Rhubarb

 Too much early rhubarb! After 3 crumbles in two weeks we needed some new recipes. Rhubarb Syllabub from BBC Food web site. (Minus the wine). Stewed the rhubarb with "lazy" paste ginger and castor sugar and made the mix of mascarpone and double cream with icing sugar. Topped with pistachio nuts. Small glass was more than enough of this yummy mix.

Nearly better

 Thank you for the good wishes on my last blog.

Well its Friday and apart from the kung flu injection site being sore I think I am feeling OK. Well I did vacuum and I did empty the dishwasher before noon, so I must be better!  Wednesday night was bit wobbly and I cleared half a packet of paracetamol trying to get on top of the headache. Why would you want to do it again within 3 weeks when your arm is barely better? Far as I am concerned, good call Prof Whitty!

I shall view this like childbirth. Painful, swear you will never do it again at the time, and then 3 months later you think its a good idea and the bees knees. (My friend just sent me a lovely picture of  her first great grandchild which was a treat and reminded me some pains are beneficial!)

The weather is all over the place. We have had a few nice periods that could harbinger Spring and we get excited but then it turns cold again. I have a few crocus and lots of snowdrops and daffs are popping up in the grass areas.  When it was really cold I took advantage of the temperatures and put the contents of my freezer outside while I de frosted. We have ploughed through our  frozen summer crops quite well this year but I need to get on top of the fruit as I see the rhubarb is already starting to throw up some stalks.  The other thing I found too much of was chillies. About 3 lbs of long red ones. This year I must get them gone. Husband already sowing seeds for a new crop. The chilli jam has gone but we wasted half a jar and are not bothered. So I thought I would go for a chilli paste that you pop into cooking. 

https://itsnotcomplicatedrecipes.com/red-chilli-paste/

Think it will be a useful spice addition to next weeks meals.

 

Discovered some new dishes

 Been a bit bored with our repertoire of meals lately so have taken on the challenge of finding two new dishes. Especially as there is no eating out in sight and a long time to wait for talented daughters in law to visit and cook for me!

In the freezer we had about 8 lbs of green gooseberries (we also have sweet red gooseberries in abundance too) and were a bit fed up with crumble and sponge toppings. An old school friend runs a Facebook page of "Lockdown recipes" and I appealed for ideas. Someone suggested Gooseberry Fool which it turned out using Nigel Slater's recipe was quite simple.

Double cream whisked with sieved and sweetened gooseberry "pulp". My first was too runny and the second try, too stiff. Think I should be able to get right balance with the next carton of cream. I topped with whatever was lurking in cupboard - granola and honey or granola and mini marshmallows. As the fruit is free it cost caster sugar and cream - about £1.50 for 4 servings?

My next dish was savoury. We were watching a YouTube about live aboard sailing couple whose Chinese wife cooked fried egg rice in her very limited galley/kitchen facilities. (The Wildings).  My Husband said "that looks nice" and I thought I can do that! Checked a few recipe/cook sites on the WWW and it was a lot easier than I had always thought  and I developed a way to use up left over long grain rice and bits of mixed veg with 2 eggs for a protein content. Has made a couple of nice, very cheap, warm lunches.  I had dark soy sauce to hand and that added the taste but I think I will try to get some Oyster sauce recommended for the extra kick on one cooking blog I read.   No real cost beyond the 2 eggs (20p?) as rice and veg were all left overs or home produced (onion, garlic, carrots, etc).  I have stopped buying those pouches of ready made friend rice for a £1 each now I know how to do it!

Husband not doing too well with "Kung Flu" vaccine. He is running through all the side effects on the leaflet. Currently "holding down the settee" with the heating turned up and ignoring the snow (and sunshine) outside.

Sweet chilli sauce

 I tried out a new recipe today to use up the abundance of red chillies from the poly tunnel the 8 or so plants have done well and I had gathered about 50!

The Good Food web site had a simple recipe. 20 chillies, 5 garlic clove, ginger, caster sugar and cider vinegar. 

I strained it to make a dipping sauce consistency. Used some as a marinade for chicken tonight. I usually have a bottle of branded chilli sauce in the fridge and this was just as nice. 

