Glanbrydan’s Weblog

Tonight I’ve been weighing up and mixing the Christmas puddings. I hope to put some up for sale on Saturday at our next farmers market. The recipe is from Delia which is the best I have found and can be taken from Delia online.

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/traditional-christmas-pudding,1234,RC.html

I like Delia. Not for her recent packet recipe television series but for her willingness to share her recipies with everybody and to talk about cooking the simple things which are so easy to get wrong.

My blender has taken a turn for the worse and T-W-O has performed a repair, I await to see if it has worked tomorrow but he is not confident it will hold. It is the only working part of my old food processor so I guess it doesn’t owe us anything but I will be sad to see it go and as always it has happened when we can least afford another one but I must replace it as my smooth soups and breadcrumbs depend upon it. Fingers crossed for the repair.

Dinner tonight included a really easy chicken dish that’s done on the hob.

8 chicken thighs, skin removed (just pull it off)

2 tablespoons olive oil for marinade and 1 for cooking

2 onions, sliced

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

a bottle of red wine

10 peppercorns

2 sprigs of thyme

a sprig of parsley

4 rashers of bacon roughly chopped up.

Place all your ingredients in a tub for as long as you can marinate. The day before is best but even half an hour helps. If you are leaving it for more than hour put it in the fridge.

Put a casserole dish (which has a lid) that can be used on top of the cooker on a medium heat on the hob with a table spoon of olive oil in it. 

Strain the wine into a bowl and put everything else into the casserole dish. Cook for ten minutes until the onion softens a bit turning the chicken thighs over half way through.

Pour the wine in and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat to a low simmer and put the lid on.

Cook for about 2 hours, checking and stirring every 20 minutes.

Serve the meat with a little of the wine wine gravy with veg and mashed potoato.

Just to say my results were a little stiff from the first wash with the balls. Tonight we are adding fabric softener. More to follow………….

I have spent the day at a team building event, so having spent five hours in the car and offered seven hours of attention to our hosts I am ready to sit back in front of the fire and relax. My brain is frazzled after the day but for some reason I recalled an event that happened in my presence maybe 4 or 5 years ago and again has stayed in my memory.  Forgive me for some poetic licence but the punch line is absolutely accurate.

I was having lunch in a pub with a few colleagues of mine from the office. The place was just out of town and considered one of the nicer sort of pubs in which to eat lunch, it was crowded with the hustle and bustle of workers escaping for an hours chit chat.

The table to my right was swarmed over by a group of ladies who seemed to be of the variety that might lunch regularly together and seemed to know each other well. Sometime into our lunch we heard a voice above the others from the ladies and when we looked we saw she was very blonde which goes a long way to explaining what followed (I too am a blonde with the help of a bottle).

‘Oh, I’ve got a text, it’s from the bloke I met at the club the other night.’ Excitedly the young woman blipped buttons on her mobile phone reading aloud to to her party (and half the pub by now). ‘ Hi, had a really nice night out, will I see you on Thursday at the club?’

She then went on to describe the mans physique and her desire to make his acquaintance a little more, then a pause’………… He told me his name was Brian but he’s put (and she spelt it out) c……….i……….a……….o.’

Her friends laughed  and one of them let her into the secret ‘That’s ciao.’ (pronounced chow for the rest of us)

This weekend has seen some play but mostly work.

Yesterday we stole half a day at Aberearon and (not) totally in line with our diet we feasted on fish and chips for lunch. The sometimes sunny, breezy autumnal day and slightly choppy harbour made a perfect Saturday morning out. We keep saying we are going to have an overnight stay there in a B & B but so far that luxury has escaped us.

Returning home we started to tackle the big list of jobs awaiting us. I emptied, sorted and refilled the greenhouse whilst the Wilf one was trying to recover from Watford F.C. winning a match!

