The Cottage Smallholder

Reading a review of a biography of Eva Braun at the weekend, I discovered that I have something in common with Hitler. He rarely got up before midday. Since developing CFS a couple of years ago, I tend to spend my mornings in bed. Propped up with my laptop and the Min Pins I do Read More »

When I lived at home with my mum, we always ate lunch – main course and pud. Supper was an ad hoc affair – we could have whatever we liked that from the bounty of the fridge and larder as long as we prepared it ourselves. Quite canny of my mum as she could put Read More »

  I was going to write about Darina Allen’s toasties and when I looked the recipe up on the Internet I discovered that I’d written about them before. On Friday, faced with two crusts of bread, a lump of cheese and two bantam eggs I made them again using Andrew this time. They were scrummy. If you are going Read More »

  “What do you think of breakfast?” “It’s not nearly as good as yesterday. Are they the same sausages? They taste cheap.” We’ve had Andrew around for a few weeks now. He always makes us weekend brunch with delicious results. This morning he was busy defrosting a chicken so I had to use the conventional Read More »

Last night Danny went out for a meal with his brother Mike. “You can have your cheese on toast thing.” Danny thinks of this as a snack but it was a staple supper with me for years. Last night I supplemented the cucumber with thinly sliced raw courgette and used a mild goat’s cheddar. The Read More »

When I was a teenager my mother often took me and my sister to Paris for a month. It was always in August when a lot of Parisians are away from the city. Quite a few shops and restaurants were closed but the art galleries and the big shops were open and we generally found Read More »

These are a collection of recipes inspired by cut price, soon to be out of date, supermarket food. I have discovered that this sort of shopping has made my cooking a lot more inventive and it’s really satisfying to create something delicious out of ingredients that would otherwise be destined for landfill. Many years ago I was Read More »

Danny likes a few sautéed mushrooms and a grilled tomato with his Saturday midday brunch. Although they sound tempting they never really appeal to me – I prefer the more conventional home smoked bacon, organic eggs and buttered toast from a homemade loaf. A couple of weeks ago I found some mushrooms and a tomato Read More »

We cured and smoked our own ham this year. It was delicious and a proper old fashioned half leg. We were thrilled that it worked out as I had tweaked our bacon cure, upping the salt by 25%. This is still far less than the HFW cure and every other recipe that I’ve found on Read More »

  “I’ll cook this evening. We’ll have the pork hock dish from last night. There is loads of mashed potato left over. How about potato cakes?” Mondays are always busy for both of us. A simple meal seemed perfect. But returning home I discovered that we had no eggs. So I pulled out all the stops Read More »