Gooseberry crumble

I've been making the most of the weather and have been spending as much time outdoors in the garden as possible. It's so lovely to see everything in bloom and it's the time of year when all of the months of hard work and tending to teeny-tiny seedlings pays off and there seems to be pure abundance.

This year, I managed to get to the gooseberries before the birds did and after weeks of watching as the gooseberries turned from pale green to a luscious deep purple, the day came when I finally decided to take on the gooseberry bush - and I won!...Well, I escaped with just some slight thorny scrapes. And here are the spoils:

It's hard to see how many gooseberries I actually got but there were almost 1kg, not bad for a fairly small, two year old gooseberry bush. So I decided to make a batch of crumbles. The recipe below is adapted from this one that I found here on the BBC Good Food website.

Ingredients:
800g gooseberries
125g sugar for the gooseberries and 120g for the crumble topping
150g plain flour
100g oats
125g butter

Method (pretty much the same as the Good Food one):

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Top and tail the gooseberries and mix with 125g of sugar. Separate into individual dishes or one large one if you fancy a feast! Then sprinkle 3 tbsp of water over them.

2. Add the flour, butter and oats into a bowl and rub together to form 'breadcrumbs', then stir in the rest of the sugar.

3. Spoon the crumble mixture over the gooseberries and pop into the oven for about 45 minutes. If you've made a batch like I did then you can either put them straight into the freezer ready to defrost and cook at a later date or gift them to friends and family - mine were delighted and I got and apple and blackcurrant crumble in return.

As you can see, I got three small-ish crumbles from my pickings, plus a large one and there are still a few gooseberries ripening on the bush so hopefully I'll be able to make some more.

Incidentally, I thought I'd purchased an 'Invicta' and was surprised when they turned purple, so I suppose the identity of my gooseberry plant will remain a mystery.  Oh and I wont pretend that this song wasn't buzzing around my brain while I was busy baking....Everybody's good at cooking something...

Running - getting back on track

A couple of years ago I started running. After a discussion at work about doing something for charity, we decided to do the Jane Tomlinson 10k. And so on a slightly chilly October evening, I laced my trainers up for the first time and headed out with a friend to tackle the pavement. As total novices, we didn't have a clue where to start and so we used the NHS's Couch to 5K training podcasts, and let me tell you, that first 60 seconds of running, even at a very gentle pace, felt like it went on forever. However, we made it through the first run in one piece and felt amazing (and just a little exhausted!).

We continued with the program and, as promised, after 9 weeks we could run 5k without stopping and felt like 'proper' runners! By that time, our running group had doubled in size and we started to slowly work towards our next goal of 10k. As always, things never go as planned and trouble struck 3 months before the race when I noticed that I'd lost the range of motion in my ankle. There was no pain, other than the usual achilles pain that occurred towards the end of most runs. And to cut a very long story short, after visiting a sports physiotherapist, I was told that I'd damaged my achilles but, on the brightside (if there was one), I was lucky enough to catch it before it snapped, I was devastated. I was advised to stop running and attended weekly physio sessions for a rather intense and painful massage. After 6 weeks of treatment, combined with regular sessions on the exercise bike, I was able to go out on my first run - and oh was it hard! I'd been told to run no more than a mile but even reaching that distance was difficult, I was exhausted! Thankfully, my achilles held up and over the next few weeks, combined with regular massages, I gradually built up my distance again. It was 2 weeks before the race that I managed to complete my first 10k run and it felt fantastic!

The day of the big race was the hottest day of the year. People were outside in their gardens spraying us with hosepipes to help keep us cool. As hard as it was, I paced myself and tried not to get carried away with the excitement of it all and I managed to finish the race in 1 hour and 4 minutes. I felt so proud, 9 months earlier I'd been a novice and here I was now having just finished a 10k.

My relationship with running has been on and off ever since. A pulled muscle from over-stretching resulted in me getting out of the habit and work seemed to fill the time that running had once taken up. Now I'm on my holidays, I've decided to rebuild my running routine. I felt so much healthier and more energised when running was part of my weekly routine and I want to get back to that. This time, I've decided to try out the Runner's World 8 Week Beginners Program  as it builds up a bit quicker than the Couch to 5k program. I'm also trying to incorporate some Chi Running techniques to help keep my running as injury free as possible, so fingers crossed it will work.

Beetroot and chocolate brownies...and back to blogging

So it's been a year since I last posted on the blog. Life seemed to get in the way and I'm afraid to say that I lost my blogging mojo. I've still been busy in the background, growing veggies and trying out new recipes in the kitchen and I've discovered a particular fondness for veggie infused cakes (and have converted a few people along the way). My first attempt at a veggie cake was the rather lush Carrot and Courgette Cake which I tried last year and is still a hit with family, friends and work colleagues. For anyone interested, the post can be found here. 

My most recent find are Shaheen's Beetroot and Chocolate Brownies from her Allotment2Kitchen blog. I skipped the almonds as I didn't have any and used 'normal' caster sugar rather than golden caster sugar and the results were delicious! You can't see it from the photo but they have a beautiful reddish hue to them and the fact that they are packed with beetroot make them feel like a slightly virtuous indulgence too.

Ooh just looking at them has got me tempted. I think it's time for a cuppa and a piece of cake - I'm counting it as one of my 5 a day!