The Cottage Smallholder

I am determined to cut our over the counter spending by 25% this year. I am also equally keen to make it fun.

Already it has taken us down undiscovered paths. The tasty vegetarian meals every other day and the real enjoyment of meat, when it comes. We are looking healthier, are losing weight (a steady pound a week for me) and feeling fitter. We have never pigged out on cream cakes and biscuits but I realise now, that our diet was very high in animal fats.

It’s satisfying. Although we have only saved 21% this month. I feel a bit crouchy about this. When we do manage to crack the 25% barrier it will be an amazing moment.

Vegetarian food is a completely new arena. I am longing to create my own veggie dishes but realise I need many more apprentice months before I can start to do this well. We chomped through a very dry disaster this month, that sounded great in my head.

Most vegetarian meals take forward planning. You can’t just slam a bean under the grill and run up a sauce. We’re beginning to crack it now by cooking and freezing large batches of dishes that we have particularly enjoyed.

The biggest surprise of all has been the discovery that most veggie dishes are all about wonderful combinations of flavour and texture. Complex stuff. I am amazed that an old carnivore like me is actually stating that, at their best, veggie dishes are delicious.

With the bit between my teeth I have been looking at all areas where we can shave costs and reduce unnecessary wastage but still have a good quality of life.

For example, the majority of our water bill is calculated on the sewerage use. We have finally filled half the cistern with some flint stones that a client donated a couple of week ago. I suspect that they had a rock garden in mind but what the hell. This is a subterranean rock garden with knobs on. It is saving us money. And it’s pretty if you lift the lid.

We’ve turned down the temperature of the immersion heater by a couple of degrees – it’s crazy to have to add cold to hot water for a bath or shower.

A fridge takes half an hour to regain its temperature when you open the door. Milk for daily use is now in a jug by the kettle – much more convenient. Similarly we are using the insulated ice bucket for cold drinks.

We are using the smaller oven rather than the big fan assisted one for baking and the slow cooker is assisting us on an almost day to day basis. This small crock pot can cook virtually anything. All it cannot do is brown a topping but the grill can do this in seconds.

We are now supplementing the chicken food (which has shot up in price) with a scatter of vegetable scraps. The feed hopper has to be refilled far less frequently.

The dogs are enjoying the vegetables left over from making stock as a topping on their biscuit rather than our previous all meat topping.

Top tips for February 2008:

• Kate (uk)’s tip for ghee. Sold by most supermarkets under the name of Plough. Lovely nutty stuff for frying.
• Emma’s suggestion to check out Prue Leith’s Vegetarian Bible. This is a wonderful vegetarian resource. I also like Delia’s Vegetarian collection but Leith’s is much more comprehensive.
• Mildred’s tips for marmalade making are wonderful (in the comments section of our Seville orange marmarmalde post). She also includes a great recipe for grapefruit, lemon, orange and lime marmalade, that can be made at any time of year.

Top February recipes, reviews and cheap foodie ideas on this site:

Delia’s Vegetarian Shepherd’s pie with a tweak although we prefer our topping and now have a new one that Danny created – I will blog soon
Delia’s chick pea and coriander cakes with marinated red onion
Make your own yoghurt – we are loving this. And it’s a great way to use a redundant jam thermometer.
Great recipes for leftovers: Summery spiced chicken curry recipe. No muddy flavours here, a handfull of chicken fed two hungry people with seconds!
Grow your own sprouting broccoli. If you set the seeds now you cold be eating this in the autumn
Skinflint soup we are still making this every week
Squash and summery vegetable soup recipe very tasty, pretty soup

Top February discoveries:

• Even more great stuff at Daily Bread. Pappadums, unsalted cashews, herbs in bull sized packs
• Stewed fruit for breakfast
• Making stock in the slow cooker, using finely sliced (more flavour) vegeatables and bones begged from Fred’s. The best stock that I have ever made.
• Garam Marsala is a condiment as well as a spice to add to a dish.

And that old chestnut. Looking at savings with an annual perspective rather than a weekly one. �2.50 a week is equivalent to around �120 a year.

Finally I negotiated the price of our oil tank refill. (It used to be 3 times a year and now it’s just twice. Global warming and tight wad queen at the helm has helped). I have used the same supplier for 25 years and I have enjoyed the relationship. This morning, the probable bill had escalated massively. I asked them for their best possible price and looked elsewhere. I just made 3 calls and saved �30/$60. From now on I will ring round to find a competitive price for each fill up. I felt a bit sad this morning when my old supplier wouldn’t budge. But in time everyone will take a few minutes and find a better price. This is the way everything is heading now.

I’ve also looking on the internet for some save money ideas. There’s a very good article about saving money on food here.