Today has been a long day, I am aching from the small amount of gardening I have done. Through the week I have been snatching half an hour each evening to prepare and lay the weed barrier material on three quarters of one of the veg beds.

T-W-O fixed the gate to the dogs area and finally fixed the fire tools in the dining room – we have only had the for around six months!

This morning the Wilf one (T-W-O) and I went off to the tip where they sell shredded wood for £1.50 a bag, they supply the bags and the shredded wood, all you have to do is fill them yourself. We did have a second reason for the trip and that was to dispose of the evidence of some of our wine consumption. On the way we called into Martin and Aura for a coffee and a chat, he is off to North America tomorrow, we added the evidence of their wine consumption to ours. We were saddened to see they had consumed a bottle of Baileys but we had seen none of it. What are friends for I ask myself!

We filled the back of the car with six sturdy bags of chippings and returned home, then carted the bags across the garden (or sodden bog as it rained most of last night) and tipped them out to cover the black weed suppressant material. I have requested a new wheel barrow for Christmas from T-W-O which would make this task much easier on the back. Job done we had another totally (none) diet friendly lunch – roast rib of beef with all the trimmings (yes that does include yorkshire pudding which I hadn’t made for ages).

This afternoon T-W-O has tackled the mountain of ironing I created in my cleaning frenzy, he does it while watching the football on the telly and I carried on in the garden. Opening up two trenches for next years runner beans I went to the ‘resting’ compost heap, half hopeful of finding the sweet soft black stuff. Success, the compost is crumbly, not smelly in any way and looks the part, the best I’ve ever produced. I lined the bean trenches with a few shovel loads as this compost has to stretch a long way. I will be adding to the trench mix until spring.

Inspired I moved on to the tyre veg bed. It was in some need of weeding and I worked away pulling, twisting raking and swearing at the brambles that creep in from the field next door. In between this I cleaned out the chickens house. As payment they came to help me tidy the beds, the funny little things always work around me when I’m gardening. Sometimes I have to shoo them away from the shovel so I can dig and other times I have to tell them off for weeding the seedlings not the weeds.

My compost bins are the cheapest on the market. If you have a corner that isn’t too much on display all you need is 4 old pallets – try asking at your local tip if they can save you a few – some string and something to put on top. I have an old piece of corrugated roofing but I have heard that old carpet is very good.

Stand up 3 of the pallets in a u to form the back and sides of your compost bin. Tie the sides to the back with string at the top and bottom. I find this makes them quite rigid. Then put the front one in place as your gate. As you fill it cover it up with the old carper or whatever you put on top. I like this type of bin because you can wheel in the barrow and tip. My composters have now lasted three years.

Over the years we have collected a few funny, touching and sad stories from situations around us. Here is one such event.

When we were at the hospital sitting in casualty for the Wilf one a couple of weeks ago two events occurred. One was touching and one was sad. The two events were linked in time and location yet completely separate, I will not forget them.

Two boys, about whose ages Wilf & I have both guessed at being possibly 10 and 12, rushed into A & E heading straight for the reception desk. Quite confidently the eldest lad took charge and asked if his sister had been admitted. The lady at reception asked for his sisters name and then looked through her computer logs.

Shaking her head ‘No’ she responded to the boys, ‘your sister isn’t here’. Perplexed the eldest lad asked if she could have been admitted to the other hospital, pointing towards the main hospital buildings.

‘No this is the only A & E.’ The receptionist returned to check her computer again.

The receptionist asked who the boys were ’ I’m her brother and this is my cousin.’ The spokes person elequently responded pointing at the smaller boy

A mature man then entered the building, he walked over to the foyer and stood, head down, resting his hands on the reception desk. As the boys were quietly waiting and the receptionist engaged in searching her records the man, who had not witnessed any of the proceeding events addressed the receptionist ’hello, my name is xxxxxxxxxx’ 

The receptionist interjected, ‘I’m dealing with the boys’. The man apologised and waited quietly.

