Blending in

We bought a food processor/blender type thing the other week because we were going to eat healthy soups and smoothies and things well drink healthy soups and smoothies and things.

First Saturday big mistake we started the day off with a breakfast smoothie, lunch was a wholesome veggie soup this had the unsurpring effect that by teatime we were both  . . . well lets say we had to open the windows. OK lets tell it like it is we were farting like vikings. (apologies to any vikings out there but it is a turn of phrase that amuses us both greatly that we probably heard on some comedy somewhere apologies also to whoever's turn of phrase it was before we nicked it and used it and probably constantly misquoted it )

So we quickly cut back on the vegetation to the breakfast smoothie while our ancient digestive systems adapt. It might not seem like much vegetation to you but TS semi seriously told me tonight that he'd read somewhere that you could overdose on nuts so you get an idea of the baseline we are starting from here. This was incidently while he was eating a bun that had some of the flour replaced by ground hazelnuts which brings me to my next point.

Obviously the odd smoothie is not really a good return on our investment in the food smashing up/spinning round machine so in addition to smoothies it's moonlighting on cakes and scones and we are telling ourselves that they are bound to be healthier than shop bought ones.

Roll on the light mornings and nights so we can start cycling to work. Did I tell you we'd started cycling? Yes well that's another story. I did make a start on fitness by walking to work last Monday but I fell and had to go to A&E and get my ankle x-rayed it wasn't broken just soft tissue damage which I think is A&E code for what are you bothering us for. They did give me a nice leaflet with ankle strengthening excercises in though.

Oh and TS has confessed he had two smoothies this morning and by lunchtime he was letting rip with such ferocity he was startling the cats

Pumpkins and stuff

The first of the pumpkin harvest and a busy cooking day.

Cornish pasties (nothing to do with pumpkins but anyway a batch of 14 for the freezer)

Butternut squash soup was the next on the list to be followed by an attempt at pumpkin pie.

The large orange pumpkins were from a volunteer plant. I didn't have a big enough, sharp enough knife to slice through one but TS came to the rescue with his wood splitting axe and split one in four for me.

We were so busy chopping up this pumpkin and turning it into puree that I accidently invented a new recipe, butternut squash and ginger mash. This involves a couple of cloves of garlic, an onion, a carrot, a potato, a teaspoon of ginger, lovage and coriander leaves, two butternut squashes and a litre of vegetable stock. Combine as if for soup ie sweating veg first in butter then adding stock then forget about it while you wrestle with an oversized pumpkin so that the stock is absorbed by the veg and the excess boils away and the vegetables will mash with a fork. But catch it just before it starts catching on the pan. Delicious! I might try making it on purpose next time.

Just waiting for the pumpkin pie to cool now. If we like it I've got another 5lbs of pumpkin puree on standby.

Get me

I can do beef madras now.

Just thought I'd share that with you as I'm rather proud.

The Measure of a Meal

For some reason I have been glued to the last two episodes of Masterchef. I haven't watched this in ages and it's a far cry from Lloyd Grossman I can tell you. But then again you probably know this.

Instead of making their best three courses chosen by themselves the poor contestents are now given a series of very scary challenges like cooking for Michelin starred chefs and weddings and stuff. It's edge of the seat stuff I can tell you.

Inspired I decided to up the stakes in my cooking this week. Emboldened by the switch from Khaki Flosam & Jetsam Vegetable Soup to soup with named ingredients and real colours I thought I know I'll do a curry from scratch, then when we finally get back to our little corner of paradise TS will only be missing real ale.

Off I went to the co-op since TS was unavailable for shopping expeditions seeing as he was back on his favourite job. I bought the garum masala, cumin, tumeric, coriander, chilli etc etc. Called in the butchers for some diced lamb. Went back to the co-op for yoghourt and ginger. Went home checked out recipes. Went back to the co-op for onions and naan bread.

In the end I got sick of going to the co-op and settled on Lamb Rogan Josh accompanied by Saag Aloo and Naan Bread. No more hotline to Ali's Curry House I thought as I chopped the onions and laid all the spices out on a little dish like they do on the telly programs. Then I made my very first curry from scratch.

