Chutneys-R-4-Us
Denise: The greenhouses are full of lovely tomatoes, peppers and herbs, and the garden and our stores are overflowing with every kind of goodness! There’s few things we make with our produce that makes better use of the variety and abundance, and is so long-lasting and useful, than chutney. The art and craft of chutney-making is so rich with possibilities …
The chutneys we make for sale have to conform to our Big Garden ‘house style’, all using the same hexagonal jars, the labels, wording and ‘trimmings’ all conforming to the same format. But for ourselves, we’re free to be more spontaneous, with the ingredients, with an assortment of previously used jars and lids – whatever comes to hand. The labels may be simply hand-written on a scrap of paper and pasted on – or may be omitted entirely, in which case we rely on appearance, memory, and position on the shelf to avoid a shock to the tastebuds!
Yummy.
When I had more summer energy years back, I would make ripe tomato chutney, ginger/pear preserves, peach rosemary jam, fig conserve, and various other fruit preserves…Ahhh, the time and love that goes into every jar to be savored and shared during the cold months…I miss those.
As one ages, and as a one-woman operation here, I must choose my tasks carefully. This year my famous Key Lime Pie and Geeze! Louise Pimento Cheese took center stage…and my time.
Keep up the good work there. I look forward to reading more…Diane
We are already have the sense that our energies have passed their peak! Thankfully the more physical work and bigger projects (building – both new and renovations, garden layout, fencing) are done or nearly so: now we hope to spend more time doing less and perhaps having more time to think and write about what we do.
I quite often use the “appearance, memory and position on the shelf” form of non-labelling but sadly they change colour, my memory isn’t as good as i think and inevitably things get shuffled along the shelf. Always seems so obvious when I put the jars on the shelf.