Glanbrydan’s Weblog

Yesterday whilst we were visiting the shops in Carmarthen we went into a cook shop, I like having a general wander round cook shops. I spotted a bone shaped biscuit cutter, yippee!! I’ve been looking for one for ages. So today after dinner I made up a batch of dog biscuits.

I am not sure the doggies deserve them or that the chickens deserve their porridge and as for Donald he has been positively naughty. I caught site of 2 chickens wandering outside the front of the house having been alerted to their being around by the dogs saying ‘oh please let me chase you’ in their usual loud hound dog way.

I went and got the trusty porridge jug and was just showing it to the chickens when the neighbours from up the hill drove by. Now the neighbours think I’m mad, I nodded and smiled trying to pretend I wasn’t holding up a jug of porridge and saying ‘it’s bedtime’ to the chicken.

The chickens happily all went to bed but Donald was having a look in on the dogs, the dogs were saying ‘hi’ so I ran back to shoo Donald up the garden and stop the noise. I then got halfway up the garden and realised I hadn’t got the grain to top up the birds supper so I went back to get it and managed, in my haste, to fall up the garden steps throwing the grain everywhere in the wet and muddy grass. It’s been years since I scraped my knees, my only hope was that there were no neighbours wandering by so my pride might at least not take a dent.

Anyway, the recipe for the dog biscuits:

2 cloves of garlic

150gms cheese

250gms plain flour

80gms of fat – I used the fat drained out of the Sunday roast as it also contains some meat juices.

An egg

I use the food processor for this as it is so easy to do with the cutting blade in.

Oven to 180 degrees (I think it’s gas 5)

Peel the cloves of garlic and give them a bash with the side of the blade of a knife, pushing down on the side of the blade with your palm to crush the garlic. Put the garlic in the the food processor. Chop the cheese into lumps and add to the garlic. Give the mix a whizz until the cheese looks a bit like breadcrumbs. Add the flour and whizz again for 30 seconds to allow the flour to mix in. Add the fat and whizz again for 30 seconds. Lastly add the egg and whizz again. This time the mix should bind together like pastry, if it’s a bit dry add a tablespoon of water at a time and whizz again. It shouldn’t take too long and you have a big lump of dough.

Carefully remove the dough, those blades are sharp! Flour a board and roll out the dough to a thick pastry and cut out into whatever shapes you like. I bake in batches on the second to top shelf for 15 minutes. The finished article should be lightly browned. Cool the biscuits on a rack and store in an airtight container.

They smelled good to me when cooking and the noisy dogs did get to try them when they’d had their walk.

I may be a wee bit biased about Llandeilo as it’s our local town but it does have a few good things about it that I think worth sharing with you.

We have several good places to eat and many excellent places to shop.

Cafi Salvador does an excellent cup of coffee and offers tapas or ‘small’ plates of food including many fish dishes. We stopped by and as we sipped our coffee we spied plates of sardines, fresh bread and other delicious things wafting past us on their way to expectant diners.

Sarah, who owns the Cafi also owns a deli just a few yards away called Salvador Deli. I understand she has made one of the top 50 independent delis in Britain its interior is filled with wooden shelves offering all sorts of treats, whilst the fridge profers up hams, cheeses, fish and fresh food.

We have several ladies boutiques with good quality clothes along with a very nice shoe shop.

Other eateries include Baritas, where the very friendly staff will serve you with soup, sandwiches and cakes. The Angel pub serves good value, tasty lunches, sandwiches and icecream from Heavenly ice cream parlour who produce all manor of wonderfully inventive ice creams, pastries and chocolate.

We hope to find a farmers market that will let us sell sweet pastries, so far at Brecon they already have 3 pudding and cake stands so we have agreed to go savoury.

I enjoy making these tarts and they did go down well. They would be ideal for BBQs as they sit on a plate and only need a fork or spoon to be eaten. They also round off a meal with a summery desert, even if the sun refuses to shine. The lemon ones can be made the day before so less stress when you’re cooking for others. If you make the fruit ones the cases can be made the day before and stored in an airtight container.

The pastry recipe is from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I have several of his books and they are generally very good.

200gms plain flour

50gms icing sugar

125gms butter

pinch of salt

2 egg yolks

Makes 1 x 24 cm (approx) big tart or about 8 to10 10cm small ones (the curd filling will do 6 small tarts comfortably)

To make your pastry put the flour in a bowl and sift in the icing sugar, add the salt. Cut up the butter into small pieces as you add them to the mix.

