The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 49 – Pumpkin Puréé

Making pumpkin purée á la mashed potatoes was my plan from the start of the year. And although my pumpkin harvest was pitiful this year, I did, in the end, get enough butternut pumpkins to try it out. I did not take any pictures, and the recipe is very simple. I handled them pretty much exactly as I would potatoes:

Cut circa 2000 kg butternut pumpkin into small cubes and boil in water for 10 minutes. Decant the water, add 150 g of butter and a spoonful of salt, and crush with a potato masher into a paste. Because pumpkins are less starchy than potatoes, adding milk or water is not needed.

The result looked remarkably like mashed potatoes. It had the same consistency, too. The flavor was very different, though, which is to be expected. We ate it with air-fried fish fingers, and I liked it. I am going to try it tomorrow with spicy sausage.

We were using pumpkins as ersatz potatoes in many foods for years, so this is just another recipe in the repertoire.

 

The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 44 – Froot Frenzy

This year was really good for fruit trees and bushes of all kinds. I already mentioned the overabundance of raspberries, and it did not end there. I only have two tiny blueberry bushes, but they were covered in fruit too. And the rootstock of my plum delivered, for the first time ever, not just an occasional fruit here and there, but several kg of them.

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I finally went to the trouble of identifying it, and it is the so-called “myrabelan plum”. The fruit is sweet, but the flesh cannot be separated from the stone. Usually it was not a problem, since we had always so few I managed to eat them fresh. However, I cannot eat several kg of fruit, so we decided to make a marmelade. And we found out that the fruit can be shortly boiled in a small amount of water and then pressed through a colander. The stones and skins remain behind, and the pulp goes through. Some of the pulp is lost, as it remains clinging to the stones, but it is quick and efficient enough.

Here are the ingredients my mother used to make the marmalade:

4 kg of myrabelan plums, 7 apples, 2 kg of sugar, 80 g of vanillin sugar, 1 teaspoon of citric acid, a pinch of salt, 80 g of gelling agent.

The resulting marmalade is a bit sour, which suits me just fine.

The plum tree is so covered with fruit that two branches broke. I will have to cut them off later in the fall and sanitize the cuts, although the tree is probably approaching the end of its life.

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There is probably over 100 kg of fruit in that single tree. The traditional way of using it is to make moonshine, but I do not drink hard liquor, and it is a rather laborious way to make window cleaner. So we probably won’t be able to use all, or even most of it. I harvested five buckets so far. I swapped one bucket with my neighbor for pears, one we gave away and today I de-stoned another bucket, cut them in half, and put them into dehydrators. They are surprisingly healthy – there were barely any worms in them, and I had to throw away just a few out of the whole bucket.

Whilst I was making prunes, my mother was making compotes. She stacked de-stoned and halved plums into jars, and once the jars were full, she covered them with a hot syrup made from 1,5 l of water and 1 kg of sugar with a pinch of salt. On top of each jar, she then poured 1 teaspoon of rum and closed it with a sterilized lid while still hot. After that, she sterilized the jars in the oven for 50 minutes at 80°C. This way, the plums do not completely soften into a soft mush, and they can still be used for pies or dumplings.

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My apple tree has died due to vole damage, but a few years ago, I managed to graft two twigs on some unknown apple that sprouted between my aronia and the bird feeder. I think it is the rootstock of an apple tree that was planted there by my grandfather and that had to be felled when I was about 10 years old. The grafts did bear fruit a few years ago, and this year they have outdone themselves. I had to support the branches with aluminium bars, otherwise they would surely break. I have been eating apples for breakfast for two weeks, and there is still more than enough on the tree. We will probably have to dry them too. Well, dried fruit is certainly a healthier snack than chips.

 

The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 42 – Making Mustard

I was optimistic about my pumpkins at the beginning of the season, then I was a bit pessimistic, and in the end, I was sorely disappointed. Not only did I only get one fruit per plant, but the fruits I got were barely larger than an apple. Overall, I got only 4,5 kg Hokkaido pumpkins, which barely covered the costs of seeds and certainly did not cover the labor. My neighbor, whom I gave some surplus seedlings in the spring, has the same experience. One family friend, whom I gave some seedlings as well, did have a good harvest, though. But I do not know what the microclimate in her garden is; it is a few hundred m away from mine, and it might just be that she has slightly higher temperatures. One to two degrees °C certainly do play a role.

