Verjus and Vine Leaves

You know that saying about paperwork expanding to fill the briefcase space available - well same applies to our freezer.  We used to have an enormous freezer in the garage (the top of which was my preferred summer sleep-out), and it was full to the top with allotment produce, food scavenged out of hedgerows, and meat bought as whole carcasses from the butcher's shop.

It didn't come with us.  F said we don't have room for it, and besides with buying all our food now, and it being cheap and always fresh at the laiki, we don't need the freezer.

So if we don't need the freezer how come the one on top of the fridge is stuffed to the gills and there is no room to fit in some meat for a Tigger?

After heeding my lockdown suggestion of 'clean out the freezer' F indeed got rid of a large quantity of encrusted ice and expanded the freezer space considerably.  She ate a lot of what she had stored there, and for a week or two there was even enough space to keep the coffee in the freezer (does ground coffee even need to be kept frozen?) 

Then there were the batches of carrot muffins, the large cook-up of spinach risotto, the zucchini fritters, the parsley pesto,... this is all about buying too much and having it go off in the fridge or turning it into something else and putting it in the freezer.  And having created space in the fridge - going out and fetching back more fresh stuff..... which needs to be eaten before it goes off.

When she got back from laiki today I supervised her (got under her feet) doing something with vine leaves.  I know they are vine leaves they used to grow over that same garage from Mike's place next door.  That vine only produced grapes one year we were there and we had to cut loads of them away to re-roof the garage that year.  F squashed and strained 80lb of green grapes to make 'verjus'  (and guess where that went).  Every ham she cooked for ages after that was boiled in verjus and spices.

Today the vines leaves went onto plastic picnic plates and - you guessed it - into the freezer.  Something had to come out; I just hope it was the half chicken I saw go in the other day.

(F says I have to thank the blogger who told her how to process the vine leaves - so thank you local-kiwi-alien; we waved to you this morning.)

It's been hot this week

Our lemon pips have sprouted, we got 4 tomatillo seedlings from 12 seeds (F says that's enough), and the stragglers of Mr B's super-hot chilies are nearly big enough to put up for adoption.  There's always some brave fool who thinks quarter of a million Scovilles is a good idea.