Preserving, Just like Grandmother Did

Here at Your Neighbour's Garden we are very fortunate to have a large number of fruit trees and other produce that we grow on our site. We are getting to the end of the harvesting season and Phew we have been busy. It is satisfying to see all the apples, and pears now sitting in jars of wonderful flavours, to use and share as winter goes on.

This year we were excited to get our certificate from the DCC to create preserves for sale. It has been hard work to create a range of interesting and delicious items for you, but we are proud to have a large selection of fruit butters, jams, jellies, chutney's, relishes, marmalades and pastes on our stall at 147 Glenpark Avenue, Dunedin.

If you haven't tried it before I seriously recommend you get a taste for pear or apple butter. These "butters" are not a traditional butter as we are use to, but a fruit butter to add to your crackers and cheese, or to intensify the flavour of your apple crumble or pear pies.

Preserving our produce for winter not only ensures we have a larger variety of food, but it also supports our no/low food waste philosophy. Of course, we could freeze and chill everything but this requires a large amount of space. Having learnt preserving skills from my own Mother and Grandmothers, it is gratifying to make different jams, chutney's and fruit butters to add interest to meals and charcuterie boards.

If you are interested in learning more about preserving check out our Matariki event where we will be having a preserving demonstration, showing you how to make your own Apple Mint Jelly, with a sample to take away.

In our desire to reduce waste we use all parts of the fruit and what we can't use goes to our chickens to devour and turn into compost. A good example of this is in the making of our Marmalade.

We cook the apples by boiling in water, straining the liquid off to use in the marmalade.

The side product is apple pulp which we then make into apple butter or pie filling. All that is left over is the skin and pips.

he citrus used in the marmalade is the juice and the outside skin. The skin gets boiled and soaked overnight, creating a citrus laden liquid. We can use this to make a citrus cleaner. The only waste from the citrus is the pith (yuck) and the leftover flesh after the juice has been removed.

You can find many of our preserves on our stall and we are working at getting the online stall up and running so you can purchase directly from there as well.

Check out our Matariki event which we will be holding on Friday the 10th of July from 12.00pm - 2.30pm. A free sausage sizzle and opportunity to try our preserves range.