Best Pheasant recipes: two winning recipes for pheasant
We are well into the pheasant shooting season in the UK. It runs from October to February. As we don’t shoot ourselves, we are either given game or swap plucking and dressing game in exchange for a brace. This gives us a reasonable supply for the last three months of the season. The first month is a bit of a desert for us – I hear the bang of guns and know that no one will knock at our door. Having waited eight months to bag the first brace this game is solely for the family tables of the guns. However there is only so much pheasant...
read moreASBO fridge freezer
Danny has secretly slapped an Anti Social Behaviour Order on our fridge freezer. Last weekend we had a bit of a fright with the vociferous beast. It was suddenly struck quite dumb. “I think that the fridge is very sick, Danny. The light goes on when I open the door but the motor does not hum.” This fridge has been an adolescent for as far back as we can remember. Moody and prone to dramatic outbursts of weeping into the space that used to hold the crisper drawers. Over the past couple of years it has been insisting that it’s a freezer...
read morePresents from Fuerteventura
The Chicken Lady, S and Rollo returned on Wednesday night from a long holiday in Fuerteventura . They dropped by this evening, deeply tanned and soaked with sun and long break laziness. I’d returned late from work so the cottage was freezing. We’ve got used to the no central heating chill but they were still adjusting thermostats. After an hour of strong cocktails, dabbling with extremely hot chilli infused Indian snacks and cranking up the wood burning stove to full power, things eventually heated up to a temperature where jackets could...
read moreHow to smoke bacon at home: adapting a chiminea
“Do you think that we could adapt a chiminea to smoke bacon? There are small ones on sale for £20.” It was early summer. Tessa and Colin don’t have a fireplace. Most of the smokers available in the DIY stores are hot smokers. Hot smokers cook and smoke the food. They are also quite expensive. My instant reaction was No. How could a chiminea be adapted for cold smoking? Smoke is hot, a chiminea chimney is short. The idea seemed crazy. But Tessa was stubborn. A few days later she mentioned chimineas again. We reckoned that the metal ones...
read moreSecret wet cure recipe for smoked bacon
Having had a baconless weekend, I have been actively seeking a new butcher. I’m told that there’s a great independent butcher in Bury St Edmunds, 14 miles away. When I next have a Saturday off, Jalopy and I will be pointed like an arrow towards that lovely old Cathedral city. In the interim, we’ve tasted some ‘good’ commercially produced bacon and been amazed at the thin and wishy-washy flavour and at the price. Even at special offer prices, bacon is a luxury. Finding a good pork supplier is now a priority. I drifted into Tesco...
read moreKreativ Blogger Award
Moonroot has given me the Kreativ Blogger award. She writes a great blog, that always guarantees good and interesting read. Thank you, Moonroot. The rules are simple. Nominate six blogs that you believe deserve this award and also list six things that you like. Blogging awards are a good idea. Writing a blog can be lonely, as I discovered over the past two years or so. Sometimes I find real gems that are unheralded amongst the more established blogs. So tonight I’d like to share some blogs that I really enjoy but that you might not yet have...
read moreLate morning brunch: Cheesy mushrooms on toast with a dash of spice recipe
To cut our carbon footprint we decided to combine the post run and the weekly shop and travel to Newmarket in the same car. This meant that Danny had to face an experience that he refers to with tight lipped horror. Saturday supermarket queues. In fact he hates any sort of queue. Even the queue for the tote to collect his winnings. I now refer to queues as moving lines. This seems to calm him. As we drove into the Tesco car park we couldn’t find a space. I knew that unusually long moving lines were already threading across his mind as he...
read moreUpdate on the young: teeny winter salad leaves sown under fleece and Beatyl our diminutive baby cockerel
When the dogs stopped playing with the fleece, things progressed very quickly with our winter salad leaf seeds. They germinated within a week. I also realised that the mini poly tunnel ‘self waters’ the two rows of leaves that it protects when condensation builds up with the heat exchange. It drips onto the soil morning and evening. The seedlings are so young that I was concerned that they might have been knocked on the head by the heavy frosts last week. Apparently, seeds sown mid September should have grown into robust plants by January....
read moreSaving money in 2008. October review. Battling with the cold.
“Have you got fingerless gloves too?” I’d unearthed Danny’s thermal vests, inherited by proxy from my uncle. Also I’d located his beanie hat (stored on a shelf beside his computer when the weather warmed up in the Spring). Delving deep in his cupboards, I’d found a good cashmere scarf that he had enjoyed opening one Christmas and would now finally appreciate. It’s tough working in an unheated house, when the ground is frozen outside. Especially if you are a fresh air freak and sit below an open Velux window. Consequently, the...
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Recent Comments
{ I was thinking the same as Magic Cochin but then like you I don't have my phone attached by an umbilical cord wherever I go.... } – Wed 8 :47 pm
{ Good point but I don't tend to take it about with me everywhere 
} – Wed 7 :25 pm
{ Doesn't your mobile phone have an alarm setting? C x } – Wed 6 :32 pm
{ I would put it towards a bbq, it's just a shame you can't purchase some sunshine from b&q } – Wed 12 :04 am- { Hi Lesley The clucking means that she is brrody also plucking her own feathers is a sign too. } – Tue 11 :58 pm
- { Hi Lesley They have to stay in the broody coop 24/7. Could you put in a garden shed or garage? } – Tue 11 :57 pm
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