Hunter Gatherer

Gregg went off out at the crack of dawn this morning to shoot some bunnies. We're having some friends round for a BBQ this evening and the request was for some of Jamie Olivers E.F.R., Essex Fried Rabbit. We've had it before at friends and it is really very tasty. I know it's not everyones cup of tea, but personally I think rabbit is just like chicken, but a lot tastier, a bit more gamey. Unless of course it's your own home reared free range chicken which is just the best. So, at about 7am, just as I was starting to think about getting up, the hunter returned with 3 rabbits, gutted and skinned and ready for cooking, good lad!

For all the vegetarians out there, we're not just going to be feasting on meat, I'm doing lots of salads from the garden too and I'm going to give Sarah Ravens Barbequed New Carrots recipe a go along with some courgettes thrown in as we're growning with them.

Have a good weekend.

L x

Eating from the garden and our new arrival

Today I have had a good feed from the garden, strawberries for breakfast, and then other than the cream and peas (ours aren't quite ready yet!) tea was all from the veggie patch too. I made myself a courgette & mint frittata, very yummy indeed, even though I am not a big egg eater.

Here's the recipe, you'll need:

a couple of potatoes sliced thinly (ours were freshly dug up from the garden tonight)

1 small courgette thinly sliced with a veggie peeler

a handful of fresh or frozen peas

some mint leaves chopped up (I used basil mint, very yummy)

4 free range eggs (or a goose egg and a hen egg is a good combo)

a dollop of cream (or milk if you want to be healthier)

salt and pepper

grated parmesan

Pop the potatoes into pan of boiling water and cook, add the peas after about 5 minutes. Place a sieve on top of the pan and steam the courgette strips. Meanwhile, beat your eggs and add the cream, mint leaves and some seasoning. Once the potatoes and peas are cooked, drain them through the sieve with the courgettes.

Heat a large frying or omelette pan with a little olive oil in it. Add the egg mixture and then the veggies and evenly distribute them around the pan with a fork.

Cook this over a medium heat for a bout 10 minutes or until the bottom is golden. You should be able to shuggle it about in the pan.

Grate some parmesan over the top and then place under a hot grill to cook the top and brown it off.

I made a little pesto and creme fraiche dip to have with mine tonight, it was really tasty.

On Monday night, we had to do one of the hardest things ever, we had to chose our puppy from a litter of 6. Sorry, did I forget to mention we were getting a black lab pup.......?!!! Oh well, we must be mad but hey ho! So, we halved the problem as we decided to have a girl, the litter was 3 girls and 3 boys.

We went from 3........

to two..........

to one........

The lovely little lady above is coming home with us on 3rd August, we can't wait.

L xxx

A wintry Easter weekend

It was to be expected I suppose, given that Easter is so early this year, that we would have snow in between fleeting visits of the sunshine. We've just had the most horrendous blast of wind, hail and snow all mixed together, and now the sun is out in it's full glory, Spring showers in their truest form I think.

The above cherry blossom tree hasn't quite come out yet this year, when it does it puts on a beautiful show of tiny delicate pink flowers. I've brought some branches in and hung the Easter decorations from them, the stove is lit so hopefully the warmth will bring the buds out fairly soon.

The dining room also looks a bit like a florists shop at the moment, jugs and jugs of daffodils and masses of branches of flowering currant. Gregg will come home and complain that it smells of cat pee, but I quite like the smell, I think it's almost earthy, a real spring smell. I've volunteered to do the flowers in Church tomorrow for Sundays service, so hopefully the daffodils will come out in the warmth of the stove too. One of the joys of living in the sticks is that there is still a lot of "by the gatepost" selling. The daffodils came from a local farm, they leave a couple of crates with bunches made up and an honesty box, 25p a bunch and locally grown, so a dozen bunches were bought for the church.

Our little enterprise of selling by the gate is also doing well, we now have 20 chickens and a bunch of regular customers that either collect their eggs or I deliver them on a Friday when I'm down in the village. It was Easter last year that we put the sign up, it still amazes me that we get so many people popping in, especially walkers with a little room in their rucksack to squeeze in a half dozen eggs!

Some of you might remember that we hatched our first lots of chicks last year, 9 in total, 3 hens and 6 cockerels. The three hens are doing great, one of them is a real little madam, she jumps up and pecks me on the leg every morning, although I am getting wise to her now! I'm obviously not quick enough in giving them their grain! Anyway, your probably thinking, what did we do with the six cockerels? Well, one of them went to a small holding up the road and as far as I'm aware he's still doing well. We ate the other 5. They were delicious. I'm now thinking we should hatch some free ranging table birds and then start to breed them for ourselves to eat all year round. We shall see, we need a bit more land and I'm still working on that one, hence the reason we have no pigs as yet :(

We also had to despatch our much loved cockerel William, he was very ill with an infection that hadn't cleared up, so he's now buried in the garden. I cried when we had to do that but it didn't bother me at all when we had to kill the others that we ate. I quite happily plucked them and got them ready to roast for Sunday night supper. So, we now have William II, he's another Welsummer cockerel and is enjoying strutting his stuff in front of the ladies and crows away quite the thing on top of the fence post.