Now make sure you’ve washed your hands and start to rub the butter in. Stop when you have a breadcrumby looking mixture. Add the two egg yolks and start to mix it together with your hands. It should make a very yellow pastry ball when it’s all come together. Roll it in clingfilm or a sealed food bag and put in the fridge for an hour or more.

When you are ready to cook preheat the oven to 190 degrees/ gas 5 then flour your rolling surface well as the sugar makes the pastry sticky. Roll out the pastry to be a bit bigger than the tin. For the large tart lay it over the tin and gently ease it to rest on the base, use a sharp knife to remove the excess from around the edge of the tin. If you use small cases find a saucer to cut round and roll out smaller amounts of the pastry. Then gently ease the pastry in, it requires a bit of man handling to get the pastry to sit in the tin but this pastry is very forgiving and you can make repairs. Don’t roll the pastry too thin as it will be too brittle. Think of the thickness of a commercial pastry base, not as thick as a biscuit.

Put the tins in the freezer for 10 minutes and place a baking tray in the oven to heat through whilst the pastry firm ups in the freezer.

Take out the bases from the freezer and prick them with a fork. Cut out oversize square(s) of baking parchment or foil and rest in the cases. Pour in a good amount of baking beans or enough rice to put a bit of weight on the base so it cannot rise up when cooking.

Cook for 15 minutes near the top of the oven on the pre heated baking tray. Take them out and let them cool for a minute then remove the foil or parchment and baking beans. After a few more minutes tip out the pastry cases very carefully as they are brittle

I used two different fillings, a lemon curd or fresh fruit on a cream base.

The lemon curd filling was a Hugh recipe but I did have to strain the egg out and add cornflour to get it thick enough. So here is my altered recipe.

I make the curd whist the pastry is cooking.

100gms unsalted butter

175gms caster sugar

3 lemons

2 eggs and an extra egg yolk

2 teaspoons cornflour

6 teaspoons of double cream

Cut the butter into little cubes and put in a saucepan, tip in the sugar. Grate in the zest of the three lemons and then add their juice.

Stir this together over a low heat. Hugh says that after 10 minutes it should thicken but I had it cooking for about 20 minutes and the egg yolk started to cook so I had to strain it through a sieve. (If yours thickens without help then let me know)

I put mine back in the pan. Put the cornflour in a glass or cup and add a couple tablespoons of water to it. Mix up until it is a runny paste . If it’s still stiff then add a couple more spoons of water. Add this to the lemon mixture and put it back on the low heat.

You need to keep stirring until it thickens and then give it a good beating. Put it aside to cool down for a few minutes and then stir in the cream.

Take the tart cases and divide the lemon curd between them.

Now you can leave them to cool and serve them as they are but for a touch of class I sprinkle icing sugar on the top and then use a blow torch to melt the icing sugar a bit. If you do this just let it catch, don’t go mad.

To produce the fruit tarts whip up some double cream and add a bit of sugar. Coat the bottom of the tart cases with the cream mixture and then arrange fresh fruit over the top. Such things as grapes and raspberries give good contrasts

We have had my Auntie and Uncle staying this week and tonight we had a couple of friends over for dinner. It’s late now and after three courses of food and far too much of the red stuff the house is quiet again.

I think dinner was a success: onion soup for starters, liver and bacon for mains followed by little fresh fruit tarts. All homedone and I think all OK.

I flap around the kitchen when we have guests, worried about the soup tasting too sweet, not doing enough veg and everything being done on time. I know that it all goes wrong if you try too hard but still I do it.

I was pleased with the tarts. I blind baked 14 cases using a sweet pastry base and filled 6 with a home made lemon curd and six with a custard base and fresh fruit on top. I will, once de-red-wined post a recipe.

Main course was prepared by the Wilf one as I cannot stand liver. I had a bit of rump steak as the only none believer. All in all a very nice evening.

After reading http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/ blog from yesterday on potato blight I began to think about our own harvest from the garden.

The weeds keep growing a treat but the veg has been a big disappointment this year, even more so than last year when all the beds were underwater. I have an image in my mind of the pea plants which looked yellow and had puddles around their bases in the middle of last summer.

Action was needed, I thought I would raise the already raised beds even further as our soil is not really soil just clay. The veg bed is hidden from the house so aesthetically I can get away with anything. I decided to try old tyres, this would be a good way to recycle products that are otherwise difficult to dispose of so Wilf went to our local tyre garage and filled the car up several times.

