Pumpkin Relish

We still have some pumpkins stored from our allotment and as time is ticking on I needed to think of some different ways to use them up. My husband is making a batch of pumpkin wine so I thought about preserving them in a similar way to the courgettes...Relish!

We love the courgette relish I make every year and it never lasts very long at all, so the only change to my usual recipe was to swap most of the courgette with pumpkin. The results were so tasty I will probably make it this way again.

As you can see in the photo it is an amazing colour, a slightly richer more orange colour and has a very pleasing crunch.

I won't put the whole recipe on again but if you would like to try this... and I would definitely recommend it, I will put a link on to my courgette relish here...

I have used exactly the same recipe and method as this courgette relish recipe except the 750g of courgette was swapped instead for 500g of pumpkin and 250g of courgette.

These jars should keep us going for a little while, although if it lasts as long as the courgette relish I may have to make a larger batch next time.

Goodbye 2014... Hello 2015

Just a short post to wish you all a Happy new year and to say goodbye to 2014. We have put quite a few things off recently due to a death in the family, blogging has been one of those things but we have still been muddling through in a quiet way and we are now very much looking forward to 2015 and all the new challenges it may bring.

We still made some Christmas decorations for our home, but this year things seem to have taken a simple, more natural approach. Both my husband and I have made some Christmas baubles, complete with pyrography, from a section of an old branch.

I made this pine cone garland, another very simple, natural craft that looked so beautiful on the fireplace. I am definitely thinking of making some more of these next year.

Another one of my favourite additions this year was the snowflake mobile. My husband hung a twisted willow branch, that had been sprayed slightly with silver glitter to give it a frosty feel, in the window. We then hung snowflake decorations and crystals from it to give a feel of snow. It was very difficult to get good photos of this but it looked amazingly magical.

My husband helped the children to make these wooden snowmen using offcuts of wood, which they chose to paint. So most of the decorations we made this year had a wooden feel to them.

Well that's some of the things we have been doing at this very busy time, all that's left to do is wish you all a very Happy new year!