‘Your sister isn’t here’. The boys looked puzzled.

The receptionist then had an inspiring thought. ‘What’s wrong with your sister?’

‘She’s having a baby’ The eldest lad proudly announced.

All that heard (who weren’t in too much pain) smiled and the receptionist tried to phone maternity. After trying several times she directed them to maternity. ‘ Where’s your Mum? They won’t admit you without an adult.’

‘With our sister.’

After ascertaining that the boys had arrived on their bikes and with seemingly no other option then to let them try for themselves the receptionist gave the boys directions to the door they needed to go to and told them to ring the buzzer and explain their situation.

Off they went on their bikes racing across the hospital car park. None of us know if they were concerned for their sister, eager to see the new arrival or just locked out the house and perhaps wanting their tea.

The receptionist turned her attention to the man. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I’ve lost my father, name xxxxxxxxxx’

Looking around to see if she could spot anybody. ‘Is he round the other side?’

The man virtually ran from the hospital, nearly in tears.

The receptionist, now checking the name on her computer, realised he had truly lost his father to the great beyond.

These events, witnessed by all in the A & E department, show how one person can in one situation be so caring and understanding and then in the same breath do something truly awful.

ecozone wash balls or flying saucers?

Do you ever get that feeling the house is getting on top of you?

Sometimes I just get a strange feeling that the house is dirty, it nags at me until I do something drastic about it.

The poor little cottage has had an attack of the damp and so I’ve been going round with my bleach spray and rubber gloves killing off the unwanted spores. I think it makes me cough and wheeze but I’m sure it’s all in the mind. This coupled with going away last week and then having the grandchildren at the weekend has left me with some cleaning up to do.

As I write I look around me at the living room and I’m pleased with the results. I’ve tidied, sorted out the rubbish, had a good Hoover (I moved every bit of furniture I physically could), a polish with a bit of elbow grease and now it’s clean in one room. All I need to do now is clean the carpet but that’s for another warmer day.

How I wish I could wiggle my nose like the witch ‘Samantha’ and it would all be done. When I was small I used to practise wiggling my nose like Samantha in the hope of producing some mystical and wonderful miracles. Samantha was such an unusual name then that I was sure of some mystic link but if there was I never saw the results! I guess that proves to the Wilf one that whatever I may be I am not a witch although he does have some doubts.

Some friends popped in for a coffee this morning, but as the furniture was all over the place, we had our coffee sat on chairs at very odd angles. It might have appeared very odd for a passer by if they had peeped in the window. Martin and Aura brought along the last string of their chilies, a little pressie for me to replace my own string that went mouldy due to the damp. How pretty they look on the kitchen wall (above the radiator to make sure they don’t go mouldy this time ).

I’ve had a go at the dining room as well and this now has a semblance of peace and order to it. I must have some illness as I’ve even cleared off a big shelf in our bedroom and cleaned a big window which runs along the back wall above the shelf which can only be reached by standing on tiptoe on a chair. The only problems are;

• I’ve displaced things I didn’t want to move and now these things have no home (some are sat on the kitchen work surfaces getting in the way)
• I’ve created an enormous pile of ironing as I’ve washed everything.

The pile of washing has afforded me the opportunity to try my new ecozone wash-balls. Unable to wait any longer for my existing washing liquids, powders and softeners to finish I put a coloured wash in to see if they work.

 The outlay is quite enormous, £35 for a box. The savings, the box tells me, are two fold: you only wash for 30 minutes and the cost of the wash balls per wash should be about 3p and you don’t add nice smelling fabric softeners for the rinse.

The wash smells OK and the clothes have come out of the machine OK. I think we are going to have to try it longer term to get a better idea of how well it works. Maybe 999 times more, as it says it does 1000 washes per box.

The damp also means the heating must be on at least once a day. It must have been terribly damp here when they used to rely on just the fires in the cottage. I guess we expect so much more today.

