For the first time in my life ..

I made gluten free tortillas to make wraps for our walks. Made 6 on Sunday, finished them today. I was a bit worried they were going to be stiff and not 'wrappable' but they worked really well and Mr A enjoyed them. Going to make another 6 tomorrow.

Pickling vegetables. On a website that sold boxes of vegetables, I found a lot of recipes for using up your surplus. Some of them sounded lovely. One was for pickled carrots - but I had no carrots, just rather too many sweet red peppers, so I adapted the recipe for those. I buy jars of mild "Piquant Peppers" so I thought I would like home-pickled ones, and I was right.

Cucumbers were next, full-size ones cut up as they were available more widely than gherkins. Again a success. Either or both of these are good in Welsh Rarebits or cheese paninis or with cold meat and/or cheese.

I tried radishes (because they are crisp and brightly coloured) Interesting texture, as they stayed very crisp, but I wasn't keen on the rather sulphurous taste. They were still radishy.

Then I bought a halogen oven, and noticed that the temperature can go right down to 50 C (about 130 F) which is cool enough to dehydrate food. I can report that sliced oranges were quite successful, and tasted great, but if I do them again I will peel them first - the skins get pretty tough.

Sliced strawberries were quite good, but got very sticky and looked as though there had been a massacre. Sliced mushrooms look good but I haven't yet cooked anything that needed them, so I don't know how the texture is.

The drawback with dehydrating anything is the length of time it takes - everything I have tried so far took 5 - 6 hours. Even at a low temperature, that is cancelling out the benefits of the halogen oven using a lot less power than a normal one.

I had a glut of tomatoes last summer and rather than use them in the usual tomato and smoked bacon soup, I instead cut them in half, drizzled a little extra virgin olive oil over them and whacked them into a low oven for a couple of hours. When cooled, I packed them into airtight jars with a little more olive oil. They kept for weeks in the fridge and were delicious.

I did the same, Chewbacca, except I did them in my Ninja instead of a low oven. Popped them into jars with some olive oil, garlic and oregano and they were delicious! Hoping to do the same again this year.
I also got into pickling too, to deal with various other 'gluts' - we had beetroot, onions and chillies, which were all pickled, and I also made caramelised onion chutney, which - even if I do say so myself - was so good!

I made raspberry jam.
I have never made jam in my entire life. I don't eat it very often but husband likes jam. He works part time inthe Co-op and thet were selling off their raspberries as they were going out of date. He brought about 8 punnets. I made enough to fill 6 jam jars. It was delicious and I was flushed with success.

I made butter for the first time at the weekend, easy and delicious.

I was amazed how easy it is to make butter Sago. And it tastes nothing like any you can buy!