Autumn almonds.

A few hours now since I came in to start  writing today..... about 5.30 I had a half hour break in my schedule,  in between almonds and dinner preparation,  but as I opened the door,  the phones did that funny switching off noise that they do when the power trips,  then on again,  then off,  we checked the main circuit breakers and there was no power outside either.  So I waited a bit,  sat in the sun,  read for a bit,  the electric came on and went off,  and again,  maybe, we said,  the feria in Ugijar have plugged in  and blown the fuses in the Alpujarras!   Not unknown,  huge power surges when it's a fiesta,  we've been staying with friends in Yator over fiesta when you can't get the kettle to boil because of the lights and music.

Anyway it all came back on, no music as yet drifting across from Ugijar but it will come soon,  we've seen the posters for the Saturday night bull fight and their  fiesta is around this weekend.  It's also Día Hispanidad on Saturday so everything will stop this weekend for fiesta.

So back to the almonds.  It's that time,  luckily for us we only have about 8 trees within easy picking reach, I say lucky as it's quite a dusty harvest.  Just like the olives, whack the tree with the pole but as the almonds and leaves are drying out it's a dusty job.  A friend of ours,  a Fernando not a Paco,  always has eye problems this time of year,  dust and grit probably.  But we can reach ours to pick by hand,  then get off the husks,  then shell,  then blanch, then leave to dry out before storing in jars for eating.  Some we use for tapas,  heavy based pan,  small amount of olive oil,  cook carefully till golden brown and sprinkle with either salt or ground cumin or dried garlic powder.  Delicious.  Some we grind for sauces, cakes or puddings.  Some chopped for adding to puddings or cakes.  But for sliced almonds,  well we leave that to the professionals and buy them.  How do you slice an almond??  Halves yes, but slices, no.

But not much wastage.  The husks we leave to dry out,  also the shells,  and during the year we wash out and flat pack the 1 litre milk and juice cartons.  Then this time of the year we stuff them full with the dried almond husks and shells,  and use them as fire starters/bricks in the wood burner.  The foil liner from the carton gets removed when the ash tray is emptied.  So far although we've spent a couple of hours every afternoon doing some part of the almond process,  we have only 3 large jars of ready to use almonds,  3 large tubs ready to shell but we have 19 cartons packed with burnable waste!

And finally a photo,  I'm still using a small ish camera of Johns,  but you know what it's like, when you've had a camera that you are happy with,  that you know how to use comfortably - well this one isn't ideal for me, but here is a picture of our pear tree in all it's Autumn glory.  For such a small tree it gave us a lot of pears this year.