Processing Carrots,Tomatoes & Bake Day

It has been a bit of a trying week pain wise, having been taken off half my medicine due to the liver, while I wait to see the specialist in 2 weeks, but it hasn't stopped me dealing with the vegetables in the garden. Just before Christmas I emptied an entire bed of carrots. There is still another bed we are eating off , so decided to freeze the picked ones. 8 kgs of them with the biggest being 750 grms.

So after a lot of peeling and cutting I blanched them in boiling water, and put them on a tray in layers between cling wrap to save room.

After they froze I then vacuumed packed them in small size bags to do two or three meals.

 At the same time I picked leeks and garlic. The Garlic hadn't formed and I blame all the wet weather. This is known as green garlic so I chopped both up together and froze them in blocks to use when doing a stir fry or similar.

So this past week it has been tomatoes. There is one sure thing about self sown cherry tomatoes is they never stop producing. Even named tomatoes that I have nurtured don't do as well. It eventually got to a point that there were too much in the fridge so I turned them into a tomato relish also using  more leeks from the garden, and some of the frozen garlic blocks.

7  jars of really delicious tomato relish was the result, which I then put them through a canning process to seal properly.

There was also a lot of eggs, from my Daughter in laws flock, to deal with so I turned 9 of them into a slice using left over bacon, some feta and cheese, leeks, bit of chopped basil, olive oil, and made one large baking dish that cut into 8 decent serves and froze 7 of them. Had to have one for my own dinner.

While I was on this baking frenzy decided to make a boiled fruit cake and some what the family call Nobbies started when my father was little. Basically a rock cake. These used up another 4 eggs.

Cut this into 3 long slices and froze two

Divided these into 3 lots and froze two also.

I have been trying to do a couple hours of weeding every day, but it has been quite hard. The front garden is looking better but the back is very overgrown. I am considering pulling the front down and moving it to the back after dismantling the brick ones there. Well at least seeing if I can find someone to do it. The wood ones seem to work better and are a little higher.

The following is Monty Dons Vegetable Garden, so along these lines but not quite so big. 

This being my garden in May this year. We will see how this is accomplished. I just wish my 3 boys would get together to help. If this is done then I will turn the front garden into false grass or may be real and pay our nature strip mower to cut it. I will still have the edge gardens for roses and flowers. Hopefully things would get a little easier, for me, getting old sucks. 

So that is it for this week

Till Next Time.