I then got as much of our own compost as I could, all the fire ashes I had been collecting from the multi fuel burners we have in the living and dining rooms, some soil our friend had removed from his garden for some reason and I started to fill the casings.

I soon realised that they would need an awful lot of filling and picked up some mulch from the local council yard to mix in. Still the casings were not filled so I went out and bought a few bags of compost. Now I was starting to see them fill up. I have only managed about twelve filled up enough to plant in. Whatever I add to them just seems to disappear to nothing.

The broad beans loved it in the rich soil. They produced lots of pods and I wish I had planted more. The peas were the same, the support I used for them buckled and they started to climb up the neighbouring broad beans. I thought potatoes would enjoy the rich soil as well and planted up a few casings of those. They have been poor, no blight on my spuds but they are not heavy cropping.

The onions look more like spring onions compared to the ones planted directly into another bed. Although the biggest disapointment has been the summer cabbages, they have just been eaten to death by slugs and ants. A close second to last is the beetroots which look like miniature beetroot but are as tough as old boots.

The carrot seeds and the parsnips didn’t even germinate and my turnip plants that were germinated in the greenhouse a few weeks ago are gradually being cut up and taken away by the ants. Fasinating to watch but there goes our winter veg on their backs!

The other problem with the casings is that they do need to be well mulched in between or it’s a weed festival there. The local tip do let you fill black sacks yourself with mulch they make for £1.50 a bag. This is a bit of a bargain as they do a very fine mulch and a rougher mulch. Great for adding to compost to bulk out. The sacks are the really strong ones and we reuse them for all sorts of things.

The greenhouse has also been a mixed lot. The peppers have done very well and I am going to string some up to dry very soon. The sweet peppers are just about ready as well, although I think they are supposed to turn purple and are very green at the moment I won’t complain too much.

The courgettes are doing well, although the ends keep going brown and the pickling gherkins would be more suited to being preserved in dolls house sized jars at the moment. Not our greatest success. I also seem to have mixed up the cucumber seeds with the gherkin seeds and have greenhouse gherkins which look healthier than the outdoor ones and I think if left would make cucumbers eventually.

The tomatoes are currently still green, I tried a different sort this year and I’m not sure if it’s them or the weather that is the problem so I won’t give out the variety but next year it’s back to Alicante or Moneymaker just to be safe.

I know this is Sam’s blog normally but having proof read her blogs I thought it would be interesting to tell you something about her, us and our family.

Sam is the driving force in our marriage (she is younger after all) and gets me to do all sorts of jobs I don’t want to do. Despite this there is still mountains of things to be done before our home is finished to the level we both want (as an aside to this statement I would add that when we had our home in Northamptonshire, we spent five years bringing it up to standard only to move on immediately here to Wales saying, “that is the last time we take on that sort of renovation project”. Guess what? We have now been in Wales for just over three years and are around a year or so away from finishing renovating our home!)

Coming back to Sam, she is very beautiful, brainy and forgiving (why else would she put up with me). She has a Bsc(hon) in technology and works for one of the major mobile providers in a testing capacity (not that she isn’t sometimes testing to me, especially when we are out shopping). I won’t state her age as I like living but when she passed one of the important milestones in her life not so long ago we had a super party for her in the village reading rooms, something that is still talked about in the village as never have so many nuns, male as well as female, been seen in such a small place. At that party we also renewed our vows (I don’t do churches so this seemed a very special compromise to me and happily a nice surprise to Sam).

Between us we have five children(?). In descending order they are Jim, Gail, Lisa, Ali and Robert. The first three were mine and the last two Sam’s but now they are all both of ours. In addition we have two son in laws, Burt and Iain and one daughter in law, Sarah. Then in addition to them we also have the two most beautiful grand daughters you could wish to see, Ami and Abi.

You may by now have gathered that Sam and the children are the most important things in my life and I love them all more than I can say even though I know I don’t tell them often enough.

I think that is enough for now and will not write anymore unless you want me too. I can only say that our family has a lot of stories to tell and memories to relate so if you do want to hear more then let me know.

By the way my name is Wilf which I have abbreviated from Wilfred! Can you imagine going to school in the 60′s with a name like Wilfred? I have got used to it now but still try to say it very quietly in public.

We let our chickens out every day, usually after lunch so they lay their eggs where they should as they have been known to lay elsewhere occasionally.  We have discovered the best way to get them home is to bribe them. They love porridge oats, cooked up with a bit of bran thrown in.

