Foody Photos Inside and Out.

Hi!

I've tried a couple of new recipes recently as you really can get a bit bored with the same old same old sometimes.

I sat down and had a good root through my Save With Jamie book, which I love, and I've been a little inspired due to watching Celebrity Masterchef just now, too. 

I made Koftas but with turkey mince instead of lamb and also rustled up some flat breads to go with them. They went down a treat so will definitely be making them again. (Unfortunately no photo.)

I had some puff pastry in the freezer so made this with a filling of chicken, peas in my homemade mint sauce, tarragon and all put through a bechamel sauce. Mmmmm.

Then I decided on pork belly-filled ravioli which was ok in the end but I have misplaced the bracket that holds my pasta machine to the island! I had to roll by hand but it came out alright.

I've taken delivery of a kitchen gadget which I've used for tea last night - a meatball maker and I love it! Jon cooked the meatballs whilst I was watching Strictly and he said they cooked really well; the texture seemed to have been improved by the pressure of the gadget making the balls into a really good shape.

Now, I've finally got round to processing, almost, all of my garlic which I took up when we came back from our holidays. It has taken ages for it to dry out as the soil was so very wet but it looks great and I am so very pleased with it. I have it in the basket I bought in Menorca hanging in the kitchen as most things I read say it should not be kept in the dark incase it sprouts so that is why I didn't put it in the cellar store room.

I have on order a small amount of garlic but need to get some more.

Yesterday I had a bit of a tidy up in the Poly House. It looks a bit better...

but there are a few jobs to do yet.

I also need to clean out the planters etc before I store them away for the winter.

My next door neighbour works at our local plant nursery and he brought me these two thyme plants. They are now in the herb sink and I was very grateful for them as mine had not grown well this year.

In the Poly House these are the broccoli raab and Spring cabbage; I intend to get them outside quite soon before they get too leggy and spoil.

Also yesterday I took up the last of my Maris Piper spuds, as I was worried the blight may get to them, and left them to dry until today.

I brought them inside this afternoon along with something else!

I have some in the kitchen to eat at tea tonight and the rest I have stored in the cellar. Don't want the precious few to spoil. I am very pleased, though, that I have these, the Christmas spuds and also the sweet ones.

Oh this really is turning into a ramble, sorry. I just remembered the mum of a friend of Alfie's, who spent the day with us yesterday, gave me a huge courgette she grew on her allotment. I am chuffed to bits as I wanted to make some of the courgette and apple chutney as I did last year but only had the apples. I've put some of the many cooking apples I was given in the cellar, ones that are not bruised, on a flat box as most of them have been put to the compost heap or the chickens. That is a job for next week I'm looking really forward to.

Right I think I should stop now or there will be no end to this!

Bye for now.

Lou.

Windfall Wonder.

Hi!

Today I got round to some preserving and set to making my windfall chutney. The apples were gifted from friends, the onion came from the cellar store room and it called for tinned toms - nowhere near enough in the Poly House anyhow - most of which were in a food hamper brought to us by friends recently.

This is the very easy recipe I used taken from Country Living Magazine.

A good amount of ingredients.

I love a throw-it-all-in-the-pan recipe!

It took just over two hours to get it cooked down....

then I popped them in a water bath as I really want them to last through the winter.

I have some put aside that I'm entering in the village show on Saturday; I'll try and do a quick post with my entries tomorrow as I will get them all together for taking over the the hall after lunch on the morning of the show.

The jars are now sitting on the shelf in the cellar store room along with other things - I'm gradually getting my stock built up!

Bye for now.

Lou.x

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!

A cosy good morning to you as I type this. 

Jon lit the Rayburn just before he went to work; I dropped him off as I need the car to fetch the boys from Urdd then him from work this evening. I have lit the living room fire, too, so we are more than ready for the cold weather they are forecasting for later on tonight. 

Bring it on I say!

