Malaysian Pickle - Quick, Low Allergy Acar

As mentioned in a previous post, I decided my life wasn't busy enough so I've started to volunteer at the local Beaver scout group. This has been great fun and with a group of friends its been fun to have a bit of input into what we get up to each week. 

A few weeks ago one of my friends and I got to plan out the lesson on healthy eating. This is a subject I'm quite passionate about and really enjoy getting my own children to help with food. We were constrained a bit though, having fourteen 6-8 year olds cooking at the same time would be hard work and having enough facilities to keep them all occupied would be nearly impossible!

How To Make Dehydrated Soup Mix

My wife and I both love eating soup, it makes for a great lunch with a fresh roll or for a warming tea. 

 The other night I made a huge batch of squash soup for tea. Some of my squash have just started to go bad so it was time to use them up. In the end I made about 6 litres of soup and it was really tasty!

I have no real set recipe for soup, I tend to just make it up as I go alone with what I have to hand. This one contained half a Oregon Homestead Squash (about 4kg I'd guess), three large onions, 6 cloves of garlic, a couple of white beetroots (so as to not colour the soup), one massive carrot and enough water to cover the lot. I then left it cooking until everything was soft and tender.

Good Value To Grow

1.4kg of Organic raspberries picked from the fruit garden Friday morning.

Waitrose organic raspberries are £24 per kg so that's £33.60! 

Although I'd probably settle for their essential British range at £12.75 per kg making this little lot worth £17.85!

If I only had a small garden I'd concentrate on growing berries, tomatoes, salad leaves and courgettes I think. Heavy cropping and high value.

With these we ate some fresh for our lunch, then I made half a dozen jars of raspberry and apple jam (I think it works better with apple so it's not so "pippy").

And dehydrated a load to add to our breakfast, cakes and cookies. These are pretty intense if you have them straight out of the jar! 

Hopefully I'll pick a load more this week as well.

What would you do with a glut of raspberries?