The garden is still giving us plenty of fresh veg though dressing in wellies, thick coat, scarf and hat to go and get things in the damp misty weather is a bit of a pain.  Washing the mud off the carrots using rain water is a cold business so we do it just before coffee time and come back in to warm up.

Autumn Harvest

Gathered the ingredients today for Chilli and tomato jam. Its perfect way to use up late season harvests. I looked up several recipes online and then made up my own as I lacked fresh ginger, star anise and other fancy stuff.

Spent a good half hour (while waiting for parcels from husband's on line spending spree) dicing as much as possible. And washing the neglected jam making saucepan. (Have not indulged in jam making this year as we never finished last years or the years before!).

Put on for a good boil but it did not seem to go sticky? Added some more brown sugar, liquidised and re boiled. 

Ah well. It will still zip up some scrambled eggs over the next few weeks.

I have also been on and off the village Facebook page as I offered these things for FREE today.

We are altering our en suite and took out this perfectly good suite to put in one a tiny bit smaller. The built in "room" by previous owner is only good if you are a stick insect. Seemed a shame to take to tip so I hope someone wants to reuse them.

Scrubs and scarecrows

Completed another round of scrubs for Norfolk NHS appeal. A nice pattern top and red trousers this time which were actually easier to sew than the standard plain blue! Compared to some valiant sewers who did 30 or 50 sets I only did a few. And they were making XL and XXL and I was only doing Small. I am wondering if there are only a few small staff?  Anyway the need seems to have passed and they are "pausing" for June.

Once free from the scrubs I converted my dressmakers stand to scarecrow duty. The village is having a 2 day scarecrow festival/trail at the weekend. Trouble is every time I go in the log cabin it scares me!

Must remember to give it a mask. I found something to do with all those plastic carrier bags I get with Click and Collect and home deliveries at the moment (even though request do not use) I used them to stuff the arms!

Not a great picture but tried something new for lunch today with salad (overcome with lettuce from the garden this week).  Flatten some puff pastry (brought, obviously), score a line about an inch in all round and pick the inner square. make an red onion "sauce"  from 2 red onions, brown sugar and balsamic or other nice vinegar (I used cider vinegar) . Put on the square top, top with nice bacon and crumbled feta cheese and bake. I sprinkled a bit of dried basil but would be nice with fresh basil if you have it.  

It was really nice. And all the ingredients were what was left around the kitchen/fridge this week!

New daily cooking programme

Lingered in the kitchen and lounge tidying this morning as it was so cold in the brisk north wind and happened across the new Daily Kitchen live on BBC.  For once the concept, the content and the intent was spot on. not too "cheffy"; included doing things frugally; included a bit of grow your own!
Really enjoyed they had Jack Monroe involved too and I do hope it is a sign of our times that some new fresh faces appear with a clear head about costs!

Well done the BBC finally got your act together and produced something for the moment!

So having said that, checked the schedules and content and turned off TV till about 9pm when I think something else new may interest us!! (Except for watching the Daily Doom Update at 5 pm).

Despite the cold weather returning my main task this morning was taking apart the wood burner and getting all the ash out for the summer and finding all the nails down the back from burning scrap wood! We had planned for the chimney flue to be swept after Easter but that has gone on the back burner (Ha Ha) till after Lockdown.  Then I had to wash out the vacuum cleaner as its filters were clogged. No sooner had I done that the husband turned up and started sanding some thing in the lounge. Obviously did not listen half an hour ago when I told him the cleaner was outside drying off!! Men.

Off to put into play a broth idea from this morning's TV as we have a lot of nothing much left for lunches. Tomorrow will be driving to big supermarket for a Click and Collect experience where I have ordered a months' worth of staples since we are failing to get anywhere near a doorstep delivery here.  After that it will be local shopping - butchers, bakers and milk and what ever comes from the garden. Like these cauli and lots of cabbage, spinach and asparagus to keep up our greens intake! We grew the cauli over winter in the greenhouse as an experiment and it worked quite well though we were glad to pull up today as space needed for the many other things coming on.

Helping my village?