Prep for Christmas has begun, a little. When food shopping on Friday I picked up these little bits in Lidl. Not sure what to use the little bags for, maybe to put teacher presents in for school, hope to make biscuits with the boys and have them decorate them. 

 The clips will be used for holding up decorations or maybe on the tree. 

The tags on the right I bought from Waterstones. Aaahh, I feel the same way about Waterstones as Holly Golightly does about Tiffany's in Breakfast at Tiffany's; nothing bad could ever happen when you are there, especially when you are stroking lovely notebooks! I plan to use the tags to make garlands as part of the decorations for the boys' rooms.

I have wrapped the small presents we have bought for the boys and they are languishing at the bottom of our wardrobe but the larger ones are in the shed; some need packing and some need big bows on them.

This week I made some red onion relish/chutney. 

To be honest I needed to use them up before I started to use our own onions (eeek), some of which I have in the kitchen; it's yummy and had it this morning on some of our eggs and my toasted homemade bread. Sorry, bit of a smug fest there. 

We had a very short notice Airbnb booking come through on Friday night but money is money so there was a bit of frantic work on Saturday morning. They were coming from Hastings to pick up a puppy; they were a lovely couple and we would gladly have them as guests again. They were the first paying guests to have our delish continental breakfast and they very much enjoyed it.

Yesterday I made my mincemeat and it will sit until I make the first couple of batches of mince pies at the weekend. I think I've made enough but who knows! It's a recipe my mum used to use but I have altered it a bit over the years.

Also yesterday we were doing a few jobs in the garden and here we have some before and after photos. Our latest building project to begin is making a better parking area. Currently we park at the side of the house; you can just see the old car in the distance I think. (Obviously this a photo from earlier in the year!)

This is ok but if we are, hopefully, having more people eventually staying as paying guests we need to have better arrangements for a larger number of cars.

So.this is how the garden looked at the side of the conservatory previously....

and this is now we are starting to look. 

The wall has been cleared as it will be knocked through to make the entrance; Jon will then make a fence where the initial posts have now been placed. We will have to make a trailer trip to the local quarry to find some gravel to make it suitable for the cars to stand on the area.

After I had cleaned out the chooks and got round to covering over three of the tyres near the veg patch,

the small number of turnips I'm growing in the Poly House, hopefully for Christmas or early New Year seem to be coming along..

and the leeks look strong but small; they are about the thickness of my index finger so have some way to go or will be nice as just baby ones.

I was inside doing a few chores; I made a big pan of veg and pearl barley soup for lunch - it was yummy so will be today's lunch, too.

On the list of jobs today is to make a pie for tea - pastry and filling - my bread yeast mix has been started, eggs have been collected, a large rat has been spotted in the compost bin!, Alfie's bed is stripped for making later and I hope to get a couple of the last pages of my December Daily finished; I am sooo close to being done and can't wait to show you the end result. It makes me feel really festive when I am working on it. I have a few things to check on my Christmas plan today as well because the calendar slots of jobs to do and events coming up is filling up fast!

Best have my last cup of coffee and get started.

Bye for now.

Lou. xx

Purely A Self-Indulgent Post So Please Feel Free To Ignore - Not Intending To Boast.

Getting there.

Stuff and Nonsense

The weather here today has been just glorious and I love the view from the top kitchen.

I have been baking and made bread, choc chip muffins and cherry oat tray bake- no photos as these are regular makes. I was also a little behind with my Journal of Gratitude so caught up with that.

I'm not in the habit of posting photos of my food but I made my courgette and tomato chutney the other day and it was yummy! in my opinion. I also managed to water bath process it, too, getting a great seal on it so these here are in the cupboard for the future plus one in the fridge. It was delicious with my boiled eggs, on home made bread!

