When we woke up this morning it wasn’t raining. We stayed in bed for a bit , watched Andrew Marr, a cartoon or two, and it still wasn’t raining. In fact, by midday, there was blue sky and sunshine.
There was only one thing we could do – go out!
We decided on a local walk up through the fields and around Craggy Wood.
We had armed ourselves with plastic bags because we knew we’d be passing a backthorn bush. We thought we were probably too late, but we found the bush still full of big fat juicy sloes.
Not wanting to be greedy, but I just had to get the ones higher up.
The sloes are now in the freezer, waiting until I get a spare hour or two when I can add the all important ingredients of gin and sugar.
Lovely weather – still, it’s not often better than down south, so best enjoyed whilst you can. Sunday down here was windy, wet & cold.
My book says that sloes are better when they have been frosted and the skins have burst open. So it may not even be too late for us to go collecting. I just asked Richard if he wanted a collecting stroll up the road, but he’s succombed to the central heating (for the first time this year) and his laptop 🙁
Yeah, they are supposed to be better after the first frost. But there’s a cheat; just put ’em in the freezer before you use ’em. 😉
We’ve had a couple of frosts now, so those we collected on Sunday should be great! :yum: But we’ve collected them before the first frosts too and they were okay. Not sure if the ones Dave & Fiona collected in August won’t be a bit too bitter though! Maybe in need of a little extra sugar?
Poor show Richard, imagine putting your feet up with a
good booklaptop in a centrally heated house over getting out to sort out your supply of sloe gin for Xmas! I thought you were a super fit kinda guy! 😯 💡 You could combine the collecting with a run…If the skins aren’t split, it is recommended to prick them. I have spent at east 2 hours in the past pricking all he sloes with a needle. Tough work.
Have you finished all the sloe gin from last year and previous years??
Mine is ageing nicely – well, ageing anyway – but I plan to try sloe jelly when I can get to a shop that has gelatine.
Ooooh, sloe jelly sounds nice. :yum: :yum: I want to try that.
We have maybe half a litre left of sloe gin from last year. That’ll just take us up to when this next batch will be ready.