The trick, we have discovered, is to always put them in the same pot so they can recognise the container from the end of the garden. I feel like the pied piper with four chickens and a duck running after me.

I also give them the veg peelings, although I understand there is some question about this practise being legal after the foot and mouth problems. All this is topped up with a premixed corn feed and layers pellets.

I have recently read an article about selling eggs in the smallholder magazine http://www.smallholder.co.uk/ and I am thinking of trying to sell a few eggs using an honesty box and a table outside the house.

Since the dogs were little we have occasionally bought them dried liver as a treat. When Bertie became diabetic we had to stop buying commercial treats and went on the hunt for dried liver.

Our local pet shop lady told us we could make it ourselves and it would be much cheaper. We set about experimenting and have been producing our own treats for some time. It is really easy and just requires a bit of planning.

We use any liver but prefer ox as it is the least expensive and our favorite butcher now keeps one permanently ready for us. We wash the liver to remove all traces of blood then dry it very carefully to stop it sticking as much as possible. then we slice it as thin as possible. We cover baking racks or trays in non-stick baking parchment and put the oven on to somewhere between 70 and 100 degrees Celsius. This would be a low gas or warming oven in a range. In the winter we have the warming oven on all the time so we can do it at any time but in the summer we cook over night.

Lay the strips of liver on the trays so they are not quite touching and put them in the oven. We find the top tray cooks first for us so in the morning we then take that out and swap the other two trays over until they have dried. The liver is ready when it is dry and brittle at which point we remove it from the trays and break it into dog munchable pieces. This keeps really well in a sealed container for some weeks as long as it is thoroughly dry, although Bertie and Vickie would eat it all in a day if given the chance.

Our dogs love the treats and our neigbours dogs try and stop by for a treat as well.

Today was a day off for us. We took ourselves off to Abergavenny to see what it had to offer having watched a Welsh TV series called Welsh weekends where they dedicated a (repeated) program to the town.

We quite often drive through there when we go and visit family but we avoid the town centre becuase of the traffic. It is a nice town with a well known market. Welsh markets (for the rest of the UK) are generally covered buildings because of the extra bit of rain we get here. The buildings are magnificent, and I think are Victorian.

The town has quite a few coffee shops for those of us who like a coffee, it also has a department shore called Nicholls which to me is what I remember a department store to be from my childhood, much smaller stores than the well known JL’s of today.

If you look up the side streets you can find some specialist shops such as a cook shop and a clock shop.

We rounded off our trip with a vist to the http://www.sugarloafvineyards.co.uk/index.htm just outside of the town on the A40 heading West. They are a small vineyard and have a fantastic location well worth a visit, they also have wine worth a taste!

We were pushed to get home because our semi feral cat Tattycat, who has decided to become a house cat today. Normally she lives with Smudger in a wooden workshop in our garden but this morning I opened the door about 7.00am because the dogs were barking and in walked Tattycat. She hasn’t left since sleeping like a baby under our bed. She is a bit shy still, after living here a year and refuses to come out.

Tattycat must be hungry by now. We have left her water and a cat tray but she seems to be happy just sleeping.

I’ve spent some hours giving our living room a good clean this afternoon. We have relatives coming on Sunday for the week and I want the house to be fresh and clean. I also want to go out tomorrow so I started cleaning up today.

I had the added bonus of a bit of the Olympics in the background to keep me going. I usually turn to cleaning the house in this way when I have something on mind or we have people staying. I do love the house being clean and  because of work and family life it gets a bit cluttered, a bit dusty and a bit of a mess.

Today I set about the old wooden window sills with our home made beeswax polish. Our bee keeping friend supplied the beeswax and I scoured the Internet to find out how to make a polish. It has been a medium success and I’ve learnt from it. I have more wax so I’ll try something a few changes with the next batch.

This time I used bees wax

soap flakes

real turps (not the brush cleaner, you have to search out the real thing)

You have to be careful mixing this together. I put the bess wax and the turps in the range bottom oven for a couple of days but you must be very careful as this can ignite on it’s own.

I then stirred in the soap flakes.

Next time I will add more soap flakes, and some lavender essence and a bit of oil. The mixture is hard work to use but the shine is fantastic. My wooden furniture smells wonderful and shines, shines, shines!

I am interested in investigating other cleaning products that I can make myself so watch here and if you have any let me know.