Fruits of my labour

Been busy, busy, busy these past few days. We'd already stopped on our way back from a lovely day out in Valdepenas de Jaen and picked several bags of green figs, which I turned into our favourite fig and orange jam with walnuts. And there's only one jar of that left...it is so delicious.


And on a walk in the countryside, we found a tree of plums - (a plum tree) - which were too sour to eat so I made a sweet and sour sauce to eat with pork. That's sitting for a month to develop its flavour.

Then we had the rain of tomatoes and pepinos (cucumber) from all sides - our landlord, our next door neighbour and our ex-next-piso neighbour all showering their fruits upon us. So we salsa'd and passata'd and tzatziki'd and gazpacho'd and chopped and ate and froze our welcome and unexpected bounty.


 
Then two weeks ago, Greet, a Dutch lady who has joined my Spanish conversation class, brought me a big bag of gorgeous purple figs - glut from her many trees. We ate a lot of them almost straight from the bag- then we ate some more with honey or mixed with greek yogurt and when we'd had our fill, I froze several handy bags and with the rest I made a spicy fig jam.

And we're already part way down that jar.









And last week, Carol, also a conversation class member, brought me bags of pears - so many that she actually apologised. I shared them with several other people who fancied a couple of kilos but still had to make two trips to get them all home.

This week I have been mostly peeling pears.

And I found this wonderful recipe for Belgian Pears which is basically sugar, white wine vinegar and pears but the chemical mix and the combination of the ingredients is pure magic! They are out-of-this-world delicious and I know they are not going to last long...


Our new shelves are now bearing the weight of all this wonderful - almost free - food. It is almost (but not quite) as good as making chocolates.....

I am so very grateful for all generosity of everyone around here. I shall be handing out a few of these jars as tangible thanks and that feels good!