Fred measured the white powder out carefully.
“You do know that it’s generally illegal to supply this now?”
I didn’t but I nodded anyway as he tried to unglue the furred up spout of the salt carton. Impatient, he sliced the entire top off with his knife. Stunning Three Musketeers swordsmanship. He added the salt to the bag and shook the crystals together. He was mixing sodium nitrate (saltpetre) with salt as I was going to make my own salt pork for the very first time.

“You could make salt pork but you could also make a bomb!”
“Oh really?” I was intrigued.
“Yes. You had better not tell Danny what’s in this little bag!”

Saltpetre used to be available from a chemist’s shop. Now it is only available from butchers’ suppliers. A good butcher’s shop like Fred Fitzpatrick’s (Exning Road, Newmarket) would be able to order it for you and work out the right mix of saltpetre to salt.

I had no idea that belly of pork is in fact untreated streaky bacon. When I saw the amount of salt and saltpetre that Fred had given me to salt the pork I was horrified. It filled a quarter of a 2 litre casserole dish.
“You need to get the salt and water mix just right. Float an egg (in its shell) in it – there should be roughly half a centimetre of the egg above the surface. If it’s floating too proud, add more water.”
“How long do I soak it for?”
“A joint that size (600g) will take 2 days. Then wrap it in muslin and hang it in the chimney over a slow log fire in your inglenook for an evening to smoke it.”

The romance of the idea was captivating and distracted me from all thoughts of saltpetre and bombs in a trice.

Apparently it is very hard to buy salt pork in a joint these days. Fred explained that most butchers are supplied with ready cut streaky.
“But Mike bought some in Saffron Walden.”
“Ah, yes. That would be So and So’s ( I didn’t catch the name). Probably the only place that you would get it in this region.”

Mike had cooked a dish to die for. And with all the salt we probably will.

Boston baked beans tantalised me for hours as it simmered in his slow cooker.
“Beans in America are not like your UK beans. There’s a whole range of them, sweet, spicy, with meat and so on. Did you know that the slow cooker was invented to make baked beans?”
Before I left that evening I begged him to leave me a taste for the morning. He was making coleslaw and briefly looked up as he sliced.
“Sure and I’ll leave you same slaw too.”

Mike wasn’t home when I arrived the next day but had sent a text with the location of the beans and the coleslaw. I grabbed 2 teaspoons and rushed down to the fridge in the cellar. I allowed myself a teaspoonful of each as I knew that I could polish off his supper in a matter of seconds. The combination was truly amazing.

I will be cooking this at the weekend and will post the recipe next week.

Fred described the old fashioned English farmhouse way to cure my joint. I have found some useful bacon curing links:

• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall cures streaky bacon without saltpetre in his Guardian 2006 article and doesn’t smoke the bacon
• A guy from Iowa uses three different cures and smokes his bacon in a proper smoker
• John D Lee smokes his own bacon in a kettle BBQ

As I write this the cottage is filled with the scent of smokey bacon – the log fire has done it work. Thanks Fred.
N.B. Update April 14th 2008. We now have perfected our recipe and method click here for our latest home cured bacon recipe.

I was thinking about the joy that not buying flowers has given me over the past year. It has forced me to look at the world in an entirely different way.

I now treasure the flowers that I grow and enjoy those that are living elsewhere – generally a fleeting glimpse from Jaolpy’s driving seat as we pound towards the job that day. At the moment there are pools of tremulous snowdrops, polyanthus and primroses. The daffodils are opening and it’s only February.

Flower spotting on foot is a much more satisfying pursuit. The dogs are forced to let me stand and gaze occasionally. When we eventually move on, they follow satisfying scents of a doggy nature as I examine the banks for wild flowers and clues for future foraging.

Today we were engulfed with a waft of such sweetness that we all instantly stopped and gazed up. Plum blossom stretched out on a filigree of branches beneath an azure sky. And deep in those branches a bird was singing. Exquisite.

In the human sized vase we have Forsythia (Forsythia x intermedia Lynwood Variety), Iris sibiricia, Viburnum (Viburnum x bodnantense Dawn) that has delighted me for months now. There are also branches of Wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) and the cool green flowers of the Stinking Hellebore (Helleborus foetidus).

The freshness of the doll’s vase is much more appealing. There are purple and white crocuses, two petulant pansies, polyathus, double snowdrops (I didn’t count them Clare!), a bud from the china rose, the first blue scilla and speedwell that I found on my morning walk. I was running late so the name speedwell carried the perfect wish.

I examined the tiny flowers peeping up from the rounded leafy collars when I got home. Quite perfect.

Our old friend Richard introduced us to Bill Granger. We didn’t actually meet Bill but tasted his recipes and were instantly drawn to his books.

Seductive photography and great copy. Sometimes Bill hovers behind a dish, looking calm and relaxed with just the right amount of sun. There is never a hint of a chilly English winter – it’s Australia after all and Bill doesn’t need to pull on a double knit.

These are the perfect books to turn to if the weather is too warm for wintry food but too brisk for a chilled gazpacho.

