The Cottage Smallholder

We don’t tend to have a starter on Christmas day as I prefer to serve canapés if people are feeling peckish. Traditionally these are smoked salmon on thinly sliced brown bread. Danny is a bit picky about the sort of salmon that he likes, ideally the salmon should be wild and not farmed. But as Read More »

I picked up a whole squid a couple of days ago. I had not come across this wonder before – just those lovely white open ended envelopes that regurgitate a baby squid when pressed. This half priced one had skin and an eye! Maybe two, I couldn’t/didn’t want to work out the physiology. But I Read More »

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 »

A few years ago I woke up one night. I could hear a loud crunching coming from the bottom of my giant 100 year old bed. What on earth could it be? I hastily groped for the light switch and discovered that Inca, our youngest Min Pin, was gnawing a head of broccoli. She had Read More »

  Everyone always says that good soup needs a really great stock. Sometimes I simmer bones for stock in the slow cooker and years ago Fred Fitzpatrick used to give me beef bones which I roasted and then bubbled gently for hours to get a good dark tasty stock. But recently I’ve gone back to Read More »

  This is another in our skinflint soup series. This delicious soup was run up with leftovers that could easily have just been thrown away. They made an elegant soup. The two key ingredients are mushroom ketchup and the zest of the orange which transformed this soup from good to sublime. Danny chickened out on Read More »

  “I bet we’re the first in the world to be having broccoli soup and flash fried squid for breakfast.” Danny dunked a chunk of crusty bread in his soup. With me still at home we tend to have a late brunch these days but yesterday was the first day that we’d gone wild and Read More »

  “Don’t you just love the look of abject fear that appears on the faces of shop girls or fellow shoppers, when they ask if you are making a lantern for Hallow’een and you reply that you are, in fact, going to eat it!”  Wrote my friend Pamela. “I made soup with half of mine Read More »

For years it has hurt me to throw away the green outer leaves of the cauliflower. I have simmered them for the chickens in the past but mainly they are added to our kitchen compost bin. Having had the tip from John Coe – that all the leaves on the sprouting broccoli plant are edible Read More »

I had a doctor’s appointment late afternoon so I changed out of my ragged decorating garb into vaguely normal human clothes and left work early. As I was working in Newmarket, I could walk to the surgery without the stress of checking that I had the right coins for the car park or worrying about Read More »