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They were rock-hard and I got about 2,5 kg of edible flesh out of them. Not worth doing something big, so I decided to make just mustard from all of it. The recipe is based on the one that I posted last year, only I changed the ingredients a bit:

grated pumpkin  – 2600 g
3 yellow bell peppers
vinegar – 490 g
sunflower oil – 325 g
honey – 180 g
salt – 80 g
white pepper – 2 teaspoons
soy sauce – 6,5 soup spoons
shroomce – 3 soup spoons
mustard seed – 240 g

I also had to add some water; the pumpkins did contain too little on their own. The resulting mustard is spicier than the one I made last year, and it also is not as smooth – I forgot to soak the mustard seeds the day prior, and they were a bit tough with just a few hours soak. But it is tasty and I got 23 glasses in the end.

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It was a lot of work; I spent the whole day with it, and today, I spent another hour sterilizing them so they form a vacuum seal and, hopefully, hold longer. I will give some away to people who I know like it, but even with that, I should have enough mustard for over a year, and the added vallue almost, though not entirely, makes it worth the effort.

For the next year, I have already bought pumpkin seeds exclusively from the one supplier that had consistent and quick germination across. I cannot change the weather, but whilst that did play a role, it was not all. That I had trouble germinating the seeds in the spring, and thus most of my plants started to grow fairly late, also played a role, as well as the fact that I planted them into uncultivated parts of my garden in the experimental three sisters system.

Speaking of which, the sweet corn was a complete disaster.

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I got barely one dinner’s worth. Out of more than 100 plants, just a handful produced female blossoms, very late after the male ones and thus the pollination was very poor on those. I am seriously considering if it is worth trying corn the next year too, or if I should forgo this crop completely. When I was a kid, corn was actually grown in the fields around here, and it did produce edible ears regularly, so I am not entirely sure what I am doing wrong. I had one good harvest a few years ago, and ever since, it has gotten worse and worse each year.

The next year, I am planning to grow pumpkins on my prime soil, and I am contemplating whether to try for the three-sisters system there, or if I should plant just the pumpkins and ignore everything else.

The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 41 – The Nutcranker!

I wasn’t sure about how and when I would come round to doing this, and then suddenly I was finished. So instead of a series of posts documenting the making process, I decided to present you with a fait accompli.

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The walnut tree is so covered with nuts that the twigs and branches bend down so low that I have to bow down to mow the grass under it. I think I can safely expect several tens of kg of nuts. That will be a lot of work to collect, dry, crack, and store. The Nutkraken works perfectly still, but it is a little slow  – it takes about two hours to crack one bucket of nuts. My father can no longer do it, and I have a lot of other things to do. So after a few years of thinking about it, I decided to build a device to make cracking the nuts faster and easier.

The first thing I did was hammer.

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I was thinking for a long time about how to do this, and I considered to perhaps turning a cylinder from hardwood or welding/soldering something from scraps. A few days ago, I realized that I have an old pump that could provide me with an almost finished part. I disassembled the pump, took out the rotor from the motor, and ground grooves in it using an angle grinder. This has saved me a lot of work and a headache, since it came conveniently with fitted ball bearings and a keyed axle.

With the hammer, I made a sketch for the base and the whole machine.

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After that, of course, I built the base. It is made mostly from scraps of plywood and particle boards. Here you can see it after it got one coat of blue paint.

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© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The base columns have grooves for the ball bearings and the axle of the hammer. And four M8 screws to fix the ball bearings.

The ball bearings are held in place with two wooden colars, reinforced with 5 mm flat mild steel bars.

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A hammer must work against something, in this case, a small anvil.

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Again, it is made from scraps of plywood and some steel offcuts. The face of the anvil consists of two mild-steel plates that are screwed-on for durability. On the back is glued a small hardened steel plate against which pushes an M10 fly screw to regulate the distance between the hammer and the anvil. The screws at the bottom lean against an 8 mm steel rod, so the anvil is very loose and can rotate freely. It can also be easily removed if needed.

