Spices & Jam Jars

I am very serious about recycling and composting and struggle to throw recyclable things in the bin like i normally have to if im at someone else's house. So whenever we eat something from a glass jar it either goes in the recycling box or gets repurposed or reused. I'm beginning to save more and more of our glass jars with metal lids ready for jam, chutney and pickle making with next years (hopeful) glut of fruits and vegetables.
At the moment i have been buying rather than making our jam (although ive made one batch of jam this year), and i always choose the Bonne Maman jams as they taste good and come in attractive jars. Truth be told, the jam is very nice but no better than any other jam (just more expensive) but i always use the jars for our spice cupboard so that's why i can justify the extra cost in this instance.

I buy most of our spices in bulk from an Asian supermarket and find that if i keep them in the packets they come in they end up spilling, going slightly stale, and sitting rather clumsily in our cupboard which makes them difficult to store. So i have been emptying them into jars ever since buying my first pack. Originally i used honey jars - we buy the same brand of honey all the time and so all of the jars where of equal size and displayed well.


But when i discovered the pretty gingham lids of Bonne Maman i decided that i would gradually switch to them instead. Its been about two years or more and im still making the switch!
I find the easiest way for me to empty spices from an old honey jar into the new jam jar is to place the new jar on top (open ends together) and then turn them over so that the old jar is now on top.


Then just shake and tap a little. This usually means that none spills and goes to waste. Then i add a pretty label (these ones are Cath Kidston and you can buy them here). I like to keep all of my labels similar in size, colour and style as it makes the collection look neater.
So far im still potting my spices up, i haven't even started on our herbs yet! How do you store your herbs and spices?

* For more Bonne Maman inspiration look in the Bonne Maman love flickr group.

Autumn

Autumn and Spring are my favorite seasons in England, followed by Winter and then Summer. At this time of year i think that Autumn is the season i enjoy the most, but im sure that every March i just cant wait for Spring to arrive and that becomes my favorite time of year.

I enjoy Autumn because i love to be cosy. I feel so happy to be wrapped in blankets and drinking warm drinks and hot soups, and the cooler temperature and change in weather makes the whole feeling cosy thing more authentic by late September / early October. I find the natural world very interesting at this time of year too, the changing colours, the more noticeable sound of bird song and the way the sun has a different beauty about it. The light is most certainly different in Autumn, it seems more interesting and intense, and to feel the sun rays on my face is a moment of joy and appreciation for me.

A few days ago i stepped out into the garden one morning to capture the onset of Autumn with my camera and i was amazed at how sudden the garden seems to have changed. The leaves on the apple trees are beginning to shrivel and dry out, changing from green to yellow, orange and brown. We still have plenty of apples and damsons to harvest though. The grass is now covered by a sprinkling of leaves and each morning every blade of grass has tiny droplets of dew on it, humbly waiting to be taken up into the atmosphere by the sun. We have quite a few cobwebs on our windows and each thread of silk is also glistening with dew, i find spiders webs fascinating anyway but each morning they become objects of beauty.

Autumn is often associated with a feeling of melancholy, but i associate it with complete thankfulness to the creator - for the food which we can harvest at this time, for the shelter ive been blessed with where i can be warm and comfortable with my family, and for the wonderment of the natural world and everything which appears and then disappears at this time of year.

Still growing vegetables...

It is officially Autumn now but im still harvesting some vegetables from the garden. We have tiny carrots and about 9 cobs of sweetcorn, plus more courgettes. I need to check outside to see if the corn is ready yet, ive never grown it before and so i have no experience with it, but hopefully if the tassels are brown and the kernels are fat and yellow then i can pick a few cobs for us to eat this week.




I started all of my veg and salad seeds off at the start of May, potting them all into small pots in the greenhouse. This is not how your supposed to do it but i hadn't had chance to dig the garden and i didn't want to miss out and have to wait another year. Most of the seedlings outgrew their pots before i had time to plant them on out into the garden, so i lost a lot of potential plants that way.
My carrots never had the chance to grow so most of them stopped at about 2 inches, but they still taste deliciously fresh and perfectly carroty.



We are still eating them, and their leaves too. I chop the leaves up and then remove any woody bits before frying them with oil, garlic and herbs or spices. ive also added them to stir-frys and casseroles. I couldn't possibly just cut them off and take them to the compost bin, they are perfectly good and healthy food.

Little D is almost always with me when im gardening, he loves to get dirt in his nails and help out. Whilst i was weeding my sweetcorn patch the other week (after i took the sweetcorn photos above) he decided to pull down some of our ivy for me. The ivy was perfectly fine where it was but i couldnt squash his enthusiasm for gardening so i let him get on with it. I wouldnt be so laid back if he was messing with some of my other plants though!

When we moved into this house there was an old and very neglected wheelbarrow in the garden, full of rust holes and not solid enough to use. I didn't want to throw it away as i prefer to try and make use of something if its there. I lined the base with a weed suppressing sheet which i found in one of our sheds, and then filled it up with topsoil and compost. Last week i planted radish seeds in it and this week we have little seedlings. I let my last radishes go to seed but im hoping that we are a little more successful with these ones insha'Allah.