TS was duly appreciative of the spicy scents wafting round the house when he got in from the first part of his 14 hours counting taxis. I filled up his plate and he made all the right noises.

Then today he admitted yes it seemed to have all the right ingredients but it didn't quite come together. "But I ate it all" he said "that's the true measure of a meal". Which would of been comforting except it came from someone who eats tins of beans with sausages in them.

Better not throw that takeaway number away just yet I guess.

More Christmas Stuff n Nonsense

Ha Hah ! Christmas is almost sorted.


The spooky pathetic lights are up on the tree outside and the holly and mistletoe and shiny things are up inside.


We have been invited out for Christmas Dinner so my proud record of only ever cooking one remains unbroken (even then I somehow managed to let the turkey go off and had to make an emergency dash to blag half of my Mum and Dad's).




Sissy is also invited out with us for lunch which means our hostess will be cooking and serving it not in her house but in their gite next door.

You see Sissy lives up to her name she is a dog who is scared of everything. The chickens, plastic bags, new blankets, the sweeping brush . . .

"Lurchers" someone once said to us "they chase and kill everything" Not Sissy. Sissy pretends she can't see things other dogs would chase, she suddenly finds a blade of grass unusually interesting while looking at the "prey" out of the corner of her eye. Once any danger of catching it is past she will spring into action and then look at us as if to say "damn if my attention hadn't been caught by that grass I would of had that!"

The last time we took Sissy with us their elderly cat chased her through the cat flap (it is quite a big one the cat flap not the cat) So dinner will be served next door to make sure Sissy isn't bullied by their cat.


As for Christmas just buying presents, sending cards and getting the vittles in then. Work of a moment! (I wish)

They're not Barbara's They're Mine

Eating rock cakes the other day with Debra in France started me off on a craving for buns that I remembered that were just like rock cakes but without the currants and with jam in the middle. You know the ones. We made them at school.

Delia was no help. This set me off surfing the net (as we say in the trade) for a recipe. My problem was that I couldn't remember what they were called. The only name that sprang to mind was Barbaras and I knew that wasn't the proper name. That name comes from a rather flat chested canteen lady's unkind colleagues.

Well after many a fruitless search with the terms jam, cakes and rock cakes with jam I finally found a recipe that sounded more or less right under jam buns. The next thing to do was of course make some to try it out.

The left hand picture is my first sad attempt which morphed into Super Size Me jam bun. Of course it still had to be eaten and there was only one person around to do it. After all you can't give something like that to a guest now can you? And the chickens are still being little Bs so they weren't getting any.

Because I'm a bit of a trooper I tried again tonight and the right hand picture is today's effort. A little bit more like I remember but if I was Barbara I would still be worried. When I have bravely eaten my way through this lot (by bed time I reckon). Then I shall try again, in fact, I shall eat as many as it takes to achieve perfection.

Perhaps after another half a dozen goes Debra can come round for coffee.

. . . and another soup

Chestnut and Celery Soup

1. Look up lots of chestnut soup recipes on internet and find that you don't have ingredients for any single one so get a general feel and go with what you've got.

2. Go to barn and jump up and down to reach sack of chestnuts hung just out of reach by absent husband

3. Weigh out a pound and half of chestnuts as detailed in only recipe that didn't measure everything in cups. (what is it with these people that they can't use proper weights and measures?)

4. Cut X in each very slippy chestnut with dangerously sharp knife while cat "helps" by batting chestnuts all over kitchen floor

5. Roast chestnuts in oven for twenty minutes then peel while still hot

6. Put chestnuts back in oven to get hot again and peel some more

7. Repeat 6 till you loose the will to live and finish up with a whole 8oz of mangled chestnuts and give the "leftovers" to chickens

8. Make a sandwich for lunch this soup will never be ready

9. Sweat the vegetables in pan then add chestnuts after you have probably discarded the bit that the cat tasted and spat out.

10. Simmer for ages then puree and taste.

11. Give to dog and make another sandwich for tea

One Soup . . .

You may, or may not be aghast to learn that I have never made soup. You might not care actually one way or the other about soup. I didn't. It was a tin from the back of the cupboard that you opened when you absolutely positively could not be arsed to go out to buy something and didn't have the money for pizza delivery.

As for the idea of making soup WHY?