Edit a few hours after publishing: I forgot to post pictures of these.

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These are inserts that keep the anvil centered against the hammer cylinder and the nuts from drifting sideways and going where they are not supposed to.

Once the base was finished, I had to make a funnel for the nuts. It would not be much saving in labor if I had to feed the nuts in individually, which is the reason I decided to not buy the commercial nut-cracking attachment for our kitchen robot.

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© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The funnel took me longer than the base because of all the funky angles. With it done, I had to make the last component – the hand crank. And this is where a stroke of luck came for the second time – I found an old key with a hand crank that fitted onto the axle of the rotor. All I had to do was to drill a hole in the key and thread it for an M6 screw to lock it onto the axle, and voila, I was done. I gave the whole thing a coat of blue paint.

Here goes the assembly step-by step.

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First, the screw goes into the back of the base, and the anvil in the front. Two slotted inserts center the anvil, and the hammer axle with the crank can be inserted.

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The collars are then firmly screwd on top of the ball bearings together with the steel reinforcements to hold them firmly down.

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The funnel is simply slotted into the top of the machine. It is not held in place by screws, so it can be quickly removed when needed.

I only had a small handful of nuts to test it, but it worked really well with those, so I have reason to be optimistic. I could not find any commercially available product for my needs. I found electrically powered nut crackers, but they were either prohibitively expensive or useless – they had to be fed with individual nuts, which would be very time-consuming.

The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 39 -Toe-May-Toe Saws

Compared to last year, the tomato harvest is both delayed and pitiful. Last year, I harvested 25 kg overall. This year, it will probably be significantly less.

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Last week, I started to harvest them, a week later than in 2024. You can see the first ca 500 g in the picture. I added approximately the same amount every two days until I had about 2,5 kg, which was finally enough to fill the pot and make sauce.

We still did not eat all the ready-to-eat sauce from last year, so I was not making that yet – I made a tomato concentrate.

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The recipe for this is very easy:

Cut the tomatoes into quarters and boil them in as little water as possible until they dissolve. Strain them through a sieve with eyes small enough to catch most of the seeds, but not so fine that they get clogged up by the mashed mass. If a suitable strainer is not available, it is also possible to cross-cut the potatoes, blanch them, and then peel them before proceeding with making the paste with the pulp, including the seeds. But straining the paste through a strainer is less work and less mess.

Put the strained juice into a weighed pot and slowly simmer while stirring until most of the water is evaporated and the remaining paste is so thick that it takes a moment for it to close behind the stirring spatula/spoon. Then weigh it and add 35 g of sugar and 30 g of salt per 1000 g of paste (I have an Open Office Calc template that calculates the sugar and salt based on the weight of my pot).

The paste can be frozen, but I prefer canning it. I put it into small glasses with twist-on lids, then I put the glasses in boiling water for 10 minutes, and I open and close the lids while they are hot. Once they cool down to room temperature, they form a vacuum seal, and they last for at least a year in the cellar.  I am putting it into small jars because it is very concentrated, and it also tends to spoil quickly once the jar is opened. This way I can guarantee that once the jar is opened, it gets used up quickly.

It is a very good base for pizza, and one glass is enough for two 25 cm pies. It can also be directly eaten as a ketchup, although it is definitely not as sweet as store-bought one. It can also be used as a base for tomato sauce or tomato soup. And since it is concentrated, it takes up very little storage space.

The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 36 – Stuffed Squash

Last year, we had such an overabundance of squash that we had trouble utilizing them all. This is one of the recipes we used to do it. The generic idea for the stuffing was mine; my mother then polished the culinary details. The goal was to prepare the squash in such a way that the finished meal is complete with no side-dishes or accompaniments.