I have made quince jelly and quince cheese from recipies on cottage smallholder site http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/ over the last two evenings. Tonight whilst watching the restaurant (ironically) I have been cooking plums in brandy.

Getting a little too involved with the program I managed to let my brandy sauce turn into something beyond caramel. The kitchen was a smoke haze and burning my eyes. The saucepan may not survive and I’ve never lost a saucepan before.

So they should have been

about 900 grams of fresh plums

a pint of brandy – the cheap stuff

350 grams of granulated sugar

a Cinnamon stick

a bit of lemon peel or orange peel.

Two pound sterilised jar/s

Put the brandy, sugar and Cinnamon stick in a pan where the plums will happily sit in one layer.

put on a medium heat and allow the sugar to dissolve slowly, stirring from time to time.

Add the plums and bring to a gentle simmer, cover the pan and cook for between 10 and 20 minutes, checking with a sharp knife to see if the plums are soft.

Once the plums are soft remove from the heat and carefully move the plums to a sterilised jar with a slatted spoon.

Put the liquid back on the heat and bring to the boil. Let the mixture cook down for 5 minutes – being careful not to go and watch a tv program.

Remove the pan from the heat, fish out the Cinnamon stick pour the liquid over the plums, they should be covered.

The plums should keep for a few weeks like this. Serve them with whipped cream and enjoy.

Today I checked on my leaf gift tags. They are being nicely pressed in a book by the sadly missed garden presenter, Geoff Hamilton. The book is from his ‘Cottage Gardens’ TV series, flicking through the pages I remembered using his ideas to transform a rectangle of grass into a pretty cottage garden some years ago, fond memories of all the work and delight I found in making a garden my own.

The leaf tags are experimental versions to which I added a few words to get some idea of the finished product but I’m concerned they are looking a bit bland, maybe they would look a bit more festive sprayed in gold or silver, perhaps even gilded a bit with a gold wax crayon. 

In addition to the leaf drying I’ve started drying a sliced up orange for Christmas decorations. These take a bit of time to dry out so I’ve popped the pieces onto a foil covered cake tin base which is on top of the wood-burner. I’ve done these before and they look great in a bowl with a few pine cones or on garlands with Cinnamon sticks and fir tree cuttings.

Half a kilo of either crab apples or quince fruit has come into my possession so I’m going to have a go at quince/crabapple cheese. The fruits were yellow like some crabapples and incredibly fragrant like quince but much smaller than I remember quince. Who will know? I’m pretty sure they are not poisonous though.

To make the Jelly I am using Fiona’s recipe on the Cottage Smallholder at http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/?p=102. The fruit has been gently cooking on the stove all afternoon and I’ve ladled it into the muslin cloth to strain for the night. My faithful muslin cloth has now strained many types of fruit and washes up well every time. I would not dare suggest replacing it.

It seems that with our few days away and having spent most of the summer with friends and relatives staying in our little cottage we have added some unwanted padding to our middles. We jumped or should I say carefully tiptoed onto the scales this weekend knowing the results would be disappointing but somehow hopeful of that illusive miracle. The worst was confirmed although our ever tightening clothes are a bit of a giveaway.

I have been to a couple of slimming clubs in the past and find that you really need to be committed as there’s nothing quite so discouraging as knowing that you pay each week to be weighed then they confirm what you knew, you haven’t lost anything. I appreciate that a good diet works and you have to eat less of the naughty things to loose those excess pounds.

In the past we have also managed to lose weight by following a very strict eating regime based loosely on ‘you are what you eat’. This time I’m going to try and work on finding a middle path, but still some of our padding needs to be lost first to get us motivated.

