Time for a clear-out!

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We have a fridge-freezer, which is supposedly frost-free, and a chest freezer, which isn’t. And even though we periodically attempt to use up things in the freezer, we never seem to get to the end. One of three things always happens to top it up: we suddenly get a glut of produce from the garden, or we find some irresistible bargains of fish or meat at the supermarket, or I visit the cheese stall and come home with at least six blocks of different cheeses! The past couple of weeks I’ve been on a mission to empty the chest freezer so that we can defrost it. We have made redcurrants and raspberries and jostaberries into cakes and puddings and smoothies. We have cooked up stews and pasta sauces with assorted meats and vegetables (this doesn’t always make as much space as expected because then we have extra meals to go back in the freezer to use later!) At last we have just a few things left – one tub of meaty stew (which I’m going to make into a pie later, just to make a change from eating the same thing again – and to use some frozen pastry!), one tub of pasta sauce which we can eat later in the week, one tub of a vegetable dish which we can eat on Wednesday when Little One, a committed carnivore, will be at a friend’s house, and some ice-cream. To get to this stage I needed to use up a lot of jostaberries, so I’m making them into jam. Of course that doesn’t actually use them up, but it does get them out of the freezer and into the cupboard! So now I have more than 20 jars of jam made from jostaberries with a few redcurrants thrown in for good measure. Would any of you like some? It’s going to be a struggle to get them in my store cupboard! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2023.