Eglu Owner

Redcup

Because Starbucks have the REDCUPS!  I know it's sad but that's when I know it's Christmas.  Enjoyed my first Christmas beverage today!

Funny thing was I popped into town to visit the new Lakeland.  Which seemed a bit cramped compared to their normal stores.  I was astonished however at some of their prices, £15 for 3 jars of preserves?  I think I may be underpricing my homemade christmas hampers!

Town was mental too - it has to be near Christmas when that many people are out shopping.  As we drove home we saw a huge queue of traffic going into the Tesco home store - get a life people it's not worth queuing for!

Pasta Sauce

suet free mincemeat

I made the mistake of "popping" into the farm shop today for a few things.  They had boxes of baby plum tomatoes for £1.99 - one box, a 50p bag of onions and a 50p bag of peppers and I have enough pasta sauce to see me through winter - that really is a LARGE stock pot - it fills the Aga oven. 

Meanwhile in the baking oven I had another batch of suet free mincemeat on the go - for my christmas hampers, I'll be taking orders this year folks!  Whilst the roasting oven had a roast dinner in too - I really was using it to it's fullest for once today.

I read about these in the Omlet forum and I thought they looked delicious.  I looked at a recipe online and realised I could make them relativley fat free (certainly a LOT less fat than roasties so I had a go.  I was very pleased with them.

hassleback potatoes

• 

  prepared potatoes
  Place potato on wooden spoon
• Slice down at 3 to 4mm intervals - being on the spoon will stop you slicing right through
• Line a roasting tin with a piece of bake o glide (or don't if you want more washing up!)
• Sprinkle with sea salt
• Spray with spray oil - 2 sprays per potato
• Cook for 40 mins on second set of runners in the Aga roasting oven (200 in standard electric oven)

Serve with whatever topping you choose - I just sprinked over some grated cheese - they were delicious - crispy and perfect and not at all mashy.  I'd never heard of them before but when I showed them to her in the annexe she said she'd cooked them before and they used lots of oil - well not like this - a new favourite methinks!

cheese topped hassleback potatoes

To blog!

Mille is settling in wiht us beautifully - in fact as I type her head is on my knee and lovely and warm it is too!  This is her last night on the sofa - soppy old thing.

Mille relaxed

tree stump

Digger

Whilst we've been out and about we have met a local (rather rich) chap who owns lots of our village, he has just bought the disused pub a couple of hundred yards up the road and has been down there with his digger clearing and securing the property.  He lets James drive his digger and dropped me off this amazing stump for my garden.

Mille with stick

James in Oak

Of course when we are out walking Mille is around - she rather likes a stick to run around with too.  Just think we wouldnt' have had all this fun if we hadn't adopted Mille.  She is a total star, captivates everyone who meets her and Mum is now wondering why she resisted dog ownership.  We've even arranged for our regular pet sitter to look after her when we go on holiday so she doesn't have to go to kennels.  Interestingly her breed - Lagotto Romognolo - is used to hunt truffles in Italy - there are probably a fair few around here growing under the many oak trees - here James snuggles into a root hole on one of the smaller oaks!

Yes we got three more chickens - taking our total up to 15!  Funny - I remember Mum saying we could have 2.  I must have misheard!  Here are "the new girls" meeting the old girls, they are 2 cream legbars and a lovely little black and white bantam.

As they were adoptees they came with names - Yolky, Poach and Daisy.  Yolky and Poach are the legbars and one had been pecking at the other so they are kind of evolving into Beaky & Squeaky.

We adopted these three lovely girls when another lovely girl came to meet us.  Mille is a 5 year old Lagotto Ramognalo dog who was looking for a new home as her owners were off to live in Singapore.  Almost by chance I had found a dog that is cat, child and chicken friendly!  After a successful home visit with us we picked her up last Sunday.  Have walked the legs off her now!

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NOTHING tastes better than home produced food.  I started the day with an egg sandwich - our own eggs from our lovely girls on some crusty home made bread.  Three yolks too as one was a double yolker - thank you June!

Tonight I thought I'd have whatever I could pick.

Salad Veg

Three runner beans, a clutch of tomatos and a corn on the cob.  Now for me runner beans are a salad vegtable.  I don't like them cooked but I love them raw.  So far this year they have been disappointing and yet last year the yield was too much to handle.  The tomatos are doing well though, but I will post seperately about them later as I've a few interesting observations to make about growing them this year.  The sweetcorn is something I've not grown before and I'm very pleased with it.  This was the first one I've eaten and it was delicious.  James will be having one tomorrow.

Salad

Corn

To my salad I added some bought lettuce (I give up with lettuce - flaming slugs eat more than I ever get!) some home grown onion and some home grown beetroot.  Some of my dinner was minutes from garden to plate.  To cook the sweetcorn I just bung it in the roasting oven of the Aga for 45 minutes.  Leave the leaves on to be the cooking "jacket" and don't worry if there is a burning smell as it's just the outer leaves.  Its a perfect thing to cook in the Aga - very simple, pick, bung in, eat 45 mins later - it doesn't get simpler than that does it? 

One of my favrourite breads.  I like to make this and change things around with the toppings - it always comes out light in the middle and crisp on the outside.  I tend to either make it in the half size Aga baking tray or a couple of 8" cake tins - or this time I used 1 cake tin and split the rest of the mix between 4 food rings to make some small roll sized ones.  I like the thickness so rather than go for a roll which will spread I constrain my mix to get a thick, high loaf.  I also use the food processor to mix and knead - keeps the kitchen cleaner than kneading by hand!