That is until last week when the supermarket had an incredibly good deal on leeks. They were such good value that I just had to buy the 3kg sack (you know one of those stringy sack things that just look so farmy and vegetabley).

So I got Delia down from the shelf and looked at the pristine pages of soup recipes (the pudding pages particularly are piratically scratch and sniff, actually that should of been practically but the spell checker preferred piratically and so do I now).

Leek and potato soup what a success. Now followed by pea soup and vegetable soup. In fact there is a pan of soup on the stove as I type. It's easy and you make it out of just about nothing. Why did no one tell me or why did I not listen?

Soup is hereby added to list of things I have never made till I got here along with omlettes and pancakes.

Don't laugh I was sixteen before I learnt to fry an egg and married several years before I could make chips. At this rate we'll be having yorkshire puddings. Now they really are pointless.

Homework and Working on the Home

Hedgewizard asked for a review of How to Store Your Garden Produce by Piers Warren and I thought OK why not, but then it felt a bit like a homework assignment and I worried about my grade. So I'll just tell you about it and leave reviews to reviewers.

It's not one of those coffee table books that have you drooling over luscious pictures of chutney taken in a designer farmhouse kitchen.

It's a small paperback about 100 pages illustrated with fairly simple cartoons and it's in two parts.

Part One is an overview of preserving methods. What I like about this part is that things are reduced to their most basic principles eg jam requires 60% sugar by weight to inhibit the growth of bacteria. This gets me past the confusion as to what I'm doing for flavour and what is actually preserving the food and also past the wondering where to get various exotic ingredients and what you call them in French.

Part Two is an alphabetical list of commonly gown fruit and vegetables along with the best ways to store each one and where applicable a recipe for wine, jam etc for that fruit or vegetable.

So there you have it. Whether it would contain enough new information for someone well versed in all this stuff I don't know, but when you compare the £4.95 price tag to say the cost of a magazine it seems a reasonable price to pay to have all the information in one place.

One of the major problems we had in our preserving efforts was our cheap crappy LPG cooker and the things that hold the pans above the gas flame (as we call them in the trade) collapsing under the weight of large pans. All in all it's not very satisfactory.

Now we have a solution or we will have tomorrow for we have aquired a Rayburn (second hand at a v reasonable price). We used to have one on our narrowboat and it was an absolute treasure. It cooked our food, kept us warm, heated the water and even I couldn't break it. It did give the boat a slight list but that was a small price to pay. The big price was paid to get it on the boat. That took four men over an hour and was decidedly hairy at times.

I'm just glad I won't be involved in moving the Rayburn tomorrow. Now that's definetely a Tech Support job.

The fruits of our labours

Left to right gratuitous french beans, apricot jam, apricot pie filling, apricot chutney

Apricot Day

Today 14th July Bastille Day in France but in this house it is henceforth proclaimed Apricot Day.

Yesterday I took delivery of my 10kg of apricots from the grocery van.

Today we have been working subtle and cunning transformations upon them. Have we turned base fruit into gold? Yes sort of, for now we have (dadadadadadadaaaah)

Apricot Jam - the finest (and first) jam I have ever made
Apricot Chutney - the finest (and first) chutney I have ever made
Apricot Wine - the finest (and first) wine TS has ever made

OK strictly speaking the chutney won't be ready for a couple of months and the wine till next year, but apricots have been processed. If the wine and chutney are rubbish then they will never be mentioned again and you will be none the wiser.

The day started with panic looking at too many books and too many web sites. In the end we settled on How to Store Your Garden Produce by Piers Warren, got an idea of proportions ,then winged it. So the jam is simply 40% apricots 60% sugar. The chutney is apricots, onions, cider vinegar, red wine vinegar(didn't have enough cider vinegar), raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and ginger plus two spectacularly large but completely mild chilli peppers out of the garden. By the time it got to the wine I'd lost track but I'm sure TS almost definately won't of.

So if we don't die of food poisoning there'll be no stopping us now.

Only 5kg of apricots to go

Finding Mimo

Busy doing nothing. One of my favourite songs and our theme tune for this week

Except TS has made these rather good shelves from some planks he found in the barn we are debating whether to paint them to match the rest of the kitchen or leave them woody. Inertia will probably win out.