I had three starter packs from my Organic Gardening training which contained big packets of organic pea seeds. As all volunteering directly to people is out of the question I left this message on our village Facebook page:

" have been working with www.gardenroganic.org.uk as a volunteer to encourage more people to begin grow their own food. As our volunteering spring activities have been cancelled I have 3 unused introductory packs which include a packet of pea seeds and I don't want to see then go to waste. I will put them out at the end of our drive in T**** Road in carrier bags if anyone would like to pick them up on Saturday morning after 10 am. The packs says you could get a crop in 9 weeks so kids could get some results before getting back to school. For parents - I will pop a few sticks of freshly picked rhubarb as we have far too much to eat ourselves."

They soon disappeared. Though afterwards thinking about the loo roll crises I did wonder if the free Rhubarb could have been a mistake!



We've got lots more to come - I will continue to give this away freely. 

Put some in freezer for next year for us but as we are still wading through last years frozen fruit I don't want to overdo it!  However I have just found out how to roast rhubarb and now I have lots of ideas for different dishes using that. Its lovely. Do try it. Just put in a dish with golden sugar or honey, cover, bake for 15 mins. it is not as sloppy as stewed and fits in better with making desserts. Went great with a cheesecake made from a packet which is usually too sweet and cloying.

Have you got some garden goodies to share locally?

Savvy Shopper cookbook

Book review

I picked this up in the library for a quick browse this week and I quite like its philosophy which is to have a simplified, scaled down approach to shopping, cooking and eating. It is based on using discount stores.

I am not a discount supermarket user, they are simply too far away from home, in a town centre with awful traffic snarl ups and a series of 12 traffic lights to go through!! I will stick to getting groceries delivered once a fortnight for under £2 a time.  Also my meal planning is around what is growing in the garden and ready to harvest rather than what I go our and buy.  But I liked some of the ideas.

• There are lists of regular buys suggested in this book. I have my own  next to the computer for everything that regularly appears in my store cupboard or fridge/freezer. Its a great way to cross check yourself and keep well stocked so you can cook from scratch easily.
  
• I am not a fresh herb user as suggested, even though I have the space and ability to grow them I still reach for dried from choice (a habit?). But Amy suggests a good mix for curry powder you do yourself using all the store cupboard herbs thus saving buying another jar specially!
• I agree with using olive oil. If you get at right price. It cooks better and tastes better.
• Her meal plan is quite simple but mine includes far more soups - they make filling and cheap lunches and use up veg really well.

I enjoyed the recipe ideas. At least 6 were in my own regular dishes book, but there were 12 I was willing to try out like Homity pie, sweet chilli mackerel pasta, sweetcorn soup, vegetable korma.

If you see it then it is worth a peruse.

My other library choice from non fiction side was Beginners Guide to Crochet. I have been promising myself to master this skill for ages. I got a hook on the way home for £1.65. I am not getting on very well at all. I don't seem to have the right kind of hands........

Grow it, Eat it

Yesterday's lunch.

Our potatoes were spoilt by wire worm so when peeling and sorting out we end up with lots of bits of potatoes  which I dice and par boil. I then put some oil and spices in a deep frying pan (turmeric, cumin, paprika, coriander) put in some garlic and onion, diced potatoes, any left over courgettes, peppers and tomatoes. In fact any bits left over! and some stock to just cover. In a few minutes you have a nice dish. If I have it I sometimes put in panacetta or bacon as an extra treat.

For pudding we have a lot of autumn raspberries still producing the odd berry. They go in a dish with a couple of spoons of granola and Greek yougart.

Does not cost a lot, except the kitchen always looks like a tornado hit it after all the preparation!

Asparagus

Has anyone else noticed such an early crop? Picked this one yesterday and there are plenty more spears showing.

Not wasted - sliced and added to a nice omelette for lunch.

Salmon in the picture was for tea. We are on a diet as we have over indulged  and put on a little weight!  Roll on the summer and the salad crops.

Two good products

I am not paid to endorse products (would not have a clue how to do such a thing) but these two products have sparked my support.

I had a few "not so good" sponge cakes so I tried some different ingredients. Upgraded the basics margarine for Stork and the own brand flour for specialty sponge flour.

The flour has really resulted in a nice texture and taste.  Bit more expensive but for treats worth the extra costs.

I also found my own brand dishwasher tablets had been improved. 

The tablets are now wrapped in something that does not need removing. So no more foil or thick plastic wraps to take off, annoying to handle  and  I don't like getting the dish washer stuff on my hands.  As this is a cardboard box it means the product is 100% recycled. I know the loose powder in a plastic bottle is probably cheaper but then you have potential for spills and another plastic bottle to recycle.

