eastermas

This year’s Easter cakes are brought to you via this Sainsbury’s recipe - chosen for ease – it is essentially a carrot cake, and therefore difficult to get wrong.  My brain is still lurgified and not needing anything complex.

This afternoon, sat around a roaring wood burning stove, feeling over full, over chocolated and contemplating another turkey sarnie (we had cooked a turkey crown on Friday to give us lots of sarnie meat through the bank holiday weekend), getting over the lurgy, having been  out and met with family and home again, the sleet and cold weather driving us in to spin and knit by the fire in front of drivelous TV… I suddenly had an urge to have a slice of Christmas pudding!

Yup it really did feel like thingymas – in fact I think it was warmer outside at Christmas.

A nice feeling – I think Easter is one of my favourite festivals.  But yes, could spring be sprung now please?

Read Full Post »

hot toddy

I feel I should now be bringing you images of new seedlings, spring flowers, or at the very least, seasonal recipes showing al fresco meals. But no. The coldest March for yonks (ironic since last year was the hottest March in yonks) and here it is lurgy central. My son started with a bug that moved to a cough that became a touch of pneumonia. Then, after two weeks of housebound tending, antibiotic giving, I have the lurgy, albeit a milder version. Oh joy.

Life goes on, animals have to be checked, even if it is snowing and bitterly cold. And I have turned to the soothing comforts of the hot toddy.

I think there are countless recipes and variations. Mine is normally:

• the juice of half a lemon
• 1 large teaspoon of honey
• 1-2 capfuls of whisky
• hot water
• 1 stick of cinnamon

Bung it in a mug and top up with the hot water.

I don’t even like whisky, but somehow it is just so right in a hot toddy. During the day I leave out the whisky as too much of a good thing is not a good thing, and the hot toddy is then called ‘honey and lemon’, like lemsip, only pleasant.  The lemon tastes of actual lemon (no surprise there) and the honey, from my Dad’s bees (thanks Dad!) is special.  And unlike those powdered drinks, you can have as many as you like since they are not laced with paracetamol (and nothing stopping you taking the paracetamol too if you want to).  I vary the flavours.. sometimes with added cloves, vanilla, cardamom  or ginger.

But at bedtime, the whisky goes back in and it is a hot toddy once again. I wont pretend it is a cold cure, but it is  a comfort, the hot honey liquid  nice on sore throats, some vitamin C in the lemon never a bad thing and the whisky adds to the flavour as well as the chances of sleep.

Read Full Post »

March

The year seems to be zipping past already – but of course the new month surprised us by it being so wintery and generally un-spring-like.

I am way behind on seed sowing, it just seems wrong to sow things when it is so very cold, but things had better change soon or we shall miss the moment.

The frogs and toads haven’t turned up yet, I am hoping they are just having a lie in and have not perished  - but we usually see frog and toad spawn in the pond around Valentines day, and nothing yet.

We did celebrate today though, being St David’s day, with a large helping of freshly cooked Welsh cakes and butter.. so all is not lost

Read Full Post »

beetroot pasta

We don’t really do valentines day – or more to the point I refuse to adhere to an official day to be loving.  I figure loving moments, romantic gestures etc should arrive when the time is right..

But, as regular readers will note, here at colour it green meadows, we three like to celebrate  most things – or at least nod vaguely at them in passing.. and this year on valentine’s day, we chose to acknowledge it with a red or pink themed dinner.. without food colouring. And using what we already had in the fridge and freezers.

So we had a family meal of prawns and pepperdew chillis to start, beetroot pasta with a chilli tomato sauce, and raspberry upsidedown cake. Washed down with red wine and red grape juice.

The beetroot spaghetti was a bit of a challenge, resulting in red hands..  and it made a difficult dough to work with – we just left out 2 eggs from the usual recipe and blended in cooked beetroot.  But worth it for the effect – it was a bit startling!

Himself left me a gift of a lovely twisted bit of ivy wood he had found and cleaned up, and, in the spirit of not doing valentine’s day, left a note saying ‘happy Thursday’. And as Thursdays go, it was a fairly happy one, yes.

Read Full Post »

chicken dim sum

Goodbye dragon, hello snake – happy Chinese new year!

We spent much of the day cooking.  this year we had steamed pork buns, ribs in a lovely dark sauce, sesame prawn toast, and dim sum – I made my own chicken and coriander dumplings – though I confess to buying the pastry. Our own chicken too.

These days, after some years of pondering the best way to cook home grown chicken, we mostly take the breasts off for fast cooking in curries, barbecues etc, and the rest of the meat is minced – and that mince can go on to make so many dishes.. and the latest is this dim sum recipe.

We had a break from the usual stir fry veg and made an ‘Asian salad’ with a dressing made from rice vinegar, light soy sauce and honey, and it made a great accompaniment,

Feeling nicely stuffed full of not too unhealthy food.

Read Full Post »

Bath chaps

We believe in the ‘everything but the oink’ theory of raising and eating your own meat – out of respect to the animal really, but also because being thrifty is a massive part of being a small holder or just simply trying to grow and raise your own food.

So whenever we sent a pig to slaughter we always ask for the head back.  This is the bit I am the most squeamish about.. but chant under your breath ‘everything but the oink’ and proceed.

In previous years we have made brawn but this time I wanted to try something different, and decided to give Bath chaps a go.

Bath chaps are a west country tradition, made popular in Bath as the name suggests, and is basically the cheeks of the pig that have been given the ham treatment.

So I did a bit of reading, watched some videos, found a fair bit of difference, and took the bits I liked.  You can still buy Bath chaps from independent butchers, and I guess they will each have their own version too.  Here is mine.

And we love it – it tastes like ham, is a bit fatty, but that tastes great too – and you can cut some off as I did (I’m not convinced it is respectful to the animal to clog up ones arteries.. however the cat had other views and nothing was wasted).

A hit with the family,  we ate some, froze the rest and is a real treat.

Read Full Post »

pigs gone

Another intense week of pork processing.  The last two pigs went off on Monday and came back as pork on Tuesday. We spent the day butchering – I know a ‘proper’ butcher would take less time but it takes us about an hour per half to butcher it to our needs - then we spent the rest of the day processing even further – the shoulders were boned out and minced into lean mince and sausagemeat.  Some of that sausagemeat and offal were made into faggots and two big pork liver patés.  We had liver for dinner – and still had some leftover – two pigs livers is a lot of liver and you are only supposed to eat it once a week – so we have frozen some and that will probably make more paté or meatloaf in the future.

The cheeks and ears are in the brine tub in the fridge.

All the joints, fillets, mince, sausagemeat, faggots, patés, trotters and bones are tucked away in the freezers – and it all, just, fitted.

quite a good feeling really

Read Full Post »

the courgette mountain

has arrived. 

We now have a shelf in the fridge dedicated to courgettes – hurray – as all of the frozen supply has long gone.  We have been restocking the freezers, but fresh courgettes are lovely – we celebrated with courgette bhajis

Read Full Post »