Grapevine

What do you do when you walk into the garden for the first time in months, to do the autumn pruning, and realize that the grapevine you've been saying bad things about all summer is heaving with bounty? You thought it was shriveling but it just won't die.
I ended up picking two huge bowls of grapes, more than everyone in my family could eat before they went off.
I used about half of it to make syrup for the trifle for the Aviation dinner. You put the grapes, vines and all, in a large pot and cover with cover with water, heat very gently for a couple of hours (if it's boiled it will taste vegetably), leave to cool overnight and then pass through a fine sieve. Yummy. If you reduce the juice for a few hours you get a rich almost syrup, no sugar needed, which makes a nice jelly (cold food tastes less flavorful so you have to make sure it's a little sweeter than you would usually have).
Grapes are nice too frozen, as a snack.
I also made some raisins.
Grapes go in,
Raisins come out
There are a lot of options of how to make raisins on the internet, good old sunshine is the best but not practical for me, I don't have a dehydrator (yet), so ended up using the oven. A nice, cozy 7 hours on 95C fan assisted.
'But Sasha' you say 'I can't run my oven for 7 hours, what do you think I am, a millionaire?'
Well it doesn't actually cost that much, maybe a pound, srsly. But if you're really worried use the oven to cook other things at the same time. Meringues need slow, low cooking for example. Or you could slow roast some of the last summer tomatoes for a sauce.
'But Sasha! I don't want my raisins to taste like vegetables!!'
Dude, use a roasting bag, they're awesome.

As a bonus I finally decided to give myself some time to try and make dolmades from scratch. I vaguely followed the instructions in Vefa's Kitchen for the most basic simple vegan version.
What you do is blanch the fresh leaves in water for a few minutes, then fill with a rice, herb and oil mixture, roll up and cook gently in stock for an hour. The leftover blanched leaves can be stored in the freezer.
Wah-lah!