Squirrelling

Hard southwesterley blow last night. Went to put the rubbish bins out about 5.30 and it seemed to be getting colder and darker by the minute.
     We're starting to segue into Deep Autumn now. This morning I had the pleasure of wrapping up warm and heading off to the park to hunt for chesnuts. At first I found none, then realised that with the wind direction, the nuts would have fallen on the other side of the tree. Bonanza! 34 nuts, enough for two nights snacking. When I was in Florence, there was a chestnut vendor in Piazza Santo Spirito; he had a small revolving barrel, just like a miniature concrete mixer, for roasting the chestnuts, very useful.
      I'm staying home for the rest of the day. It's very cold and windy and yesterday I dug my potatoes and my back's a bit sore, so no gardening today. Lots of tiny potatoes and one large one. Every year it seems there is a King Potato, which is a lot larger than the others. I suppose I should keep this one and grow next years crop from it, it might be some sort of mutation.
  Cooking pear and fennel seed chutney at the moment. This is really good with pork sausages. We have an excellent organic butcher here in Opawa, and he makes the best sausages, whether they be venison, beef, pork or lamb. There's none of that taste of preservatives or too much pepper which inferior butchers use to hide the fact that most of the sausage is breadcrumbs, the sort of sausage you get all too often.

Pear and fennel seed chutney.
2 1/2 lb pears (1125 grams)                   1 cup seeded raisins
1 green apple                                         1 tablespoon fennel seed
1 lb white onions (450grams)                1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 cups (1lb) sugar                                  1 teaspoon salt
2 cups white vinegar
Peel, core and chop pears and apple and chop onions. Put all the ingredients into a preserving pan and bring to the boil, lower heat and simmer until mixture thickens and is syrupy and brown (about 1 hour). Stir occasionally during cooking to prevent chutney sticking. Seal in jars when cold.
Peaches or plums can be used instead of pears.

(Recipe from Australian and New Zealand complete book of cookery/ edited by Anne Marshall. Paul Hamlyn : Sydney, 1970.)