Inca, the Min Pin, our gourmet optician. How to stop your puppy destroying valuables.
Even at eight months our pup chews everything. Clothes pegs, lighters, ice cubes, sea shells and now two pairs of my spectacles (actually it’s three pairs now: updated March 2007). As Danny spelt out on the fridge with the magnetic letters that she had not yet gobbled up, ˜Inca is a goat amongst Min Pins.’ This morning I managed to prise open her jaws and retrieve a large and presumably tasty cheque and noticed a glint behind her in the gloom of the basket (a sort of fur igloo). My second pair of specs lay in pieces. She had crept...
read moreBook review: Two good books for winemaking by C J J Berry and Gillian Pearks
Back in the seventies, when buying a bottle of wine was an expensive treat, the author C. J. J. Berry shot to fame with his series of amateur winemaking books. This is the rather smooth looking character on the left. He cashed in on the great home winemaking boom of the sixties and seventies. As glugable wine began to fill supermarket shelves, the home winemaking craze declined and you could often find his books in charity shops. Now that country winemaking is enjoying a small renaissance his books are becoming sought after again. The best of...
read moreSlow cooked Steak and Kidney Pie Recipe
One great thing about autumn and winter is savouring a really good steak and kidney pie. Another is that we have streamlined our weekday cooking but still eat well. We both love good food; even our mid-week meals of sausage and mash consist of Newmarket sausages (superb!) with creamy mashed potato and heaps of vegetables fresh from the garden. Neither of us wants to spent hours making supper during the working week. Even those ’30 minute meals’ seem to take us at least an hour. Eventually we twigged that we could avoid kitchen...
read moreFrancoise’s garden herb jelly recipe
Danny salvaged a discarded bathtub and planted it with parsley and thyme. Three months later, the bath is overflowing with parsley. It stands beside a large water butt so it’s impossible to forget when the weather is hot. Regular watering has definitely paid off and I’m thinking of moving a lot more herbs down to this location. There was one problem: what to do with the glut? When I mentioned this to my friend Anne Mary, she assured me that she had the answer. Within a few hours she rang me, ‘I’ve found this great...
read moreHow many eggs does a chicken lay each week?
“How come there were only four eggs in the basket this morning?'” Danny asked when he brought in my breakfast tray. Admittedly I had given John Coe four when he came to mow the lawn this week, but only eight in a week! Danny was concerned, “What are we going to do about our fry ups?” Danny’s mother kept chickens when he was a child and as a Poultry Instructor, passed on her knowledge. Despite this both of us were a bit naive when it came to keeping chickens ourselves. Just before we collected our chickens three...
read moreDamson granita with kirsch recipe
The Tesco Basics range includes a pack of twelve champagne glasses. These are really tough, made to last. I’m sure that they’d survive being flung across a room. We haven’t tried this yet with these particular glasses. We just use them for parties and occasionally we bung them in the freezer to hold granita. Granita is a massive, seven league step away from a traditional sorbet. Danny describes a good granita as spoonfuls of iced heaven. It’s a cinch to make. You don’t need an ice cream making machine to shine...
read moreRosehip and Apple Jelly Recipe
Rosehips are ripening and perfect for picking now. Some people wait until after the first frost, when the rosehips will be soft. We start picking from the first week in September. They need to cook for longer but we know that they’re really fresh. They’re high in vitamin C and a great asset for the self sufficient smallholder. As a child, I remember my Mother giving us rosehip syrup (a dessert spoon daily). It was rather good. Nowadays, we make apple and rosehip jelly. The rosehip flavour combines well with the apple. This is a...
read moreAnyone for tennis?
The only sport that I’m actively engaged in is killing flies. I have a good collection of swats. The blue one works the best. Not being a athletic type, I’m delighted that I’ve found a sport at which I shine. I did win the Junior Doubles Tennis Championship at school. But that was only because Petronella Lovegrove played heroically for two, whilst I skulked by the net. Now my weedy backhand and embarrassing dolly drop serve have been supplanted by a well honed whoosh and the happy click of fly on plastic. The fly killing...
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