The ingredients:

Any type of pumpkin/squash of a size that fits into a baking tray (pattypan, marrow, courgette, etc.), circa 1500 g.
Boullion cubes
200 g of protein – here we use dry soy meat and cheese 1:1, but it can be replaced with tofu, ham, smoked meat, hotdogs, or salami if you prefer, at any ratio to your liking.
5 eggs
2 White bread buns
2 cl of cream
3 medium-sized onions
~250-500 g Green bean pods, canned or fresh
butter or vegetable fat
Spices to taste

The process:

Cut the squash in half and scoop out the insides. If the seeds are not formed yet, the content can be mixed into bouillon with other vegetables (peas, lentils) to make a delicious soup. Ripe seeds can be roasted. Unripe seeds with hard shells but still filled with liquid need to be discarded.

Prepare the dry soy meat according to taste. We prefer to cook it in a chicken bouillon or in water with sugar, salt, and soy sauce for 20 minutes, then let it drain.

To make the stuffing, cut the buns into small cubes and wet them with cream. Add in the spices, finely minced onions, eggs, soy meat, and cheese cut into small pieces, and mix everything thoroughly. If necessary, it is possible to make the mass firmer by adding bread crumbs.

Put the squash in the oven at 180°C for 10 minutes. It releases some water that needs to be scooped out; otherwise, the food will be too soggy.

Fill the squash with the stuffing, roll it in baking paper secured with a string to keep moisture in, and bake for 30 minutes at 190°C. Tinfoil can also be used.

Cut the string and remove the baking paper.

Add bean pods around the pumpkin, with some water (if needed) and a spoon of butter. Bake uncovered for a further 30 minutes at 190°C until the stuffing develops a nice, firm browned crust and the beans are cooked.

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Three people had three lunches from this one squash, so one person could have lunches the whole week.

The nice thing about this recipe is, it can easily be modified to make it vegan. One can easily change the spices too; instead of the bean pods, any vegetable can be used to fill the tray to mix things up, including mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, or frozen vegetable mix. The variations are limitless to prevent becoming oversated and bored with it.

The Great Gardening of 2025 – Part 33 – Juicin’ n’ Jammin’

These are recipes we used for the excess of raspberries and the first marrow pumpkins. For all of them, the raspberries were first pressed through a juicer, and the still-wet seeds were wrung through cheesecloth to extract more juice. We learned that the raspberries must not be cooked first, because when pressing cooked raspberries, they release too much juice, and the outgoing seeds are so dry they block the juicer completely. (Edit: if you do not have a juicer, heating the raspberries to near-boiling first is thus advantageous for pressing them by hand).

Apricot and raspberry jam:

2600 g raspberry juice
12 apricots cut into small cubes
3000 g white sugar
16 g vanilla sugar
16 g vanillin sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
100 g of gelling mix
1 teaspoon of citric acid

Raspberry jam (sweet):

2600 g raspberry juice
2000 g white sugar
16 g vanilla sugar
16 g vanillin sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
100 g of gelling mix
1 teaspoon of citric acid

Raspberry jam (sour):

1700 g raspberry juice
1500 g white sugar
16 g vanilla sugar
24 g vanillin sugar
1 dcl rum
1/2 teaspoon of salt
100 g of gelling mix
3 tablespoons of citric acid

Apricot and pumpkin jam:

850 g of young marrow pumpkins, cut into small cubes.
12 apricots cut into small cubes
1 big apple cut into small cubes
16 g vanilla sugar
24 g vanillin sugar
1 dcl rum
1/2 teaspoon of salt
50 g of gelling mix

The gelling mix is a commercial mixture consisting mostly of apple pectin. It is necessary to add it to raspberries, since they do not gel particularly well by themselves, even if most of the moisture is boiled off.

The sour jam was made specifically for me; I do not like sweet jams that much. The apricot-marrow pumpkin jam is an experiment of my mother’s. Based on how a pie made with the foam tasted, it should be very good.

The jams are pretty straightforward – slowly dissolve the ingredients by heating them together without boiling (the pumpkins and apricots release enough water by themselves when heated), skim off the foam, and while still hot, pour into sterilized, pre-heated jars and close. After cooling, the lids form a firm vacuum seal.

The skimmed-off foam can be put into the refrigerator and used for cooking. We used ours in pies, and I was mixing it with yoghurt and oatmeal for breakfast.

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This is only one batch of jam.

