Waste Not Want Not

With the Colder Months creeping up on us so soon, and the likelihood that we'll be wanting to save some Pennies here, and hugely more Pounds there, to heat ourselves, and eat healthily, now is the time for me to make music from every corner of our productive Kitchen Garden, because what you DO with that produce now, preserving it, and storing it away for use over the next six months or so, is absolutely BEAUTIFUL.
I've got a Tamasyn Day-Lewis tomato sauce on the go on the right, and on the left, are all the beautifully-flavoured skins and peelings, leaves and celery strings that you'd normally chuck onto your Compost Heap.  Having quite enough on my compost heap right now, thank you very much,  I don't need to waste beautiful flavours there.  I prefer those flavours at this time of year, to be hugging each other in my kitchen, with not a jot of a recipe in sight, for my own Vegetable Stock, for the base of one or two of my own soups or sauces, that I can then freeze.  It isn't clever to chuck stuff out if you can make good use of it in your kitchen first Children?

I can take or leave a lot of these so-called Telly Chefs, but, Tamasyn Day-Lewis blew my frock up with her Book: 'The Art of The Tart' (ISBN 1-84188-132-5) published way back in 2000 or so, because she took a twist on Simon Hopkinson's version of a Tomato Tart, and made it her own, with A Saffron Custard and it works superbly well if you happen to grow kilo upon kilo of your own tomatoes, onions, garlic and celery.... which I generally do, and did this year successfully with Celery, but bonkersly not at all that successfully with Garlic, and I still can't identify where I went so hugely wrong?..... I'm no expert, but when you find certain recipes that you adore, and you can use them in 'a multitude of sins', make Shed-Loads, and preserve it to the best of your ability, I can't think of a single reason why I wouldn't just go 'all out' to preserve my produce in this direction, for a later direction to tickle our tummies.  And my particular point here is that, with every kilo of homegrown tomatoes, I couldn't possibly 'go wrong' by making this sauce.

And, of course, having successfully last year dried the Calendular/Marigold Petals, for a Saffron Substitute, Wellie is totally now up for a Nasturtium Seed substitute for A Caper Preserve.