Rainy days

Woke to torrential rain this morning and after the initial, obligatory “why’s it always wait until the weekend to rain” grump, kind of got into the swing of things.

Having had an extremely physically tiring day yesterday we enjoyed a bit of a lie-in until 9am (which, considering the alarm often goes off at 5am in this house is actually rather a long lie-in!) – only interupted by a quick trip to the garden to let the dog out and open the chicken coop. This was followed by a soaking while walking the dog, breakfast, then I decided to do some baking.

A quick stop for a brandy coffee (well, brandy latte really – sans cream), then along with lunch of the day, I made some orange curd, baked egg custard and cinnamon buns.

Having had the egg custard after lunch, I’m feeling rather stuffed. Tea will be bacon butties (the OH didn’t get the bread on in time for us to have them for breakfast or lunch) and no doubt a cinnamon bun (or 2).

Maybe rainy days aren’t so bad after all – well, the garden needs it!!!

The Green Cone

Last weekend, the OH and I (with not a little help from the cats – well, holes are there to be jumped into right?) installed our Green Cone (food waste digester system).

Amid much excitement (it’s been a long time coming), we took it in turns to dig the hole to the requisite 32″ diameter and 24″ deep (we like to “share”), screwed it all together, popped it in the hole, filled in around the sides (making sure we’d covered the base completely) and stood back (with hands on hips and a rather smug smile) to admire our handywork.

There’s a mix of things that can be put into the Green Cone – fish, red meat and poultry (including the bones of all 3), bread, fruit (inc peelings), veg (inc peelings), dairy produce, cooked food scraps, crushed egg shells, teabags and animal excrement – the majority of which can’t be added to the compost heap (hence the reason we got the cone).

According to the instructions, 0.75-1kg of food waste can be put in the cone EVERY DAY! Apparently, this amount is TYPICAL of that produced by a family of 4. Good-o, less in the bin.

That was Saturday morning. I sit here on Thursday evening, and all that’s in the white caddy (that comes with the cone to keep the bits in, because you obviously can’t be expected to find something to put the scraps in and carry them to the cone!) is one small piece of bacon fat.

The raw fruit and veg scraps, crushed egg shells and teabags go on the compost heap. The bread crusts (that’s the ends of the loaf, not the edges) gets fed to the birds (if the OH doesn’t get there first and turn them into midnight toast!). When I cook, I cook the right amount of food, or enough to freeze down for another day, or enough to have cold the next day for my lunch, so we don’t have cooked food scraps very often (only fatty bits and the very rare “I don’t feel too well and can’t quite finish this”). The bones from chicken will go in there the next time we have one (as will fish bones). It’s very rare that I buy food and it doesn’t get used. At the moment all that’s in the cone is (sorry to be blunt) cat and dog poo.

I don’t mind that, that’s why we got the cone really. We knew we didn’t have much in the way of non-compostable food scraps, but we do have a dog and 2 cats. But it got me thinking – don’t people know how much food they’re likely to eat, and therefore how much to buy and cook?

I can think of one family (who don’t even know about this blog, so if you’re reading it, it’s not you) for whom it’s a regular occurrence to buy food, pop it in the fridge and then chuck it in the bin – funnily enough, they don’t compost and are a 4 car family! But is that normal? How can people live like that?

Cakee!!!!

Probably the most versitile cake idea in the world:

Base:
500g plain flour (white or white/wholemeal mix), 50g raw sugar, 2-3 teaspoons dried yeast (more for wholemeal), 3 tablespoons sunflower oil, 1 egg, ½ cup milk. Make as for bread dough and let rise until double in bulk, then knock back and knead lightly.

Roll out on a tray (as large as will fit in your oven).

Add topping (see below). Allow 30ins to rise again.

Bake at about 180o Celsius for 30 – 60 minutes, depending on the topping (the thicker, the longer, but then lower the temperature a bit).

Possible toppings (and this is the good bit):
Absolutely anything!!! Seriously! The one above is raspberry jam and shortbread crumbs, but it’s also excellent with stewed fruit and sugar (or a crumble mix).

You could use creme fraiche, mixed with 100 – 200g raw sugar.

Or just a good sprinkling of sugar, with or without cinnamon.

Smokin’!

For Christmas the OH gave me a hot smoker. Yesterday was the first chance I had to use it.

We had applewood smoked chicken, homegrown salad and homegrown tatties for us tea!

Greenhouse Day

Having spent a few weeks faffing around with the chicken coop, I’ve fallen behind with seed sowing. Consequently, sunday was spent in the greenhouse. The result? See for yourself:

That’s not to mention the stuff indoors on windowsills. To be honest, I’m only halfway there on the catching-up – halfway on the veg side, I’ve not touched the flower seed. Then again, flower seed only gets sown round here if I’ve finished sowing the veg.

Admittedly, a lot of this stuff is ready to be hardened off or moved to the polytunnel and out of the intensive care unit. That’s a job for next weekend!

One thing I was really pleased about. I’d made up some of my own seed compost – not to the correct measurements as I didn’t have any leafmould. Just come homemade compost mixed with some sand. Some veg haven’t liked this – I think it’s too heavy for them – but some calabrese I was potting on obviously loved it:

Good strong healthy plants and the thing that really please me, was the roots – I’ve never seen such a mass of healthy, well developed roots on a seedling this size before. On a slightly smug note, I’d also grown the same variety in some bought seed compost – they’re all but dead (and no I didn’t kill them on purpose) – just vigorous enough to survive round here!

To polish things off, we had salad for tea:

This is the first of this year’s cut-and-come-again lettuce. So we had some of that, some overwintered chard and oriental leaves, with homegrown tatties from store made into a hot potato salad with homegrown garlic, parsley and mint. Yes there were some other ingredients (shop bought), but I don’t think we’ll mention them!