I guess that is the stuff so the nonsense is that yesterday I embarrassed myself spectacularly live on Radio 2. I love listening to Popmaster and normally do really well, high teens or low twenties. However I scored 9 on the first person's questions, he got 6 and when it came to mine I scored a measily 3; horrifying. But on the up side my t-shirt arrived in the post today, however I deleted the photo but this is what it looks like - on the back it says "one year out". I did give a little mention to some of you but I wouldn't recommend making the effort to listen to it!




I shall wear it in the greenhouse; photos of that to follow soon.

My eldest had been chosen as a member of one of the school football teams and he is took part in a tournament in Aber today. He was SO excited! They didn't win the whole thing but one out of six games and he said, even so, he really enjoyed himself.

The youngest managed to leave his towel at swimming last week but thankfully he came home with two this afternoon.

Tomorrow I have the huge task of getting all of their things ready for their Urdd activity weekend at Llangrannog. It involves taking items such as no clothes at all which we would not want to get even slightly muddy, wellies, walking boots, old tracksuits, sleeping bags etc.
Alfie is a real homebird and we had quite a conversation when we paid the deposit about him going as he wouldn't be able to come home early of half way through. He had a bit of a wobble last night saying he would really miss me; I assured him he would be far too busy have a fantastic time to miss me, but that I wanted to hear about everything he and Harry did when they come home.Bless!

Right, better go as we bought the new Star Wars film this afternoon and we are having Movie Night with burgers and I need to get a few things ready.

Lou.xx 

We Seem To Almost Have A Garden, Not A Wilderness.

You may want to settle down with a cuppa and a slice of cake as this post is a bit of a catch up. The weather really was very good to us this weekend and we have got LOADS done in the garden. Here is the flower bed I mentioned the other day from both sides. It looks much better but I still have a few roots to dig up when I find my little fork and trowel.

We have pruned some very out of control trees, collected up the vast majority of the cut down bamboo and had a big fire to get shot of it. I know I talked about us getting the wood chipper from the saw mill but it didn't seem forthcoming and we really wanted to get on with the clearing as much as possible.

Whilst the fire was doing its thing we worked on cutting down to size three mahoosive Rhododendron bushes parallel the side wall that runs along from the front door. 

I can understand if you think it looks a bit severe but they had just taken over and there are at least two more bushes in the garden, too; we found a birds nest in one of them so we will re-home that.

This is the pile of cuttings that will all have to be taken down to the bottom of the garden for burning, too. 

The bushes kept out so much light and it is like having two garden walls. We are in the middle of taking down a tree in that corner, too. There is just too much of everything in this garden but thankfully we are getting it sorted. Can't wait to show you the greenhouse! The main structure is built, Jon has painted it with creosote and the polythene is on order for delivery on tomorrow but the benches inside are still to be built; hopefully all will be done by next weekend. 

We have two, yes overgrown, raised beds up near where the greenhouse is and we hope to get those into use for planting. 

We are so pleased with the progress we have made. The boys are on their Urdd activity weekend this coming Friday so we will be able to get stuff done whilst they are away until Sunday afternoon. They like it when they have been away and things have been done or changed!

Seeds in the conservatory are starting to show. Sooooo excited! and I have bought two cherry tomato plants to go along side the Beef tomatoes we are growing so we, hopefully, have a good supply.

I have lettuce in a tub and that is starting to come through. The boys are loving having a look every morning to see how things are coming along especially the sunflowers and Alfie has his initial in his pot so he knows how big it is getting - so competative with Harry!

We sold our Ercol day bed and the buyers came to collect that in the middle of all this so that is another thing out of the way.

I remembered I had taken these last two photos when I took Jake out on Friday. We are surrounded by sheep and I keep meaning to snap then so here are a pair of twins looking super cute in one of the fields near the cycle path. I am considering sending the first one to the Cambrian Times as a photo of the week!

I'm currently waiting for bread to prove and then I'm making courgette and tomato chutney- trying the recipe for when we have our own grown! Dawn, I am trying the water bath method today so wish me luck!