We still had enough raspberries left, and new ones keep ripening. So I am dehydrating a lot for fruit tea still. I also wanted to try to make raspberry juice, something we haven’t done since I was a child. For this, we filtered the pressed juice through a cheesecloth overnight. We used a very simple recipe that my mother found somewhere on the Czech internet. Thus, this recipe, unlike previous ones, is not written with the actual weights we used.

Raspberry juice:
1000 g raspberry juice
1500 g white sugar
1/2 teaspoon of citric acid

The juice was again slowly heated until everything dissolved, then it was briefly boiled, and the foam was skimmed off. Then it was poured into pre-heated and sterilized bottles.

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To be on the safe side, I heated all filled bottles to about 80 °C for twenty minutes. I would not like for it to explode in the cellar.

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And lastly, for all that we made, I printed labels. My mother cannot write them by hand anymore, so I bought printable 52.5×35 mm labels. One label with the name and manufacture date on the front, one label listing all the ingredients on the back. I am listing the ingredients because we are occasionally giving these things away, and it is important to have the info on hand in case of food allergies or preferences.

 

Shrim Pizza

This is my mostest favoritestest pizza of them all, the one to find them, the one to bind them. I do not know what an Italian connoisseur would say about it and I don’t care, I love it.

Ingredients:
400 g of fine flour
1 teaspoon of salt
baking powder
250 g soft cottage cheese
2 egg yolks
5-7 spoons of vegetable oil
cream
anchovies
shrimp
grated edam cheese
tomato sauce/ketchup/paste
blue cheese
1 onion
oregano
basil

Dough making: Mix the cottage cheese with the egg yolks, salt, and oil. Mix the flour with baking powder. Add the flour to the cottage cheese until you make a soft pliable dough. Should the dough be too hard, it is possible to soften it with cream.

Put either baking paper or fat on your baking tray and roll on the pie base. This amount of dough is for two round pies of approximately 25 cm diameter.

The toppings can be according to taste, this is the process for this one specific pizza, which I cannot stress enough, that I absolutely love:

Spread the tomato sauce on the base (I am using homemade one) and sprinkle on it some grated edam cheese. Add the shrimp and intersperse them with anchovies from a can. I also pour the oil from the can on it.

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On top of the shrimp add an adequate amount of grated blue cheese, grated Edam cheese, and onions cut into half moons or rings. I like to sprinkle a generous amount of dried basil and oregano on top of the cheese too.

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Bake for 20-25 minutes at 200°C until the crust is crispy and golden brown. The baking time can vary slightly based on how watery the various ingredients are. The shrimp should remain juicy and the onions should soften but not get completely mushy.

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Cut and enjoy! It is very salty, an absolute caloric bomb, and expensive to make so it is a rare treat for me. I recommend cold non-alcoholic beer to top it off. I cannot eat the whole pie in one go but this pizza actually tastes really well the next day when warmed up in the microwave too, so I get to enjoy it for two days.

Gingy Breads – Ree-Sye-Pea

This is the basis for the recipe that my mother uses most for her yearly gingerbread creations. It is not the actual recipe she uses, because she made changes to it that cannot be easily conveyed by text. I will write the changes at the end if you want to experiment, this is what she started with.

Ingredients:

650 g fine flour
240 g powdered sugar
4 whole eggs
100 g honey
50 g of vegetable fat, shortening, butter (ghee), or lard according to taste and availability
1 tablespoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of gingerbread spice mixture*
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2-3 tablespoons of cocoa powder if a darker color is desired (optional)

Process:

Put the sieved powdered ingredients and some flour on the rolling board. Add the eggs and molten fat with honey and start adding the rest of the flour. Work from the center of the board towards the edges and knead the dough until it is smooth but firm. A kitchen robot can be used at the start but elbow grease will be needed for finishing the dough because it becomes too firm.

Roll the dough to approximately half the desired thickness of the final product and cut the shapes with a butter knife or forms.

Bake at 170-180°C until the color changes to golden brown (approximately 10 min). Te exact time depends on the actual kitchen equipment available.

If a shiny surface is desired, egg wash can be applied with a pastry brush on hot pieces directly after they are taken out of the oven (my mother does not do this).

