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Our seasonal plum selection at the Green Valley Grocer

Oat Plum Crumble

750g plums or Damsons

4 tablespoons-Golden caster sugar

A Large Knob of butter

For the crust:

150g of flour

100g of butter

50g of Ground Almonds

70g of Caster Sugar

50g of Rolled oats

Set the oven at 190/gas mark 5

Stone the fruit, place them in a deep pan with the butter and Sugar and leave them to soften slightly. Meanwhile make the oat crust by rubbing the butter  into the flour till it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the ground Almonds, sugar and oats.

Place the fruit into the baking dish, place the oat and almond topping on the fruit and bake for 30-35mins .and serve hot with cream.

Place the fruit in a bowl and add sugar, allow the mixture to stand for 8 to 10 hours, next place the fruit and syrup in a saucepan and cook over low heat, stir every once in a while, and allow to boil for approx 20mins.If after this time the fruit is still chunky mash with fork or electric mixer to make the jam smoother. Fill jars with liquid and seal.

 Beef and Plum Stir Fry

Ingredients

 3tsp sesame oil

6 small plums, stones removed and cut into thirds

1tbs brown sugar

500g beef fillet, thinly sliced

2cm fresh ginger, finely shredded.

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 broccoli, in little florets

2tbs hoisin sauce

450g rice

Thai basil leaves to serve

Heat 1 teaspoon of the oil in a wok over a medium heat. Add the plums and sprinkle with sugar. Cook for around 5mins stirring occasionally. Then transfer to a plate.

Heat the remaining oil in the wok over a medium-high heat, stir fry the beef for 1-2 mins or until golden, once cooked transfer to the plates with the plums.

Heat the remaining oil and add the ginger, garlic and broccoli cook for 2-4mins or until the broccoli is green and crisp.

Add the beef and plums and the hoisin sauce, toss until well combined and heated through.

Serve with the rice and basil leaves.

If you have any plum recipes please bring them in to the shop, or add to the blog.

Plum Jam

1kg of plums, washed and halved

700g of Sugar

From this week, the GVG is offering a refill service

for Ecover Washing Up Liquid and

Ecover Laundry Liquid

at £1.99 for a litre, which means it's cheaper AND you don't have to get rid of your empty bottle. 

Jim might even fill it for you, if you're lucky.

Service with a smile!

Today at the shop.... it was party-time all day. HUGE thankyous all round are due:

• To our marvellous customers who came to say Happy Birthday and give us their continued support 
• To our never-resting growers who turned up first thing this morning with the freshest possible produce from within 'food metres' of the shop
• To Dee for the wonderful birthday cakes and "Green Valley Grocer" edible-logo'd cup cakes

   

• To Fiona and Pinky and Perky for dishing out said cakes and keeping the customer flow moving
• To Gill and Andy for entertaining us so splendidly with the GVG Fruity Veg Carnival song
• To the Art department staff and students at Colne Valley High School for making us our very own Green Valley Grocer 'bags for life' at their Green Day yesterday
• To Linda for producing 1st birthday rosettes for us at the drop of a hat
• To Jim for arriving just at the right moment when we were running out of steam and bringing us chocolates and the offer of help to pack away
• To MC for having got out of bed (far too early) silly-side-up
• To Freddie for battling against the odds to keep stock on the shelves
• And to Carol for keeping the show on the road ... for a whole year!

Here's to the next 12 months!

This week at the shop... we are celebrating with Heather. It was like walking on eggshells last week for all of us (staff and customers alike) as months of hard graft were followed by days of nail-biting delay in waiting for the results. We all pitied her postman. Things got decidedly worse when Giants failed to get the win against Hull KR and she missed, yet again, the appearance of Brett in the shop. However, Monday morning dawned sunny and warm, we all lay low but the message came through - Heather has gained her Degree in Geography from Manchester! Good on her! 

Expect to see a lot more of Heather in the immediate future, as she increases her days in the shop to 4 per week (until she embarks on her graduate career). Not one to sit around revelling in her success, she's thrown herself into 'shop innovations' and research. 'The Fish Counter' has been on her 'to do' list for a while and we now have a fish info board with maps (she is a Geographer) and detail about sourcing, product labels so you don't have to ask what it is, and menu/cooking ideas. After undergraduate-style research, she knows all about bees and honey production now, and she is taking over our 'Local Produce of the Month' campaign to promote eating local fruit and veg in season.

Talking of 'in season', we are mourning the end of the UK asparagus season, but celebrating the increase in local summer produce available now. We're delighted to be in receipt of some top quality veg and salad from Tracy Jackson's plot that would, in previous years, have been destined for the plates of diners at the Weavers Shed. John Berryman's sugar snap peas are beyond comparison with the imported version from Kenya and his kohl rabi are nothing short of beautiful. Helen is working hard on establishing our growers' network with an eye to increasing the percentage of shop stock that can be grown locally. All the rhubarb that we have sold so far has been grown locally, the green stuff has all come from within a few miles of the shop. Garlic is on our 'hit list' now - let us know if you could grow some for next year, as it seems almost impossible to get away from the monopoly by Chinese imports.

And finally, a big thanks to everyone who shopped with us last week - the 'scores on the doors' tell us we had our biggest week of sales since Christmas Week and over a thousand customer transactions. Brilliant.

Today at the shop... I am grateful to Roger from The Radish in Marsden for asking me to bring gooseberries from the market run. I almost dismissed the possibility due to it being too early in the season, however Total Produce (always my best bet for English tomatoes) had the very first arrivals onto the market.

Like other berries and rhubarb, the climate in Yorkshire is good for gooseberries and ours are growing pretty well so far. The biggest threat is mildew, brought in from America in 1905 which wiped out the whole European crop. Nowadays there are varieties that are resistant - ours are mostly Invicta which seem to do OK without spraying.

If you're a serious gooseberry-grower, you might consider visiting the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Show near Whitby. This year it's on Tuesday 3rd August. These guys don't mess about, they've been at it since 1800 and last year Mr Bryan Nellist grew a record-breaking Woodpecker berry weighing in at 2.19oz (or 62g in new money). That's amazing - I just weighed an egg from the fridge and it weighs only 2oz (less than 60g)!  Read more about this traditional English event at www.egtongooseberryshow.org.uk/index.htm

Gooseberry fool and gooseberry crumble are obvious delights to try, but traditionally gooseberries are also eaten with mackerel. And in our house, some are always frozen to have with goose at Christmas.

If you have grown gooseberries to spare, please contact us and arrange a good time to bring them in for us to sell for you. We'd love to have them from 'down the road' rather than elsewhere.

Invicta gooseberries at Wellhouse (2009)