I also mentioned the other day that I had to try and catch one of our drakes, we currently have 2 drakes and 3 ducks, all Indian Runners, as our little call ducks got eaten by something when they decided to sit on eggs and we couldn't find them to bring them in at night. Anyway, as you can imagine, with it being Spring and all, the drakes are rather randy at the moment and have decided that three ladies is just not enough for them, so our two chinese white geese, Florence and Felicity, have been getting chased to the point where they dissappear down the burn and don't know how to find their way back! One of the drakes has to go, we could eat him, but I'm going to give him back to Diana (pottery friend!) as she's just lost her drake to the fox. He has been given a reprieve at the moment as I've not had time to go up to the pottery, maybe this weekend, then hopefully peace will be regained in the hen house!

So, I hope you all have a lovely Easter weekend, we'll be dodging the snow showers, hopefully getting some more studio building done and a bit of gardening. We might even go and roll some eggs!

Love,

L x

Friday already and family fun

Can't quite believe that it's Friday already, where has the week gone? Maybe it's the fact that we've actually had a proper, summery week of weather up here, washing blowing on the line every day. You know what it's like when you've had visitors, the washing machine is on for about a week after they've left and you always find the odd sock that doesn't belong to you.

Linda, Ian, Hayley, Jordan and Joshie (aunt, uncle and cousins) arrived on Saturday afternoon, thankfully bringing some decent weather with them. We left the boys to put up the marquee and us girls headed off to the berry fields to pick strawberries and raspberries for Sundays pudding. Then we had a mass cookathon on Saturday night, marinading a couple of joints of meet from here, making the chocolate slab cake that was in last months Country Living mag (it's delicious by the way!) and generally catching up.

It was going to be a simple affair, lots of good home cooked food, straw bales to sit on, tables borrowed from the local village hall and foxgloves in jugs on the tables.

Sunday arrived with lots of sun and all of the visitors, nobody got lost on their way here and we all had a marvellous day. There were 30 of us in total and two babies, enough food to feed an army and much fun was had. A very competitive game of football was played, a dead frog was placed in a Prada shoe and another dam was built in the burn.

It made me realise how important family is to me, how important my family is to me and Gregg. We've been together ten years this week, he is as much a part of my family as I am, he's been welcomed with open arms and accepted as part of my life, the way it should be with your extended family. That means a hell of a lot to me right now.

Our home comes into itself when it's full of life, kids running around, laughter filling the air, just general happiness buzzing about the place. It was a very special day, my mum and her five brothers and sisters all together, my grandparents watching most of their grandchildren running around with each other and two great grandchildren bouncing about on folks knees. Bliss.


After the last of the visitors left late on Monday morning the house seemed very quiet, I hate it when it's like that. Never mind, we'll just have to do it again next year.

For Robin........

Robin, as requested, here's the recipe for the sponge and butter cream icing from my previous post..................

Victoria Sandwich Cake

175g butter or marg. softened

175g caster sugar
3 medium eggs beaten

175g self-raising flour, sifted

Grease and base line two 18cm sandwich tins.
Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each addition.

Fold in half the flour, using a large metal spoon or a plastic spatula, then fold in the remainder.

Divide the mixture between the two tins and level off the surface with a palette knife.

Bake in the centre of the oven at 190 degrees C (375 degrees F) or gas mark 5 for about 20 minutes. The cakes should be well risen, golden on top and spring back when lightly pressed in the centre.

Loosen the edges with a knife and leave in the tins for about 5 minutes.

Turn them out of the tin, remove the lining paper and place on a wire rack to cool.

Putting it all together.

For the buttercream icing put 75g of soft unsalted butter in a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy. Gradually add 175g of seived icing sugar, a few drops of vanilla essence, a splash of milk and the tiniest little drop of red food colouring. Beat well until nice and smooth.

I used some home made strawberry jam to sandwich the two sponges together or alternatively you could use rasp jam too. Then spread the butter cream icing over the top of the cake. I used mini eggs dotted around the cake but frosted violas would also look very pretty.