But in general we haven't got much done. Today for example we spent two hours looking for the kitten. Downstairs calling Mimo Mimo, upstairs Mimo Mimo, in the attic, in the cellar, in the garden, in the barn (no she doesn't go out but we were getting desperate). No she wasn't in the basket all the time we looked in the baskets ten times at least. But she appeared from that general vicinity.

When we weren't looking for Mimo we were putting the chickens back in their run. Four times if it was once (eventually we just took them down to the woods and left them to it) or scraping the cremated remains of meringue off the bottom of the cooker.

The meringue seemed to be the ideal way to use up the five egg whites left from the creme patisserie that took five egg yolks and use up the left over creme patisserie. In fact to generally concoct something sweet and yummy. Instead I concocted a previously unknown substance that resists all attempts to remove it. The settings on the cooker are only notional it seems and the choice is actually gas mark blast furnace or gas mark inferno. Yes it is definitely the cookers fault the cook is blameless.

The oven has only just been put into commission, it needed the burner changing for LPG but we couldn't find the burner until we took the back off the cooker. It's taken two months for our desire for pizza to overwhelm our desire not to bugger about pulling the cooker out and taking it to bits. Then we couldn't find the replacement burner which we'd put somewhere safe. In a box. But where was the box? That was three hours searching then.

The box had been turned into kitten proofing blocking up a hole in the bathroom. So although we looked and looked it was no longer the box with the cooker bits in it was kitten proofing and we just didn't see it.

Oh and we're blighted our beautiful spuds blighted. This is what happens I guess when it's either raining buckets or 28 degrees and the veg growing advice is based on the UK weather and the gardener doesn't use her brains. So since they've all flowered I'll follow "The Vegetable Expert" advice and cut off the haulms, leave the spuds in the ground for 10 days and then dig them up. Unless anyone has a better idea.

Stuff I have to buy so I don't have to buy stuff

Now that we are getting potatoes from the garden my thoughts naturally turn to storing and processing the bounty of produce to come. So of course I will make jams and chutneys and bottled fruits and tomatoes and store dried beans. I will freeze peas and green beans and fruits. I will dry walnuts and hazelnuts and chestnuts and make things with them that I have drooled over on the internet. There will be cider and homemade beer and wine.

All this marvellous food and drink for free!

No it bloody well isn’t.

For I shall have to buy big pans for making jams and chutneys even if I do without thermometers and funnels and tongs for lifting jars out of water and cherry stoners and apple corers and sieves, I shall have to buy jars. I shall have to buy storage tins for storing dried food. I shall have to buy a freezer to freeze food. I shall have to buy baking accoutrements like tins and rolling pins and pastry brushes and weighing scales. Brewing supplies like buckets and demi-johns and bottles and caps.

All this is before I start buying food to add to the food, things like sugar and vinegar, spices, flour, baking powder, yeast.

Admittedly much of the stuff is “an investment” and will be used many times. But it could all go horribly wrong and I will have all the possessions but no food. I could buy a lot of jars of jam, frozen peas, tins of tomatoes and sticky buns for that money all made by experts in their field, and have change for a recliner, parasol and a good book.

So at the end of the day I can’t produce food cheaper than I can buy it. All things considered. Unless I consider food miles, freshness, quality of life, job satisfaction and all the worthy green stuff, but I just wanted to moan about all the stuff that has to be bought so I won’t go into all that. I'd only be leaning on an open door or boring or both.

Self Sufficient Egg and Chips

Yay!

We've graduated from sandwiches to hot meals. From dinner to tea (or lunch to dinner if you're posh) in the self sufficiency stakes.

We now have the makings of a meal. We dug up our first few Charlotte potatoes today. (Not counting the one we dug up a couple of weeks ago to see what was happening down there)

No I didn't make chips (just how common do you think I am?) We have had them boiled in their skins with lots of butter and they were yummy and potatoey. I even went so far as to cook duck to go with them in a hastily concocted marmalade sauce (which is far indeed for someone as domestically challenged as I am). But the potatoes were the stars.

And yes we have had them at tea time

Potatoes! The official food of the Breezy Break!

ps Do we leave them and dig them up as we want them or dig them all up now?