The strawberry season is upon us, so we spent a pleasant hour strawberry picking at a lovely pick your own farm near Lymington. There is nothing like it, gathering the sweet berries and tasting the odd one or two. It is such a domestic pleasure all the joy of harvest without the hard work! However picking is just the beginning! We came home with six large punnets of strawberries and two punnets of raspberries so I have been cooking all afternoon!
The Blackfield Horticultural Show is coming up soon, and I have been looking at the classes to enter, there is one for jam tarts so I thought I would try out my pastry making skills. After making the mistake of using self raising flour the first time I managed to create a sort of pastry cake! The second batch came out fairly respectable. I used two recipes: a normal plain pastry recipe and a tart recipe. Clive and I tasted one of each the tart recipe won as it had more buttery sweet taste. As for the jam, for now I used a conserve, will try the jam making tomorrow!
The shows are great fun to enter, costing only 40p per entry! I tried it last year for the first time and it was really exciting, taking my entries down early in the morning and returning in the afternoon to view the other entries and to see how I got along! I did fall foul of the rules with my Victoria sandwich by putting icing sugar on the top rather than castor sugar (I did not even realise there were rules for things like that!)I won a certificate for my shortbread, card and crochet phone holder which was very encouraging as I had only just taught myself!
The Waterside Arts festival starts soon as well, it is a great event the whole village gets involved. There are a number of poetry writing competitions an art exhibition, as well as live bands and music events. Should be fun! How I love the summer! Let’s hope the weather is good, it is surprising how everyone seems to smile more when the sun shines!