Food combining seems to be a key element of many diets, if you split your proteins and carbohydrates into different meals then for some reason you loose weight. As I am so conditioned to have potatoes with most meals, which I love in any form, I will be replacing potatoes wedges with fresh turnip wedges tonight. We tried a few of the turnip wedges along side the traditional potato wedges a couple of weeks ago and they were delicious. I have also grown a few Jerusalem artichokes and I will try oven cooking some of these when they are lifted in a few weeks. Most of the turnips I planted in August look big enough to be pulled but I’m going to pull them as I want to use them. I really wish I’d grown more.

To make the turnip wedges.

You need as many turnips per person as you would have used potato wedges. I use about 2 medium potatoes a person, so replace them with two medium sized turnips a person.

Quarter teaspoon Garlic salt (or a couple of crushed garlic cloves and a good pinch of salt).

Half teaspoon of paprika or quarter teaspoon Hungarian paprika (it’s quite hot)

A pinch of chilli flakes if you like a bit of spice

2 tablespoons olive oil per 2 people

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius

Peel the turnips (the older skins can be quite bitter) and then chop them into wedge size pieces. The size should be about the size of your thumb but a bit fatter.

Put an oven tray in the oven lined with foil shiny side up.

Put the wedges in a pan of cold water and add a pinch of salt. Bring the pan to the boil and then reduce to a very gentle simmer for about 5 minutes. Drain the turnips and leave in the colander over the saucepan for a couple of minutes to allow some of the water to evaporate from the wedges.

Get a plastic food bag or plastic food storage box big enough to accommodate the wedges and a bit of room left over. Put the olive oil and garlic salt in with the paprika and chilli flakes (if using). Mix it together by squidging the bag around with your hands or stirring the food box a little.

Add the wedges and seal them in either by loosely tying the food bag or putting the top firmly on the plastic box. Shake the food box around or squidge the food bag about until the wedges are coated in oil and spice. Do this lovingly as you want them still in their original shape we don’t want mashed turnips.

Take the warmed oven tray out and empty the wedges into it. Cook for about 45 minutes. To check if the wedges are ready prick the biggest one with a sharp knife. The inside should be as soft as the centre of a baked potato.

Serve with a sprinkle of freshly chopped parsley if you have some. We will be having ours with oven cooked lamb chops and broccoli. I also fancy trying them with oven baked salmon.

When we go away I try to save up a couple of magazines to take with me. I have one indulgent magazine and one practical magazine a month. I am not one to read TV or fashion related journals so I have Country Living and The Smallholder.

Having been in receipt of these two publications for several years now I feel the winds of change coming and as the Smallholder annual subscription has now finished I will give it a rest for a little while. I am also going to cancel Country Living as I feel it’s become more centred on those living in the cities who desire an escape to the country. The items beautifully photographed and priced are often way beyond our means but I very much like the rural businesses they feature each month.

This holiday I discovered that I had left the magazines at home, we always forget something, and thought it a good opportunity to browse the shelves and pick up something new. There seemed to be a myriad of magazines on offer, I wandered up and down the aisle so confused was I that I decided only to look at the gardening magazines. I flicked through a few, the Wilf one was by now becoming restless understandably not wanting to spend huge amounts of his holiday in a supermarket, I made a decision! I went for the one with the free packets of seeds (Kitchen Garden), I can parallel this behaviour to our Granddaughters comic buying, and they always go for the one with the best gift. Some marketing does work!

The first evening of our holiday we settled down on the sofa for an hours rest prior to our special treat, dinner in the restaurant. Feeling tired but not sleepy I unwrapped the magazine, soon I could hear those gentle deep breaths coming from the Wilf one which signalled he was sleeping. I read the magazine greedily taking in the articles, there was an informative article about planting garlic, a look at a community allotments, advice on what to plant now, a quince feature, an article on mushroom foraging (the photo is of part of our compost heap) and so much more. I have to say I enjoyed my new discovery and it may be replacing my existing magazine purchases. Over the few days away I read every article, cover to cover. The web site gives you a good sample of the magazine but I felt the web page layout let it down slightly. http://www.kitchengarden.co.uk