I do product reviews on the supermarket shop and gave good feedback for these. I also joined a customer campaign to get the plastic packaging on own brand porridge replaced with a paper based one. They had about a 100 review comments mainly saying the same thing. Hope it works.

Shin of beef

I discovered this cut of beef a couple of years ago and is now a winter favourite for stews in my slow cooker.  It is always quite a bit cheaper than stewing beef or braising steak and has a very nice meaty taste.
Day 1:  the 600 grams was cooked for about 5 hours in the slow cooker with lots of swede, carrot and celery and onions and in last half an hour topped with suet dumplings. I add a good slug of Worcestershire sauce before adding the gravy which gives it extra richness.

This was day 2 reheated with fresh root veg and some red lentils added and served with cauli and carrots.  I transfer it to a casserole dish and put in the oven so other things can be cooked along side.

The sack of potatoes I brought at the end of  last week have proved very good quality and make really nice roast potatoes.

It is very cold today, although sunny and dry, which is in contrast to the mild days we have been having. Up to 10C, I  have been able to finish the re cutting of the strawberry/asparagus bed.

I have nearly finished the garden flower beds giving them a good tidy, my husband is planning to move things about in the spring, which won't be long as winter things are flowering and various herbaceous are showing growth already.

We went to a Parish Council meeting last night to complain about a 7 foot high sign the have put right outside our window.  We stayed to listen to the rest of the meeting which was ponderously slow and full of muttering which my husband could not hear clearly.  One of the ladies wants me to stand as a Councillor to help her even up the male/female divide which is 5 to 13.  I shall have to read up about it as I am not sure I could bear the months and months it seems to take to do anything. We started complaining about the sign in October!!!

Cheap meals continue

Its turning colder here (5C during today) so thoughts are of warming meals. For Monday and Tuesday I took our a packet of pork sausages costing £1.50 (for 8).  There are cheaper but these are at least a bit "meaty" and don't just lay there limply all pink and flabby! 

Started of with a saute garlic, celery and some whole small onions. The shallot size things were last of our stored crop sculling around in the bottom of the bag. Added some paprika for colour and a few bits of our (hot) chilli to give a bit of internal warmth. Then the sausages to brown with a couple of very hard whole button mushrooms.  I'd defrosted a pack of tomatoe puree from the summer crop and added a good portion of that.  It all looked and tasted a bit intense so I had to water it down a bit.  Slid into the oven for less than an hour with some roast potatoes and parsnips. When it came to dishing up we found 3 sausages with the thick sauce each more than enough with some broccoli and peas brightening the plate.

The two left over sausages and sauce were added to some pasta the next day with a little more tomatoe puree and some sliced button mushrooms. A grating of hard cheese on top lifted the taste of pasta dish nicely.

I'd give you pictures but my food photography is awful.  I understand why there are experts who have all these weird techniques to make the stuff in magazines look good.

Wednesday's meal has been a half a kilo of diced lamb cooked with gravy and lots of root vegetables. It cost around £4 so I have to stretch it out.  When I looked in the pot today all the root veg was gone but the left over meat was tender and there was a nice thick gravy left.  I boiled up some more root veg (swede and carrots) with some lentils to get them going before adding it in to the pot with a chunk of leek.  As the oven is on, there will have to be roast potatoes to go with it besides which the quality of these cheap potatoes is bad and they go to mush if just boiled.

I made a crumble of red gooseberries from the freezer yesterday but as I overly influenced by the news programme on at the time deriding the over use of sugar in the British diet I did not put enough sugar with the fruit, in the crumble or in the custard. It was very tart!!! Ouch. Left over today will have to have over sweetened ice cream with it.

Autumn harvest

Our weather is yo-yoing between warmish and wet and then clear and bright. Wednesday was a lovely day and two loads of washing were dry by 3.30 pm.  There is nothing more lovely than white sheets billowing brightly!
I managed some gentle gardening after lunch, taking care not to overdo the sore back (again) and brought it in a bucket of potatoes and this lovely collection of roots, leeks  and a cabbage.

Next year I must make sure my husband gets seeds for SMALL cabbages. Thee great big things keep us going for a week!

