and the satisfaction of it being homemade too.
Or of course you could buy a value brown loaf and make up a massive 800g of breadcrumbs for just 40p
As they say 'You pays your money, you makes your choice'.
I know what my choice is. I'm off now for the final stage in my Bramble Jelly making ... the best bit, I love a kitchen that smells of homemade jam :-)
Sue xx
If you want to use mysupermarket to compare prices here is a link .... http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
