Preserving.

Preserving - not persevering, though they were much the same thing, the single time I tried to make seville orange marmalade earlier this year. That's why I decided to go on the Summer Preserving workshop at Tresillian House in Cornwall a couple of weekends ago.

It was actually going to be funded through work, but I forgot to get the receipt in before the deadline. So I ended up not claiming the fee back, but that's ok because it wasn't that expensive - it was just useful to have an external push to do something different.

Mark and I were going to go down to Cornwall together, to make a weekend of it, but he had to work last minute on the Sunday. Neither of us thought it would be very nice for him to have to drive lots and rush back on Saturday night, just to get up and work all day Sunday, so I decided to go alone. It's about 2 1/2 hours drive, each way, so I decided to do it all in one day, rather than stay overnight. The drive was fine (and early start meant I was justified in getting breakfast from McDonalds, one of my favorite things to do since I don't get to do it very much). Plus I got to catch up on all of my podcasts.

I ended up arriving pretty early (I had left a big buffer for traffic, since a Saturday in summer usually means terrible traffic down into Cornwall - but I left so early that I missed it all), so I sat in an empty parking lot (Dairyland Farm World) and continued listing to podcasts.






The course was in a very nice "Regency period country house" (turned hotel). It was run by two ladies who work with the (fairly famous) British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who is the man behind the River Cottage.

It turned out to be more a demonstration course, rather than a hands-on affair. I hadn't really thought through how difficult and expensive it must be do set up cooking courses were everyone has access to their own stove and equipment. And they were able to run through a lot of different recipes that we wouldn't have had time for if they had had to wait for 18 individuals to follow along.

So this was the set up for most of the day. That's Pam on the left, and Liz on the right:


I don't have many pictures from the demonstration bit, because I had forgotten that I had brought my camera, until our visit to the walled garden in the afternoon. But it does mean that I have a lot of pictures of the walled garden.

It's apparently one of the largest walled gardens in existence, and the head gardener, John Harris, is big on preserving old varieties; he apparently has several varieties that are pre-19th century. He also uses the principles of Victorian 'moon gardening,' which takes as its premise that the phases of the moon affect the rise and fall of the water table, in the way they affect the rise and fall of tides. So he claims that he has never watered anything - except, I guess for the plants in the green house, which are in pots (and for them he uses rainwater). It's pretty incredible, if it is true, considering how green everything is, since we'd had one of the hottest Junes on record. Whatever the claim, it was a pretty impressive garden.

I'm sure you can pick out Mr. Harris in the pictures below.

















So it was a nice day, and I learned some things, and got some nice recipes out of it (plus a jar of strawberry and gooseberry jam and a jar of whole-grain mustard - both of which were from the demonstrations throughout the day. Mustard is really easy to make, if you have a food processor - I recommend everyone tries it.)

Bread and butter pickles are high on my list for one of the first things to try - once I get a glut of cucumbers from Mark's folks, which I think is coming soon. Now I just have to get all the gear...