That evening there was an article on the news about sustainable food and buying local - we looked at one another and laughed.  Apart from the small amount of chicken brought locally from the butcher who buys only local products, 90% of our dinner had traveled 50 yards down the garden.

Chill Jam

This late summer sun and warm temperatures has been helping ripen the sweet peppers and chilies to a lovely red so I was able to gather the ingredients for chili jam.  Had to buy the garlic, golden sugar and red wine vinegar but rest from garden.

I rather over cooked it and the jam saucepan took a week to get the burn off the bottom.  Still, it is very sweet and spicy and goes lovely with omelettes.

My garlic was a complete disaster this year and I am determined to put some in this autumn and have a better spring crop next year.

Freezer Audit

Had to de-frost the freezer yesterday so did a quick audit and repacked in a more sensible way. Result - a third of the space was empty.  Something to be said for neatness, and I could squeeze a bit more in.
My list for the winter is -

• 2 lbs of sliced sweet peppers
• 1 lb of french beans
• 8 lbs tomatoes - various chopped, puree, soup and sauces
• 2 lbs of whole raspberries
• 2 lb of whole strawberries
• 1 lb of blackberries
• 1 lb of blackcurrants
• 10 lbs of gooseberries
• 8 boxes of blackberry and apple pie mix
• 1 Rhubarb
• 7 boxes of fruit puree 

 and      Half a packet of supermarket peas  and 4 slices of bread for emergencies

No meat, no processed food and no ice cream.
We are going to be away later in the month so have had a big clear out of anything near the best buy date.

Last of the summer

Thank you for the encouraging comments on my last blog.

Last blackberry and apple puddings this week. Our thornless blackberry grown on wires is so much easier than going to any hedgerows and gives large berries and super juicy fruit.

Using windfall apples as they occur.  Think husband might be ready for just apple puddings soon as the bramleys are ready as he feels we have had too many red pubs lately. It has been alternating between blackberries and autumn raspberries for the last 3 weeks - sometimes it is just nice to see a plain milky rice pud!

Do you think it is possible to over do a glut and give yourself a food intolerance?  Last week we both had feelings of bloat, bit of diarrhea, acidity, heartburn.  I looked on line and those are the symptoms of tomato intolerance?  We have been hoovering up the tomatoes = lots of fresh tomato soup, sauces with meat for main meals, incorporating them into lunches.  We eased off for a few days and things got better. But we also thought about some supermarket eggs we had for lunch as we both felt a bit funny fairly quickly and they had a funny taste. Marked as British, within date and only purchased last week.

Sweetcorn and onions

Last of this year's crop of sweetcorn.

Plants were slow to start due to cold, never really got any height due to heat; some did not make cobs and some made multiple small cobs that did nothing.  We have eaten more than enough ourselves, gave a box of 16 large ones away and sold about a dozen. 

The onion crop has been drying in the shed for a couple of weeks so I went in to rub off the dirt and loose skins, roots and cut the tops. They now are nice and clean and ready for use- should be enough to last to the New Year.  It started to rain yesterday afternoon so I gathered some of the red onions  and store cupboard ingredients and made a red onion marmalade.

The onion smell was a bit much for me so I did not get the onions really finely chopped so I cheated a bit by whizzing the mix. Only made 3 jars which is enough for us and a small jar which will make an ideal present at Xmas.

I am really looking to make chili jam which I also love.  We have loads of green chili but they are being very slow to go red.   Next week is looking warm and sunny so I am hopeful this last bit of summer will turn them.

Plums

Hi

Isn't this weather lovely?  I think it is my favourite time of year.

Our three plum trees have done a bit better this year. No Victoria plums at all, but a good 2 kg from the yellow plum and the same in Damsons.  I made a pudding or two from them, and we had a few fresh but in the end had to put the majority into jam. We have fresh autumn raspberries and blackberries for immediate puddings.

I split the yellow plums, added an apple but took out the stones which I think was a mistake. I did some reading on the internet and for the damsons I left the stones in and it set much better.

The yellow plum turned a fairly nice colour but is still a little bit sharp.

The damson is very, very dark and really sweet and well set.  I have made a couple of mini jars for Christmas gifts (that is about as far as getting organised in advance I will ever get).