For the best taste, they should be left to wait for a few days until they soften up a bit. For decorations and building more complicated structures, like gingerbread houses, you should proceed ASAP while they are rock-hard.

My mother’s changes:

  • 3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg instead of 4 whole eggs
  • 300 g of honey instead of 100 g
  • flour is added to the mixture not by weight but until the desired dough consistency is reached so the actual amount of flour used depends on the size of the eggs, the honey consistency, etc.
  • Gingerbread spice mixture is sold in CZ. Here is the site of the manufacturer (-click-). Ingredients according to Google Translate are: ground cinnamon, ground coriander, ground star anise, ground allspice, ground cloves, ground anise, ground nutmeg, ground mace, and ground fennel.

Gingy Breads 2024 Xmass – Part 3

Aaaand for the third part the gingerbread cottages.

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© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

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© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Gingy Breads 2024 Xmass – Part 2

Today a few Christmas trees.

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Gingy Breads 2024 Xmass – Part 1

Today just a little teaser of my mother’s creations this year. She made so many gingerbread houses this Christmas that I will have to post them over a few days. I shoulda start two weeks ago but I somehow never got to it.

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© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size

Can Ned Pump Kin Soup?

After a very bad spring, the pumpkin plants that I have did catch up in a big way. I already mentioned that, several times. I literally can’t give them away fast enough, I gave out over 30 kg and then I ran out of people to foist them on. Based on previous years, I expected about one-third of what I harvested in the end. I think the compost is to blame for this unexpected bonanza. I wonder what it would be like if the weather was not so cold in May and June and the plants did not grow stunted for the first half of the season.

But as the cold weather approaches and days shorten, the pumpkin plants did catch mildew on the leaves so I decided to cut them down and harvest all that was there. Now we need to process it.

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© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

We have a lot of marrows and pattypans. In addition to what I already mentioned, we also made some canned fruit mixing the marrows with plums (we had to buy those, ours have frozen this spring) and we plan to make some more with apples and pears (we have to buy those too). I am afraid it still won’t be enough and we will end up throwing some away because they spoil before we get to process them.

I came up with the idea of making canned soup. We never did that before but my reasoning was that when we can make canned tomato sauce that lasts for years, we should be able to make pumpkin soup and expect it to last too.

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We started by cutting the pumpkins into small cubes and throwing them into the pot with a bit of salt. They do release enough water to cook without adding any.

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When the pumpkin cubes soften, we either mash them or shred them with a food mixer into a thin paste.

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Sometimes we added cooked carrots and some spices, to have some variety. No two batches were identical. One thing we always added though is boullion soupstock cubes.

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The onion harvest was truly abysmal but I did get at least a few dozen smallish bulbs that were just big enough to cook and add to some of the cans whole.

The result is oversalted and concentrated paste that we put into screw-top jars just like the sauce. When preparing, we plan to thin it down with water to soup consistency, ad some fresh spices and maybe some other veggies (baby carrots, peas, corn) and cook for about 20 minutes before serving. I hope the experiments works well because we already made over 20 cans and we still have to make more.

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Pattypans are not that good for soup, although we did use some to bulk up the tomato sauces. However, we still need to eat those eight pieces in the picture and here I came up with an idea to stuff them not with shredded meat, but with standard stuffing made from bread, eggs, veggies, and salami. It is a whole meal on its own and one such pattypan baked with mushrooms or green beans is food enough for the three of us for two days. But we still can’t eat them fast enough.

To top it off, today I harvested the hokkaido squash pumpkins.

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I planted eight plants but six were destroyed by slugs and one remained stunted the whole summer and bore just one fruit. The other one, however, took off magnificently in July and August and bore about as much fruit as I expected all eight plants together when I planted them. One of these will be made into a dozen or so small glasses of mustard. Two I managed to push into my neighbor’s hands. I don’t know yet what we do with the rest. Maybe some marmalade and some soup too.

Part of the problem is that I also had to harvest the potatoes because it is supposed to rain the next week and it is better to harvest them before the ground turns to mud. As a result, we have a lot of potatoes that also need to be processed quickly – about which I will write tomorrow.