Posted by admin on Oct 14, 2011 in
Uncategorized Royal Mail have announced their Christmas Posting Dates at http://www2.royalmail.com/christmas-last-posting-dates so there is no excuse for late posting of your Christmas cards this year. In fact the Royal Mail have a dedicated Christmas webpage for personalising your stamps, printing your own stamps online and ordering stamps and stationery at http://www2.royalmail.com/greetings. This is useful if you don’t want to queue at the post office.
Many thanks to Mandy Higgins for the info regarding last posting dates.
Posted by admin on Sep 25, 2011 in
News and Comment,
Uncategorized 
It’s Harvest Festival this Sunday at our local church and I’m busy in the kitchen and the garden making the most of our own modest harvest. It’s not as if we grow much but it’s always nice to have some food fresh from the garden. I always grow tomatoes, chilli peppers and fresh herbs such as thyme, rosemary and basil. By this time in late September the Tomato plants are heavily laden with green fruit which if left will probably never turn ripe.
My solution to this is to turn the Tomato’s and Chilli’s into my Christmas Chilli Chutney I do this most years and give some away as Christmas presents but it’s so nice with cold meats and cheese that I have to keep several jars back for the family. It goes really well with cold turkey on boxing day and with the wonderful selection of cheeses my husband insists on each Christmas.
I also like to pick all the Chilli Peppers and any that don’t go into my Chutney I carefully freeze for use throughout the winter months. I know you can buy chilli’s in the super market but they don’t have the variety, in my local supermarket it’s red or green. Growing your own chilli’s allows you to pick more varieties. This means that you can develop flavour rather than pure heat.
So have a lovely Harvest Festival weekend and see what you can harvest and preserve for Christmas.
Tags: Chilli Chutney, Chutney, Harvest Festival, Tomato
