Pumpkin and Courgette Soup

It's been a while since I last shared a recipe, so I decided it was time to do so again. This time I'm sharing a recipe for a healthy vegetable soup that's super easy to make, just make sure you have fresh ingredients for a better taste. So for the ingredients you need: 500g of pumpkin chopped in cubes 500g of courgettes chopped in cubes 200g of chick peas (optional) 200g of kidney beans (optional) one chicken or beef stock cube Add all the pumpking and the courgettes to your pot and add water until everything is covered. Add the stock cube of your choice (I always prefer the chicken one, but you can add either beef or a vegetable stock cube, whatever your preference) and let the whole thing boil until both the pumpkin and courgettes are soft. You can check this by using your stirring utensil (I use a wooden spoon) and digging into a pumpkin and courgettes piece, if it breaks easy it's done. Take the whole pot of the heat source and use your handheld blender to blend the pumpkin and the courgettes until you have small pieces or until smooth, add the beans and the chickpeas. Put the pot back on the heatsource for another 5 minutes on a low heat and you're ready to serve it up. Add seasoning to taste. You can add a dollop of sour cream when you serve this or just as is. Well enjoy.

Simple Ice Cream Recipe

A friend of mine gave me this really simple recipe to make ice cream. You don't need an ice cream machine or any other fancy equipment. All you need is a mixer and a large tupperware or another type of sealable freezer dish. If you don't have a dish that has a lid on it, don't worry aluminium wrap works just as well as a cover.

Ingredients:

2 packets of cream (about 500ml total)

1 can of condensed cream (about 500 ml)

Whip the cream together until it's the consistency of whipped cream (without the sugar) then add the condensed milk and mix a little longer until it's the consistency of mousse.

Pour the liquid into your container and freeze it.

Like I said, really simple. Of course this is just a basic "vanilla" type ice cream, if you want you could add some chocolate powder to make it chocolate flavour, or strawberry flavoured either with fresh strawberries or powder (the Nesquick kind, the one you add to your milk). For the one I made, I added Oreo biscuits which I'd crushed into tiny pieces and then mixed into the mixture with a spoon before putting it into my container. I'm definitely going to be trying it with some fresh blackberries this summer. Enjoy

Fruit Harvesting at the Farm

Above one of the Sunflowers that managed to stay standing during the summer. I took this photo just before my dad cut it off the stem so that my mum could harvest the seeds to plant some more next year, or to use in salads or bread.

This is a tray of figs my dad and I harvested in just a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon at the beginning of October. Surprisingly enough the fig tree seems to be giving us a lot of fruit this year. Every weekend there are more figs to harvest. And we leave plenty of the fruits behind on the trees because they're still to green, or they've been eaten by birds already. Actually the figs are one of the hardest fruits to harvest because the tree is so fragile. If you pull the branches to far they'll break, although it's quite flexible. In other words, you can never put too much pressure on its branches and you can't even climb it, so with a bit of care and climbing up a ladder we manage to get to the very top of the tree. My dad will be trimming it at the appropriate time. The picture above shows the quinces we managed to harvest this year. We left it a bit late so we didn't get as many as last year. Many of them were already half eaten by birds, or rotting on the tree. The ones in the basket in the photo were the only ones that were still in good condition. Saying this, the majority of the ones we did get weighed about 500-800 grams. If any of you have any quinces readily available, you might want to try make your own quince liquor, it's quite easy really, just follow the recipe below:

You will need the following items/ingredients:

A large glass jar (preferably the kinds used for preserves with the rubber seal) ; A bottle of Vodka (or if you prefer, RUM) ; sugar (approximately 200 g) ; a vanilla pod (cut in half but don't remove the seeds) ; a handful of almonds ; three medium sized quinces

1. Peel and cut the quinces into to bite size chunks

2. pour 1/4 of the sugar into the jar, followed by the vanilla pod and the almonds

3. fill the jar with the quince chunks to about half way and then add 2/4 of the sugar followed by the remaining chunks of quinces, making sure to really queeze them in there.

4. once you've filled up the whole jar with the quinces, add the remaining sugar before pouring in the vodka/rum

Leave to settle before sealing/closing the jar, you might have to fill it up with more vodka/rum. Once you're convinced it's 100% full and can't take any more vodka/rum, seal/close it and put it in a dark place (the pantry) for 10 weeks. You will need to shake the jar lightly every 2-3 days to get the sugar to dissolve completely.

Now at the end of the 10 weeks, you can either pour the liquid into another bottle, or leave it as is, and use it whenever you like. The quinces are 100% edible, and taste really nice.

We did this last year and they came out great, we used Vodka last year, this year my mum made several more jars using vodka, but she also tried one jar with rum to see what the difference is and which one we like the best. The ones we made will be ready around Christmas time, so I'll let you know my preferences. But in the meantime, I'd say go ahead and try it out.

The photo above is just to show the difference in size of the figs and quinces. The figs were small about 5cm in height at the most, but delicious. Next year we're going to try drying them during the summer so that we have our own dried fruit at Christmas. We didn't think about it until it was too late because the sun isn't giving off as much heat now as it was during the summer months. The first weekend of October was a long weekend here in Portugal, so my dad asked me to come over and help him pick the grapes. So that's what I did, although it wasn't easy let me tell you. Becuase everything has been allowed to run rampant for years, the vines have continued to grow, and so they've grown into the trees and all the best grapes are at the top of the trees, so after getting all the ones that were easy to get at, we got the ladder out and started climbing trees and gently pulling the vine out of the tree. These 3 barrels were just the first day's harvest. At the end of the day we made sweet wine from one of the barrels and then filled up another 4 barrels the 2nd day. My dad has now finished making the sweet wine and has bottled it up already, pretty though it will turn sour. I like the sweet wine, it tastes just like grape juice, although slightly thicker. Hopefully next year we'll get a better harvest with plumper grapes, as we're radically cutting the vines so that they don't grow into trees again.

This fruit/vegetable is apparently called a chou-chou. We haven't tried it yet, but we have about 10 fruits growing on the vine. Will have to check the web for some recipes.