Mak'n Bac'n

Something we've wanted to do in a while, is try our hand at home curing. We finally got our acts together in January and bought us some pork from Tablehurst, the wonderful bidynamic farm in the Ashdown Forest that we go to occasionally.

I followed a recipe from one of our home craft type books - I don't have the weights but I mixed curing salt, sea salt, raw brown sugar, juniper berries, peppercorns and some herbs (thyme and rosemary) together and made sure I got it all over the belly (the pig's, not mine!)





We then left it for 2 weeks, covered in muslin in the fridge (although a cold larder will do) and occasionally drained the liquid. After 2 weeks I tried a bit - it was very salty - so I soaked it in cold water over night. The finished product was deeeeeelicious!



After about a week it started to smell a little so we used it up quite quickly. I'm not sure whether I should have put more cure on it or whether that's how quickly it goes if you don't hang it in the salt for longer. I have read, in Home Farmer magazine, that you should entirely cover it in the cure (lots and lots of cure) so I'll try that next time but a reat first attempt!

Produce 2011

As I didn't do any updates last year, you will have no idea how well our allotment has been getting on so this is a gallery-style update on things what we grew last year...

A basket of produce (this must have been autumn time)


My beautiful "Twilight" chillis (one of three varieties I grew - I have so many!)


Some strawbs in the fruit cage from early in the year


The onions, ready to come up


A GIANT carrot (after never having had much luck before, we outdid ourselves this year!)


A GIANT mooli! Slightly enexpected and we only managed to use some of them sadly...there's not that much you can do with a mooli it turns out!

Update on chickens

Our first 5 hens (Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch followed by Blue and Bell) were all ex-battery hens. There really is nothing like seeing the battered, naked chickens going from their first day (being scared of air, sun, rain, flies...) to becoming confident (some might say a little too confident!) proper chickens. BUT, they are hard work - I always say that they're like foster children. They'd had a tough start in life and you can tell. We lost our last ex-batt (Rom - who behaved more like a cockrel!) late last year and not long before that decided that we would get some *normal* chickens for a while...enter Water and Cress (following the theme of being named after heritage railways).

Here's Cress, she's the boss, and a big chicken:



This is Water, she's an "Amber", isn't she pretty? She's the under-chicken (and therefore our favourite!). Good ol's Rom-the-bully is in the background (I think Water was pretty glad to see the back of her!)



They're very well behaved and lay pretty much ever day. I'll post an egg count soon but this gives an indication of how productive they are...

Doesn't time fly...

It has been a year and a half since I last blogged on here - life, PhD, work, running has all got in the way:



(Matt is the centre of the trio of blue shirts on the right hand side)

I'm going to try to start adding photos more often. An allotment update will come once we have some things growing and I will introduce the new chickens to the blog but for now I'll just put some pretty pictures of things that we cooked with our produce in 2011...






A creative (and pretty!) way of using courgettes



Matt's wonderful bread



"Healthy" Eton Mess (yoghurt, not cream) with our own raspberries and homemade meringues

Bringing in the harvest down at Jimmy's

Jimmy Doherty is an absolute hero of mine. We went to Jimmy's Farm a few years back when Matt had bought me a tour of the farm and lunch with Jimmy himself and he is such an inspirational chap. So, imagine our delight when we discovered that he was hosting a food and music festival.

In case you don't know who Jimmy is, this is he (holding his month old baby in a carrier...aaaah):



We booked tickets months and months ago before we knew the line up so I was soooo excited to discover that my favourite band (The Futureheads) were playing. The music was brilliant, of course, and the atmosphere fantastic:




The food was also brilliant. On the first night I had dinner from Wahaca, the Mexican "street food" restaurant set up by Tomasina Myers who won masterchef a few years back. I've been to the restaurant in London a few times and it never disapoints - it's just my kind of food! On Sunday we had some Greek-style salad from the "farmers market" area, and a pasty from Jimmy's shop. Being such a small festival it was a great place to just see people. We watched The Hairy Bikers do a cooking demo and they were jolly funny and just as entertaining as on TV:


(a speeding biker)


(bikers in action)

Last, and by no means least, my gardening guru, Alys Fowler was there! Matt said I was all red every time I saw her and I saw her lots - she clearly wanted to be my friend because she queued next to me for breakfast and sat behind us at Wahaca:



She talked about wild food and some unusual ideas for preserving and pickling, which was fascinating, and we even won a prize from her of some walnuts that she had collected on her drive down from Birmingham. Brilliant!

I was a bit of a loser and asked for her autograph (I never do that, but I just couldn't not!) and talked to her about flea beetles, a very important subject I'm sure you'll agree.




Finally, a visit to Jimmy's Farm wouldn't be complete without a mention of the pigs. We had a lovely talk from a pig expert about the different breeds and they all came out to show themselves off:

Gloucester Old Spot

Large Black

Tamworth

Wessex/Saddleback

I thought this chap was an Essex but he's clearly not so he's nameless

Middle White


It was just running around pigs that kept us amused either, there was plenty of piggy to fill our tummies (Katy, don't scroll down)...














Pass me the apple sauce!

Produce update

I haven't done an update on the food that we're getting from our garden for a while so I thought it was about time...

A couple of weeks ago we went down to the allotment, basket in hand, and had a good old harvest. The peas are pretty much spent so we picked the last of those (I think we've had over 4 months of peas, which is great considering I only successionally sowed twice and we had pea moth larvae). Some of the squash had also gone orange and hadn't grown in a few weeks so I decided to pick those. I'm glad I did because we now have a load more femal flowers fruiting, which is very exciting. We obviously had some courgettes (who doesn't?!) and the first of our tomatillos were ready so I picked some of those. I collected a jar of raspberries and I have also presented, harvest festival style, some of our chillis here. We've had over 15 chillis now from our 3 plants (and a good few to ripen yet) and 1 chilli is hot enough for a good kick in 4 portions of chilli!



To celebrate our bounty, I roasted a squash, some courgettes, tomatillos and a chilli (which was a bit too hot!) with some of my mum's garlic and some thyme form the garden and we had it for a few meals with couscous.



We are also continuing to get a continuous crop of tomatoes, although no new ones are growing now as you would expect. I picked a small punnet's worth today to add to a paella that I'm cooking for friends on Friday night. Despite it not being a traditional paella ingredient, I am going to see if I can hide some courgette in there!

We all need some...preservation

It's been a while since I've updated the blog as you will see (once again I blame it on weddings, festivals and a PhD) so I have quite a bit to update on.

Following on from the tomato ketchup success (it really is very delicious) i got the preserving bug.

Firstly, I emptied the fridge of summer fruit so made a "summer fruit jam" which contained various quantities of blueberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and some alpine strawberries. It's quite delicious and has a lovely tart edge from the blackcurrants:



Secondly, in true self-sufficientish style, I swapped half a dozen eggs for 1.5kg of plums from a lady at work. I kept some aside to grill with sugar and serve with ice cream but the rest I made into little jars of spiced plum chutney, which is yummy, and should be good for Christmas - I think it'll go well with turkey, or with my special Boxing day sprout and sweed sarnies (yummm!).

Unfortunately I haven't taken any photos of the chitney jars so here is a montage of some of our produce:



Finally, I walk in the gate every day and brush past the lovely bushy mint bush and it makes me long for mojitos so i decided to do something useful with some of the mint and make some mint jelly. My mummy made some delicious mint jelly when I was younger, which had lots of sugar and was like minty-jam. So, I decided to immitate this and make some lovely sweet mint jelly. It's very sticky but very nice and goes well with potatoes (and, I imagine, the aforementioned sprout and and sweed sanger):



So we have well stocked cupbopards for the winter...as long as our diet consists only of preserves!