win your own fruit garden

Winter.

Rain. Grey. More rain. Not much incentive to go outside.

Thankfully, the good people at Rocket Gardens are a jolly sort and have given us a very good reason to get out, keep fit and assuage our biscuit cravings by doing a spot of gardening.

You see, right now is the perfect time of year to start planting soft fruit in preparation for crumbles, summer puds and jam making.

And they've very kindly given us one of their lovely fruit gardens to give away to one of our lovely drinkers right here in Ireland (don't worry, we'll make sure it gets here really safely, no matter how much bubblewrap it takes).

All you need to do to bag yourself one is tell us your most memorable fruit pie/crumble/pudding experience.

Post your answers below by Wednesday 4th February and come next autumn, you could be running your very own black market fruit pie operation (with a nice sideline in preserves).

Comments

[Anne Henderson]

Many years ago we were on holiday in Sligo my Grandmother invited two elderly bachelor neighbours for Sunday Lunch - she had made one of her wonderful Apple Pies which she always served with cream - it was only later that we discovered that she had served it with the Yorkshire Pudding batter instead of the cream - they were so polite - they never said a word!!!

[Gillian]

My most memorable fruit pie experience is from when I was a young child.
We used to have blueberry plans all over our family's vacation home. We shared this home with my many cousins and we often went fruit picking to seeing how many we could get. More often than not we would eat more than we brought back.
The main reason for the picking of the blueberries was to get our Granmother to make us a blueberry pie. Her pies were legendary. I remember my Dad telling us that when we had Gran's pies, it was the only time in OUR LIVES!! we could lick the plate. And let me tell you, everyone from my grandfather to my baby cousins licked those plates clean.
One day on our fruit picking adventures we decided that we would gather enough berries for Gran to make us a pie. This was the height of the blueberry season and we, in all our 8 year old knowledge, thought we could get enough for a pie. So we set out with our indivdual yogurt cups (the best way to hold blueberries in our very informed opinion) and tried to gather as many blueberries as possible. By the end of it, myself and my cousins had gathered at least 1 whole cup of blue berries. So off to Grandmothers house we went with our blueberries and our blueberry stained mouths and delivered the blueberries with so much pride our chests nearly burst. And when we asked Gran if we had enough blue berries for a pie, she looked at us and told us: "You have enough for two."
That night as we tucked into our pies, bursting with blueberries we congratulated ourselves on a job well done. Gran could so not have made those pies without our help.
It was only later (about 15 years later)That gran told us that we brought her only about 20 blueberries and she had sent Gramps out to get more from the shops.
Like 2 lbs more.

[rachel nevins]

my grandma used to make apple crumble with a twist...she'd soak the apples in brandy!one christmas,after dessert and when all the adults were feeling a bit tipsy...me and my cousins fed the brandy-drenched apples to our 3 year old cousin and watched him run through the brand new telly with a bucket on his head!that thing was barely out of the box....