Gardening and Grape Sorbet

I’m not a gardener. At all. To me, gardening is a chore, like cleaning. The only things in our garden that get looked after are the edible things – and even then it’s only a water here and there. When we bought our house, it came with an established mandarin and orange tree, a grape vine, and a mint shrub. Our first summer in the house, we discovered some cherry tomatoes must have self-sown and popped up down the back. I have grand plans to plant more of a vege and herb garden, but so far it has extended only to a jalapeno shrub, a few citrus trees and a few sickly looking herbs on my kitchen window sill. Eventually I will get the motivation, because there is nothing better than fresh herbs and they are so expensive to buy when you use them in the quantities I do. But in the meantime, I will continue to reap the benefits of someone else’s labour and use the abundance of mandarins, grapes and mint that grow in our backyard. (Stay tuned for my mojito cheesecake!)

 

That’s not to say I don’t like our garden, I love being outside. I have two favourite spots in our garden – a coffee table/bench set-up that we’ve affectionally named ‘date corner’. That’s where my husband and I have drinks and dinners outside to make it feel a bit more relaxed and un-windy and ‘special’ than having it where we do every other meal. And this grape vine gazebo, which we deck out for summer entertaining. In the heat of summer, it’s a good few degrees cooler than anywhere else shady in the yard and it’s just so darn laid back. At the moment we are LOADED with grapes. Thousands of them. It’s brilliant. My husband picks a big bowl full, blends them up and sieves them out to make the thickest, yummiest juice.

 

Reading through various food blogs the other day, I came across a recipe with grape sorbet on The First Mess, and thought I would steal some of the juice to make my own. (I say steal, because my husband doesn’t like sorbet). Our grapes are super sweet at the moment, so I’ve added a touch of lime juice from the original, and a little ground ginger, because I was in a gingery kinda mood. I’m currently loving eating a scoop of this with my breakfast on the weekends, or as dessert with a scoop of coconut ice cream. They pair beautifully.

 

Grape & Ginger Sorbet

2 cups grape juice
1 cup water
1 cup agave nectar

2 tbsps lime juice
½ teaspoon ginger powder

Put all ingredients in a large jug apart from lime juice and whisk like crazy to mix. Taste for sweetness, add lime juice if necessary

Place grape mixture into an ice cream machine and follow manufacturer’s instructions.