Mass baking

Last night I took myself off into the kitchen to have a mass baking session. I love baking, especially when it involves using up lots of our free range eggs. So, I asked the birthday boy (Gregg) what kind of cakes he would like for his birthday as I was planning on making him one to have tonight and one to take into the office with him today. The request was for a carrot cake and a sponge cake and I also suggested I'd make him a tray of mars bar crispie cake as he rather likes that too.When we were at the CL Fair last week he kept pestering me for mini eggs as I'd made some little jars of treats - jam jars filled with mini eggs with a fabric lid, tied with a ribbon and a cute little hand written tag. Like last year they sold really well and we also had a little bowl of eggs on the counter for people to help themselves to, quite a nice little touch I thought. So he knew I had a bag stashed in one of the boxes but I wouldn't tell him where they were as I knew he'd eat them all! I'm such a spoil sport aren't I?!! So I've made him what looks very much like an Easter cake for his birthday to make up for my stingyness last week! It's just a simple victoria sponge with home made strawberry jam in the middle and pink butter cream icing on the top, not quite sure what he'll think of that little touch!!

As promised, here are some photos of the pots that I did for display at the fair, just another little touch that I though looked rather sweet dotted around the stall. So many people asked if they were for sale and there were nearly a few flower heads pulled off as people were convinced they were artificial - really, what next?

Birthday boy and I are are heading out tonight, we thought we'd head down to Dundee for a bite to eat, we've been recommended to go to a Turkish restaurant, so we might give that a bash.

Speak to you all tomorrow!

L x

Sweet Valentines..........

Do you remember when you were little, waiting on the postie arriving in the morning, was there going to be any Valentines cards for you? Or even worse, would there be one for your brothers or sisters and not one for you? If Valentines Day fell on a school day they had a "Valentines Post Box" in both our primary and secondary schools, it caused great hilarity, and you could get up to all sorts of mischief sending naughty cards - not that I ever did of course! ;O)

Today I got one lovely card and a bunch of flowers, in return I have baked a chocolate cake and never quite got round to making that card.......................oops! Much creativeness has been going on in the workroom today though, so that's my excuse. At last I feel as if I'm getting somewhere, lots of new products have been flying off the sewing machine, all of which I'm really pleased with, I'll maybe show you some of them nearer the time of the fair..............!!

I'll leave you with a picture (sorry it's not the greatest photo) of our yummy cake - well I hope it will be! I've used some of our lovely blue duck eggs to make it! Gregg is busy making the supper, fillet steaks (from a local farm), dauphinoise potatoes and fresh veg from the organic shack down the road, mmmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Happy Valentines Day to you all, whats is everyone doing tonight I wonder?

L xx

Do not read if you're a vegetarian.............

The other night there was a knock at the door at about 9pm, I was in alone and thought "who on earth is it at this time of night?" Well, when I opened the door (with Chrissie at my feet incase it was someone dodgy!!) I got a bit of a shock. It was our neighbour with a brace of duck for me, shot that day. Hmm, what do I do with these was my intial thought, but being the thankful neighbour that I am, I gratefully received them and accepted the instructions as to how to "deal" with them. "Don't bother plucking them, too many feathers, just slice them open and cut out the breast!" was the instruction - boy could I have done with Hugh F-W! I left them hanging at the front door overnight while I deliberated over my dilemma. Gregg wasn't home until this morning, so do I deal with them myself or be a wimp and leave them for him? I very pathetically opted for the latter!

So, Gregg got to it this afternoon, with me watching, he's skinned a mink before so kind of knew what he was doing! After a bit I got bored and decided that I was probably never going to have to do this kind of thing so I didn't really need to know, a bit pathetic, eh! I didn't think you'd really appreciate photos of him skinning the duck, so I'll spare you the gory details.

It has brought us back to a conversation we have constantly, one of our main reasons for moving to the sticks and having some land was so that we could be more self sufficient. We have just over an acre at the moment, enough to keep the chickens, geese and ducks, a large veggie plot and lots of room for growing flowers. We'd love to have a bit more land, ideally the field across the burn from us would be perfect. My dream is to Keep Tamworth pigs, breed them, some for selling and some for the freezer. I'd also like to keep sheep, again to sell, for the freezer and for their wool, ideally a rare breed too as we would then at least feel as if we were contributing to the preservation of our rare breeds. I quite fancy an Anglo Nubian goat too, but that's more for a pet and just for the fun of having a mad goat, she would of course have to be called Gertie!

So, we were sat at the table this evening enjoying our duck, although I have to say I did find it a bit weird eating meat that still had feathers and a head attached to it a few hours ago? Gregg asked me the question that he asks me all the time whenever I'm whittering on about this menagerie of animals that we're going to acquire "so, do you think you'd be able to take one of your little piggies or lambs down to the abatoir for slaughter and then enjoy a nice Sunday roast?". Hmm, I think I could, I would love to think that we will one day, but how will I actually feel when it comes to eating it? Only time will tell, I know for a fact though that if we do get all these animals I won't be able to use the excuse "but they're our pets", from the outset they will always be destined for the freezer, maybe that will help me get my head around it.

I'll leave you with a picture of our supper, pan fried duck breast on mashed potato, veg and a good dollop of leftover home made cranberry sauce! It was rather tasty...........