Feijoas - juice and cake

It's feijoa season here in NZ.
In some countries it is known as 'Pineapple Guava'.

A bowl of fresh feijoas from the orchard

This variety is aptly name 'Mammoth'

Love them or hate them? I like them cooked but am not wild about them raw. However, yesterday D and I made some apple and feijoa juice using the Reinette du Canada apples from the orchard with a smaller amount of feijoa fruit. And the verdict? - delicious!

Making juice gets the thumbs up

 I also made this feijoa and coconut cake which is a lovely way to enjoy the fruit, using a this great recipe. From browsing the net I see that some people have made this cake and successfully frozen it, so I think I should make a couple more to put in the freezer for later. By the way, this recipe does make a substantial sized cake!

Coconut and feijoa cake

Pumpkin harvest

Harvest time is here! We now have stored away 17 of the Queensland Blue pumpkins and 6 Musquee du Provence pumpkins. Although with 2 quick growing pigs around these probably won't last all that long!

Pumpkin pie time

Yesterday I made a pumpkin pie for the first time in ages. I used some of the Musquee du Provence pumpkin. The recipe (I tried this one from a web search) only called for 2 cups of pumpkin puree, which did not use up very much of the huge pumpkin..! Never mind, now that we have pigs again, they will enjoy any leftover pumpkin!
Here is a photo of the pie, I might not get top marks for the cracked pastry, but it was delicious anyway!

New pigs!

It's time for pig raising again. Yesterday we bought 2 little piglets, 8-9 weeks old. These ones are 'Large Whites'. Aren't they cute?

Pumpkins and kumara time

Ripe at last! These are the Musquee du Provence pumpkins. They are very big pumpkins but the flesh wasn't too hard to crack into, cutting up was a breeze, just using a sharp knife. The flesh is a very dark orange colour. I roasted some of this but I imagine it would do well in a soup as the flesh was soft and creamy. In the seed catalogue it mentions this variety of pumpkin is often seen at farmers markets where it is sold in wedges - I can see why, it would take us forever to get through a whole one! Never mind, we are hoping to have more pigs soon and they will get through them all (we must have about a dozen) in no time!

Also in plentiful supply at present is kumara. We were gifted this haul from a friend who grew it in his garden. Some of the kumara are huge!

Homegrown kumara from a friend

Look at the size of this one!

So far I have made kumara chips in the deep fryer, also mashed kumara and these little cakes below which were very nice:

Kumara 'cookies'