Focaccia Recipe

• 500g of strong white bread flour (or Tipo 00 flour but bread flour seems just as good!)
• 1 1/2 tsp of salt
• 2 tsp dried yeast
• 6 sprigs of chopped fresh rosemary
• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 300ml hand hot water

1. Put the flour, salt and rosemary into the blender (with dough hook attached), turn on to minimum setting whilst you add the yeast then the olive oil.  Gradually stir in the warm water.  Process for about 2 minutes to knead - the dough will be quite wet
2. Spray a bowl with oil and place the dough in.  Cover with oiled cling film or a wet tea towel.  Leave next to the Aga (or other warm place) for up to 2 hours, until it has doubled in size
3. Turn out your dough onto a lightly floured board and knock it back with your hands then knead by hand for another minute. 
4. Place dough into your chosen tin, push it out to the edges, cover again and leave to rise for another hour
5. Prepare your topping with a couple of tablespoons of Extra virgin olive oil, some more chooped or sprigged rosemary and anything else you like.  In this one I added some chopped onion, sliced tomato and peppers and after putting this on the loaf I added some chunks of goats cheese.
6. Dip your fingers in your oily topping and press dimples all over your loaf.  Add your toppings, pushing some into your dimples, sprinkle with sea salt
7. Bake in the roasting oven (or at 220/gas mark 7) for about 25 minutes until golden brown - adding a bowl of water to the oven will help to create the humidity of a bread oven.
8. Allow to cool a little but tastes great hot!

Home made breads like this are great to take to parties - this also freezes well!  This recipe is low in saturated fat - you could probably take out a little of the olive oil for the topping too if you were really slimming!  Remember most bought loaves contain far more fat and sugar than anything you will make yourself.  Making bread really isn't that hard - most of the making is really just waiting - 5 minutes of mixing in the food processor and another 5 minutes of knocking back, kneading and adding toppings is all that it takes from you! 

A delicious tangy alternative to traditional orange marmalade.  Oranges are often far more expensive too - our local cheap farm shop has red or pink grapefruit at knockdown prices all year round, for this batch I bought 7 for a pound and thats made 9 jars!  I like this method of making marmlade too, not to fiddly and still delicious (of course I don't really eat marmalade myself, I prefer jam but this is both a great gift and a great seller at the gate).  This also makes the house smell wonderfully citrusy. 

Grapefuit Marmalade (good with any grapefruit - best colour with red)

• 1 kilo grapfruit
• 1 lemon
• 1.3 litres water
• 1.4kg warmed sugar

1. Wash the fruit.
2. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the rind, cut into strips with a sharp knife and add to your preserving pan. (I cut half into strips then blitz the rest in the food processor for less chunky marmalade)
3. Cut the fruit in half and squeeze out the juice (take a look in your cupboard - you may find a juicer that fits on your food processor and that really makes short work of the juicing!)
4. Add juice to your preserving pan and put pips and membranes into a muslin bag.  Throw away shells.
5. Add the water to the pan, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for a couple of hours when the rind is tender.
6. Allow to cool then squeeze the muslin bag over the pan.
7. Put back on heat and add the sugar, stirring over a low heat until it's dissolved.
8. Bring back to the boil
9. Boil until reaching setting point
10. Remove the pan from the heat, leave to cool then bottle as usual.
    

Cheese on toast or pizza quicky...

Lightly toast whatever rolls are to hand - this one was a panini (amazing what I can find in the "bread freezer" nextdoor!).  Topped with grated cheese, onion and tomatoes freshly picked from the garden and sliced.  For added bite I put on dollops of last years green tomato chutney - you can forget how good that tastes but this has reminded me to pick a bunch of green ones again this year!  Grill in the aga until the cheese is melted.  Add some basil leaves from the garden and serve accompaied with home grown beetroot.  Yummy.

Our garden is rather short of fruit trees (except the 6 I've planted but the fruit count from them so far is 3 apples - LAST year not a sausage this...).  We do have a tree with little yellow cherry plums which are quite nice and another with damsons.  Neither saw a single fruit last year but both are doing brilliantly this year.  The yellow plums are ripe and falling from the tree (but ignored by chickens!) So I went out this afternoon and picked a couple of kilos from those within reach.  I knocked up some jam straight away.

Cherry Plum Jam (good with any plums)

• 1 kilo of plums
• 3/4 pint water
• 800g sugar
• 2 tbsps lemon juice

Wash the plums thoroughly add to maslin pan with water.

Bring to the boil for about 5 minutes whilst skins pop and fruit bursts

Add sugar and stir until dissolved

Boil for about 10 minutes until a rolling boil is achieved

Using a slotted spoon stir and remove all the stones (can be time consuming!)

Test for set using your preferred method

Allow to cool slightly to reduce bubbling

Pour into sterilised jars and seal using your usual method

I have to say this jam is wonderful.  Shame I'm trying to lose a few pounds!  Whilst picking these yellow plums I realised there is a heavily laden Victoria plum tree in nextdoors garden right by our fence, Mum is going to ask if we can have some picking rights in return for eggs & jam - we both love our Victorias! 

I realised we had them before our holiday - but we were off that day and time was tight as I had a bouncy castle out that day and it had to be collected right before we got in a taxi to the airport so I just hosed down the Eglus and threw a load of powder in.  There were only a few in the Purple cube but quite a lot in the green.  As I feared I hadn't got rid of them but they didn't get too bad in the 11 days we were away.

The red mite

This time I tackled them properly.

2 cubes completely dismantled

2 cubes in pieces

Both thouroughly blasted with the Karcher - pic of Mum as I was etting soaked in a bikini - NOT a pretty sight!

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All left out in the sun for the afternoon then thouroughly sprayed with poultry shield and all dustaths and housing doused with diatom. Fingers crossed there is no sign today.....