Chutney Tuesday: plum and apricot

Today's plum chutney is again based heavily on a chutney on bbc good food. However I wanted to bulk it out so I've added a lot more onions. I've also changed a few other bits and bobs.

Ingredients
5 tbls veg oil
1200g plum. chopped finely (leave skins on)
4 medium red onions (sliced finely)
1 kg white onions (diced finely)
250g dried apricot (roughly chopped using oiled knife)
350ml red wine vinegar
100ml sherry vinegar
500g dark soft brown sugar
1.5 tblsp ground ginger
1.5 tblsp mustard seeds
1.5 tblsp ground cumin
1.5 tblsp smoked paprika
1.5 tblsp crushed chillies
large pinch salt

heat oil and add red onions and cook until soft.
add diced white onions and spices and cook until soft.
add all other ingredients, stir well. bring to boil and simmer with lid on for 10 mins.
uncover and simmer until colour becomes deep red and consistency is jammy.
stir frequently during cooking.

spoon into sterilised jars while hot and seal.
makes 16-17 190ml jars (about 3.25 litres)

Chutney Tuesday: Spicy Pear and Fig Chutney

It's been a while since I did a Chutney Tuesday, but I really fancied making some today. I was going for massive quantity, as it's really useful to have these in for christmas gifts, etc. If you want to make it in smaller quantities it will work just as well.

ingredients:
4tbls veg oil
approx 2.5 kg pears (before prepararation)
1 kg onions
4 fresh figs
2 large red chillis (just use one if you don't want it so spicy)
4 cloves garlic
3tsp ground coriander
1tsp ground ginger
1 pinch salt
500g dark soft brown sugar
350ml cider vinegar

Peel pears and chop into very small pieces. Finely dice onions. Slice chillis finely, crush garlic. Chop fig- remove stem and base and chop into small pieces/

Heat oil, add ginger, coriander, garlic and chilli. Cook for a minute. Add onion and cook until softened stirring regularly.
Add pear and fig, stir well and cook for a few minutes.
Add vinegar, sugar and salt and bring to boil. Cover and simmer for 30 mins, then uncover and simmer until jammy in appearance (about 25mins)
Whilst still hot spoon into hot sterilised jars and seal.

makes 13x190ml jars (about 2.5 litres)

Autumn birthday card.

I love the colours of autumn and they are so easy to use in crafting. I was so pleased then that two of my favourite challenges were takinf autumn as their themes.
Less is more has a colour challenge : "Autumns's bounty" and One Layer Simplicity Challenge has the theme "turn to fall"

I also needed a birthday card for a friend that loves autumn colours so the timing was perfect.

The card was made with an old set of "see-Ds" stamps (I don't even know if they still make these, but if they do the set is whimsical garden) and then, of course the colours are distress inks: vintage photo, spiced marmalade, barn door and mustard seed. I just used post-it notes for masking and randomly stamped.