Apples and Pears, Chutneys and Pickles!!!

I have mostly been making chutney this weekend! A friend took the dog out walking yesterday which gave me all day to get pickling! However, I do believe I wasn't the only one. Mustard seeds were out at every shop I went to!! In the end I had to buy pickling spice.

So I have decided that the plum jam and piccallili I have made for the favours won't be enough for all the people we have coming. One of my friends has five apple trees in their garden so has an amazing amount of apples at the moment - far too many to eat. So the sensible thing - apple chutney! I had 3 huge bags of apples - this picture just shows a few that we've kept for eating.

So far I've made 3 big pans; a tomato and apple chutney that was my late aunt's recipe (picture left) - boy it's good, and two lots of lovely sticky sweet apple chutney that my friends gave me (picture below). I have to admit though, after the first batch of hand chopping, I got the magimix out and blitzed so the second batch may not be quite so chunky!

 So now I have to wait a month or more to let the chutneys mature before I can decide whether they are good enough to use or not. I hope they are, or FH and I will be eating alot of chutney ourselves! Just as well he'll eat anything I give him!

I've also decanted the plum jam into little jars as I am building up the collection of jars now. I should be anyway as I have so many people collecting small jars for me. Thanks to all those who are, keep eating all those jars of food! I think I must have 40 little jars now so 60 to go!

 I have another friend who has just dropped a bag of pears on the doorstep so what to do with those?!? They are a little hard to eat so I think I'll leave a few to ripen, poach some for desserts and I might have a go at a pear and walnut chutney. The recipe has an equal amount of apples to pears so it would do two birds with one stone!

 I think I have become a little chutney obsessed this weekend. I was very disappointed the other week. I entered Sherstons pickle competition - Picklemania (it runs along side the Mangold Hurling) and didn't win a thing! I even got a jar of one of the winning entries, a beetroot and orange relish and it wasn't half as good as my plum jam or my piccalilli!!! Maybe it won on originality! Not that I'm bitter or anything!! It would have been nice to have said that one of the favours was award winning though!

Well, I have some bottling left to do before it all goes cold so.....'til next time!