We recently discovered that houmous, topped with a light pesto is an excellent combination. This morning the sunny day inspired me to run up this houmous recipe from Joanna’s Food. It took ten minutes. I found the remains of a jar of really delicate Italian pesto in the far reaches of the fridge.

For my solo lunch I made delicious, layered oatcakes (Mike’s invention, he uses his ‘egg box’ crackers). Cottage cheese, houmous, thinly sliced tomato topped with a half teaspoonful of pesto.

Driving back from Saffron Walden this evening I had a brainwave. There’s a large jug of coriander sitting on the kitchen windowsill. Why not turn it into an amazing coriander pesto?

Imagining the wings of Escoffier brush Jalopy’s windscreen I thundered back ready to share my inspiration with the world.
“If this works it’ll be great with chicken, fish, baked peppers and as a topping for houmous or even soup!”

A tremulous step onto the internet showed me that over three hundred thousand people had already discovered the idea. I skimmed though a few recipes for combinations of ingredients and my head whirred. Finally I found this recipe from Bill Granger – it uses cashews rather than pine kernels so it instantly appealed as I bought some on whim a couple of weeks ago.

I played with his recipe. Used the top half of the stalks as well as the leaves, dropped the chilli pepper, added more lime juice and olive oil and finally added a small amount of parmesan cheese. I am delighted with the result. Summery flavours and so enticing that I’ve had to put it away in the fridge, out of easy reach. My version is below.

Coriander and lime juice pesto recipe (inspired by Bill Granger)

Ingredients:

• 60 g fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves and the top half of the stalks
• 80 g unsalted cashew nuts, lightly toasted and roughly chopped
• 10g of garlic chopped
• 15g of grated fresh ginger
• 6-8 tablespoons of olive oil
• 4 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
• 25g of finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano
• Sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Method:

Place the coriander, garlic, cashews ginger and parmesan in the food processor and blend. With the motor still running drizzle the lime juice and enough olive oil to give a smooth consistency. Add a little salt and lashings of ground black pepper. Store in the fridge with a little olive oil on the surface to keep it fresh.

The stocky man outside the front door looked a bit embarrassed. I assumed that he was going to offer to prune my trees or tarmac the drive. With a sweep of his hand he explained that he was a neighbour. He didn’t give his name. As The Contessa and Inca bawled at him from the safety of the sitting room window he let rip.

He jabbed a finger in the direction of the roaring dogs behind the steamy window.
“Those are the reason why I have come round.”
He observed me closely and enunciated clearly.
“Every time I go into my garden they yap. I open the shed door they yap. They ruined the barbecue that we had last summer. Our guests said,
“How can you cope with this?”
I know that they are a yappy breed but please do something about them. Our dog doesn’t bark. They’re driving me nuts. Everyone agrees with me. They are a nightmare. I can’t even strim in peace. It’s just yap, yap, yap…” He went on and on, with a much stronger bark, for a good ten minutes.

I let the rant wash over me. I hadn’t brushed my hair, was wearing outrageous pyjamas and hadn’t even started to think about breakfast. I was also containing our oldest Min Pin, Dr Quito. Who had sensed danger and was snarling from behind my slippers.
“Why there’s even another one there!”

Here was the unseen Bank Manager that Inca (our youngest and most territorial dog) has taken a real aversion to. Our garden backs onto the gardens of six houses. He moved into one last year. We’ve never had a complaint from anyone before.

“I came round last week and there was no one home! I realised that the dogs have access to the garden when you are out. They have to be shut indoors.”
When I nodded he softened a bit.
“I have heard you calling them in when they’re yapping.”

Of course he had, there is nothing worse than a yapping dog. Our dogs have access to the garden through a cat flap. In summer an open back door, when we are at home. As he strode down the drive I realised that we needed to do something about this fast, before it was too late. The set of his neck indicated extensive petitions and complaints to the police.
Danny and I discussed the options. “I’m amazed that he didn’t mention the chickens and guinea fowl.”

From the depths of the garden we heard Cloud’s piercing, repetitive call.
“Come home, come home, come home, come home… Come home, come home, come home, come home…”

The main culprit is Inca who is six years younger than the next dog. She loves a good bark. She plays for hours on her own with rings and balls but often gets bored and then she patrols the fences looking for intruders. Following the BM’s visit we had a yap free day. Had the dogs understood our mutters of ASBO and the possibility of being “put down”?

We decided to give the younger dogs a hearty walk each morning. Dogs will be locked in the cottage when we are both out and we’ve organised a friend to let them out for a 10 minute breather at midday. This morning I searched the barn for the pack of Training Pads as there are bound to be a few accidents and these are a great way of containing the mess.

I arrived home to find four happy dogs, a clean Training Pad and the cat flap open. Danny had forgotten to pull up the drawbridge in his rush to leave. Let’s hope that the BM didn’t host a barbecue this afternoon.